michelangelosmonkey

That $100 million is just a number. They signed Albert Belle in 1997 to a $55 million contract making him the highest paid player in baseball and two years late sighed Frank Thomas to a $64 million/7 year contract. With baseball inflation those would be WAY higher than $100 million in 2024.

Not sure where the figures come from. Sportrac had 2022 WS at $203 mill, 2022 (Dodgers at $270 mill.) 2024 Dodgers at $240 mill but with accounting nonsense Ohtani's $70 mill was only $2 mill. So Dodgers were really at $310 mill. Still I generally agree with you. Better to give Elko a shot at DH or Cannon a 5th starter spot for nothing than to sign aging DH and aging 5th starter at $40 mill per year. Bundle the savings on one or two difference makers. But again...CROCHET should be that difference maker. Let him prove it this year and next and then drop a 10 year $300 million contract on him

I'm not sure that is how the organization works. A sycophant is someone who sucks up to the boss. Seems like JR let KW and RH run the baseball stuff and was wildly, sadly loyal to them...that is like sycophant in reverse. Who's to say if Getz has a $200 million budget that he doesn't believe that signing Soto for $70 mil per year isn't better than spending $70 mill on Grandal/Keuchel/Lynn and a bunch of relief pitchers. WE don't know. What we know is that the budget HAS been high. That's JR. And we know it was done poorly.

Why are we bringing the A's into this? The White Sox in the 90's 00's, 10's and 20's have had top 5 payroll. That's JR's budget. The argument is the baseball guys spent it stupidly. Fair enough. But it seems we have finally come to terms with the fact that the KW/RH admin was stupid and gutted the organization. But it wasn't because we had no payroll. And I didn't say "franchise altering prospect". Alonso would be more in the Grandal/Keuchel/ Lynn sort of high second tier.

Pasquantino is not much better than Vaughn. Vaughn had .750 OPS the previous two years P had .760...and I'm not really counting on Vaughn as more than a failed prospect. I said they should sign a big contract on a hitter. So Alonso + Vaughn is as good as Salvy + P and I think Montgomery, Quero and Soso could be better than the Royals 4-5-6 bats. As for "we will never do this"...it's a new era. There is a ton of payroll available. Getz seems in charge. He drafted Smith...the idea of three amazing left handed starters is fun.

That's not my point...my point is KC did it with ONE guy having an OPS above .800. But Witt was MVP level. Robert could be that. You sign one big contract, Montgomery and Quero come on as above average players, Sosa figures it out and that group of 6 former prospects turns out to be one good prospect....that's five. The rest you get guys that play good defense. Pair that with a top 5 starting pitching and good relief staff. There's hope.

At the risk of being stoned to death...the horror of JR is overstated. In 2022 White Sox had a $200 mill payroll. I think he (And we) were all sort of blinded at how bad the organization structure was in 2022 because they had some real quality high-cost veterans, and a core of very exciting young players. When the veterans got old and the core of youngsters fell apart there was nothing backing it up. JR wants to win. He was over loyal to his baseball people KW, TLR and RH and in retrospect those guys had built up an organizational rot that seemed to have spread everywhere. JR is embarrassed by the team. Whatever Getz said in his interview, it seems like they get it...JR backed off as Getz has fired everyone in the organization. Bannister, Fuller and Venable seem like really good hires. Pouring money into analytics seems overdo...but they are doing it. Minors seem way better than they've been. Payroll has been cleared of deadwood. Listening to Future Sox podcasts I feel excited about the last three drafts. There is no defense of 2024 but I feel like they've been working on the fix for two years now and we aren't doomed to a lifetime of awful.

