Black_Jack29

QUOTE (SCCWS @ Oct 3, 2016 -> 11:29 AM) But their value is higher this winter than it will be in July and the trade pool is larger in the winter than in July. So waiting till July is a big mistake unless the Sox are contenders next season. Not necessarily. It's a smaller market, but the teams that are in the hunt in July get desperate at the deadline and will overpay for guys like Frazier and Melky.

QUOTE (Flash Tizzle @ Oct 3, 2016 -> 11:29 AM) There's always an excuse, always some reason to justify holding off a rebuild for another date. Again, as Hi8is said, our fans are repeating the same damn lines since 2013. And Frazier and Cabrera's pending FA is not enough reason to justify going for it. If they're selling those two will find reasons (ie, their next contract) to perform well I just don't understand, assuming the entire core will return, how can anyone expect different results? We're not improving through FA and I don't believe trading what's left in our farm system is the right course. It's time to finally sell. And sonce SOOO many people insisted we'd receive top value for Sale and Quintana in the offseason because "more teams are available to bid for them," let's act on it If you're going for it in 2017, the idea is that you add this offseason. Obviously, not changing anything and expecting better results is silly. 2017 really is their last chance, though. There's just not enough in free agency or the farm system to replace Frazier and Melky AND improve the the team as it stands now. If the Sox cannot appreciably add this winter, then I agree that they should sell off.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Oct 3, 2016 -> 11:05 AM) Adding Reddick (overpaying in the process) is not going to cut it with the need to find a DH, 2B and catcher. Lawrie is a 1-2 bWAR player and there's no real need to replace him. They need a DH, an OF, and a veteran C (e.g., re-signing Avila).

QUOTE (hi8is @ Oct 3, 2016 -> 10:55 AM) People have been saying that since 2013... Almost like clockwork. Then, in July... It's, "we can wait until the offseason to sell." That cycle needs to just stop with some definitive action... Finally. Except that Frazier and Melky both hit free agency next winter, and the Sox cannot legitimately "go for it" without those two. So there is a compelling reason to either sh*t or get off the pot this year.

QUOTE (OmarComing25 @ Oct 3, 2016 -> 10:43 AM) If the free agent pool was deeper, then there would be no question that they'd go for it again, but it's just so shallow that I'm currently sitting about 50/50 about whether they will sell off or not. Who would we even buy? Reddick and Cespedes (assuming he opts out) would be worth looking at. The former might be affordable, while the latter may not. Then again, JR found a way to afford Albert Belle. They may go for it simply because this is their last chance with Frazier and Melky. Once they lose those two, their offense will go kaput. If I'm JR and I'm making one last push, I'd feel inclined to try to add now and see how things shake out by July. I don't see the downside in waiting until July instead of January to sell off and rebuild.

QUOTE (soxfan2014 @ Oct 3, 2016 -> 10:23 AM) Listening to this press conference, I'm beginning to fully believe they will rebuild. Hahn sounds really confident about making a major move and I doubt that would be us spending a bunch of money to acquire big talent. Given that JR reportedly doesn't want to throw in the towel just yet and shocking approved $27M for Shields this summer, I think that they're going to make a sizable FA move or two this winter (possibly even a big one) and see how things are going in July. If they're still mired in mediocrity, they'll begin selling off players. With Frazier and Melky coming off the books at the end of next year, it would make sense for them to stay the course and add going into March.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Oct 3, 2016 -> 11:10 AM) Goodbye Robin, thanks for being the irrational scapegoat that most of the posters here needed. We no longer have to pretend it's your fault that the team sucked.

QUOTE (2005thxfrthmmrs @ Oct 3, 2016 -> 08:28 AM) Boston and LA aren't giving up that much for Sale and Quintana. If I'm a playoff team, I'd be concern with Sale since he has inevitably faded in the second half each of the past 4 years, and that's without throwing a single pitch in the playoffs. While Sale improved down the stretch this year, I basically agree with your point. The problem with trading Sale is that his contract is ridiculously favorable, but he's not a sure-fire HOF stud who is a shoe-in to dominate in the playoffs, like a Randy Johnson. So that's going to limit the return on a trade for him. And since the Sox do have a relatively solid core of players who are maybe a Cespedes, a Morneau re-signing, and a bullpen arm away from being legit playoff team, it's difficult to justify trading Sale for anything less than the moon right now. I think that the Sox do eventually move Sale, but it won't be this winter.

QUOTE (soxforlife05 @ Oct 2, 2016 -> 10:45 PM) You should've probably just kept it at that. He led the team to the worst winning pct in franchise history. The criticism is well deserved. There were plenty of mistakes he made he never learned from. I'm not about to go back through every game thread to find poor in game decisions he made but they were common. Navarro dogged it plenty of times. Lengthy DL stints by certain players. He was a big part of the reason those two situations became issues that ended up being covered by the national media. Too passive to take charge and put guys in their place. It's why all the players will always say he's a good guy. He wouldn't tell them anything they don't want to hear. You seem to be confusing MLB with the NFL, where the level of player talent is approximately equal between teams, and the main difference is the coaching. The Sox's farm system has produced maybe three halfway decent position players since Aaron Rowand, and that pretty much says it all. If you're looking for a scapegoat, you're going to have to go further up the org chart.

