Balta1701

That’s the game with these guys, it’s the same routine Hahn got - it can never be their fault. 2022 “I think the pitching will be pretty strong, Kopech just substitutes for Rodon and they added a ton to the bullpen.” The pitching was a Cueto away from bottom 10 in baseball, but that’s LaRussa only. 2023: “The pitching should be ok, Cease should still be great and the bullpen is bound to be better.” 101 losses. Bottom 6 pitching staff. Cease sabotages his own trade value. Pre 2024 here at Soxtalk “I think the bullpen will be ok with the arms they added”. The bullpen is awful. “How could you expect them to have a decent bullpen with these arms”. I can already write the 2025 story. “We don’t really need a starter, look how many promising young arms we have.” Will turn into “No one ever said that arms like Burke were promising, there’s not even a first round pick among them, of course the starting rotation was bad, the important thing is that Martin had a good year and Schulz looks good and wasn’t hurt.”

Was this international cash or cash considerations?

1. Ethan Katz got his job because he fixed Lucas Giolito. He fixed Lucas Giolito by cheating. Ethan Katz has his job because he’s a cheater. It’s like hiring the 2017 Astros pitching coach and asking me why I’m focused on that. Ethan Katz made Josh Donaldson honest. 2. That was, in hindsight, quite literally the day that this rotation started falling apart. 3. I can’t find any other team that had such a dropoff in pitching performance starting right then. 4. Name one season, hell one half season, since the first half of 2021, where you felt the pitching lived up to expectations. Edit: since the day of the sticky stuff ban guess which team has the worst walk rate in baseball.

Oh so you want me to focus only on 2024? 28th best ERA in the league. Good enough? Note that I went all the way back to the moment that Katz’s one tool, cheating, was taken away from him.

I am willing to give the White Sox some credit for both Crochet and Fedde. Cease too. Ethan Katz is not the worst pitching coach in the league. He has contributed to a couple of actual success stories, Rodon, Cease, and Crochet notably. Since the day that the sticky stuff ban began, the White Sox's pitching staff is 16th in MLB in fWAR. 19th out of the bullpen. 25th in bullpen ERA, 20th in starter ERA. Is that performance satisfactory? Is that an appropriate level of performance given the goals of the team and the resources put into those spots? Trades, the most expensive bullpen in baseball in 2022-23, is that satisfactory? Because if the end result of the White Sox is great performances from Smith and Schultz, teamed with a bullpen that puts up an ERA of 4.5 and 3 replacement level starters - that's the Ethan Katz performance so far.

How about this - the last time I thought player development did its job was in the 2000s. In the early half, the heart of a World Series team was developed in the White Sox system, and you had unexpected successes like Crede, who was a 5th round draft pick, or Brandon McCarthy from the 7th. You can't name a 5th round draft pick who became a success for the White Sox in the last 15 years, because around the time Hahn took over it just plain stopped happening. In the latter half, a rebuilt rotation including Danks and Floyd came up out of that system, at least partially. That isn't to say the White Sox didn't have talent in their system or get talented guys in later rounds. Despite giving a way a lot of draft picks and never spending their international funds, they managed to have guys like Semien and Tatis in their system who had tons upon tons of talent. The guys they had in their system actually out-performed their system rankings, by a lot. However, by 2014, under Hahn, when those guys were coming up, the system had reached a point where they couldn't recognize those guys were good or help those guys build anything. Marcus Semien was a 6th round pick in the White Sox's system, he's damn near been an MVP caliber player, but the White Sox's system pigeonholed him as a utility man. As soon as he went somewhere else, he struggled because he hadn't gotten quality coaching the entire way up, but after a year of work and a couple of years experience, bang here's a 7-WAR player. That story has continued to repeat itself. Normal teams get good players in rounds other than round 1. It's not every one, but guys come up and contribute. Occasionally you should still find a Spencer Strider. You can't name a contributor for the White Sox outside the first round probably since Hahn took over, and what did they wind up doing as a consequence? Overspending on utility guys, overspending on relievers - the guys you often can find in middle rounds.

The game of the sycophants right now is to take "we'll believe it when we see it" and say it actually is people saying "everything will fail". I will give you one example. I have no idea how this stadium setup works out with the team staying in Chicago. The only options I can plausibly come up with are: the government caves at the last minute and gives Reinsdorf the most expensive stadium in baseball, Reinsdorf suddenly has his heart grow three sizes and funds a reasonable portion of the stadium construction himself, or the team moves or is sold. The only way I can foresee the team staying in Chicago is if they're sold in the next couple years to a group that wants to keep them in Chicago, and everyone has said Reinsdorf doesn't want to sell until after his death due tot he taxes. If you can tell, I think both of the first 2 options seem exceedingly unlikely. Is this "everything is bound to fail" or is that a proper reading of the current setup?

Then they should...actually write that?

I think "blind faith in Getz" is an apt description of at least a few posters here. I don't think they'd get piled on as much if they were saying they'd like to support him and hope he does well rather than saying what a great job he's done already and getting angry when people call out things like his moves over the last year.

Jose Altuve, 7 year contract extension. Pujols's original deal with the Cardinals, 7 years. José Ramírez with the Guardians, 7 years. Joe Mauer contract with the Twins, 8 years. Codify isn't very good at this.

He went through liking a giant series of her photos on Instagram for reasons that were never explained. But that kind of leadership, dragging outsiders with his employer into a domestic situation, was the kind of leadership that prompted Chris Getz to bring Clevinger back.

Yes, coach S. Tack.

Um...about Giolito's 2018...and about what changed in 2019...

Sale in 2015 actually has a better K/BB ratio than Garrett.

For there to be a 0.1% chance of it happening, that's a 1 in 1000 chance. For it to happen 3 times, that would mean the White Sox had 3000 pitchers in the last 10 years. That seems high to me.

As dominant as that is, we've basically seen 3 White Sox pitchers do practically that within the last 10 years. 11.8K/1.8BB, 12.6K/2.4 BB.

Who prevented him from being himself?

While we don't know what they are, we 100% know that the White Sox absolutely, ardently refuse to give him another chance even when the opportunity is wide open.

I can think of one larger broadcasting team mistake in the last year than either of these, IMO at least.

The governor of New Jersey was freaked out by the Constellation Orion.

Wow, I didn’t pay any attention to his stats after about the first half, and wow did his numbers go nuts in the second half.

I don’t know that he’s a good backup catcher. Right now he’s a replacement level player. That has some use, but he has work to do before I’d call him good.

Apparently now that this is a thing, people looked at the videos and there’s some combination of people freaking out about planes, helicopters, and occasionally, Venus.

Also not just this…if he were to sell the team, a large chunk of the funds coming from the new owners who want to own their stadium and surrounding land for business development is also expected. In that case, helping procure land and transit access can be something that a city kicks in.