Free Agency - How confident are you?

[TaylorStSox]

1 minute ago, Dick Allen said:

Everyone knows twitter and the rest of social media is rather toxic when you are not perfect. Maybe Rick needs to stop reading twitter. Why is that not an option? 

He didn't make a big deal out of it. He just said it was unfortunate. I'm sure people will entertain themselves by making a bigger deal out of it than Hahn did though. 

[mqr]

3 minutes ago, TaylorStSox said:

He didn't make a big deal out of it. He just said it was unfortunate. I'm sure people will entertain themselves by making a bigger deal out of it than Hahn did though. 

The people it was pretty obviously directed are making quite a big deal out of it...

[TaylorStSox]

1 minute ago, mqr said:

The people it was pretty obviously directed are making quite a big deal out of it...

Of course they are. They love the attention. Read a game thread. They dominate them. The other day Cease threw a 94 mph fastball in the 1st inning and 3 posters starting railing on Cooper for ruining Cease. We won that game and it was probably his best start. Shit's crazy, man. 

[Baron]

4 minutes ago, Tony said:

Because every GM/Owner/Team Executive is on social media, getting the pulse of fans. It's the same reality as Twitter being "rather toxic" Hahn was asked the question last night, and answered it. 

You know for all the crap the McCaskey's have gotten over the years they have gotten one thing right. When there's a large contingency of the fanbase getting tired of losing and pissed they did everything in their power to change the culture of the team. For me it's that effort to get back in that keeps me onboard with all of that losing you can see they are tired of it. For Rick it just seems like another day at the office.

[Dick Allen]

4 minutes ago, TaylorStSox said:

Of course they are. They love the attention. Read a game thread. They dominate them. The other day Cease threw a 94 mph fastball in the 1st inning and 3 posters starting railing on Cooper for ruining Cease. We won that game and it was probably his best start. Shit's crazy, man. 

You probably complain about the internet more than anyone. Why do you continue to post? Seems you're a pot calling the kettle black. I find gamethreads a bit over the top, so I don't look at them much.  Yet everything is weird, everything is crazy, but you keep looking at it. Do you get a badge for being an internet cop?

Edited August 9, 2019 by Dick Allen

[fathom]

33 minutes ago, Tony said:

Because he was talking about you? 

For starters, I’m not on Twitter. He should probably realize that every team’s fan base seems to be negative on Twitter. Anyways, I still don’t like how he seems to feel social media is a deterrent to the rebuild. Him blaming the lack of a trade last year due to a leak is still ridiculous.  Keep things tighter in your organization and don’t have people blabbing to Peggy Kusinski.

[ChiSox59]

19 minutes ago, Dick Allen said:

It;s not turning on the rebuild per se. It's everything that goes with it. Kopech is throwing a lighter ball 110 mph during an offseason and he winds up needing TJS. Gee, who would have guessed that. Give Ricky boy another year. A couple more injuries, that doesn't happen to other teams, give him until at least 2021. Trevor Rosenthal had TJ, he can still throw 100, but can't throw a strike. Does every expect Dunning, Kopech, Rodon, to come back like nothing happened? 30% of pitchers in MLB have had TJS. So it happening to White Sox pitchers shouldn't be a pity party. I still see a team that actually bats Jon Jay clean up. Sorry, I expected the rebuild to be a little farther along at this point, especially considering they traded 3 guys for a bunch of prospects, many that were considered major league ready at the time. We are still at a point where a ton has to go right. A ton. 

Eventually, they will get to the point they were earlier in Hahn's reign of terror, and will have to add major league pieces. Sorry if I am more than skeptical, but I am using past results as an indication of future results. 

I think its fair to be skeptical.  But this year was never a realistic year to compete.  I think we all hoped that we'd have a decent product that could maybe float around .500, and frankly they did until the ASG.  The lack of pitching has just caught up to the club the last month.  Obviously pitchers get hurt and that is part of the game - but when your best two SP entering the season (Rodon and Kopech) make a grand total of 7 starts, that is going to hurt.  On top of that, when your #2 and #3 (Dunning and Lambert) pitching prospects that are near major league ready also go under the knife and are out for the season - that is going to hurt.  That is legitimately what could have been 80% of the Sox rotation today.  The Sox have had to patch together a rotation all season due to that.  Hopefully those days will be behind us starting in 2020.

This offseason is obviously monumental.  Another flop, and I am going to lose patience and faith.  But for now, they still have an enormous amount of financial flexibility.  Moncada has developed into one of the best 10-15 position players in the game, and he still has a ton of untapped potential.  Giolito is at worst a VERY good mid rotation starter, and most Sox fans have pretty much written him off after 2018.  Robert has turned into one of the best 2-3 position player prospects in the game and looks like someone who is going to fill what what a been a blackhole in CF for a decade plus.  There is a ton of cheap controllable talent in place that needs outside reinforcements.  I for one think the FO deserves another 8 months to see what they can do before I lose faith that this rebuild is going to be flop.  

