Balta1701

THEN F***ING RESIGN IN 2014. OR 2019. OR 2021. LITERALLY EVERYONE ON EARTH WOULD HAVE UNDERSTOOD WHY HE RESIGNED IF HE HAD DONE SO IN DECEMBER OF 2020, AND HE'D PROBABLY HAVE ANOTHER GM JOB RIGHT NOW. INSTEAD HE'S A LAUGHINGSTOCK WHO WILL NEVER WORK AS A GM AGAIN.

Reinsdorf will keep trying for several more years. He will then, by 2026 or 2027, start saying how unfair the politicians have been for not giving support to his brilliant plan. That is the setup the A's were at a couple years ago. The City was willing to spend some on a new stadium but expected the billionaire owner to do their part as well. The end result is a team in Sacramento's minor league park for 2 years before they move into a ballpark that even the new city doesn't want to actually pay for.

JR has acted the whole time like a classic 1980s bully rich person. In the 80s he threatened to leave and they caved, so he’s expecting that again. He doesn’t realize the politicians no longer will cut a blank check for a stadium, but he has told his partners he can make it happen. The politicians are expecting him to put up a lot of money and give them a plan that is a good deal for the taxpayer, and for a blighted and undeveloped property in the city that can happen, but he won’t do that. He believes they will cave when they see his importance, and get this, no one in his employ has clearly explained to him that the world doesn’t work that way any more. The state won’t cave, nor should they, which sets up a standoff just like the A’s.

chances of a sweep in the final series looking solid, with Detroit right in a tight race.

I think 40-122 puts you clearly behind the 40-120 Mets. 41-121 has more losses than the Mets but a better winning percentage, that would be a tie in the standings with the White Sox listed ahead. 40-122 puts the White Sox 1 game behind.

The government should not be caring about white Sox payroll on their big league staff. They should be caring about the quality of jobs generated by the site, and Reinsdorf is notoriously cheap for what he pays his stadium staff. They should be caring about the tax revenue return created by developing this site and jobs created around it. So far, as far as I can tell, neither Reinsdorf nor Related have talked about this at all, and as a consequence the politicians are correctly saying that they need to make sure it is a “good deal for the taxpayers”. Reinsdorf apparently refuses to demonstrate this in any way, and instead expects that he can bully the state government with threats to move and bribes of river cruises.

Worth noting that the NFL concussion settlements I think establish a pretty clear precedent that a team has responsibility to act in the best interests of their players health in addition to their interests of winning. If a team pushes a player too hard or does not have the player fully understanding their risks of an activity, there remains liability on the part of the team.

Let’s not ignore the fact that Garrett Crochet has already done this at least two times for playoff teams and maybe half a third time rushing back too early to try to save a 2023 team. Is he going to be asked to pitch himself into the operating table or rehab room every year?

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.”