35thstreetswarm

He pulled up running to third? This sounds like an injury to me, hopefully not serious.

I do like that the other full rebuilds that are "scheduled" to bear fruit at the same time as ours are clustered in the NL.

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ Apr 17, 2018 -> 10:23 AM) Reasonable responses. I think I had 79 wins, which looks way too optimistic. If Avi really goes back to being below replacement that is three wins right there and he sure looks like he is back in that mode. The losses don't bother me so much as how they are losing. Had to turn the game off after TAs error last night. Looks like a 70 win team right now. At least Lopez is off to a great start. I'm happier about Reynaldo Lopez looking like a legit MLB starter than I would be with the Sox in first place in April 2018 with Lopez looking shaky. I could care less about wins/losses with the current group. I do care about Moncada turning it around, but I still have confidence he'll do that.

QUOTE (Quin @ Apr 15, 2018 -> 10:14 PM) HeGoan is the worst nickname since HoT fIrE. HeGoan is actually very pithy and not at all a stretch of a disparaging nickname. Right in the running with "YOu cANt hit", or "Moncadamnhestruckoutagain", or "The Cuban Missile Crisis"

QUOTE (SoxFan2003 @ Apr 11, 2018 -> 02:06 PM) I agree. What I don't understand is why we take it so personally. I used to be guilty of it myself even though I personally go to 15-20 games a year. Even the Cubs were getting negative pub during their rebuild with pictures of vast empty spaces within Wrigley (though obviously never as empty as what we saw this week). This is a rebuild year. We'll be bad, and attendance will be bad. I thought everybody was clear on this.

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ Apr 3, 2018 -> 01:10 PM) It was written for a non-Sox audience but I do agree it was mostly "old news" for Sox fans. I think the "meat" of the article (the history of our transactions, the profiles of our prospects, etc.) was made up of a lot of facts that are very familiar to Sox fans. What I found to be a departure from the usual coverage was his thesis that the Sox were doing something fundamentally different from other rebuilding teams like the Cubs, Astros, and really anybody else. As others have noted, this is a debatable premise. But I've never quite seen anyone describe our rebuild in the same terms as this author, so I appreciate his originality at a minimum.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 26, 2018 -> 08:38 AM) Ken posed an interesting theoretical, and we turned it into a roundtable. Five FS writers weighed in on who, between Yoan Moncada and Eloy Jimenez, will likely end up with the better MLB career. Here it is! Now after reading, what do you all think? Who would be your pick? Added a poll to help with the discussion. Voted Jimenez because his skills stand to play better over a long career than Moncada's, which seem more dependent on explosiveness and youth.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 12, 2018 -> 05:45 PM) Ask yourself this. Say the Cubs won their first title and then said "we're going to keep developing these guys". Would they seriously be better off than they were last year? Un-do that deal, give them back Jiminez at AA. Now their pitching staff going into 2018 is Darvish, Lester, Hendricks, Chatwood, Montgomery. Does that rotation scare you? Even with all the talent in their big leagues squad, aren't you seriously thinking that both the Brewers and the Cardinals can compete with them? Yes, in 2019 Jiminez would be a monster for them, alongside a 35 year old Lester and with Bryant, Baez, Hendricks, Russell, all in their 2nd years of arbitration. That could still be a decent team, but as the arb costs go up for these guys the money available to add pitching is going down. The lesson here is that even when you do things right, the costs to stay on top for more than a season or two are huge. The Royals won their title and then haven't been back to the playoffs. The Cubs won their title and then just to make the playoffs last year, after a sub.500 first half, they had to cash in their last chips. The Astros started last year with a $132 million payroll, they're up to $149 to start the year this year, and former Cy Young and their 2nd best pitcher Dallas Keuchel hits free agency next year. The moral of the story here is - when you've got a team that can win a title, win a title. The way baseball is playing right now, staying on top for 3-4 years requires extremely high costs in both talent and money. Be ready to pay the price to get on top and then worry about the other years later. They won't be cheap, but you've got two choices; pay that price or rebuild again. And I don't think anyone would, in the Cubs' position, try to rebuild right now, even though guys are getting expensive. I agree with all of that. As I said, I think signing Darvish was probably necessary to keep their window open - I just don't think it really makes them any better than they were last year when they came up short. I view this as a tread-water move rather than the breakthrough some seem to think it is. (The rest of my rant was really directed more generally at the tendency to afford this Cubs team a degree of deference I'm not sure they have earned just yet.) Hopefully we have such problems to deal with in a few years!

