35thstreetswarm

...you also have to take out the South for that rule to work. NFL doesn't rule Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, or Louisiana for that matter.

Cubs’ rebuild was clearly not a failure with a WS. But their era is over and was far less impressive than predicted. They were going for “Giants” and will turn out to be more “Royals”.

The latter is what I meant this thread to be about (on-field product) fwiw. I don’t think anyone thinks the Sox will ever be more “popular” for lots of reasons. I for one could care less.

But I'm not talking about attendance wars. I'm talking about who's a better team to watch. The Cubs outdrew the Sox in 2005, and I think most would agree who had the better year/team.

Details about losing bids get leaked all the time. Like, every time. See White Sox/Manny Machado/2019 and the twenty billion threads discussing our offer as Exhibit A. Your repeated mantra is also contrary to basic principles of economics, which suggest that it's probably safer to assume that a rational actor will *not* leave tens of millions of actual American dollars on the table, rather than in his pocket, based on absurd soft factors like "attendance" or "popularity in the city." But who knows? Maybe this will be the year we see a free agent tell his economically-self-interested agent, and his wife, and his kids who stand to inherit his compounded wealth one day: "we're going to voluntarily assess ourselves a $25 million penalty today because, I don't know, the Chicago White Sox just don't seem cool, man."

By the way, I'm not necessarily saying that we'll have a better record next season, or that we won't have our struggles in 2020, especially early on. Just fan experience. I think the next couple seasons will be joyless affairs on the North Side as they continue to watch their core decline and decay, ala the Giants of the last few years. The story on our side of town will be prospect debuts, flashes of brilliance, inconsistent results but a steadily increasing level of play by a team on the rise - that stuff is fun to watch.

I disagreed with you based on the history of available evidence...until you repeated yourself a third time. Now I agree with you. You had me at "Again,"

It's been a tough few years to raise young Sox fans on the North Side. I live walking distance to Wrigley, across the street from one of the more beloved Cubs players, weathered 2016, and have still managed to keep my four kids from straying to the Northsiders during their formative years. It has not come without considerable effort on my part. I recognize it's tough for kids in the schoolyard to fend off "we're in the playoffs, you're in fourth place" with "oh yeah, well...we've got some really good prospects in Winston/Salem, Birmingham, and Charlotte." I've assured my kids that the Sox are on an upward trend, the Cubs (at least since 2017 or so) trending downward, and that there would come a time when those trend lines cross. When one could proclaim with a straight face -- say to an alien moving to Chicago and choosing a new team -- "you're better off picking the Sox right now." I think that moment came on Sunday, September 22, 2019. I now feel comfortable saying that (generational loyalties aside) I'd rather be a Sox fan right now than a Cubs fan, at least for the next several years. Am I too early? Too late? *Apologies in advance to the "too cool to care about the Cubs" crowd.

Indeed. One of the most persistent false narratives among baseball fans.

Kind of crazy that the Cubs will likely come out of this “dynasty window” with only two division titles.

I'd be thrilled in late 2020, though it would mean suffering through a full season of teeth-gnashing about the failure to land a RF in 2019 and the chorus of "this front office has never signed Mookie Betts before, what makes us think they'll sign Mookie Betts now?"

He'll surely join Ian Happ and David Bote in the Hall of Fame

75 has a nice ring to it (and was also my preseason prediction).

I sometimes wonder what would happen if you could get a critical mass of posters to sign a pact stipulating to something like the following: 1) The on-field results from 2007-2016 were unacceptable 2) It is fair and appropriate to criticize the ownership and management from that era for those results 3) It is fair and appropriate to be worried that the same regime is now in charge of the rebuild, given their past failures 4) Nonetheless, that regime broke meaningfully with past practice in undertaking a full-fledged rebuild in late 2016 5) The rebuild, while necessarily uncertain given its incompleteness, is showing at least some promising results 6) The full success of the rebuild cannot be judged until 2020 or 2021 when the key prospects have arrived and seen some testing at the big league level 7) It would be disruptive to change course dramatically when that key period is upon us (or substitute that, even if not disruptive, it is a waste of mental energy to pine for the architects of a rebuild to be fired at such a critical juncture), SO... 8) Let's withhold judgment a little while longer--and decide whether our skepticism in this regime was warranted or misplaced--after the next couple of years play out. I think we could absolutely slash the length of most threads. You could just say a magic word like: "PACT" instead of hashing through the above points over and over in different contexts, different combinations, and different sequences. I suppose it would spoil some of the fun, though.

I think there are many more fans who (a) want to not care about batting titles, and (b) enjoy saying out loud that they don't care about batting titles, than there are (c) fans who don't care about batting titles. Go Timmy.

I’m ok with it, though I’d like to see a way to work the old English logo into a black on black scheme. It’s too bad they screwed up the white on white players weekend uniforms so badly this year, as I’ve always thought white on white (done right) would be an awesome look for the White Sox.

Ozuna, though I have a sneaking suspicion Puig could have a career renaissance here so I would be excited (but nervous) if we signed him.

I could see Puig coming here and having a career renaissance when surrounded by this team. He has all the talent in the world. It would be risky, but so was AJ...

As are you. While people do often fail to grasp the difference between state and private action and overread the amendment as a generalized license to speak without consequence, the First Amendment protects from much more than “criminal charges for thought and speech crimes” and “being jailed.”

Like we have the chance to be a pretty good team.

#triggered

Actually, you haven’t gone far enough. He’s been a really good player overall for the Chicago White Sox over the entire course of his career; a team that’s never in contention. That’s proof he performs in low pressure situations. In fact, if he were worse he’d be better.

Well, the definition of “picking and choosing” is saying things like “beating Detroit and Kc and Baltimore, while nice...doesn’t put a team ahead in a rebuild.” You could have “picked” beating Minnesota or “chosen” beating New York for example, but that would not fit your narrative. Instead you picked a few bad teams to imply our wins all came against bad teams and we got beaten up by the good teams we played, which is not true.

No, and I don’t think that’s the FO plan. It is an interesting reminder, though, that there’s a lot of ways to win ballgames. Kind of amazing what the Brew Crew has done with that suspect starting 5.

Precisely this. Nothing about the rebuild has changed. This has been a brutal stretch to watch, but the improvement to our draft position is probably the best thing for us at this point.