LVSoxFan

I keep hearing how it might not go well and this and that... hey, can it be worse than it is now? Yes I know what it entails and yes, I'm willing to sit through a rebuild with the chance of having a contender in a few years' time. This "approach" hasn't done sh*t in a decade and counting so the status quo is not something I'm down for accepting any more.

QUOTE (shysocks @ Jun 9, 2016 -> 09:48 AM) Rick Curl ‏@sptswrtrrick 13 hours ago @WriteSox is it just me or does the duo of @stevestone and @jasonbenetti seem to get farther off base the longer they work together Steve Stone @stevestone 13 hours ago @sptswrtrrick @WriteSox @jasonbenetti it's just you. 7 zip dude Stoney is real feisty on twitter, you just have to wade into his replies to realize it. LOL!!! What a perfect response.

We're gonna lose what we do have if somebody doesn't get their ass in gear ASAP so time to pull of the band-aids and play the long game.

How does this myth keep going that Sox fans won't tolerate a rebuild? That seems to be the rationale for whatever-the-f*** this approach has been for years now--oh, no! We can't clean house and rebuild or Sox fans will stop coming forever! Huh? I would go. I would rather see some promising youngsters lose with some effort rather than the corpseball we've been fed for damn near a decade. Didn't the Cubs basically rebuild? Not just on the field but in the front office? How's that working out for them now? I'm tired of hearing that supposed reason as a rationale not to do it.

I dunno--I like the Cell and the upper deck. Either way, the Stadium is the least of our problems. I'd support a new one if they put it on the lakefront, say, where the George Lucas museum is now not going to go, where it should have gone in the first place.

Even WITH the s*** years we've had for, oh, the last decade--does anybody remember a streak this brutal? Because I don't. Maybe it's exacerbated by the fact that they jumped to such an amazing start but OMG I can't remember a time where they lost this many games just one after another, for such an extended period of time. I mean, losing 20 out of the last 26? Good God. It's just sad to me. For a hot minute there in April I thought wow, this is going to be a fun season. Serves me right for thinking we'd actually do something in the KW era.

100% Jason, hands-down. Sure some of his jokes are goofy but a lot are pretty clever and at least they're references from THIS DECADE or at least post-1960s. Him and Stoney obviously like working together and I find their running jokes pretty hilarious. Seeing that this is going to be a long, brutal season, there's going to be a lot of dead air to fill so, yeah... I don't want that being the Hawkeroo. Just retire already, man.

LOL Steve just said Eaton should win pick to click because... He got a hit. Welcome to your 2016 White Sox.

QUOTE (Lip Man 1 @ Jun 8, 2016 -> 02:00 PM) For what its worth, I have been told by a few folks who have worked for the Sox that money is actually the least concern. They are making it...a lot of it. JR's business philosophy has always been and he's never hid this, he's said it publicly, that he refuses to pay top dollar for managers / head coaches and he refuses to pay for unproven talent. (Which is perhaps why the Sox minor league system has been poor for at least 15 years.) You can agree or disagree with that attitude. What I'm saying is, if JR actually wanted to he could have a 140-150 million dollar payroll with no trouble. It's a matter of choice. MLB operates one way, JR another. That's his right...but its clearly not working that well. This comes back to something I and others have noted. JR wants to win, but he wants to win, HIS WAY. Mark That actually makes sense, but at what point does he realize that "his way" doesn't work? The more this goes on the more I wonder if the relatively instant success of 2005 (in that they had just hired Ozzie the year before and gone all-in on the "smartball" approach and boom! World Series win after 88 years) convinced KW and JR that "their way" is genius. And that would be understandable, had it sustained itself. But here we are 11 years later with exactly one playoff appearance to show for it (which was a no-contest, first-round exit) and we've basically replaced KC as the Comedy Central bottom-feeder year after year. Hell you can't even call it the Comedy Central anymore with teams like Detroit, Cleveland and current WS champion KC). What I'm not seeing here is... a learning curve.