It's easy to be a broken fan after the last two years and I think Sox fans tend to lean pessimistic to begin with. Still this idea that we are lost in the wilderness for thirty years is crazy. Didn't KC go from 106 loses to the playoffs LAST year? Did they do it with a lineup of stars? No it was Bobby WItt and pitching (and a lot of games against the Sox). So what is the case for White Sox optimism? Well I'll start with the two "trade" pieces. Crochet never pitched 60 innings in a season in his life and then last year pitched 150 innings and was magnificent. 2.69 FIP, 13 strikeouts per inning, 6.5 Strikeouts per walk? And he's 25. Chris Sale just had a Cy Young season at 35. Why can't we sign this guy for 10 years? He has very few innings on his arm and is a true ace. Build with him. And Roberts? He is only ONE year removed from a 5.5 WAR, 38 homer, 130 OPS+ season and many of us thought he had room to grow. He was terrible this year but players have career bad years as well as career good years. He's only 27 next year. Let's say he stays healthy next year (he played 145 games just one year ago) and is reinvigorated by new manager. He hits 45 homers with gold glove defense. Now look at the payroll. As I have frequently fought on this site...Sox have been in top 5 payroll when the team is good. 2025 top 5 payroll is $150 million and Sox are at $38. They have a ton of money they can spend. How about making a statement with someone like Pete Alonzo. As for the lack of talent...Hagen Smith, Noah Shultz and Grant Taylor all have ace stuff. Drew Thorpe seems like the perfect complement to those guys. OK that's not your starting rotation for 2024...but it's not ridiculous to think that at the All Star game your rotation could be Crochet, Smith, Shultz and Thorpe. The bullpen was historically bad, but you have more than half of the top 30 prospects as pitchers. Plus about half a dozen 25 year olds that were rookies last year. Seems you could cobble together a solid pen from that group. But zero hitters? Colson Montgomery had a bad season...but last 22 games he put up a .900 in AAA while 4 years younger than league average. At AFL he put up over 1.100 OPS. He's a lefty shortstop, that takes walks and hits for power. Quero hit .820 OPS at AA Birmingham at 21! He was even better at AAA Charlotte. How about up the middle you have Quero, Montgomery and Roberts??? The rest is a bit rag-tag...but again KC was ragtag outside of about two guys. Sosa had a .900 OPS the last month of the season and has a history of taking time to figure out a league and then burning it up. Learning curves aren't linear and you have a collection of guys that once looked like they would be good...Vaughn, Ramos, Colas, Vargas, Deloach, Baldwin. At some point we HAVE to get positive prospect luck. If one of those breaks out...and you make a signing like Pete Alonzo, Roberts has a career year, Montgomery and Quero come up and hold their own...now you have a competitive team. I like the new manager. I like the management stuff Getz has been doing (not player acquisition although I do like the Smith draft). I hate the idea of trading an existing Ace for hot prospects who often fail. And trading your CF at his lowest value. I don't think the future is hopeless. We just need things to break right and it seems the baseball gods owe us.

So what we dreamed Madrigal was going to be? How is Jordan Sprinkle blocking him at high A?

Why does Nishida not get any attention? .415 OBP, 34 stolen bases in half a season? Left handed hitter. 2023 draft pick...yet I don't see him on White Sox top 30 prospects. Rarely mentioned here. Is his age his fatal flaw?

Come on White Sox. He just turned 25 last week. Randy Johnson pitched to 45. Kershaw still pitching at 35. Strong tall lefties with good fundamentals can do this for a long time. Why couldn't he be the mainstay of our rotation for ten years? Don't say money. JR has been in top ten payrolls many times including two years ago. Just imagine that rotation...playoff series with Crochett blowing people away, Thorpe driving them crazy Buehrlesque and Shultz blowing people away. Get off the rebuild drug.

At the risk of being optimistic...the White Sox have Garret Crochet at 24 having a breakout season (.93 WHIP, 6 Ks per BB, 12 K's per 9). They have 3 pitchers in @JustBB_Media top 50 prospects in all of baseball...Shultz, Thorpe and Iriarte. Grant Taylor might be the best of them all. Isn't there a scenario where Thorpe becomes Greg Maddux 2.0 and the other four are dominant starters? Then you have an all-world CF, a 2b, 3b and SS of Ramos, Montgomery and Gonzalez. Solid Catchers. If everyone else is garbage seems like you could be the late 60's Orioles, or the early 90's Braves? Dominant pitching and defense. The interesting thing about this rebuild is that the depth of the minors seems SO much better.

See it's this kind of brilliant analysis that I come here for...the Houston Astros the 10 years after they lost the WS to the White Sox lost an average of 95 games. HORRIBLE organization....everyone there is an idiot. There is no hope for the future. I am stupid. I think it is fitting that the last words I hear on Sox Talk as I cancel my account is "Get Fucked" by the Global Moderator.

What do you mean we put "no effort into adding players"? We are still drafting players and making interesting international signings. And the Astros have "passed us by"???? The same Astros we've been chasing? The Phillies were a year ahead of us in the rebuild and started fire hosing money at free agents in 2019 and went....4th at 500, 3rd under .500, 2nd at .500, 3rd at 12 games up (and WS) and are under .500 again. Imagine the hatred on Phillies Talk about their wasted time. And the Orioles and Rangers have had a nice 49 games. The enormous patience and respect Soxtalk has for every other organization and the hatred of all things White Sox is so weird and exhausting.

