Balta1701

Nearly everyone on the FA market should look vastly overpaid when they sign. That's the reality of the FA market. It is very rare where more than 1 team makes a comparable offer to a guy and he gets to choose without either team changing their bid. You want to get better on the FA market, you either need to be targeting literally only 1 or 2 guys, or you need to be ready to overspend. If the Yankees and Mets can't put playoff teams out there with what they spent last offseason, there is a lesson to be learned from that.

The "We need to win soon" and "Here is a CBA violation I am definitely not interested in Ohtani and the White Sox will not be bidding on him" statements in his press conference.

An owner is willing to disrespect their GM by publicly announcing personnel decisions and goals without consulting the GM, is generally a bad thing in every way possible. Chris Getz proved he was ok with this on the day he was hired. Kim Ng just resigned from a job because the owner decided to undercut her.

I’d say that it doesn’t really matter, honestly. The setup is precisely the same in both cases. You would need a massive improvement from guys who are currently here, for most of them beyond what they have done recently or ever, and you need to team that with everyone you bring in outperforming their contract, no real busts allowed. Finally, you need no one to run away with the Central, if there’s a 95 win Twins team and 2 87 win teams in Cleveland and Detroit, even serious improvements don’t make this team competitive. This is the case whether they spend $170 million or $140 million.

"That was the 99th pitch of this game. We are through 2 innings."

Kimbrel? Yup, sounds familiar.

I think the idea today is to use both Heaney as the starter and Dunning as the first reliever out of the pen, hoping to get a long enough outing to give their offense a shot. Dunning has a good amount of bullpen experience this year, more than Heaney, so throwing several innings might be a good idea, and it sets them up to do some lefty-righty maneuvering against Baker's lineup by putting Heaney out there first.

Just to see how a different scenario could go: The White Sox go to Flaherty, Maeda, Severino with offers in the $8-10 million dollar range, not understanding that teams are going to have to pay a premium to sign these mid level pitchers this year because there are few options and tons of cash available (they stay away from Stroman and Giolito for personal reasons). There is a run on these guys signing $12 million+ offers with other teams, leaving us complaining about how most of them are gone (we have seen this before, in both 2020 and 2021 offseasons). The White Sox are left with no choice but to sign guys to become depth, and they become their first actual signings - guys who otherwise aren't wanted. Carlos Carrasco and Jake Odorizzi thus become their first signings.

1. The White Sox cannot afford guys who have the record of being quality starters at the positions they need to fill. 2. They still need people capable of filling these roles, so they default to utility infielders because they are affordable. 3. They do such a terrible job at developing their own players that they have zero depth. This leaves them with many more openings that need filled in the offseason and also requires them to find additional players during the season because they have no internal options to replace the guys who do get hurt. Utility infielders are the only ones available on waivers or as free agents, without a big cost in trades. 4. They do such a terrible job at developing their own players that they come up and are some of the worst baseballers you have ever seen. When you replace those guys with someone who is "tolerable and putting the ball in play", they look like revelations. (See: 2022 Danny Mendick). 5. Every so often, you roll the dice on a seemingly washed up veteran, and you get an incredible performance that could never be predicted, but it happens. (See: 2022 Elvis Andrus).

The caliber of defense these teams are playing compared to what I’m used to watching is mind boggling.

True but he was also a factor as he was never as good as you hoped. The entire time he was there, the Bears were in the top 10 of scoring offense once, in 2013 - and that was the year Josh McCown played 8 games and had a 13-1 TD/INT ratio. You can win with a guy doing what cutler did, but you have to pair him with a truly elite defense, which is tough when you gave up 2 first round picks and a ton of cap space for Cutler.

"How dare Bears fans want to win a Super Bowl!"

You left the part where Reinsdorf said that he had to do that because of the fans!

IF the Bears are taking Williams, I would take the best draft pick I can get for Fields and be content with it. Depending on his stats for the rest of the season, that could be a 2nd or 3rd round pick. Should be worth a little more than Rosen was at this point, right? That's not likely to be there next year, given the way the options and contracts work.

Tony wasn’t fired. And Ricky probably wouldn’t have been fired if the owner wasn’t already planning to bring in LaRussa.

Then get the deal done before the option decision deadline.

There are some potential issues with a clueless manager. Failing to properly treat or develop or coach actual talent - this can permanently damage young players. Allowing veterans to get away with things because they’re veterans - ,could hurt their performance and trade value. Creating a permanent reaction among players because you were too dumb to know why “he’s so well spoken” isn’t a compliment to your African American assistant GM, generally “I’m just staying away from that medal bad.

Oh lol so it's that "Church of Satan", and you haven't bothered to educate yourself about them. I like them even more now. Fascinating that you went with the pejorative of calling them "Satanic" or whatever word it was rather than saying anything about their actual group or even giving their name. And yes, the idea that I need a conversion ad during sporting events from the same people who were caught looting artifacts from the Middle East bugs the hell out of me, to use an appropriate phrase.

Well this started with a post saying that the Dodgers had endorsed "Satan Worship" and you explained to me that was because of an LGBTQ+ group. Are you saying there's a difference between those?

The "He Gets us" campaign is funded by an organization that includes the Hobby Lobby ownership (heavily lobbied to get the Supreme Court to rule against contraceptive coverage), has donated to a church whose website states "“all people who do not have faith in Jesus Christ will spend eternity in hell,” and to another group that has been labeled as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group.

Then I have a team they can look at as a good glimpse for how the future will go.

That's Satan worship to you folks?

Then their targets should be Blake Snell, Sonny Gray, or Aaron Nola.