Balta1701

I would bet that Jerry Reinsdorf would be ecstatic to add a few years onto the current White Sox park agreement as long as the deal remained the same. It's so ludicrously pro-Reinsdorf that he'd probably jump at that.

I think they'd have tried to finish it this morning if weather would have allowed.

The guy came up in Atlanta's system and started 2023 with Cleveland.

See ya Monday.

We don't know the structure yet, but the fact that these guys are getting such broad-ranging titles makes it seem pretty obvious to me that they are just replacing the overworked guys who were here with new guys in the same basic roles. The new guys think things will be ok, then they are going to be hit by the amount of tasks on the table for them, try to do the best they can, and wind up half-assing everything because they can't possibly do all the tasks they're supposed to do but somehow things need to be finished. Just like the guys right now.

No. He's a starting pitcher who is arb-1 with an ERA of 5 this season that matches his career ERA of 5. His FIP this year is 5.01 and it's 5.2 for his career. His WHIP is 1.41 this year and 1.46 for his career. He could very well wind up in the rotation of the White Sox next year, because the White Sox have so little in their organization that grabbing guys with an ERA of 5 to be their 4th or 5th starter is ok to them, but that's what bad teams do. On even a decent team, he's a guy who gets picked up when they have had 4 different starters go on the IL at the same time, because guys like him are available on waivers.

You can say that at the KW and Hahn level and it appears accurate. HOWEVER, at all the other levels of this organization, we constantly are talking about failing to do basic jobs - basic advance scouting, basic big league scouting, minor leaguers who are unable to obtain the type of coaching and feedback that they need to have success and who are sort of on their own to figure things out. We see people who are sloppy, we see people who aren't doing their jobs well. The Dodgers give AJ Pollock a huge amount of information, a giant book every day to prepare for his at bats, he comes to Chicago and they tell him that there's probably a pitcher who throws with an arm who will be on the mound tomorrow and he should get to work. The ticket sales and customer service departments have sounded awful the last few years, events and outreach and even just the general things that leave people feeling good have been stripped away. There's no one to say "Hey maybe Clevinger using 'gold digger' as his walkout song" doesn't reflect well on the team, so it just slips through. They haven't established a clear structure at the top, fair. However, at all the other levels of the organization, people are overworked and incapable of providing the type of information that players and decision makers need. They're all swamped, they're doing the best they can but the organization is so completely bare-bones, built to save money on staff, that it hurts everything else. That contrast shows up dramatically when you compare to the Cubs. The White Sox have 1 guy getting the same title as 3 or 4 guys there. They have a pitching expert, an international scouting organizer, etc. The White Sox just lump all that onto one guy, and we've seen how bad the results are.

That’s one hell of a thing.

In the way I wrote that I didn't call out any single player (note that he did choose to call out Anderson himself), I just noted that this season had gone very poorly (undeniable) and that they had a lot of work to do to get things turned in the right direction (which he apparently cannot acknowledge right now).

They already received some sort of relief for his contract/injury so I don't think they can do that. https://heavy.com/sports/chicago-bulls/nba-decision-request-ball-karnisovas-dosunmu/#:~:text=The %2410.2 million allocation represents,in the summer of 2021.

Comparing to a much better run front office, the Cubs, there is a Director of Baseball operations at the top (Hoyer), A general Manger (Hawkins), two guys who have Assistant General Manger titles, and I count at least 6 guys who have the title of Vice President just on the baseball side (with other Vps in charge of their spring training, security (cough), and so forth). Assistant General Manager – Ehsan Bokhari (no official portfolio but thought to focus on scouting and player development) Assistant General Manager/Vice President, Pitching - Craig Breslow Vice President, Player Development - Jared Banner Vice President, Baseball Operations - Greg Davey Vice President, Scouting - Dan Kantrovitz Vice President, Player Personnel - Matt Dorey Vice President, International Scouting - Louie Eljaua Vice President, Research & Development - Chris Moore I would question whether one person can do all these jobs.

I know a GM is supposed to be somewhat positive, but boy, I really wish that when he was asked this stuff, he gave answers that were a little more realistic. The White Sox are obviously in a messy situation, I wish he would be forthright about that. If he's asked about the state of the team and his first response is that there's a lot of players on this team that can help win the division, it leaves a sour taste in my mouth, because this is a 100 loss (or nearly so) team and it's darn hard to believe anything that starts off with talk about winning the division right now. If he is just playing to the reporters, it leaves me with an ugh because it's not honest, and if he actually believes that, it's far worse since that would be in denial about the mess in this franchise . You can even give some credit to the guys who are here, while still stating that it's going to be a tough job. "We think we have some solid pieces here, everyone has seen what Luis Robert has done in his first all star campaign this year, Dylan Cease was a cy young award runner up last year, but at the same time a team doesn't change GMs when everything is going well. We have some talented players here, but we know we have a lot of work to do at a number of levels and we're working right now to make decisions on those topics."