As we enter another week of it's the players!/It's the manager! arguing, I keep flashing back to something on the 2005 World Series DVD. In the beginning, as they're setting up the whole 88 years "curse" thing, somebody (I can't remember who) said "There wasn't any curse, just a lot of bad baseball teams." I LOL'd at that for its truth. I think the reality here is that we've got the perfect storm: a lacking team AND a manager who's not up to it--even though everybody keeps arguing it's one or the other. And when you look at it that way, whose doing is that? Yup, KW (with the approval of JR). I've said it before, I'll say it again and I've been saying it for years: as long as KW is running this team, expect more losing seasons. Even getting rid of him isn't a guarantee if JR's simply going to hire another yes-man. But this problem starts at the top, people. I was shocked to look at our record against the central in just the Ventura era--not to put it on Ventura, but for senior management to not feel any sort of urgency, because if we can't even win the central, duh, we aren't going to the Series or anywhere else. Now for my total arm-chair conspiracy theory: I read something by chance about White Sox attendance that startled me. I could never figure out how JR could keep fielding losers when it kills attendance and... doesn't that mean less money for him? What this thing said, if I read it right, was that certain taxes kick in when the Sox hit a minimum attendance for the season. If they do NOT hit that minimum, there is no tax, and it's a substantial break. I'm sure somebody here can present this much better than me. So, in this scenario (if I'm correct), perhaps the reason JR's okay with the non-stop losing is that he has a financial incentive to not win--or not make a serious stab at it financially, instead coming up with these KW-engineered experiments that if they win, great--and if they fail, tax break! Again, I could have misread that but usually when somebody keeps doing something that makes no sense, it's because they're making money doing it that way. Even tossing that theory aside, though: this organization needs a Cubs/Hawks-like housecleaning. This season is going to be brutal. It already is. With no end in sight.

If this home stand tanks, especially the one against Detroit, what possible excuse would we have for doing nothing, even IF firing Ventura would be simply symbolic? Isn't Detroit sort of our Packers? Like, if we can't beat them, we're not going anywhere? (Granted it used to be Minnesota but I guess it could be any central team at this point).

Well one question I have to ask is: how many World Series champions had sh*tty managers? That's one way to look at it.

Really, can we dispense with the whole "managers" don't matter argument? That Robin has nothing to do with our woes. I understand that the players actually play the game, but if managers don't matter, then why would so much time and effort and interviewing go into hiring them? If it could be any schmuck? Oh, wait, unless it's us: where we hired somebody with no managing experience--as what, an experiment?--and... yeah. Here we are. I will give you that firing Robin would be a feelgood measure at this point, but not for the reasons that most people think. And that's because even if you fire RV, KW is still the president, JR is still the owner, Cooper is still the pitching coach and Hahn still the GM. The fish rots from the head down, folks--we have Ventura because of KW and JR, who had to talk him into the job. I'm going to give Hahn the benefit of the doubt (rightly or wrongly) and assume he's basically under KW's thumb, but yeah: we fire Ventura today and guess what? KW is still the president and JR is still the owner and KW picked not only the manager but also the players. So even if you go the "it's not the manager's fault" route everything still points back to KW, and ultimately to JR for allowing him to continue running the team. It's been said here before that we need a housecleaning like the Hawks did and yes, like the Cubs did. Look where they're at now. I don't know if we have to wait for JR to retire but I'm going to assume so. Until then, though, as long as KW is the man in charge, expect more losing seasons, just as we've been enjoying for a decade now save for 2008, which wasn't going to amount to anything anyway since that was more a contest of who could lose the central between us and Minnesota, more than who could win it--and then get decapitated in the first round of the playoffs. Oh, and BTW, as others pointed out yesterday, our record against the division is absolutely pathetic. We're going nowhere if we can't beat division teams, so for that record alone yeah, KW should be gone. We aren't going anywhere if we can't get out of our division. We certainly knew that in 2005, as it was sort of a mantra--just win the division first. We're nowhere near that so if we're going to blow up the team, now is the time to do it, not after the ASB, not at the end of the season--not when you've basically made it clear that fans are stuck with the losing season because you won't do anything until the offseason.

While he certainly has a good point, his comment about Maddon having a bullet-proof lineup really hit home as to what the problem is, and what I've said for years. No, firing Ventura won't change anything. Fire Kenny Williams. Thanks for 2005 Kenny, really, but since then the Sox have sucked ass and you've made some of the worst signings (Dunn!) and rentals in recent history. One trip to the playoffs in 2008--and that's only because Minnesota managed to out-stink us (as fun as the blackout game was)--where we got smoked in the first round. People have mentioned what the Hawks did: exactly. They cleaned house and came in with a new attitude, a new plan and they spent wisely. So while I don't have much faith in Ventura as he learns-on-the-job and does things like having Melky bunt, or leaving in pitchers until they're so far in the hole will never climb out... it goes higher than him. Like, KW-high. I said at the beginning of this season (as I have in seasons past): as long as KW is in charge, expect more corpseball. Granted, for a month there I thought perhaps KW was going to prove me wrong this year (and I was fine with that) but no... here we are again.