I don't think that anybody will ever accuse Robin of being a super-exceptional leader of men, but I think that he took way too much criticism from the fans. His job was to fill out the lineup card, handle the pitching staff, diffuse tension in the clubhouse, and get the guys to play for him. While I occasionally didn't agree with some of his bullpen moves and never understood his seeming lack of acknowledgement of the importance of OBP in the 2-hole, I thought that he did a semi-decent job of in-game management. Even at his worst, he never cost his team games. The players liked him and played for him... I never saw guys dogging it out there, which is more than I can say for some other teams. He did a reasonable job of managing the mental-midget tandem of Sale and LaRoche, as well as the Executive VP who seems to go out of his way to get into fights with players. Overall, I think that Robin is a decent and classy guy who was limited by a bad farm/player development system.

QUOTE (SoxPride18 @ Oct 2, 2016 -> 09:33 PM) Gonna eat his money? No team will trade for him. Why not try and see if he can pitch well and trade him at the deadline? Yep, the Sox are stuck with that contract, unless they want to exchange it for another bad one (e.g., Ryan Braun... barf). Of those listed in the first post, the one guy I'd definitely want back is Avila. With Collins not scheduled to be ready for a while, the Sox are desperate for a solid veteran catcher. Avila also gets on base at a nice clip, something that's relatively rare for catchers and something that we also desperately need now.

I'm not in the business of blaming managers when players don't perform, but this move makes sense on many levels. I also think it's clear that Renteria was not brought in as bench coach just to be a bench coach. That's why the Sox aren't interviewing other candidates.

QUOTE (joegraz @ Oct 2, 2016 -> 03:40 AM) Let's not forget his running big Frank out of town, also because it got personal. Not that the Sox would've re-signed Frank, but that's true. His feud with Sale has also became a huge mess this year (though Sale is also a complete headcase).

QUOTE (Thad Bosley @ Sep 30, 2016 -> 03:45 PM) 100% correct. Thank you for correcting the revisionist history going on around this topic! Meh, the others have decent points. The Cubs going to the NLCS certainly helped. It just seems like it took a few years for Harry/WGN to really make its mark. Interesting note: The scene at Wrigley in Ferris Beuller's Day Off was originally supposed to be filmed at Comiskey (John Hughes is a Sox fan), but was changed at the last minute due to time constraints.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 30, 2016 -> 11:29 AM) Except the White Sox leanest attendance years happened while Carry was still here. QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 30, 2016 -> 11:40 AM) 1982,1983,1984 the White Sox outdrew the Cubs while Harry was promoting them on the superstation and for a time, the Sox were on Sportsvision. It's a great theory, but the Sox had Harry, and didn't exactly fill the place. The Sox and Cubs were drawing roughly similar crowds form the mid '70s to early '80s. Caray made a difference for the Cubs because he was on national TV. At the same time, the Sox were on their pay network (and UHF directly before that, IIRC). I'm not arguing that Caray alone was the difference-maker - it was the combination of Caray and WGN's national audience that helped the Cubs before more popular at the time. (And, yes, the 1984 NLCS didn't hurt, either.)

QUOTE (Thad Bosley @ Sep 30, 2016 -> 09:47 AM) ....with Harry Caray promoting 1984 on WGN and turning the Cubs instantly into both a local and national sensation. Did that happen to Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn's White Sox after their 1983 season on SportsVision? No. Would it have happened if Harry was broadcasting the '83 season on WGN? You betcha. At least Harry thought so, and I agree with him. I agree with you here. The Cubs grew a national fan base when Harry and Steve were broadcasting nationally on WGN (Reinsdorf and Einhorn's fault), and the Sox lost a decent chunk of their fan base after Reinsdorf's hard-line stance tanked the '94 season with the Sox in first place. Those are the two major reasons for the disparity in popularity between the two franchises.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 29, 2016 -> 06:33 PM) so 270,000 tickets at about $25 each isn't worth selling because of a $95,000 tax hit? Exactly. Reinsdorf's lease has some nice incentives, but it doesn't even begin to make up for the increased revenue from increased ticket sales. Also consider that most people drive to the ballpark and, of those, the Sox get $20 in parking for every 2-4 of those folks. And each person probably spends $10-$30 on food/beer at the ballpark.

QUOTE (captain54 @ Sep 29, 2016 -> 04:59 PM) I agree, all across the board......100% There are two ways to look at it... 1) Does the current ownership fall victim to living in a town where they got a terrible luck of the draw? that despite bringing a WS to the city, they still play second fiddle? or 2) Did the current ownership completely drop the ball by not being able to capitalize on being the only MLB team in this town win a title in 100 yrs? I'd say that (1) is more correct, with the major caveat that the current ownership group's poor decision-making decades ago directly resulted in their current second-class status. Back in the early '80s, there was no clear-cut #1 baseball team in Chicago. Given Chicago's North Side/South Side baseball balkanization culture and modern society's downright slavish devotion to political parties, I think that the Sox front office gets a pass for not "converting" Cubs fans after winning the WS. Adults aren't going to switch their allegiance and their kids typically follow the team that their parents follow.

