almagest

You know this board is full of optimists.

Tell me what he could have done to make this team be on pace to win 20 more games. I provided a detailed breakdown of each player on the roster in a previous post, and I also covered how there wasn't much of anything out there in free agency that the Sox could've signed. All I've gotten from you is deflection, excuses and hand-wavey BS like "KW/Hahn would have somehow gotten 20 more wins out of the players they brought onboard!" and "Seby Zavala, the player I absolutely hated a few months ago, is now a defensive stud catcher who would be a difference maker even though he's not even in the majors anymore and wouldn't play over Korey Lee!"

No, you don't, because they are getting the exact same production (or better) at every position Getz filled this year. I posted about this already, in detail. The main difference has been Benintendi, Vaughn, Eloy, Robert and Moncada have all been substantially worse than last year, even factoring in their injuries. We've also been over how zero top 100 position prospects were traded at the deadline. We've also discussed how Getz recognized the need for a hitting guru like Bannister to help the minors. @ptatc is absolutely right - even a soft differing opinion like "give the GM one more year because a lot of what's happening this year isn't his fault, it's the fault of the previous regime" is met with people who need to paint me as some blind Getz apologist and make a bunch of assumptions about what I'm saying without actually reading what I say.

He may have questionable assessment skills, sure. I'm not going to say he does for sure yet. I'll give him another year. That is literally all I have been saying this whole time.

Yes, it was. Maldonado over Zavala is not why this team is historically bad. It's barely a blip.

Firing Pedro and his boys, even though Reinsdorf blocked him for most of the season Bringing Bannister onboard, which has shown immediate benefit both in the minors and majors Mentioned changing international scouting in the offseason Mentioned bringing a "hitting guru" onboard, like he did with Bannister Getz has responsibility for the product on the field. Once again, I'm saying there's still a ton of cruft to get rid of from the previous regime and it's going to take more than a year to turn that around.

Oh no, I get your point - Maldonado is so bad even Zavala would be an upgrade. I'm just saying it's completely irrelevant.

I have to admit, I'm cracking up each time Zavala's name comes up as the savior to the 2024 White Sox season.

He wouldn't be. Zavala isn't in the majors anymore, same as Maldonado.

So all of these guys would be better under KW/Hahn? Moncada and Eloy wouldn't have gotten hurt? How exactly does a change in SVP and GM accomplish that?

Benintendi, Eloy and Vaughn alone are half of that negative fWAR. Moncada hasn't played in months, and probably won't play again this year. Robert isn't even at 1 fWAR yet. Those are the guys you counted on to be the "good" players. They were on the roster already and were going to play. They had to at least be decent for this team to be normal bad, no matter what. Romy barely plays in the outfield. He's not an OF. Also, again, Romy also only has 100 AB, and would likely be exposed with the Sox because they would be forced to play him way more than the Red Sox. There was no one else available in free agency or on the trade market (except McCarthy) that would get this team like 20 more wins then they have right now. McCarthy is much better than Fletcher this year. That looks like a miss, and doesn't bode well for Barfield if he was that bad at evaluating players in his org. Getz isn't the only reason they are so barren in the minors. KW/Hahn did a terrible job drafting, signing and trading players. Being unhappy and skeptical is fine. I am unhappy and skeptical. I am not wallowing in negativity and pinning all the blame on a guy who has only been doing this job for a year, in what is most certainly the worst organization in MLB. He's got another year to prove himself in my mind - he probably won't be fired even if he's awful because Reinsdorf, but if they don't start showing improvement then Getz needs to go too.

Sounds like a KW/Hahn apologist to me

You're right. No one expected all of Benintendi, Vaughn, Eloy, Moncada and Robert to be practically useless this year. And it's not revisionist history to realize how absolutely screwed this team is after what we've seen this year and the tons of insider feedback we've gotten about what an utter disaster this organization was under Rick and Kenny - so bad that even Reinsdorf had to fire KW, who he considered a son and who brought him a WS in 2005. A guy who Jerry blocked from interviewing for other roles. A guy who likely had a job for life, and yet still managed to screw it up somehow.

If people read what I actually said, and not what they thought I said or wanted me to say, then it would be easy to see I'm not a Getz apologist. I'm just trying to be realistic about what's possible in one season with an organization this bad and not whip myself into a pointless frenzy of negativity.

"I don't like him, but give him a year because this entire org is fucked and there's no way to tell if what he's doing is working yet" is an apologist to you?

No, he didn't. Once again, you don't get to this level of historic incompetency without a full, multi-year, thorough organizational failure. None of you have even come CLOSE to showing how this could be a 60 win pace team through any set of realistic signings or trades. It's not possible with how utterly terrible they've been, and that's 100% due to the decisions made by Reinsdorf, Hahn and Williams over the last 8 years. And again, grading him on player moves this year is IRRELEVANT. We're not going to truly start seeing the effects of the changes that are happening and need to happen until next year. Plenty of people around the team, including people on this board, have been commenting on what a bad state this org is in, and how much is changing and needs to change.

