Chicago White Sox

You believe these Northbrook Bob & Eloy vs. Wall characters or have you heard something similar? Last I checked Mike Rodriguez hasn’t moved off his initial report that it will be Espada.

Oh god, are you suggesting this is to allow KW Jr to be in charge of the farm?

Wouldn’t Getz rather be GM once KW retires and Hahn gets moved up to EVP of Baseball Operations? Seems like he’s leapfrogged Haber to be next man up.

He did go to Michigan so he meets the unwritten one ?

I think the LatAm stuff is a bit tricky. For years, we underinvested in this area, whereas other clubs would blow through their cap and load up on talent prior to taking their penalties. Unfortunately, we have to accept a few realities here. First, it took a little bit of time for Paddy to right our LatAm operations after the Dave Wilder fiasco. Spending big may not have been a real option early on in his tenure. Second, Reinsdorf provides his own challenges when it comes to spending big in this area. Traditionally he has been a stickler for following the rules (see his refusal to go above slot for years), which may have limited Hahn’s ability to mimic what teams like the Padres were doing. Furthermore, he does not like spending big on unproven talent (draft or LatAm) vs. major league ball players and especially hates pursuing 16 year old Hispanic kids. Of course the year that the Sox finally decide to go into the penalty box is the year they sign Luis Robert. Unfortunately for us, the Sox didn’t treat it like a big overage year and only signed 20 players (for reference we would sign 26 players just two years later under the new capped structure). Without Luis, I think it would have been a normal year. Again, I struggle how much to blame Hahn for that vs. Jerry. Don’t get me wrong, investing in LatAm provides the best overall ROI vs other types of spend and it’s Hahn’s job to make that clear to Jerry. But we all know Reinsdorf is a stubborn f*** who likes to do things his way. I agree those next three years were problematic. Not spending up to their cap is simply unacceptable. I get maybe the 2017-18 class through a wrench with the addition of Robert, but being in the penalty box never stopped the Padres maxing out, even if it had to be on lower priced guys. It’s very clear the Sox did some poor planning here and did not have counter-measures in place in the event they signed Robert. The 2019-20 class is the most embarrassing given we were out of the penalty box and to your point should have had ample lead time to use our budget appropriately. And ultimately our big prize was spending $2.5M on a 22 year old Cuban who projected to be a UT infielder. I believe there may have been some other Cubans that were intended to part of that class but didn’t materialize for whatever reasons, but that’s still no excuse for not spending to budget. So yes, Hahn clearly failed in this area and I didn’t rip him to the appropriate levels, but I do think there are other considerations in the LatAm space that makes his failures less egregious than those on the amateur scouting / player development side of things.

I mean, JT Realmuto is both their best player and the highest paid catcher in all of baseball. They also traded a ton get him, although he has been worth every penny. Not trying to discredit your point, but probably important to point out. That being said, Hahn’s ability to supplement this roster via free agency has been disastrous. IMO, there are two reasons for this. First, was several big misses in free agency that resulted in dollars being allocated differently than originally planned. Second, was the absolute failure to develop cheap pre-arb talent to provide above replacement level production at certain spots. Regarding the first point, everything probably changes if Jerry nuts up and signs Machado to the deal the Padres offered. Additionally, let’s not forgot that Hahn actually prioritized a Wheeler signing and made a higher offer than the Phillies, but lost out due to geographical considerations. Can’t blame Hahn for the miss there, but can blame him for panic signing Dallas Keuchel. Yes, he delivered in a COVID shortened 2020 season, but was basically useless 18 months into that deal and was never going to be a true TOR starter for us. So instead of having a cornerstone 3B & SP to build around for ~$55M/year in payroll commitments, those funds went elsewhere. Grandal is currently the largest free agency acquisition in franchise history at 4/$73M. I was a huge fan of the signing and won’t rip it now, especially when we needed a LH bat and the alternative was overpaying for James McCann. The problem was that was our only true high impact move in free agency. Maybe you can argue the Hendriks signing being one given how elite he is, but at the end of the day he is a reliever and that limits his potential impact to some extent. But that doesn’t explain where all the money went. Let’s lay this all out. The core pieces that Hahn acquired during the rebuild accounted for ~$50M in salary this year (Moncada, Anderson, Robert, Eloy, Vaughn, Giolito, Cease, Kopech, Lopez, & Bummer). Beyond Grandal, Keuchel, & Hendriks (who made a combined ~$49M this year), the other two expensive core pieces were Lynn ($18.5M) & Abreu ($14M). That’s ~$132M in total payroll for seven everyday positional guys, four starters, and three high leverage relievers. That gave Hahn ~$54M to finish offer the roster. And that’s where the second problem comes in. Because Hahn failed to build a steady pipeline of talent during the rebuild years, the Sox didn’t have cheap options from within to fill their remaining holes. Hostetler’s focus early on in low ceiling college bats with little to no defensive utility (Collins, Burger, Sheets, etc) created a system that lacked athleticism. The Robert signing limited what Paddy could do in subsequent years, which hurt our up-the-middle depth (just starting to see the fruits of his labor here with Sosa & Popeye). Getz & staff could not develop the few fringe prospects we had like Rutherford, Adolfo, Basabe, & Gonzalez into legitimate major league options (although SF did with the latter). And our pitching depth in the upper minors became a complete joke. Despite all the investments that we made into relief prospects, we struggled to develop a critical mass of major league caliber bullpen arms. Quite frankly, the prospect cupboard was quickly empty after the first few waves and organizational depth became non-existent. So coming full circle, where did that other ~$54M go? Hahn spent $11.5M on Pollock to solve “RF” for a year (despite not being a RF) because all our minor league options had failed and Colas & Cespedes weren’t ready yet. He spent a combined $9.5M on Leury & Harrison to fill 2B for a year and provide some up-the-middle depth that he thought the system couldn’t. Rick spent $18M on two high-leverage relievers and a shitty swingman because the farm literally had nothing to offer. For that same $39M, we could have Bryce Harper playing RF ($26M) right now with Eduardo Escobar at 2B ($10M). All it took was for Hahn’s staff to develop four pre-arb guys to fill out a major league bench and bullpen, but unfortunately that was too much to ask for after a multi-year rebuild TLDR - So yes, Hahn’s ability to supplement this roster via free agency has been a complete & utter disaster, but beyond just the poor resource allocation is an organization wide incompetence that lead him to prioritize depth over impact talent in free agency. And it’s those core failings in draft strategy and player development that should prevent from ever being a major league GM again.