QUOTE (captain54 @ Sep 29, 2016 -> 04:35 PM) You're probably too young to remember this, but in my lifetime.. there was a rather extended period of time where the White Sox were the #1 MLB in the city, not the Cubs...a stretch of almost two decades..the 50's and 60's..as a matter of fact, it was cause for serious ridicule to publicly admit you were a Cub fan... so it's not a given that the White Sox are relegated to 2nd class status.... And JR and Einhorn's PR blunders between the early '80s and mid-90's, coupled with the Cub ownership's savviness, changed that culture. There's no easy way back now. Even the Sox winning Chicago's first WS in almost a century didn't convert Cubs fans to Sox fans.

QUOTE (captain54 @ Sep 29, 2016 -> 04:27 PM) So according to that logic, the Cubs move to hire Joe Maddon was irrelevant... they'd have the same 100 win season with Ronnie Woo Woo as the skipper, right? Maddon definitely helps, but their talent level would've guaranteed 85+ wins last season and 95+ wins this season had they retained Renteria.

QUOTE (Lip Man 1 @ Sep 29, 2016 -> 01:51 PM) True but there is also more overall revenue sharing through merchandising, national TV deals and the new technology platforms to watch / stream games then ever before. We are talking a lot of shared money. And just for the record it was Bud Selig himself who claimed MLB is in the same ballpark as the NFL in terms of overall revenue. I'd assume as commissioner at the time he'd have an intimate knowledge of the financial situation for baseball and Selig was never known to tout how strong MLB was financially before this situation. Mark I'm not disputing that there isn't more shared revenue than there has been in the past. There's MLB Network, MLB.TV, and other avenues for shared revenue that there weren't before. But that's nothing like the NFL, where the league shares massive regular season and TV rights from the networks and DirecTV. I believe that they share merchandising revenue as well. I believe that MLB is near the NFL in *overall* revenue, but that's not what we're talking about here. There is a massive disparity in what MLB teams earn, and that's driven mostly by disparities in local TV revenue (almost all MLB games are televised locally) and ticket/parking/concessions revenue (for 81 homes games vs. 8 home games in the NFL). The Yankees pulled in over twice what the Sox did last season and, not surprisingly, their payroll is roughly $50-80M more than the Sox's payroll every season. On the other hand, any disparity in NFL team revenue is swamped out by the salary cap/floor and cap penalties. There are no "rich" and "poor" teams in the NFL. That's not true in MLB, and it's reflected in the payrolls.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 29, 2016 -> 12:38 PM) The reality of revenue is this. The White Sox are no where near the big market teams in terms of dollars earned. The Yankees brought in $516 million in revenue last year. Tampa brought in $193 million. The White Sox brought in $240million. Thank you. For further perspective: The Cubs' revenue reached $340 million in 2015, up from $302 million.

QUOTE (Lip Man 1 @ Sep 29, 2016 -> 12:23 PM) It still has some meaning but simply not as much as before the billion dollar TV deals and the myriad ways MLB is producing revenue through non traditional streams. MLB is now in the NFL's ballpark when it comes to generated income. To say nothing of the lease agreement which in some strange ways actually makes it better for the Sox to not draw well since then they don't have to chip in for maintenance fees to the state of Illinois. Mark Except that the Sox don't have a sweetheart TV deal like the Yankees and probably won't any time soon because their ratings suck. MLB is nowhere near where the NFL is in terms of TV/streaming money right now, and those 81 games of ticket/parking/concessions revenue still mean a lot.

QUOTE (gosoxgo2005 @ Sep 29, 2016 -> 11:43 AM) That $35MM increase is pennies to him. Seriously, it's nothing. The attendance is an excuse to not spend. Uh, yeah, that's it. Ticket revenue doesn't matter when running a sports franchise. $35 million dollars is chump change. You've obviously never run a business before. If you knew anything about business, you'd know that net worth includes non-cash assets, such as his financial stakes in the Sox and Bulls. The idea that Reinsdorf is an old miser when his franchise is near the bottom 20% of the league in attendance, but in the top half in payroll is silly. The idea that he should dump his own personal savings into the team's payroll is equally silly.

QUOTE (BrianAnderson @ Sep 29, 2016 -> 08:32 AM) Also $140mm isn't a ton nowadays. It sounds like a lot. But in the baseball world, $140mm isn't what it used to be. $100mm payroll used to be something, now only the Marlins, Brewers and Rays operate under $100mm. A $140M payroll puts the Sox in the top half of MLB payrolls, despite the fact that they're 12/15 in attendance in the AL and will struggle to reach 1.7 million tickets sold this season. So, yeah, JR isn't spending like an elite team, but he doesn't have the financial resources to spend like the Dodgers or Yankees. Cespedes wanted $30M to play for one season and to bolt to free agency this winter. He's also been streaky throughout his career, which makes that contract a huge gamble. (That said, he's been having a really nice season and the gamble did appear to pay off for the Mets.) I agree with you about Desmond. The Sox should've out-bid the Ranger for him, rather than signing A-Jax.