Thad Bosley

Then the whole thing will likely have been a fool's errand.

As long as the Sox offer the most money (which we’ve all known needed to happen all along), along with whatever bells & whistles were served to Machado today, if Machado ends up accepting an offer from someone else for less, then so be it. Nothing anyone can do at that point, and it would be a case of “it wasn’t meant to be”. That’s the glass is half empty reaction. The glass is (more than) half full one is that in addition to offering the most money to Manny, the FO was also able to sell him on the experience of being a key part in what should be a very promising time during the next decade as a member of this team.

Mark Teahen Jaime Navarro Claudell Washington Adam Dunn Bo Jackson

I actually enjoyed the article. It basically said the Sox are, or should be, a force to be reckoned with. Which is true, given the team plays in the 3rd largest market in the country.

If we signed BOTH, along with the introduction of one Eloy Jimenez into the fold, you’d have to expect an immediate jolt to the bare bones season ticket holders ranks the team currently has, both full and partial season packages. That’s a good start. Then hopefully, as the season progresses, the excitement builds upon itself, and more partial season packages are sold along the way, along with a pretty significant bump in single game ticket sales, both in advance and walk-up.

Brushing aside your predictable asinine comment, it just seems odd you think it “creative, out of the box thinking”, as you put it, to set aside a roster spot for someone primarily because it would be a feel good for a superstar on the team. Not sure I’ve ever heard this line of thinking before.

Is that how you construct an MLB 25 man roster now? By allocating one or two precious spots to friends or family members of the team’s superstars?

Bill Veeck signed Ron LeFlore right before he sold the team to Reinsdorf. And Reinsdorf made his fortune in real estate, not television. It was Eddie Einhorn who was the so-called “television pioneer”, although you would have never known it with his decision to take the Sox off of the superstation WGN during the early ‘80s and instead plopping the games on pay TV for what at that time would be the equivalent of around $60 a month in today’s dollars to watch White Sox baseball. Real tv genius, that guy

If you go in with the premise that we won’t be outbid by anyone else for either, which I happen to believe will be the case based on everything we’ve read to date, then I think there is a strong chance we could get both. With history as our guide, players usually go where they’re offered the most money. For me, and using the Torii Hunter signing of a few years ago as the example, where the Sox’ offer then was $75M, only to be blown out of the water by the $90M offer by the Angels, I think this offseason we are the $90M bid for both Harper and Machado. It doesn’t make sense otherwise to get this deep into the process without planning to have the highest bid for both on the table when all is said and done. So I think we’ll offer the most money to both, and at the end of the day, I think both will eventually go where they’ll make the most money - 35th & Shields!

The guy is going to turn 83 next year, so time is running out on his opportunity to enhance his legacy as owner of the Sox, which at the moment is not a very good one at all.

I don't think you hire Scott Boras to be your agent to take a four year contract instead of a ten year one.

I don't know if it's realistic or not to hope for, but given the wreck our franchise has been pretty much our entire lives, save the one magic year, you'd hope that there would be some allure for someone like Harper or Machado to come in and potentially be a complete difference maker for a franchise like ours that they really couldn't be for a team like the Dodgers or Yankees. That perhaps given the kind of success they hope to have over the life of their next contracts, their legacies would be better served if they could be viewed as a primary reason for turning this franchise around (once and for all) vs. just being one of many stars on one of these other teams.

Baines was a mere 134 hits short of 3,000 career hits and 16 home runs short of 400 career homers from being in an entirely different conversation as it relates to the HOF. Had he made those two milestones, he would have joined a very exclusive club of only eight players in the history of the game with BOTH 3,000 hits AND 400 homeruns. Your typical 3,000 hit-getter isn’t much of a power hitter, and your typical 400/500 home run hitter isn’t the kind of contact hitter the 3,000 hit guys are. Baines was a nice blend of both contact and power, which for me made him such a great player to watch over the years. But he just came up short on both milestones, and thus his election is being called into question by many. I get that criticism, but at the same time, I’m happy HB is heading to Cooperstown!

When Herm Schneider first stepped foot in the White Sox dugout in 1979, Jane Byrne had just been elected mayor of Chicago, and the manager of the Sox was a player-manager - Don Kessinger. Later that year Kessinger would give way to a rookie manager the Sox brought up from their minor leagues, a guy by the name of Tony LaRussa. That's how far back this guy's tenure with the team goes!

The Sox went from winning only 69 games in 1989 to 94 wins in 1990. That was a swing of 25 more victories in the win column. Such a 25 game swing next year, while not probable, would easily land the team in the discussion of a wild card berth. So there's definitely a scenario to be made that it could happen.

How are you coming up with the scenario of a "threat" potentially going on with any of this? If the Sox offer him what they think he's worth at this point in time, which could be below the 20% cut threshhold, he can either accept it or get non-tendered, at which point he's free to go out into the world and try and get a better offer than the one the Sox offered him. No manipulation there whatsoever, just plain, 'ol market economics at play.

Voila! This. This is how the process works, and has worked for a very long time.

I tend to agree with this answer to the question. Seems like we've tried this approach many times in the past, and how has that worked out for us? Let's grab a premium talent (or two) and combine them with our young prospects and see how we fare.

To pursue two generational talents who are both only 26 years old? Well ok, I guess that qualifies as one point of view.

You can multitask, and continue to develop a core of young players, and at the same time, pursue generational talents like Harper and Machado.

Please, enough with this “they’ve been competitive” business. The Sox have managed to win the A.L. Central division just three times in the 24 years of the division’s existence. They didn’t make the playoffs in any of those other 21 seasons when they didn’t win the division outright. And now the experience of this so-called “rebuild”. It’s time to raise the bar a little higher than to just say they’ve been “competitive” in all of these other non-postseason seasons over the years. This is why you have to admire the Sox fan base. We’ve had little to cheer about over the years, yet we remain White Sox fans. Let’s hope these n’er do-wells running this organization are actually successful with this rebuild business and for the first time in our lifetimes produce a sustainable winning ball club for us all to enjoy. No other fan base is more deserving at this point!

Sadly, we didn’t get the integral aspect of either the Cubs or Astros rebuilds, which was NEW ownership and NEW front offices, to take over from the regimes whose failures brought the need for those respective rebuilds in the first place. Nope, our rebuild bypassed that critical part of the process.

The epitome of “godsend” for this organization at this time.

By "people", presume you mean the people in the front office, the ones responsible for all of the losing that brought on the need for the so-called "rebuild" in the first place. They of course would want the rebuild "badly", as it represents a do-over of sorts, and another chance to get it right and therefore keep their jobs. Those are the people who would want the chance to rebuild. As for the fans, though, we absolutely never "want" a rebuild, because that is synonomous with lots and lots of losing baseball. All of the losing leading up to the rebuild, and then of course all of the losing that comes during the rebuild (see the 100 losses in the 2018 season). Certainly no fans want to have to endure all of that, but as loyal fans, we plug our collective noses and suffer through it in hopes there will be a return to winning baseball at the end of the rebuild. That's really our only choice. But as for rebuilds in general, by no means do fans ever "want it badly". It's simply not an enjoyable experience.

Three more decent years at the plate for Jose should catapult him into the White Sox’ Top Ten All Time for most offensive categories. I’d be more than happy to see him go down as one of the team’s all time greats!