jenksycat

That would be the worst possible reason to make these decisions. So all he needed was 4 good starts in AAA and he's now ready? He couldn't have made those starts in the majors?

To me its about being realistic and wanting to be better than the Royals window when their crop of stars all left at the same time. IDGAF about JR's money, but realistically they're not going to be able to sign (hopefully) 5+ guys to massive deals so I want the longest window possible with cheap guys. Under the current CBA its just smart business to get as much cheap labor as possible. The players should fix that in the next CBA and stop selling out their young talent, but until then cheap labor is the key to winning. If they were going to call him up it should have just been a month+ ago, he's no more ready now than he was then, it's just stupid timing in my opinion.

whitesoxdave tweeted about Cease this morning. I don't know the precise emoji translation but I can't imagine Cease is getting called too https://twitter.com/barstoolWSD/status/1031521620245004288

Nah, people are mad they traded ~12 starts for a year of control. Shoulda been called up a month earlier or not at all in 2018. Can't wait to watch but this is the first move I've hated of the rebuild.

He may not have been in many "high pressure" situations due to how garbage the White Sox have been...but he sure sucked in the few that he has been in. He does also fade in the 2nd half...I don't know how you could possibly blame that on the White Sox, they put him specifically on a plan to try and make sure that didn't happen and he immediately threw that out when he got to the Red Sox and - shockingly - faded in the 2nd half last year again. He's fun to watch but IMO still needs to prove he can do it for a full season

Its less about payroll and more about scouting/development. "Sustained Excellence" has to mean they've fixed decades of horrific scouting and/or minor league development and as we lose the (hopefully) superstars to ridiculous contracts we're ready to back fill with young cheap talent. Otherwise the sustained excellence will be for 3-4 years then we'll be right back to square 1 since almost all of the current young talent was not scouted/acquired through their drafts They've shown that they can spend in the past no problems. They just cant wastefully spend like the NYY/BOS/Cubs/LA do and have corpses on the roster making 200m. I don't think they'll have a problem dishing out money, they just won't be able to give out some 8 year deal to a 29 year old and get 2 productive years out of him before essentially eating the rest of the contract.

They have to do that. No team has ever stated publicly "we're keeping him down to get an extra year of control". Again, blame the shitty CBA they signed.

Blame the CBA not the FO. It's a smart FO move to get an extra year of control of a potential superstar, I will never fault them for that in a rebuilding year.

At this point just keep them all down for the extra year of control. If they want to be mad they can complain to their union for agreeing to such a stupid CBA

"In an odd move Ozzie has decided to bench rising star Eloy Jimenez in LF in favor of recently acquired veteran Juan Pierre who he says adds more versatility to the lineup with his speed threat"

Yoan already got paid, only way I'd see him signing early is if he didn't turn out to be a stud 2-3 years from now. Otherwise if he's a star there's no chance he doesn't go to FA and cash in.

I think its 99% money & 1% "wanting to win now". It's not like the NBA, teams can change overnight. If we're not in the ballpark of most money & opt outs we have no chance.

Still has to be the right player and a crapshoot. What if they broke the piggy bank for Alex Gordon a couple years ago? Spending money just for the sake of spending money isn't a great strategy either

Attached. I'm sure its just due to large screen + modern sites being dynamic to fit anything but the huge whitespace require tons of scrolling to read posts now.

I'm sure its just a template or might even be settings somewhere....but there's so much white space. 2/3 of my screen is just blank space.

QUOTE (reiks12 @ Apr 10, 2018 -> 05:05 PM) Very good article, I had no idea about this place. I wonder what Sox history would have looked like had we decided on Armour Park. Are we looking at 101 years without a title? What difference would the stadium have made on how s***ty the team was for decades?

QUOTE (Jack Parkman @ Apr 4, 2018 -> 05:58 PM) Ever think that the cold weather contributes significantly to the product being s***? Yeah Boston/Cubs/Yankees/KC sure have been terrible the last 10 years, wouldn't wish being a fan of those teams on my worst enemy.

QUOTE (bmags @ Apr 4, 2018 -> 11:27 AM) I'm definitely out on tanking next year btw. This crap is all out of sorts. THere is no way the marginal value of moving from effectively 10 to 6 is worth literally sabotaging the game of basketball. Would rather move to phase two of trying to accumulate good assets and wait for trade opportunities. But how do you accumulate those assets picking in the middle of the draft every year? The NBA in it's current format sucks if you're not a fan of the 3-4 teams that realistically have a shot at the title, not point in even playing for the other 27 teams.

QUOTE (Jack Parkman @ Apr 4, 2018 -> 05:46 PM) When they see early season attendance go up significantly because fans are comfortable and the players aren't freezing and playing better, they would find it worth it. Teams could double their early season attendance at places like Cleveland Minnesota and the south side of Chicago. It could go from 8-10 k to 20-25k. What would help attendance more than a dome: Not having a s***ty team for 10+ years. Attendance is going to be s*** if the product is also s***.

QUOTE (Tony @ Apr 4, 2018 -> 04:29 PM) So the roof is being paid by... The billionaire owners + league silly. They for sure would agree to each non-dome cold weather team spending hundreds of millions of dollars a piece to magically retrofit stadiums with massive domes vs. pushing the league start date back 1 week or having no cold weather home teams

@ChiTribKane 3m3 minutes ago More White Sox say forecast has improved and they’re hopeful they’ll get the home opener in tomorrow. The record for coldest Sox home opener was 37 degrees in 1974.

QUOTE (SoxFan2003 @ Apr 4, 2018 -> 01:15 PM) I think bad press was the wrong choice of words. I'm not sure anyone outside of Sox fans talked about it at all. All I really meant was that the people I know who were at the game, and the people on this message board were in agreement that everything about how last year was handled was terrible. As someone else said, I'm not stepping foot into the ballpark tomorrow until I know there will be at least an attempt at baseball being played. Yeah I doubt they give 2 s***s, they got to double dip concession sales so it was a win for them. I have 0 faith in them doing right by the fans so if you plan on not going unless there is a definitive 'yes' then I'd probably say you're not going.

It'd be real neat if they could make a call weather wise before 3pm Thursday this year. But I fully expect them to cancel it around 330p tomorrow after they get a few hours of beer sales in.

QUOTE (WBWSF @ Apr 3, 2018 -> 01:14 PM) He not only sucks but trading our best bullpen man (David Robertson) for him was nuts. Is there anybody in this bullpen as good as Robertson? They also took all of the money in the Robertson deal. There's also 0 reason to have a good bullpen on a s*** rebuilding team.

I like the man on 2nd rule...but only after giving teams at least 2-3 innings to end the game normally. Getting rid of 17 inning games is fine