[TaylorStSox]

Just now, Dick Allen said:

You probably complain about the internet more than anyone. Why do you continue to post? Seems you're a pot calling the kettle black. 

I probably complain more about the internet? What does that even mean? ?

I definitely have fun mocking you, fathom, caufield and jack parkham because it's easy and I'm lazy and have other character flaws... because I'm like a human, ya know? I still come to the site for the minor league board because it's so much more civil and informative, but the main board is a cesspool of reactionary babies. 

[Dick Allen]

Just now, TaylorStSox said:

I probably complain more about the internet? What does that even mean? ?

I definitely have fun mocking you, fathom, caufield and jack parkham because it's easy and I'm lazy and have other character flaws... because I'm like a human, ya know? I still come to the site for the minor league board because it's so much more civil and informative, but the main board is a cesspool of reactionary babies. 

The internet is weird. Probably have posted that 100 times. b**** and moan about other posts countless times. Tell everyone how they are supposed to feel. Mock yourself, you are as big of a complainer as there is.

And there you go, cesspool. Yet here you are. 

 

 

[fathom]

This is the best tweet on the entire subject 

https://mobile.twitter.com/JamesFox917/status/1159828543574073344?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1159828543574073344&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpublish.twitter.com%2F%3Fquery%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FJamesFox917%2Fstatus%2F1159828543574073344%26widget%3DTweet

[TaylorStSox]

4 minutes ago, fathom said:

This is the best tweet on the entire subject 

https://mobile.twitter.com/JamesFox917/status/1159828543574073344?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1159828543574073344&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpublish.twitter.com%2F%3Fquery%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FJamesFox917%2Fstatus%2F1159828543574073344%26widget%3DTweet

This line is just a dumb. 

 

wish the decision makers would worry about their pro scouting more than negativity on social media

 

 

[TaylorStSox]

9 minutes ago, Dick Allen said:

The internet is weird. Probably have posted that 100 times. b**** and moan about other posts countless times. Tell everyone how they are supposed to feel. Mock yourself, you are as big of a complainer as there is.

And there you go, cesspool. Yet here you are. 

 

 

I have less than 4000 posts in 15 years. How do you even remember what I say? 

[Dick Allen]

1 minute ago, TaylorStSox said:

I have less than 4000 posts in 15 years. How do you even remember what I say? 

Pretty easy. Plus click on your name, it will show posts. Nothing much baseball related, just complaining about other posts unless you are praising Rick Hahn. 

[TaylorStSox]

4 minutes ago, Dick Allen said:

Pretty easy. Plus click on your name, it will show posts. Nothing much baseball related, just complaining about other posts unless you are praising Rick Hahn. 

Nothing much baseball related? It's all baseball related. 

[Baron]

Hey just incase you had any doubts that Rick wants to keep pressing home the timeline may go longer...he's mentioned 5+ Years on rebuilds quite often in this podcast so far. Love how the timeline goes from short to 5 years like everyone else to maybe 7 years. 

[fathom]

1 minute ago, Baron said:

Hey just incase you had any doubts that Rick wants to keep pressing home the timeline may go longer...he's mentioned 5+ Years on rebuilds quite often in this podcast so far. Love how the timeline goes from short to 5 years like everyone else to maybe 7 years. 

It didn’t give me the impression they view next year as a window being wide open season.  I understand why after last offseason, but that doesn’t make it any less fault of their own.

[bmags]

1 hour ago, Jose Abreu said:

I get why people would be annoyed that he is talking about this in the first place, but he is 100% right that there is a substantial and growing subset of Sox "fans" on Twitter who have seemingly made it their life mission to incessantly whine about every little thing for no apparent reason while completely ignoring anything that is good. I'm not saying that there is no reason to complain, but they take it to another level and his description of them is pretty accurate. 

Yeah, I can't follow the meta discussion around who is allowed to complain here, but it is incredibly tone deaf to me that the only time sox execs appear to open up and answer honestly is when they are asked questions where they can b**** about the fans.

The sox have either been poor at executing or outright misrepresenting their intentions on many steps along the rebuild. Then its "jeeze we said it was a rebuild, you just need to trust us!"

I used to listen to every hahn interview, there's no point now even beyond the ongoing joke about his lawyer speak.

Hahns' favorite line about the check box is the perfect example of what's wrong with their mindset. They think if they do something once they are finished. When they signed robert it meant they were done with needing to focus on lat am. The critique is that they don't explore every avenue to get better, not any individual tactic along the way. 

