Eminor3rd

Every team gets them every three years. EDIT: or at least that’s the plan. There have been some audibles for some high profiles flops like the first dodgers release.

I think it’s more likely because they’re only going to keep one of the veteran types, and they want to figure out which. I don’t think it’s a reflection of a desire to get them all prepared for OD. But then again, White Sox, who knows.

Vargas to LF, Ramos to 3B?

Eno Sarris is shoving him a bit too on the fantasy side of things.

I just don’t understand the strategy behind these veteran signings. He SHOULD be making signings LIKE these, but they should be with guys that have a chance to provide some actual value. The upside with Clevinger and most of the rest is that if they bounce back and play well, they’ll waste innings/ABs for the prospects, and still return nothing of consequence at the deadline. Like adding one win if everything goes perfectly is simply not worth the opportunity cost for this team right now.

I don’t think anyone is buying into it except WestEddy

Every player the White Sox have signed this offseason were candidates for the Atlantic League

The thing about Drury is that if he bounces back at all (admittedly, I have no idea why he was so bad last year; maybe there's a good reason), he may be the best hitter on the team aside from Robert. And yet, even if he does so, he still won't return more than a live arm at the deadline.

Yes, the problem is you can’t get to 30 with 0.9 WAR players, no matter what you pay them.

It's an important point. When every player's final form is some fraction of their current form, you need to begin with a tremendous amount of upside to end up with a prayer at a contender. The White Sox an get an elite draft pick, signing, or acquisition to the MLB, but when was the last time they "developed" a guy where whole seemed greater than the parts? Even randomness should have produced a few by now.

Maybe Law is harsh here -- time will tell -- but it's not like it doesn't sound like more of the same thing we've experienced as fans for the last 20 years with this team. The Sox simply cannot develop players. The failure rate is remarkably predictable and the narrative remarkably consistent. The ones that get through are largely able to do it through sheer raw talent, and even still frequently improve when they leave via trade or free agency despite advancing age. They take good prospects from other systems and just consistently waste them; these guys get to the highest levels with all of the same flaws they had all along, and without significant growth in their strengths beyond what can be gained from simple reps. Until this changes, there is no hope for this franchise. Forget about JR and his self-immolating free agency policy, his refusal to do whatever it takes to build a credible player development system is his true curse on the White Sox.

1Q84 is pretty wild, I second the rec

lol no

I fear you are going to be really disappointed in Munetaka Murakami

Really gonna enjoy this next lockout

That looks like a mound that early image AI would come up with if some prompted with "young white sox fan posing in front of baseball field in Cuba"

Andrew Vaughn’s midseason replacement? Who am I kidding — this is our RFer

Solid move, was gonna be tough to block all the infield prospects without an addition of some kind.

Nothing has to be anything with this team.

I don’t know what the league had in mind when they talked about “attempts to circumvent the spending limits,” but that sure as s%*# sounds like it.

For some context, Iguchi was let go as manager to make room for the promotion of Masato Yoshii, who was previously the pitching coach, and has a very close relationship with Sasaki. Yoshii is known to be a health/biomechanics expert, and it has been speculated that his promotion was the result of the Marines considering Sasaki the most important part of the organization; no one was more familiar with Sasaki's unique health situation nor better positioned to manage it. I will admit that it can be very confusing to attempt to follow these types of things as a non-Japanese person, because the language is so impossible to map to Latin-based languages, and the layers of obfuscation they tend to speak with, particularly to the media and particularly with matters that affect reputation, can be even more confounding. But regardless of what actually led to those managerial moves, I would think it very unlikely that Iguchi would have been let go if Sasaki found him to be personally important. But, you know. I don't really know, of course.

Perfectly reasonable return, probably the first of the Getz regime.

I imagine the Tigers are trying pretty hard to convince Hays to come be a rh platoon with Kerry carpenter right now. Open question if he wants to accept being a platooner in his next role.

Never have I browsed the list of non-tenders and thought "oh wow, that guy's an upgrade for the Sox" so many times.

Lol and if it was 1972 and free agency hadn’t been invented yet and the players were decades away from having earned the leverage, through a series of labor strikes and collective bargaining, to create anything remotely like today’s limited service rights constraints and the resulting market-based competitive labor market, I would say we should keep all our good players, too! I wager we’d all like to have our cake and eat it too, if it’s an option. It’s not about Garret Crochet being good, it’s about the context in which he can only be good for two more seasons before the cost to retaining him becomes a substantial obstacle to acquiring more talent. And there’s no way to make that service matter in that two year period, so why not transfer that value to a period where it can actually make a difference? And your thing about trading for mediocre prospects is a strawman; obviously no one supports trading Crochet for bad prospects. It’s simply a reality of the game that you can’t know the future, but it shouldn’t stop from playing it altogether.