Well I covered this yesterday but yeah, I'm in agreement here. I've always said that as long as KW is in charge, expect more of what you've been getting for the past decade. For a hot minute (ok a hot month) there I thought: "Oh.... maybe he pulled it off this time." Nope. They seemed like they had such a spark and talent in April--I still don't know what happened. But here we are again: a couple of big-time pitchers whose impact is (or is going to be) negated because we are horrible at the plate. And for all the great defense in the first month, what happened to that? At this point--and this is my non-baseball-expert take on this--I wonder what this team would look like with a proven, experienced manager? It just seemed like they all had/have some ability (unlike recent years) and they definitely had heart so I wish I could see them with a Maddon-type figure, just to see if that made a difference. Or is that crazy? Because I realize the manager's not the one actually playing the game. SUCH a disappointment though, to be back here. I really was excited for this season after that start.

I'm gonna be honest: I'm sad. Going into 2016, I had zero expectations, except for another crappy year of fourth-place KW-created baseball--figured I'd probably hit about five games but probably not watch any on TV as I haven't for a while. But then they exploded and at the end of April I thought: OMG, is this really happening? We're neck and neck (well, almost) with the expected-World-Series-bound Cubs, first in the division, best in the AL? I'm in. I started watching on TV again. My first game was a nice win over the Twins and it just felt like a team with some zip to it. That didn't last long. I realize we weren't going to keep that pace forever but damn, talk about a complete 180. And the hitting--OMG. Of course last night the moment Sale has a bad game, we're doomed. My bad. I lost my objectivity and started to believe, ignoring the past years of middling KW-style average-ball. That said, there are some players I really like on this team. So in the midst of all the talk of rebuild, white flag, etc., etc.--who would you guys keep? Obviously Sale and Quintana, but unlike years past, there's a few position players I think are worth holding onto this time around, hitting woes or not. Of course we're not going to ship half the team out--I'm just curious if we're thinking the same thing. But yes, I am sad. I was looking forward to a different season for once.

Ugh.

I love how he's mixing speeds. Even though he's got the heat, he doesn't rely on it. I swear one of his curves/changes last night clocked at 77. Can't say for sure, but I thought I saw that. He's "pitching" and not "throwing." With his arm, no wonder he's 9-0.

Jason's been awesome. Plus, he tends to drop in sly movie and pop-culture references throughout (including last night) which are so much more refreshing than Hawk's "Back in the day" ruminations. I really like the change.

Hands-down my favorite Sox player right now. Although I like a lot of them--been a long time since I could say that.

Is anyone upset about this? He seemed like a way overpriced guy--nothing against his past glories, but it would have been Danks II (nothing against Danks either).

MUCH prefer the new guy. It's time for a new era.

Well, weather aside, "real" Sox fans have no excuse for not going to games as I mentioned earlier, because they are so insanely affordable, for good seats. Granted if the Sox revert to form and go back to their losing ways, all bets are off, but getting sweet seats for $10 or so apiece? Back in 2005 I went to 36 home games and I think back then (I was always in the bleachers) it was minimum $36 per game, yes? I agree it's too early in the season to rate attendance. Weather is a big part of it. This is the first time in 10 years I didn't go to Opening Day because the weather sucked (granted it of course sold out) but last night, for instance? That was too cold to get me to The Cell. As for comparing us to the Cubs: forget it. We will never, ever outdraw them or even match them. Wrigley is also a tourist destination which is something The Cell will never be.

Well, before the bandwagon jumpers show up (should we keep on winning), get to these games! SO cheap right now. I got two 1st row tix upper deck behind home plate for $14 each. At Stubhub. $14 would be one beer at a Cubs game (or Hawks, and yes I'm exaggerating). I plan on hitting a lot of Sox games this summer at these prices. This is the first team in years that I actually like--that has some personality.

I'll take the Robin Ventura question: yes. As long as KW is running the Sox, Robin is not going anywhere. To fire Ventura would be admitting failure for KW, and he won't allow that.