Oh fully agree and glad you said it.

@Sleepy Harold- I saw you got blocked, did you recently message him or mention him?

Which may add credibility that Espada is not their guy.

To be honest, it makes me think they have someone in mind that they can’t officially pull the trigger on. Maybe Long? Why else let the Marlins have the opportunity to offer a job before you?

To me it would have to be a true blow-up, which means trading guys like Cease & Anderson plus many others. I don’t see any chance of that happening though given where Jerry is at in his life. Not trying to dark, but who knows if Jerry would even be alive after another rebuild. But to me, that’s the only excuse for not holding SoxFest.

They provided several reasons, just didn’t go into much detail on them ?

A major sell off would be the only reason to consider canceling and that still didn’t stop them having SoxFest during the initial rebuild years. To me, it still comes down to a general cowardice and the risk of exposing the competing factions within the organization. Jerry simply doesn’t want to bring more attention to the insanity that was Tony La Russa.

The Sox deserve zero fans the way they run things. Like literally, any non sports-related business would have gone under a long fucking time ago I’d they ran s%*# like Jerry’s org does.

I was in Brentwood which is a 20 to 30 minute drive from downtown. The problem is that downtown Nashville is your cool young, urban, liberal setting and the suburbs are uber religious & conservative. Unfortunately the latter wasn’t for me and being back in Chicago has only reaffirmed that point.

Downtown Nashville is great, but hated living in the suburbs there and simply missed everything Chicago (places, people, food, etc.). Just couldn’t see living there forever and unfortunately for whatever reason going to Sox games is one of my favorite things in the world. I’ve always dreamed of taking my two young sons to Sox games on a regular basis and have them share in this passion with me. Despite the s%*# show that is the Sox over the past couple months (and cancelling SoxFest is a big one), moving back to Chicago was the best decision in my life. For all its warts, I fucking love every corner of this place.

Who is the driving force to bring him in for an interview? KW legit hates the dude and his family. Hahn specifically said Ozzie wasn’t an option in 2020 before Jerry hijacked the process and inserted Tony. Why would Hahn suddenly change his mind and consider Ozzie now? And I’m pretty Ozzie’s son Oney made some digs at Rick over the years…why would he want to bring back that circus? To me, this is Jerry doing Ozzie a solid by giving him an interview. Ozzie simply doesn’t have the attributes that Hahn said he was looking for in his next hire.

One thing I will add is you can always tell who the fake insiders are based on how they interact with other “insiders”. The fact that Eloy vs the Wall refused to call out Comiskey Footlong for being a fraud and simply went with the “he was mislead” just shows this is all attention driven and he doesn’t want to lose the free marketing arm that is another fake insider. Espada may or may not happen, but I don’t these two guys’ tweets are the end all be all. I still haven’t seen much they have broken first that wasn’t to guess budget related stuff. @fathom - Why do you have so much faith in these two?

This Eloy vs the Wall character seems to be a fraud. Someone asked him to prove something he leaked and his example was the La Russa not returning in 2023 stuff. But guess who tweeted that moments earlier? None other than the Mike Rodriguez who is saying Espada will be the hire. Definitely feels like Eloy vs the Wall simply piggy-backs off whatever Northbrook Bobs says.

f*** these cowards.

I’ll be honest, I’m trying to remain optimistic here, but the fact they’re planning to give Ozzie an interview is terrifying. Just no reason for it whatsoever given how he exited the organization last time. If legit, it just wreaks of Reinsdorf meddling.

I don’t believe for a second they’d hire Guillen, but if they did I might have to take an extended break from the White Sox until Jerry’s reign is over.

His point is that the Sox aren’t going to hire any manager to a one year deal and Espada can’t just leave his contract.

To be fair, Eloy vs The Wall oftentimes piggybacks off Northbrook Bob, so it’s really one dude saying this. Doesn’t mean he’s wrong, but very odd this would leak and be totally fabricated. Seems there is more to this than meets the eye.