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Feb 12, 2018 -> 02:29 PM) Good deal for the Cubs, if he stays healthy the first 2-3 years of course. Their window is now so who cares about the end of the deal. Usually a bit nervous about pitchers from Japan but he already had the Tommy John so that's probably a good thing for the Cubs. And this thread makes me think a whole lot of posters are gonna be disappointed with the next 5 + years of White Sox baseball. What the Cubs have done and are doing now is a best case scenario for the Sox future. It might just be the Cubs bias in people, but if you are so down about them, I don't know what you expect from the Sox. A lot of truth in that - look, the Cubs won one WS, and I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't be overjoyed if the Sox did the same with the group of prospects coming up. But I don't know that the Cubs have done quite enough to spare them the level of criticism I reserve for other teams -- like, say the Royals, or, say, the White Sox -- that have accomplished pretty much the same thing. If Eloy Jimenez wins World Series MVP, I fully expect to party deliriously through November and be back to whining about White Sox moves the following July. If the Cubs go on to build the multi-title dynasty some predicted back in 2015, then maybe I'll give them the "Patriots treatment" or "Blackhawks treatment" (i.e., the benefit of every reasonable doubt when it comes to personnel moves). But I don't think they're there yet.

I view this as a predictable and maybe necessary move (given that they're in the middle of their "window"), but not a particularly exciting one. I had always figured the Cubs would sign Darvish to keep from taking a major step backward. But I think this is at best a lateral move for the Cubs when you compare what Arrieta has given them over the past few years vs. what a mid-30's Yu Darvish is likely to give them going forward. To get there they had to shell out what will soon become an albatross contract - these splashy offseason free agent signings don't have a great track record. Not sure they've moved the ball forward, and they are still minus Wade Davis.

QUOTE (Jack Parkman @ Jan 31, 2018 -> 01:17 PM) Then you have the Sox from 2008-2012. Not good enough to make the playoffs, just good enough to come in 2nd or 3rd. I'm not sure what to say to that, but if your baseline for success is going 4/4 on our top prospects becoming "superstars," you should probably prepare to be disappointed. There aren't too many teams with 4 "superstars" on their roster, let alone home-grown.

QUOTE (Jack Parkman @ Jan 30, 2018 -> 02:12 PM) Honestly, I think the Sox now probably rank 5th in Baseball in future talent. I'd take the Braves, Yankees, Padres and Phillies ahead of the Sox. With the Yankees and Phillies, they have young talent that has already proven itself to have at the very least one good season in the Majors, and I also think the Braves and Padres have a deeper farm system. The Sox prospects, overall, probably have the most high-end potential but it is fairly concentrated. What happens if two of Moncada, Kopech, Jimenez and Robert don't turn out to be the players we thought they'd be? Then what? I think the other teams have a bigger buffer to their players, while the Sox probably have a ceiling of a 78 win team if the "big boys" don't turn into superstars. Everyone points to the Cubs and Astros, but they have had at least 1-2 high profile busts-Appel and Singleton with the Astros, and Soler and Schwarber haven't been the studs that Cub fans thought they'd be. The Sox can't survive that kind of setback. Their potential stars actually have to be stars otherwise they're f***ed. There are a LOT of assumptions built into that projection, which also requires that you ignore the rest of the Sox prospects, and imagine no free agent signings. What if the big four don't become "superstars" but do become productive players, and say Hansen and Giolito turn out to be dominant TOR starters, Rodon rounds back into form, and one of Collins, Rutherford, Burger becomes a surprise star, and we sign Machado and another TOR starter? Is that a 78-win team? What if we draft an All-star caliber player #4 in a few months? What if you insert Cease, or Dunning, or Lopez, for one of the breakout pitchers I just mentioned? I think you're vastly understating the number of paths to success the Sox have with their current makeup.

QUOTE (KnightsOnMintSt @ Jan 31, 2018 -> 10:08 AM) Here are mine: 1. Ethan Hankins 2. Nander de Sedas 3. Brice Turang 4. Nick Madrigal 5. Nolan Gorman I'll go: 1. Nander de Sedas 2. Brice Turang 3. Nick Madrigal 4. Ethan Hankins 5. Brady Singer

QUOTE (steveno89 @ Jan 25, 2018 -> 10:26 AM) I would take Carlos Lee out of Eloy for sure, but would really hope he could be a tad better than him These kinds of thoughts are a little sobering to me, actually. If Eloy and Robert turned into, say, Carlos Lee and Magglio Ordonez I think we should all be thrilled. But we all know even that is no ticket to the promised land. It just takes so much to build a great team.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Jan 25, 2018 -> 02:22 PM) The Q&A sessions with Hahn are worth the price alone IMO. Some of the other seminars are really good too. I think the memorabilia sales are almost reason enough to go. I've picked up some really cool and unique stuff over the years for great deals: a framed photo of the first-ever game at Comiskey in 1910, some special edition stuff the team did for Obama's inauguration, etc.

