Balta1701

I wouldn't' sign him to that right now if I was the White Sox and I wouldn't sign that right now if I was him. You don't sign him right now because what if he has a setback - you've added $8 million and gotten nothing out of it. I wouldn't sign that right now if I was him because I might find a better offer after the 2024 World Series once I do a throwing demonstration in the offseason, depending on who needs pitching and how the market goes. All this went out the window today, no one has any real motivation to do anything here until he's doing a pitching demonstration and hitting the high 90s again.

They should definitely have tried to work something out where they give him his money much sooner and there's a couple million extra for 2025 in it for him, rather than getting to the point of declining his option. Now, he should just wait til he's healthy and try to sign a $8 million or so deal after 2024. The money is guaranteed now that the option has been declined, it's no longer good business for him to sign anything until he's ready for a training camp.

While we don't know Bochy's exact deal, when he was with the Giants, he was the highest paid manager in baseball at up to $6 million for 1 season. I can't imagine he's coming back for substantially less than that.

Bochy took the Rangers job before the White Sox hired Grifol. We do not know if the White Sox ever talked to him or not. There would probably be a money issue here as I’m sure Bochy is getting paid what he deserved and Reinsdorf would have issues with that.

While what you write about it being idiotic to refuse information is true, I’m not sure you realize how much of an indictment of the White Sox it is. They could have gotten vastly more information in their GM search, they should have done so, any professional business would have done so, but the White Sox ardently refused. They did not interview outside the organization, they didn’t interview people of diverse backgrounds, they didn’t interview anyone. They as an organization literally said “these guys on other teams are smart and educated and know baseball in their current jobs and that’s the kind of opinions and information we absolutely don’t want to hear.” I said at the time that if they actually our together a true GM search, that wouldn’t mind LaRussa being involved. He knows the owner and the organization and he has certain types of experience that would be useful, but it needed to be balanced out by others through a professional search process. For the utterly rigged joke that we got, it’s not surprising that LaRussa would be involved. You said it yourself that any organization refusing information is making a mistake, LaRussa being involved in the White Sox making that mistake fits perfectly with my impression of him.

Yup, Burdi was going to be on the same path as Sale and Fulmer, they drafted a college reliever in the first round because they needed help that season. And this draft was loaded. Just looking at pitchers, guys who went after Burdi include Gallen, Dustin May, Lozardo, Lodolo, Burnes, and Bieber. Maybe they don’t switch to any of them, but they had lots of other chances.

https://projects.ricethresher.org/projects/baseball/janish-reflects-on-his-unexpectedly-long-tenure-with-rice From earlier this year, nothing in depth but if you'd like to read him talking about his career.

Didn't the Giants win the 2014 World Series? It was an even numbered year so that had to go to Bochy. He didn't get a ring, that would have been 2015.

There is already a Fire Getz thread.

From the perspective of a student there when he was fired... I think he also got way worse over time and as the accolades piled up. I can't look at that picture of him and his team from 76 or Isiah Thomas saying "prayers for our coach" yesterday, or the way Mike Woodson has treated him the last few years, and believe that he was also kicking these guys in the shins and slapping them on a regular basis. He might have been tough, but to do what he did there in the 70s, I struggle to see him being that level of abusive. I think especially after that undefeated season, the "legend of Bob Knight" started to grow, that fed his ego, and maybe he had fewer people willing to call him out if he pushed up against a line and eventually stepped over it. I think you can see this with the stores and books published about the 1980s, there's a level of "pushing the line" that isn't quite physically violent but isn't ok in those stories. Then there were some down seasons in the mid-80s and that took him to another level, that was when the chair incident happened. That's when a lot of the first incidents between him and the press, between him and his family apparently happened. What I remember from the 1990s and early 2000s teams is that they had way more talent and were way better put together than their final results would show. They could hang with anyone, but they'd often lose - I think they were legitimately playing scared all the time. I was at one game against Ohio State, the refs were calling the game tough, Indiana was the better team, but they lost because they weren't being aggressive at all, they were hanging back and expecting fouls. They knew if they screwed up that they'd get in real trouble, so they didn't focus on doing their best, they focused on not trying to make their coach angry. That fits with the high number of transfers they were getting in the late 90s from players who came there and wanted to get away from him. They stopped winning, and that was because of him too.

The more I see how they're going right now, the more I think the reason they were fired is that they were too honest with JR. I think JR believes that this team is 1 or 2 players away right now, and if his GM is off doing rebuilding trades and saying that they just can't be at the top in 2024, well then he needs a GM who will agree with him.

