Texsox

Youngins. On the bright side in a few decades you could be explaining this s%*# to a grandchild who asked who were the White Sox and why did they go away?

How many ways can we quantify that we are a bottom three franchise in baseball history? Toss in financial resources available and we're the worst. Absolute worst. We sucked for decades before modern analytics, we suck after. We flunked the eye test, now we can prove mathematically we are horrible. We flunked before free agency, we fail afterwards. We sucked before the DH, we suck after. Name any era in baseball and we sucked. Deadball? Sucked Steroids? Sucked We have a bottom farm system. We have employees at every level that couldn't find baseball jobs anywhere else. We take great players after their prime to watch them fail while collecting big checks. We take good players and make them bad. We take bad players and make them worst. We suck potential out of every draft pick except the lucky few who are able to leave quickly. Our stadium was a joke when first build with a death defying upper deck. Our owner openly shows distain for his players and fans. Everything about this franchise is an embarrassment to baseball, the city of Chicago, and America. Ok, the last part was hyperbole. No other major city has such a horrible franchise in any sport. I'm trying to figure out why I ever made fun of being a Cub fan. /Rant

Seriously, slamming him like that just shows everyone their lack of baseball acumen and makes him look even more like a visionary. He is sacrificing pitching effectives to help his hitting. He's playing chess and y'all are playing checkers. Brilliant plan Lance

Gotta bring up the young guys.

Heading to a state where sports betting is legal. Won't be placing the bet.

A bit of randomness. I'm f*cked if karma kicks hard. After arriving at our first night stop of an eight week road trip I realize I'm wearing "The Boys are Back" opening day 2021 shirt. Of s%*# we know how that turned out.

Ain't that the truth

We'll call it a Reverse Kimbrel with a degree of difficulty 9.8 which ironically could be his ERA

It might be in his contact lol

I'm not following you. You seen to be making a different point. Mine was both teams unloaded time bombs that weren't going to pan out long term for either team. Taking a chance on Kimbrel having one great season when we potentially needed one great season wasn't the worst decision. Now if you want to discuss how we got into that jam and left that jam, then yes, it was a bad situation.

True. This one is on Hahn for no depth.

I think the Madrigal trade was about as even as could be expected. Both teams knew they had time bombs on their hands. I suspect they also knew they were receiving time bombs. Thinking we could get another half season at current level out of Kimbrel wasn't the worse prediction. Knowing Nicky wasn't going to play more than 60 or 70 games a year was another solid prediction. Good trade for both teams.

It's always a hot take, momentary ranking.

We use to call it being polite. Having good manners.

@TheKidsCanPlay Now let's think how the Sox could have a top five GM. I see the first question is will they attract someone with that resume or will they need to sit on an acorn and grow them? My guess is they will need to grow them. Unless we want to gamble on billionaire new owner hires the best at any price. I'm not holding my breath. So we now can merge this with every fire and sell thread. I think Hahn deserves another shot, with another franchise. But it's time for a change.

I'm sorry it came off as challenging, I was trying to challenge my own. I think this intersects the area of a coach's experience and growth. My philosophy in business was hire good people, support them, and get out of their way. I recognized my way wasn't the only way. Forcing a unified approach sounds good but my experience tells me there are unintended consequences. Coaching golf I'm continually looking for new ideas to give my teams an edge. I have an analogous situation to the Sox in that my best players have outside professionals they work with on their swings then I get them. I focus on their mental game, shot selection, and practice focus. Ten years ago I would see things that they were doing and thinking that's not going to work and try to force my philosophy on them. I quickly realized that was wrong. Now I look at those moments as a chance to learn. Example, one of my best players pulled out her range finder for a pitch of about 20 yards. I've taught that shot is pure touch, you have to feel the shot, not use a formula. But her pro is a friend of mine and someone I really respect. A five minute chat with him and I'm a believer in shooting the distance as a way to develop feel. I'll encourage all my players to do that. By the way the pitch was 18 yards. Just a little less than her dead hands waist to waist shot. Tap in to save par.

I really feel bad for the marquee players who defended the PGA. They look really foolish right now. All the money stuff in golf and sports in general is really starting to wear me down to the point of not following millionaires fighting with each other on who should have more millions. I'm following college golf and USGA events more.

While it's a step in the right direction let's look at Mark Cuban and the Mavs. In 23 years of ownership one championship and it took about 15 years to get there. And that's in basketball where fortunes seem to shift a lot quicker than other sports. There is so much wrong with this franchise that needs working on that it will take a long time to really fix it.

Damn, that's the best post I've read in a long time. ?

Hasn't that been the problem for a long time? Rarely are there any options for the manager that doesn't create a problem while fixing another. White Sox baseball is filling a hole by digging a hole. In my day . . . . . . It was the same s%*#. Nothing changes but the names on the back.

Thank you. I really enjoyed thinking about this. Whenever something seems so obvious and easy to me yet people don't seem to be doing it, I ask why? As much as we want to think so, we didn't corner the market on stupid baseball people. We know the system needs to be better. I think we all also know the answers can't be that easy or every system would be pumping out championship caliber players. We usually point to the same couple of franchises. Their coaches and front office people have left but haven't been able to replicate that same success elsewhere. Another thought here. The goal is the system should be to produce a MLB players. So using 2nd base as an example. I really don't care if any of the current group of potential 2nd baseman ever put on a Sox uniform in Chicago. If they get traded for someone who does, or even if we trade 2nd for left and left for center and center for 2nd, we have someone on the roster. So I can't rank home grown roster fillers very highly as a yardstick. I'll trade most prospects for MLB ready. (I'm willing to change my mind on this next part), the first yardstick I think is valid is how well is the MLB roster? I can understand a strong roster at the top and thin below. A strong system but weak MLB team might sell some tickets and build fan support but do we really need to watch more guys falter between AAA and MLB before we suspect fools gold over 24 carat? BRING HIM UP!! BRING HIM UP!! SEND HIM DOWN!! Of course the best of the best franchises have both. It won't happen in my lifetime.

Would you say then a good organization would or wouldn't have one consistent approach throughout the organization?

I agree with everything you are saying but can't figure out how it translates to actual coaching. Using the Ryan and Maddux examples, what are you aligning? The coach has those two guys in a bullpen session what should they have aligned? What makes sense to me is you have those two in AA, evaluate each individually and prioritize x number of things they need to work on to reach the MLB team. Each player's list will be different. Let's say there are six items. At some point there is enough progress that the player advances to AAA. In AA items 1, 3, 5, and 6 were the main concerns. Now they are in AAA and 2 and 4 move to the top. They still have the other four to continue to work on but the priority changes. A quality system to me should be able to develop a power pitcher and a control pitcher. It shouldn't have only one type of player they can develop. You need to develop guys that can hit for average and guys that hit for power.

Help me out here. I was talking with a couple coaches I know who played in two different farm systems and I wasn't doing a good job explaining your points. Here's the question they asked. You draft Nolan Ryan (power pitcher) and Greg Maddux (control pitcher) in the same year. What would you be teaching each of them to do the same and what would you allow them to do differently? And if they are showing some success, but you hire a new MLB coach with new ideas, do you force those changes on them? I couldn't really answer that. Mostly trying to understand what gets taught to everyone at every level. What they believed worked the best were the coaches that collaborated. What's worked for you in the past, what hasn't, what do we need to do to get you to the next level? The concept sounds great, it's the specifics that I can't grasp.