almagest

You're living in a fantasy land if you think he's going to be replaced after one year, even if it wasn't Reinsdorf. Sure, he almost definitely wouldn't have been hired (and rightfully so), but in the small chance Getz was hired as the GM of a real team, he would at least have a couple years to put all of his changes into place. You can't turn around any organization in one season, much less a complete disaster like this one.

Yeah but you see if they completely overhauled the roster by getting rid of Vaughn, Robert, Benintendi, Eloy, and Moncada in the offseason, kept Cease, predicted which terrible relievers they let go would have a bounce back year, and had a time machine to know that guys like Jurickson Profar would post the best stats of their careers... They would win about many games as they did last year!

I want to see what Baldwin, Lee, Fletcher and Vargas do next year. Robert should be better next year, because he’s not getting traded with his terrible 2024. No sure things in the minors, unfortunately, but there’s a bunch of guys in the top 30 that are interesting and worth following. I’m also an Elko fan and wouldn’t mind seeing him replace Vaughn next year.

The Sox absolutely need hitting for the future. Not right now - what they need right now is for a giant tsunami to wash the other team into the ocean before every series starts. I don't believe in Burger as a key part of the Sox when they finally start to get decent again. By that point he'll be early 30s and guys with his profile are often in severe decline. A solid hitting prospect would definitely have been a better return for Burger, but I doubt the Sox were getting that, unless they went super young, and that's not a KW trade.

They probably still sign Senzel even with Burger, because that's what terrible teams with no help in the upper minors do. Sign DFAs and pray.

You must've missed the part where I said " It's up to [the Sox] to make sure the returns are successful". And again, Eder can still have more value to this team than Burger would've. We'll see if he makes a successful move to the bullpen or figures anything out next season.

The trade rationale made sense at the time and the Sox should keep making trades like that. It's up to them to make sure the returns are successful. Also, let's pump the brakes on declaring this a bad trade already. It's definitely been bad value since Burger started hitting again and Eder forgot how to pitch, but Burger wouldn't do much for this team other than bump them from "worst team of all time" to "worst team of all time, but like 1 more win". We'll see if it stays that way - if Eder can become at least a solid reliever he's worth way more to this team in the next couple years than a 30+ year old Burger. One tool guys don't often perform well post 30, especially given his injury history.

I don't think we can say Thorpe is doomed if he gets TJ since the general success rate of pitchers who get it is so high. Eder just might be in that outlier bucket. Or, maybe he's the "wrong kind" of lefty starter and the Sox can't reach him, which is either a player dev problem, or Eder just sucks now. Given the Sox general strength with pitching this year and the job Bannister has been doing, I'd lean more on the latter. I also think the Thorpe trade was solid at the time. Thorpe was MiLB pitcher of the year and a top 50-ish prospect. Zavala has talent and had a great year last year. The Sox just need to figure out how to work with him. Wilson was questionable but I see the rationale. He's arb eligible and I assume they'll give him another year to build some value/hopefully provide a more stable bullpen presence next year. We'll see what Getz does in the offseason with Crochet and maybe Robert, though I suspect Robert stays one more year at least given his bad 2024 so far.

Urshela was horrible with the Tigers and got released, and he was alright last year in limited playing time either with the Angels. He wouldn't help anything. Rosario is an odd case. He can still hit, apparently, but his defense has been awful. He was traded for basically nothing to the Dodgers (again), then put on waivers and claimed by Cincinnati. Either his defense is that terrible, or there are some locker room concerns with him. DeJong was also a better signing by both bWAR and fWAR.

Agreed on the trade making sense at the time. They should be held accountable for his regression, though. Maybe it's just a result of the TJ surgery, but Eder is looking like a release candidate right now.

And then he came back to the Sox in 1997 when he was already washed.

A .639 OPS for this team is fourth best among starters.

He’s been terrible since he left and is already 26, so seems like an alright move.

Way better backup than Chuckie Robinson, but he'd probably start here and I'd rather to continue to see what Lee can do. Not sure why the Rockies are putting a 1.1 bWAR catcher not making a lot on outright waivers - do they have someone he's blocking?

We had one of those and they just fired him.

The Yankees should have to move to Sacramento instead of the As for losing this badly to the White Sox

Yankees really taking it to the Sox, as expected. 11-2 now. Hey, wait a minute...

Man Vaughn sucks. Couple of meatballs right there for him.

Thanks for making a legit effort. Profar was comfortable in SD and likely wasn’t playing anywhere else. No one knew he’d be this good. Winker I missed because he’s a left fielder. No idea how good he’d be in RF everyday. He was also horrendous in 2023. Perez hasn’t been very good. Solano is a solid platoon option. Not sure how good he is at 2B.

I’ve been asking for possible ways to do it and no one has given one. I also looked at the free agent list from last year and wasn’t super encouraged. If you have solutions I’m all ears.

There was no one out there to improve this roster by any substantial degree, unless you pipe dream about guys like Ohtani. I looked. We got improvement at SS and starting pitching and are break even pretty much with every other new player, and still are 20 games worse. I'm also not on a crusade to defend Getz, but god damn its frustrating when asking simple questions about who they should have signed or traded for, or spending time to show that the major differences on this roster are all due to large downgrades from existing players, results in "Getz apologist!" or bizarre arguments about signing or retaining guys who offer so little value over what they have, that you couldn't even win 20 more games if you "upgraded" 20 positions on the 26 man roster this way.

The White Sox don't even have one right now (only an MiLB hitting coordinator), so finding someone to lead a focused effort across the entire org still seems like a win, even if the impact isn't as quick or as dramatic as Bannister.

"Do well enough so Jerry doesn't make me fire you and hire LaRussa"?

I don't have that much anger left for this team. I just don't. I barely even watch them. I'm trying to find something to be positive about, or at least ambivalent.

Yes there absolutely is. Plenty of teams have a director of hitting. https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2020/03/12/directors-of-hitting-pitching-becoming-more-common/111417370/