This is another credo of Soxtalk...negativity on our own prospects. The idea that you KNEW Lenyn Sosa was going to be a bust based on history of the Sox busting at these positions is crazy. He put up a .900 OPS in Birmingham while 2 years younger than league average in half a season at that pitchers park, then he put up an .820 OPS in Charlotte in half a season at 4 years younger than average. You know which other middle infielder also put up a combined .880 OPS in AA/AAA spit at 22 and flailed in a few at bats in the majors? Marcus Semien. And we traded him away a year later for a bag of magic beans because "we know our middle infield prospects are never good" and then he's averaged a 4 WAR for the next 9 years. Sox should just bring Sosa up and play him at 2b and have everyone shut up.

I did a look at attendance a few years back when I was arguing that JR wasn't cheap...seems like Sox core attendance is around 18,000...you get 18,000 to Comiskey Park to watch a paddle ball game on a nice summer day. If the fans think they are good...that jumps to 24,000 and if really excited to 30,000. Post WS is 36,000. So if a fan is worth $100 the core income from attendance is $144 million, an ok team is $192 mill, a great team $240 mill and WS $288. I argued that JR is not an idiot, he's a businessman and he understands that the Sox can't count on idiot frat boys turning out on day games to get drunk no matter the product. Cubs base looks to be more like 28-30,000. So if you make payroll through tickets you don't spend when the team is bad but hit the accelerator when they are good. I predicted the payroll would jump to $190 in the window to laughs of derision. And then it did ( top 10 payroll every time they are good for the last four decades). But it's also clear that the next jump was put on hold...partly because JR lost two nearly full years of attendance because of COVID but also because the super exciting team (remember this dirge is only a year old) attendance only jumped to 24,000. Now it is back down to the core at 17,000...of course its early and a hot streak now could lead to big crowds in the meaty months. Still its why the team should probably get moved out to the western suburbs where they can guarantee a much higher base. The team's future is not turned on a 7th starter or a backup 2b. They need to built up potential star core to produce...which will bring the crowds...which will bring the budget. To me the situation feels like COVID + injuries has hurt us more than any team. Black Sox curse.

Robert has played 98% of the games this year. TA had a five year run of being available 90+% of the time. Eloy is a clumsy kid but appendix is random. Moncada...ok he's an orchid. You can't count on good luck but you shouldn't rely on bad luck either.

I don't like the narrative for 2023 that they didn't fill the holes at 2b and RF. They did with two of their hottest prospects...Colas and Sosa. It wasn't idiotic to roll them out there, have them bat 8th and 9th and grow up in the majors...but then Moncada got hurt, and TA got hurt and Eloy and we were back to 2023...where you have 4 hitters trying to support the offense and the team couldn't be patient. I'm also not sure what the alternative was. Conforto at 2-$36? Probably would have been a reasonable gamble as it was short term...but obviously risky or he would have gotten more than that. Who at second base was more than just another Josh Harrison? Elvus seems like a fine back up. Yes we will see how it rolls out...it was suboptimal to start off the season with the hardest schedule in baseball (by a wide margin when I looked at it a few weeks ago), the surprise loss of your ace reliever, injuries and a rookie manager. They walked to the center of the ring...got punched in the nose, fell to the mat, crawled to the corner but made it to the bell. Now its the next round. This was never hopeless. The Tigers and Royals are hopeless because they don't have the talent. If we struggle to the trade deadline...sure...begin the rebuild around Robert, Cease and Kopeck. Trade everyone over 30. I just don't think it will be necessary and we will have the cash to trade for a nice part.

Sorry you missed my point. The poster had said that the White Sox injury narrative was "proven" to be untrue. The proof generally runs something like "average games lost by starter per team" and there is some nonsense that the White Sox have been healthy. Using the same "analysis" having Angels 100% healthy outside of losing Trout and Ohtani would still leave them statistically as an above average healthy team. It MATTERS who you lose and when. The White Sox had a core of young players--Moncada, Robert, Jimenez, Vaughn that you needed to learn to play together every day and I think there's been about five games in two years that all four have been out there. Add to that two of your established stars...TA and Grandal have missed more than half the games in the last year. Its hard to get rhythm when everyone is always hurt...and there is a psychological element to teams winning. You think there isn't a darkness that surrounds the team when poor old Eloy has his appendix burst? First for him but then the "what will happen next" hopelessness. As for "not even losing all stars". Robert is 4th in FWar this year...you think having him miss half of last year didn't hurt? Eloy with 45 homers in his first 700 at bats by age 23 and his injuries haven't hurt? Moncada and his 5 WAR and 4 WAR seasons surrounded by injured seasons hasn't hurt the White Sox growth?