Even ignoring all the clear mistakes he made during the Astros series and the games he gave away during the season for no reason whatsoever...there were some fundamental strategic choices that they made which backfired. Take a look at the pitching staff. Coming off of 2020, literally everyone could see that "the health of pitchers" was a concern, because none of them pitched 150 innings the year before, and Rodon in particular was going to have some worry since he was also coming back from injury. LaRussa burned out his starting pitchers as much as humanly possible in the first half of the season to get a 10+ game lead in the AL Central, and never scheduled in break time for most of them until they actually hit the IL. You had Rodon hit the IL with arm soreness and tiredness, you had Lynn break down with a knee problem, I believe Giolito hit the IL, and Keuchel fell apart as soon as the sticky stuff ban existed. Maybe the latter doesn't fall on LaRussa as much as Katz and company, but "Pushing these guys as hard as possible in the first half to the point that they were injured down the stretch" and "Burying Kopech as a 1 inning reliever in the bullpen for July, August, and Most of September rather than sending him to the minors, streching him out, and using him as a starter to give each other guy a break" - these were big picture strategic decisions that looked like bad ideas coming into the year and turned out to be bad ideas in the end. Maybe they still lose to the Astros, but maybe if they stretched Kopech out, they come in with home field advantage, Rodon's arm is stronger and he goes in game 1, and all of a sudden you have a different series.

That 2021 team had a real, legitimate shot if they were smarter. Especially if you could throw in better defensive fundamentals, an approach at the plate that isn't obsessed with ground balls the other way.

Guys with 2 WS MVP trophies: Bob Gibson, Sandy Koufax, Reggie Jackson, Corey Seager.

Well that was anticlimactic

I'd kinda go with "both".

However they get to that point, recognizing that "they can't actually contend next year" is actually the right conclusion. If that leaves their 5th or 6th starter spots open for Eder or other guys who are probably all going to suck but who can get tryouts, sure go for it. Just don't say "Eder can be our 4th starter" and "I'm going to trade Quero for Perez because we gotta get that leadership to contend this year" at the same time.

Is there a chance that, if this guy wasn't traded for now, the Commanders might have used the franchise or transition tags on him?

I mean, I think this is precisely true. Furthermore, I think that if the White Sox pretend this isn't true, it will lead to a much larger, much longer setback.

If you're looking at the same White Sox roster as me, it seems pretty obvious that a reliever under team control in 2027 and 2028 is worth way more than 70 home runs over 2 years for a 2024-2025 team that otherwise is going to win 65 or 70 games.

As apparently I’m the Jake Burger hater because I do check the stats, this also isn’t true. His walk rate with the Marlins was 32% lower than with the White Sox this year and also lower than his 2021 or 2022 stints with the White Sox. His OBP improved with the Marlins not because of walks, but because he had a .225 BABIP with the White Sox and a .354 with the Marlins last year. His OBP improved because more balls dropped by chance. Now, he does hit the ball very hard, so it isn’t surprising that his .225 BABIP would be weirdly low and would go up after leaving the White Sox, but .354 may also be too high for a guy who isn’t a good athlete and won’t get tons of cheap or infield hits also. Further, his HR rate dropped in Florida, that may or may not be worrisome, or it could just be random scatter. The thing he did make progress on with Florida is a lower K rate. But, does that go with the lower walk rate and just suggest that he’s swinging even more aggressively? His swing rates are a little higher in Florida, but he must have been making more contact to get that K rate drop.

I don’t think any of them will be gone this year. First, two of them are easy to move, but won’t return anything. Anderson could have his option declined, Eloy could probably still have most of his contract sent elsewhere, but if you do either of those you have no replacement and that makes it tough to pretend you can decide to win this year. Moncada is unmovable without paying his deal or taking a contract like Sale back, and since they have no 3b without him, again they can’t pretend that they’re deciding to compete this year if they move him. Everything so far - Reinsdorf’s press conference, every comment from Getz and now especially BARField, has been how they have so much talent and expect to win soon. Plus, we still have the revival of the Perez rumors. There’s no logic to this being them trying to deceive everyone, it won’t sell tickets and denying that they’re rebuilding might only drive up Perez’s price in a trade. Reinsdorf insists that they have a good team that is one or two players away and can win soon, nothing fundamental has to change he just needs people on board with that decision. Whether the guys they brought in are dumb enough to believe this or they’re just repeating it because that’s what the boss wants who knows, but everything says they believe that they can decide to win this year. That also suggests that a reason why the GM was changed was that the last one might have questioned their natural ability to compete because they say so. Regardless, that leaves all of them coming back because you can’t insist you have a ton of talent and are going to compete this year and then let guys go for nothing.