Here's the link, it's an insider article. https://www.espn.com/mlb/insider/story/_/id/38490793/mlb-regular-season-grades-all-30-teams-2023

Stereotype of Jerry Reinsdorf today: totally unwilling to change things or take outside feedback. Reinsdorf fires his GM, finds the only mediocre white guy in his organization who won't give him independent and outside feedback or demand for him to change anything about how he's running the organization, hires him for GM without competition. Completely living up to the stereotype, to the letter. Stereotype of Jerry Reinsdorf: so anti-union that basic things like "being a spokesperson for the Union during the 2021 lockout would be totally infuriating for him and a complete breaking point with that player". A few months later, the team breaks off negotiations and takes that player to an arbitration hearing over a difference in salary of $50,000 - a stunningly petty move that counts as completely living up to the stereotype, to the letter. You can do more of these, the LaRussa hiring, draft picks, international signings, front office staffing, low pay for his part time employees, he is basically living up to every stereotype we have for him. And now that the player who was a public union spokesperson was traded away, and Reinsdorf has spent the last several years totally and utterly living up to every single bad stereotype about him to the letter in every single way we can think of, we expect him to do the exact opposite and bring that player back? If we get a thread about Giolito coming back, you may call me on this one and I will say that Reinsdorf shocked me because I sure don't see this as Reinsdorf behavior.

Well they still legitimately put resources into improving this defense and after 18% of the season they are worse on defense in terms of both yards given up and scoring defense than last year. They are 17th in the league, just below average, in terms of cap dollars committed to Defense. They were 4th in the NFL in free agent spending last offseason and that’s only because Moore was acquired in a trade. Are they getting their moneys worth? Same rule as fields I understand that they weren’t going to jump to the playoffs this year and they need time to draft, but do we see progress? Last year at this time I was saying they’d have no shot at Williams because combining this years draft picks with all they money they had to spend there was no way they could be this bad again. Now it seems I’m going to eat those words because right now they are worse on both sides of the ball despite all that spending. Thats something worth blaming for.

Under the situation where the pitcher is facing 2000 km/hr winds and temperatures of -364 Fahrenheit,, you probably want to take some pitches as it's going to be tough to throw balls in the strike zone. This is a bad idea for a team that is as aggressive and free swinging as the White Sox.

I feel like the things that make him look clueless are the performances on the field.

I mean, at some level I understand that saying that is his job. But you're also correct, that at some point they have to back that up if they're going to say it, not even with a win but hell just holding a team under 20, and even if they couldn't do it at KC, they should have been able to do it against Tampa or GB.

Are there D-line players likely available in this FA class who are notably better than Ngakoue?

If they have to get a QB, then yes I'd say turn down the WR and focus on QB and D-Line if you have 2 high draft picks.

How much do they sell off at the trade deadline? Are they still bad enough for a top 2 pick (or they get one from Carolina)? I am always hesitant about trading 3 firsts to move up (See Carolina), but if they are in position for one of the top QBs, that’s all I need to know. Fields having a few good games again for the worst team in the league isn’t enough to risk paying him $40 million for an extension, see if you can get a second round pick out of those games and let the Titans or Saints figure out if they want to extend him. If they have the 7th and 8th picks or something like that, I might pick up his 5th year option and try one more year based on them getting 6 or 7 wins or whatever.

Some of these really annoy me because you’re obviously cheating to say it - for example, how is Moncada worse than last year? Hes not. Elvis Andrus is the exact same mid .600s OPS player he’s been for years and you’re counting him as worse because of an insane HR stretch over 2 months of last year that he was never going to repeat. For Grandal you’re comparing him to 2021 and saying how clearly he’s not motivated, but he was way worse in 2022 - but for Eloy, he was actually worse than this in 2021, slightly better but hurt more in 2022, so you pay attention to Eloy’s 2022 and ignore his 2021. They’re just generally bad, with numbers that bounce between tolerable and terrible! But the real fun part? That you’ve literally said that you can tell how this team needs better motivation since they didn’t get anything out of Hanser Alberto, Gavin Sheets, Clint Frazier, and Adam Haseley. i think there’s a bigger problem than motivation when stuff like that gets written.

Which guys with track records underperformed? I will give you Anderson but who else? Robert seriously overperformed. Clevinger was better at baseball and boxing. Moncada was about the same. Burger broke out. Grandal was way better than last year. So many guys - Kopech, Vaughn, Colas, Sosa, Crochet, Bummer, they just never were good. Lynn was worse sure, a 35 year old lost his fastball, that’s not a motivation thing. They were a bad team last year and the only reason they weren’t in third place was that they got lucky in 1 run games. They lost their best hitter and second best pitcher in the offseason. They didn’t upgrade basically anything, they have no support from the minors and maybe less depth than Oakland, and their already old roster got a year older. This was a terrible roster coming into the year that sone people refused to recognize.