QUOTE (ChiSoxJon @ Jan 24, 2018 -> 06:15 PM) Good one http://www.sportingnews.com/nfl/news/cowhe...wx11ugttnkmfx2s https://www.si.com/nfl/2016/10/04/tom-brady...e-ideal-gas-law How about when Elway's Broncos went over the Cap routinely? Or when Tomlin tripped up Jacoby Jones? Jerry Rice using illegal gloves? Falcons pumping in fake crowd noise? Everyone tries to get an edge, few are successful That's right -- I always forget about the fact that there were actually MULTIPLE cheating scandals. It's pretty rare not just to cheat in multiple ways, but to get caught, and get punished, for multiple incidents - that's some Sammy Sosa level isht

Seems like a lot of love for adding back the red from yesteryear. I think that could look cool. But I do have to say that I appreciate we're one of few teams with no red or blue in their primary color scheme. Those have become sort of the generic colors in baseball, where it seems like 80% of teams' colors are similar combinations of red white and/or blue.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 22, 2018 -> 10:15 AM) Outside of Robert, I am actually really respectful of this ranking group. I think it recognizes what Hansen has done, and it recognizes what Cease hasn't done. With Robert I can accept the excuse that he hasn't played here yet, but once he does we'll see what happens. Regardless, for the White Sox future, it isn't these guys we need to worry about most. It is the group of prospects on our own #10-40 type rankings we need to make some noise to get the Sox to the playoffs again. I'd love to see good production from our second tier of prospects, but I'd be pretty happy just getting success out of our top 10. The Cubs won a World Series on the back of a handful of their top prospects.

QUOTE (cjgalloway @ Jan 22, 2018 -> 11:57 AM) Loved the bottom ones.. Never really understood the red though.. I like our current uniforms though id be interested in getting rid of the pinstripe home jerseys and replacing them with plain white. ...maybe with some/all numbering and lettering in white on white. No fan of the Lebron-era heat, but their "White Hot" jerseys were one of the coolest ever.

QUOTE (SoxPride18 @ Jan 21, 2018 -> 08:37 AM) I believe men stop growing when they are 25, so I think it's possible. I remember Luol Deng grew two inches in 2 years when he was drafted at 19. I grew about an inch at 20. Sidenote, just subscribed to the Athletic, and it's pretty awesome.

QUOTE (soxfan49 @ Jan 20, 2018 -> 10:08 PM) FWIW I’m not sure any MLB team can have all white hats. I believe it’s a rule. Something about that being a distraction to hitters if it’s all white & it blending in with the pitch. With UA taking over in 2019 I’m betting some uniforms do get changed, ala the way Seattle’s did in the NFL when Nike took ovwr. I could see a re-do for San Diego or Detroit happening Forgot about the UA takeover...I have to say I'd much prefer to entrust a uniform reboot to Nike than UA, given their track record... https://www.google.com/search?q=ugliest+mar...bylIR4ZGEjGyGM:

QUOTE (Thad Bosley @ Jan 20, 2018 -> 05:44 PM) Gotcha. So the current home uni sans the pinstripes. Not sure that would work. Seems like that would be too much white, if all you'd have on the uni is the current Sox logo over the left part of the chest. I think you'd have to pull something across the entire chest to eat up some of that white, like those Vanderbilt jerseys do. But I'm with you with having a team called the "White" Sox somehow better emphasize or feature white in their uniforms! Maybe so: I think it could work with something across the chest - ala the "Chicago" script on the gray aways. (I wouldn't want to use that old '87 font, though, which always looked goofy to me).

QUOTE (soxfan18 @ Jan 20, 2018 -> 12:30 PM) I don't get all the vest love. It was a 2000s fad that thankfully died. Another risk that comes with the sleeveless is that fans buy them, too. Ever sit next to a fat guy in the sleeveless jersey with his pit-hair blazing on a hot August day in the early 2000s ? Not pretty

QUOTE (Thad Bosley @ Jan 20, 2018 -> 11:39 AM) So essentially re-introducing the uniforms from 1987-1990 and simply swapping out the red and blue colors with silver and black? Not exactly - those uniforms had a totally different logo, different font, huge numbers on the pants, etc. The only thing that would be the same would be the home unis would be white instead of pinstripe.

QUOTE (Latilleon @ Jan 20, 2018 -> 12:11 AM) Sox went most of their existence changing logos and uniforms every couple of years. It's nice finally having a classic look that is known, respected, and appreciated worldwide. Why change from one of the most popular logos/styles in sports? I agree they're respected and appreciated. But I think it's the logo and color scheme that's respected. I'd go further in the direction of embracing the colors and logo, not away from it. There's nothing special or "White Sox" about the pinstripes; to the contrary, it's a Yankees thing.