almagest

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/

I wasn't the one to call you a zombie, though I'll admit its frustrating getting dog-piled by a bunch of people who take it personally that I don't share their opinion on Getz, so maybe I went too far. FWIW you've been good to interact with on this topic, and I can understand why people want to fire Getz. I just don't share that opinion.

You got an actual point to make, or are you just here to be insulting?

It's not shouting. It's zombie speak. Also, you get to poke fun at people who have a similar opinion to me, so I get to do the same in return. It's all in good fun from my perspective. Up to you if you want to take it as an insult.

Ha, fair enough - how's "ROMY GONZALEZ HUNDRED AT BAT SAMPLE SIZE ENOUGH TO DECLARE HIM BIG LOSS TO SOX", or "4 POINTS OF ERA+ BIG FAILURE", or "BENINTENDI AND VAUGHN SUCK BECAUSE OF GETZ"?

"RRRRRRRR.... GETZ BAD. ZAVALA COMPETENT DEFENSIVELY. RRRRRRRRR"

What are you defining as the mistakes that caused this roster to be 20+ games worse than last year, given the similar or better production provided by the position players brought in by Getz? The starting pitching is better overall. The bullpen is worse, but not by as much as I thought (91 ERA+ in 2023 vs 87 in 2024). It couldn't possibly be that every single position player regular left over from 2023 has been worse, could it?

This is interesting - wasn't the story until now that Hahn wanted Renteria gone?