So if the Angels have everyone healthy all year long and they only loose Ohtani and Trout for the season they are historically healthy? I don't care what sort of nonsense "proof" you have or how healthy the backups are...the Sox have had terrible injury luck. Yes the starting pitchers have been luckier and still if you assume a full season is 32 starts the core 4 lost 20 starts last year. That is losing one of your best pitchers for 2/3rds of the year. Grandal, TA, Jimenez, Robert and Moncada, the very core of your team, lost 340 games. That is equal to losing two star players for the full season. If you want to run out stats that say how historically healthy AJ Pollock was, or how Adam Engel and Josh Harrison were there to answer the call everyday. You have your truth, I have mine. Just don't pretend that your truth is somehow science.

Yes...it's been frustrating...but still a top 11 payroll and $190 mill spent...and like I said...all of the top 4 payrolls in MLB are at or further behind their division leads than the Sox. I think the idea that the Sox aren't trying or are stupid is one view, the other is they accumulated a lot of talent and then they've just run into incredibly bad injury luck the last 18 months...Seem to remember they had a 10 year run of good injury luck. Sometimes life is random. The idea of burning it all down seems so pessimistic. As for the home runs...seems like Comiskey park used to be one of the most cavernous parks in baseball.

This is precisely why I rarely engage here anymore. The primary dozen posters on Soxtalk are White Sox haters or trolls. Anyone that tries to find a fun narrative is hunted by the mob. I write a commentary about things being darkest before the dawn with a bunch of reasons why things got ridiculously bad (that first forty game schedule was unbelievable especially for a new manager) and why they could turn around and your response back is 1) personal insult, 2) Personal insult, 3) personal insult, 4) made up argument that makes me sound ridiculous though I never said anything like that 5) tired old story about something that happened 30 years ago that could be viewed negatively. Hey, all of you, enjoy your hatred. Abandon all hope yea who enter Soxtalk.

Soxtalk is reaching maximum crazy. Two playoff seasons followed by a devastating injury year that still ended up .500 and now a slow start which was a combination of new manager, key injuries and the hardest schedule in baseball the first 40 games....and we are writing the obituary?? If we had only spent money like top four spenders, the Mets (.500 and 4.5 games out), Yankees (3rd place 5 games out), Padres (under .500 and 8 games back) or Phillies (under .500 and 7 games back)? Where did it all go wrong as we stand hopelessly...checking...checking...5.5 games out of first after 50 games....with the easiest schedule the rest of the way? Do we put the 25 year old Andrew Vaughn in the same dumpster as the 26 year old, often appendix victim, Jiminez? Jake Burgers feel good story is now over because he's had a couple of bad games? Tim Anderson's 3000 career .750 OPS is an illusion and his last 85 post injury OPS of .471 is the new normal. Colas and Sosa are now AAAA players because of 80 bad, cold weather, at bats against the five best teams in baseball? Kopech has no future. Lynn is toast. Cease was a fluke. We have no relief pitchers. Yet we are less than 14 months removed from many BB writers in the country saying we had the second best MLB talent...and yes since then the luck has all been bad. But baseball is a marathon and luck changes. We still have starters, relievers and 7 position players that at their best in the last three years have been all star levels. This year the Sox are like a Porsche with a flat tire...it looks great in the driveway but on the road its ugly to watch. But the tires getting fixed. The weathers warming up. Jiminez is coming back, Crochet is back, the four top starters all looked great and went 4-0 in their last four starts. Robert is turning into the superstar we thought. Anderson will burn up the league in June. Vaughn is so close. Burger will continue to be a nice surprise. The bullpen is rounding into shape and It would not be crazy at all to see the sox go 40-20 the next 60 and be 5 games up at the 110 game mark. Then Liam regains his form and becomes the rallying cry for the team...Colas and Sosa unleash their talent. The first six weeks of the season was gut wrenching for all of us...but this happens in baseball. Let's let it play out into the summer. I think this is going to become a really fun team.

Anyone know anything about Elko for the Cannon Ballers? He's old for the league but he put up a 1000 OPS in the SEC and now has 8 home runs and 6 doubles in his first 100 at bats. Not on top 30 prospect list...but his SO rate has dropped this year and his walk rate is way up. Sleeper?? Also fun to see Baldwin off to a good start...near .400 OBP with 6 stolen bases in 17 games. Winston Salem at 19-7, the Kannapolis over .500...a little bit of hope for the future??