Tony

……

I think Harper or Machado would have come here in they beat everyone else in offers. Money wins out 9/10. I think Ohtani is a little different, I think he really wants to go to a winner.

This. I really do believe he wants to go to a franchise that is ready to win, and is dedicated to winning. It's part of the reason it seems like LAA isn't going to keep him. I really believe if the Sox were the highest bidder, and not something like 100 million+ over the highest bidder, Ohtani would pick Option 2 over the Sox. If you signed Ohtani, kept Giolito as well...I STILL don't think this team is very good. That's how far off they are.

Giolito will be gone. They’ll buy out Lynn for $1 mil. That leaves you with Cease, Kopech and Clevinger Then what? What free agent pitcher are they spending 100+ million on, and what historical data tells you they will? They’ll have a large hole at catcher and the FA market isn’t a good one. This team was built to compete for 4 seasons, 2020-2023. Per usual, they have one of the worst farm systems in baseball. The reinforcements aren’t coming from the farm. I know you are on some crusade to tell Soxtalk it’s boring to just be negative, but objectively speaking, there is no evidence to tell us 2024 will be any better than 2023 for the Sox. More likely will be worse.

That’s all well and good, but I’ll bet you the winner of the AL Central does very little in the playoffs, so the difference between 81 wins and 88 wins means…nothing.

This is obviously true in the factual sense of "You can't win a World Series without making the playoffs." But as others have mentioned, including Hahn....the AL Central can't seem to have anyone that wants to play above .500 at this point. How is the winner of the AL Central going to stack up against Texas, Tampa, Baltimore, or the Braves, Phillies, etc...? Yes, getting to the playoffs is the goal, because you can't reach your ultimate goal without doing that first, but I can at least give a small tip of the hat to Hahn for his quotes above, as he's telling the fan base "Listen, we got to the playoffs in 2020 and 2021, and we all saw what happened. A First Round exit isn't saving anyones job, that's not the goal, and if we think that's all this team is capable of, we're not investing more resources into this bunch because that isn't what we're shooting for." Obviously that is received much more positive if he wasn't absolutely terrible at his job and got the Sox into this mess, but I do agree with his sentiment given how the standings look, as well as the performance of the 2023 White Sox.

I’ve turned into my dad very quickly. Until the Sox prove they can develop prospects consistently, following the Sox minor league system is a fools errand, much like the ML team.

This is correct. As you said earlier, Fegan wasn't canned because he isn't talented or bringing good content to The Athletic. These were decisions based on traffic numbers, and not enough people were interested in reading about the White Sox. Shocking...

Most expensive bullpen in baseball

It's June 8th and I have as many HR's as Benintendi

He was 4-5 with a 5.83 ERA.

1. The big difference between the Astros and the White Sox? The FO that lead the Astros to those results are long gone. Yet the Sox FO has stayed the same 2. You’ll be back. They ALWAYS come back…

When did being a "fan" turn into having blind loyalty and ignoring reality? You sound like a petulant child, @michelangelosmonkey. The White Sox have objectively been one of the worst baseball teams in MLB the last decade (and you could go back a lot longer than that.) And you think the Sox fans are "too negative?" Get fucked.

There are a few points here. 1. There is a reason a team like Boston would trade Moncada and not Devers, who the Sox reportedly wanted but the Red Sox wouldn't include him and instead went with Moncada. Smart teams know who the true keepers are, and who have more red flags. The same can be said for Kopech and Giolitio 2. People often overlook the job of a GM, and all that goes into it outside of player acquisition. Say Rick Hahn was in charge of a marketing department. He hires 2 brand new creatives, 2 hires that come from big agencies and have a good track record. When they arrive to work, they are set up with two desktop computers from 1998. Not really setting up your new investments for success, are you? The training staff and baseball analytics department is woefully behind the times, and we've seen it impact the Sox on the field over the last handful of years. The "core" of this team basically never plays together at the same time. 3. Sports is unfair. Being a GM is unfair. I don't disagree that on paper, Rick Hahn built a solid core during the rebuild. The names listed in your post, on paper, make up a solid foundation. For whatever reason, it didn't work. The biggest issue is we said from Day 1 of the rebuild, as excited as were for each name listed above, some of them weren't going to work out. They never do, for any baseball team. Prospects fail. You know it's going to happen, and you need to be prepared for it when it does happen. The next wave of talent needs to be there. That's maybe the biggest failure of the Sox. They went all in on their core, and had NOTHING to back it up. The minor league system is a barren wasteland with almost no MLB talent. That means they have to spend in FA, which 95% of the time is a fools errand.

Gage'd

Getting? What will it take for you to just not care? I ask because I simply don't how much worse it can get for people to just not care. I think I've watched about 4 innings of Sox baseball in May. If they don't care, why should we?

Pretty sure that's an image of him actually getting hurt ?

It takes something really funny or really stupid to make me actually laugh out loud, and this did it.

They fucked up paperwork and didn’t get their offers in to their RFA’s on time, so they probably ended up spending more on those players to retain them than they otherwise should have. Brian Campbell was also a poor/bloated contract at the time but there was always a debate about the value he held to the Hawks.

I have no issues with thinking/saying the Hawks should have been punished more. That also isn't going to change my fandom though, I have no control over what punishment the NHL handed out. However, if the organization was still intact from the dynasty (Stan was still in charge, etc) I have control over saying "Yeah, I'm out until he's out." I also don't disagree with you that Tallon was the main architect here, Bowman was trash for the most part.

That's sort of where I am at, and have admitted that once they "get good again" it will be much easier to jump on the bandwagon. The entire core is gone from the Cup Dynasty. That not only includes the players, but the Front Office, Coaching Staff, even the announcers. Even a lot of the HR/PR/Marketing folks have been totally turned over, right or wrong. Aside from Rocky still being at the top, it's a totally new organization. They deserved to be punished, and now with a new spark inserted into the organization, I'm ready to re-invest my time into them. I've missed hockey in this town a lot and am really excited to see what Bedard brings to the table.

I totally agree…it’s a huge jolt to the franchise that basically changes everything. The timing is so interesting as well, with Kane and Toews both officially gone, having Bedard start this hopefully “new era” right after is pretty cool.

Lol, just amazing.

Yes you can.

By most accounts and from what I know, I don't think Jerry is a bad guy at all, incredibly loyal, sometimes to a fault, but as you said, he's still 100% with it, still very sharp. He's a very good businessman. Bad owner.