Agreed that Vaughn needs to go, but I'd give Elko a shot at 1B. He's been pretty good at every stop, and assuming he continues to play well in AAA there's no reason to spend resources on 1B. The rest makes sense.

No, you are missing the point. There's no way letting some bullpen pitchers and Seby Zavala go caused the problems we're seeing this year. You don't get to this level of historic incompetency in one offseason. This started with the sell-off in 2016 and is a complete organizational failure, largely due to Kenny Williams, Rick Hahn and Jerry Reinsdorf. Believe me, I'm not a fan of Getz, but pinning it all on him because he made some bad bullpen moves or traded for guys who didn't play much in the most lost season in the history of the MLB is reactionary and short sighted. These moves literally do not matter right now. Most of the changes he's making are not going to show returns for a year at best. This might be the biggest org tear down we've ever seen. That's how BAD they are, from top to bottom. It's disgusting, and it's even more disgusting that Reinsdorf tried to sell this as a quick turnaround.

It's amazing to me that so many posters equate "I'm giving Getz another year because Jesus Christ himself couldn't make this team win 60 games" with "I am fighting for the respect of Chris Getz". It's also amazing to me how so few posters understand that the major league team they have is a result of nearly a DECADE of incompetence.

Zavala has barely played. You're banking the turnaround of the catching position on a guy who has appeared in 18 games, has 0.1 fWAR and is now in AAA. Losing Zavala is not a problem. Trading for Fletcher and DeLoach then burying them is ridiculous. So is burying Colas. I'm hoping that was Pedro, and at least two of them get playing time now. The bullpen guys I'm not as upset about, because, again, I don't think they'd be nearly as good here due to the pressure of trying to be perfect every game due to the team's lack of offense, and because I'm not convinced Ethan Katz or whoever manages the bullpen knows what they're doing. I'm still also not seeing how Zavala, Colas/Fletcher/DeLoach and a better bullpen gets this team to +20 win pace.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

Zavala is at -0.4 war this year, same as he was for the Sox last year. He’s only gotten 39 at bats though, so I really can’t see how you’d be counting on him for much of an improvement, especially since Lee would be getting most of the playing time. I agree on Colas, but let’s be honest - he hasn’t shown us anything to make us believe he’d be better. Still worth trying, I’ll give you that, and I hope he’s out there now that Grifol is gone. Romy Gonzalez only has 100 at bats this year. It’s likely he’d be exposed in a full time role. If you combine his entire career (~120 games), he’s basically Nicky Lopez this year. Not an improvement. If you add all those relievers you get 2.7 WAR. Definitely an improvement over the garbage they have now, but not enough to make up 20 games, especially when your offense averages 3 runs per game. Bullpens struggle when they have no margin for error. I’m also not sure any of these guys would be good here - I think Katz is terrible with bullpens.

Like who? What free agents were out there that the Sox would realistically sign that would be a big enough improvement to make up 20 games? I already covered RF and 2B - not much there. Not seeing much at catcher, either. Maybe they could’ve used some of their assets in trades, but who was going to give up a decent major league player for Bummer? Or injured Santos? The ML coaching staff was largely retained from last year, and we’ve been hearing Getz wanted to can them for a while. This team has had issues fielding and playing good fundamental baseball since long before Getz took over. I’ll give him more than one offseason (especially now that Grifol and most of his staff were canned) to fix this problem,

Burger wasn’t Getz. The move also made sense at the time. Bummer had good advanced stats but had control issues and an awful ERA. I doubt anyone was lining up to give the Sox much of anything there. I can see the rationale to grab a bunch of players on the edge of the Braves 40 man and see what you can get. Some of them had a pedigree, and Lopez was a body at second base who played good defense and had a 4 WAR season. They clearly don’t think of Mena as highly as some people do here, and his results don’t show much of anything yet. I doubt he was as highly valued around the league. The Sox clearly made the wrong player choice, especially given Barfield’s knowledge of their system, but they’d probably only have a couple more wins at most. I agree Santos didn’t need to be traded, but maybe they knew more about his injury than we did. Plus there were the rumors that he was the one sleeping. Maybe they just wanted him off the team, and so far he hasn’t done anything since leaving.

Bad teams churn through players like crazy. I don’t understand why this is such a sticking point for people. If the team was good they wouldn’t try to find good players. I already went over the position players sucking - every player who was here last year has been worse. Hard to not be worse when your “good” players suck. The defense also still sucks largely because of those players. Now do you have an answer for my questions or are you going to keep deflecting?