Balta1701

I’m not sure what to make of Martin yet, but I think there’s more the core of a bullpen here than a competitive rotation. There’s a potential top two starting pitchers, maybe another arm that turns out tolerable, but I think a lot of the minor arms are guys that get exposed after too many long outings or too many times being seen. At least so far that is, maybe they all add pitches or velocity this offseason.

Can the my make the bridge across the river something architecturally neat? Because that’s spectacular in Pittsburgh.

I thought this last winter, but the idea that Reinsdorf would think "walking around the legislature threatening to leave and demanding the most expensive public stadium in MLB history in order to stay" was anywhere remotely a good strategy remains baffling to me. Not only something no one was ever going to pay, but also the threats to leave followed by this season had to leave everyone extra soured on the whole idea. This is what "Poisoning the well" probably looks like.

Everyone saw this right?

Didn't Crochet literally say he didn't want to do this without a contract extension?

I'm looking forward to the offseason where we start trying to bully the state of Illinois out of a billion dollars again with more threats to move.

Back in either Jan or Feb, whenever they decided not to fire him, I said you had to commit to 2 years, barring a complete disaster, for exactly this reason. A rookie QB looked like a normal rookie QB and that was key in a loss to a very good, well coached team. This would have happened with literally any head coach yesterday I think, in almost the same way.

Rather than holding the ball too long (again excluding that blind side sack), I thought his problem was much more accuracy and decision making under pressure. Too many balls by Odunze’s feet or bombs into triple coverage. A lot of that is expected as a rookie against a really good defense. Some of that is improvable, even quickly if the coaches are good at teaching. If he was able to hit some more of those quick routes, that would also help his O line, as they said during the game this was the most that any Ryans coached defense had even blitzed during a game. Getting those balls onto a receivers hands under pressure would limit the defenses ability to do that. They attacked him like a rookie QB and he looked like a rookie QB. Next step is learning from it.

Around the league, there are only a handful of teams that actually look elite right now. The Bears sure don't look like a 4-13 team, and they don't look like a 13-4 team. While you hope things trend positively soon, right now they're in that giant middle of the pack. The Texans, in my eyes, are one of the teams that look elite right now. They are winning close games rather than blowouts so far, this is true, but they play really tough defensive football and have a lot at the skill positions. Injuries could change things and they could always "Eagles" the 2nd half or something like that, but I think the Bears just gave a tough game to a 12+ win team with a QB in his 2nd game, didn't look the best, but still held their own. Question is, do you change systems if the coach wins 7-8 games?

While the O line wasn’t good, give some credit to the Texans too. That D line is legit. The personnel are strong and Ryans seems excellent at pushing an offenses weaknesses. It felt like watching a young team with a stout defense and a rookie QB last night, up against a team with a more experienced QB. Both sides did damage but Stroud limited the silly plays (the long Int, the blind side sack by Hunter on a play that should have been a screen come to mind) and Stroud did a better job of nailing the “how the hell did he find that guy open” throws, mostly to Collins. I thought the difference in the game was not the O line as much as it was Williams played like a rookie. Did not hit his receivers when they had space and did not know how to find a weakness in that defense. Showed promise but still early on a learning curve. The one thing that is different is that his opponent, Stroud, was a long ways ahead of this point last year after game 2. Also, that was way too many false starts for a pro offense, did the coaches not work with anything on volume this week? And that second half wasted timeout-challenge was awful, that could easily have been a difference maker at the end.

Holy s%*# Jacob DeGrom is actually pitching in the big leagues again?

I always used to do this for Hahn so I might as well do it for the “Bruised girls are best” GM. The correct answer to that question is “Look we know the results of this season aren’t acceptable to our fans or to us. We know it takes time to fix these things. But we owe it to our fans and to the city to take a big step in the right direction next year and some of that will come from Free agency. I can promise you we will sign anyone specific but there are players on the market this offseason who will make us a lot better next year and we expect to compete to sign them.” Even if it’s bullshit, the only reason you declare you’re out on FA in September with a 35 win team and $50 million on the books is to collude with other teams to keep prices down, so that no one uses you as a possible mystery team that you have to bid against. Even the worse than us in ‘23 Royals made a serious move this year helped by some strong signings, with a similar payroll going into the offseason as the White Sox today.

Focus on guys who have TWTW. Who hit the ball on the ground and who have leadership.

Which is weird because the last time he talked, he said his number 1 priority this offseason was to fix the bullpen.

I count 3 innings in their last 36 where they've scored.

115. 9-5 ties the Mets in the L column. 5-9 for lowest winning percentage in the modern era.

“I know, we’ll bring in veteran leadership, that’ll solve it.”

No 4 games per month since July would be 9-10 wins. You're exaggerating, it's not nearly that high.

"Per month"? You're also exaggerating.

The Angels being 27 games better than the White Sox is like a 92 win team playing a 65 win team. In that case, the better team is probably going to win most of the games, but they'd be happy going 4-2 and winning both series, it's still not a blowout, and sometimes the worse team might still win 3 or 4 games.

No one would notice action on…a low level minor league game?

The White Sox kept horn through the spring and sent him to Charlotte after trading for him IIRC.

Did everyone see that article in the Sun Times a couple weeks ago on how the White Sox had bullpen pieces on their roster in ST that they let go and those guys have had pretty consistent success this year with other teams?

Lee was a young guy brought in to see if they could get something out of him while he had cheap control. He was not brought in by Domestic Violence Enthusiast Getz as one of his veterans for leadership program.

I tend to not quite count Fedde in that total since that signing seemed smart and very distinct from bringing in Martin Maldonado and expecting leadership to make a difference. Fedde was a gamble that could have trade value. Maldonado was to bring TWTW and make them winners.