He has a very good job, I don't cry tears that he is upset. I obviously very much want this rebuild to succeed, but I don't think their process has particularly earned that, and I will continue to think they are not particularly good at their job even if we do get to the playoffs unless I start to see changes in how they operate.

[Baron]

Well every Rick Hahn appearance now is "Whoops I know I said this and we didn't do that...but now here's the goal". He's the master at spin. 

[ChiSox59]

3 hours ago, fathom said:

Listening to the Hahn podcast, if you read between the lines, Cole is not happening this offseason.  He was talking about not being able to control where they went to college or married someone from a particular area.

Just listening.  Not surprised to see you make that leap, but that is quite the leap.  The comment about where they went to college or married someone from a particular area had nothing to do with Cole.  He's just saying that there are certain things that money can't overcome - the question was not directly about Cole.  

For those that had not listened and took that comment at face value...

[fathom]

3 minutes ago, ChiSox59 said:

Just listening.  Not surprised to see you make that leap, but that is quite the leap.  The comment about where they went to college or married someone from a particular area had nothing to do with Cole.  He's just saying that there are certain things that money can't overcome - the question was not directly about Cole.  

For those that had not listened and took that comment at face value...

Cole is the top free agent available and is from the west coast, married a girl from west coast, has talked about wanting to play on the west coast and went to college on the west coast.....he laid it all out right there unless you think it was all some big coincidence he mentioned all that criteria.  We will hear this during the offseason I’m sure when he signs with the Padres or Angels.

Edited August 9, 2019 by fathom

[ChiSox59]

Just now, fathom said:

Cole is the top free agent available and is from the west coast, married a girl from west coast, has talked about wanting to play on the west coast and went to college on the west coast.....he laid it all out right there.  We will hear this during the offseason I’m sure when he signs with the Padres or Angels.

Well if that is all accurate, then perhaps his mind is set on signing on the west coast and there is nothing Hahn can do about it.  

But Hahn's comment was definitely not directly about Cole.  You can negatively read between the lines all you want, but just presenting what was actually said to those that haven't listened.  

[Dick Allen]

3 minutes ago, ChiSox59 said:

Well if that is all accurate, then perhaps his mind is set on signing on the west coast and there is nothing Hahn can do about it.  

But Hahn's comment was definitely not directly about Cole.  You can negatively read between the lines all you want, but just presenting what was actually said to those that haven't listened.  

A lot can be overcome if you are willing to be the high bidder.  That is what Hahn can do. Supposedly Harper hated Philly, and Machado liked the east coast.  Funny how offering the most money usually gets things done.

[ChiSox59]

3 minutes ago, Dick Allen said:

A lot can be overcome if you are willing to be the high bidder.  That is what Hahn can do. Supposedly Harper hated Philly, and Machado liked the east coast.  Funny how offering the most money usually gets things done.

For some guys yah.  But if Cole would sign with Dodgers to 6/$180, but would require 6/$240M from the White Sox....the calculus changes.  But yah, obviously money talks and for most guys, they're going to go to the highest bidder.

I don't know very much about Cole on a person level (outside of his talent on the field), so I can't really speak to how important the things fathom is mentioning would be to him.  

Edited August 9, 2019 by ChiSox59

[SonofaRoache]

13 minutes ago, ChiSox59 said:

Just listening.  Not surprised to see you make that leap, but that is quite the leap.  The comment about where they went to college or married someone from a particular area had nothing to do with Cole.  He's just saying that there are certain things that money can't overcome - the question was not directly about Cole.  

For those that had not listened and took that comment at face value...

Money overcomes every thing in MLB. Machado would have signed with us had we paid him more than SD, remember he wanted to be on the East Coast as well. I'm still confident Hahn can get this right but he needs to own this situation and put his nuts on the table this off season. No more rebuilds take time jargon. If we lose going all out, fans may be upset but at least he tried. This team can compete in 2020 if they spend money and invest wisely. Our pitching staff should be front lined by Cole/Stras, Gio, another middling vet, Cease and Lopez to start the season. If Kopech and Rodon can give you anything next year that's a bonus. 

[SonofaRoache]

3 hours ago, Baron said:

 

 

Just for those who don't know what I'm talking about. 

We are in year 13 of not winning 90 games. The criticism may get to be over the top but it is to be expected. Fans are not obligated to give the people who've failed miserably a chance to prove themselves for a third, fourth, and fifth time. The only reason fans have been patient now is because they tried a new method to winning. I trust this process, but think in 2019 it shouldn't take 5 years to contend again. Competent organizations can compete in 3 or 4 years, even if it is just for an 88 win season.