Why did the downfall happen and could it have been avoided?

[Dominikk85]

Just a couple years ago the rebuild looked really great and the sox had a top farm System and later a good young core. They also had really solid seasons in 2020 and 2021 but after that it went downhill.

But what happened and could it have been avoided?

 

-signing TLR certainly wasn't a good decision even though he won over 90 his first year he seemed mentally/health wise not able to do the job anymore

1) not getting enough depth from the farm System after the "core" graduated certainly was an issue, the sox had a good core but still a depth problem, especially when injuries happened. This probably can be blamed on the front office as player dev, drafting and non Cuban international signings were just bad.

 

Blame on front office: 9/10

2) a lot of core players got injured. I think this one can't be blamed on decisions of the club, Anderson, Robert, moncada, Eloy and giolito are all under 30. Sure now it is apparent they seem to be injury prone but at the time that couldn't have been foreseen and trading them after injury would have meant selling them low for 50 cent on the dollar.  Sure grandal and Lynn are older but overall I would say it was mostly bad luck.

 

Blame on front office: 2/10

 

3) signing bad free agents

Some free agent signings actually did work well. I think overall Lynn was a success, even though he might be done now he was excellent his first year and ok his second year. Hendricks also I think was a great get, even if he can't rebound from cancer at 100% that was not foreseeable.

Past that it doesn't look good, grandal, bennitendi,encarnacion, pollock, the list of failures is long.

However you have to consider that the checkbook of Jerry did limit the front office in the quality of free agents they could target but still even considering they had to take older and slightly washed guys some of the results have been extremely bad.

Blame on front office: 6/10

Edited May 24, 2023 by Dominikk85

[T R U]

- Chips pushed all in on starting core. 
 

- No depth put into minor leagues, thus no next wave to support starting core. 
 

- No marquee FA signings to supplement core. 
 

these things mainly

[Chicago White Sox]

Losing out on Zack Wheeler and then pivoting to Dallas Keuchel to be our big pitching addition was a massive blow to the rebuild.

Being afraid to sign impact talent and instead spreading the wealth across multiple B & C tier free agents (mainly relievers) was a waste of resources.

Taking safe college corner bats and a 5’ 6” 2B at the top of the draft during the rebuild years resulted in a low ceiling farm.

Failing to address 2B & RF year after year despite being obvious holes.

Not being creative or aggressive enough and finding a way to add interesting depth to AAA, in particular, of the pitching kind.

[caulfield12]

1 hour ago, Dominikk85 said:

Just a couple years ago the rebuild looked really great and the sox had a top farm System and later a good young core. They also had really solid seasons in 2020 and 2021 but after that it went downhill.

But what happened and could it have been avoided?

 

-signing TLR certainly wasn't a good decision even though he won over 90 his first year he seemed mentally/health wise not able to do the job anymore

1) not getting enough depth from the farm System after the "core" graduated certainly was an issue, the sox had a good core but still a depth problem, especially when injuries happened. This probably can be blamed on the front office as player dev, drafting and non Cuban international signings were just bad.

 

Blame on front office: 9/10

2) a lot of core players got injured. I think this one can't be blamed on decisions of the club, Anderson, Robert, moncada, Eloy and giolito are all under 30. Sure now it is apparent they seem to be injury prone but at the time that couldn't have been foreseen and trading them after injury would have meant selling them low for 50 cent on the dollar.  Sure grandal and Lynn are older but overall I would say it was mostly bad luck.

 

Blame on front office: 2/10

 

3) signing bad free agents

Some free agent signings actually did work well. I think overall Lynn was a success, even though he might be done now he was excellent his first year and ok his second year. Hendricks also I think was a great get, even if he can't rebound from cancer at 100% that was not foreseeable.

Past that it doesn't look good, grandal, bennitendi,encarnacion, pollock, the list of failures is long.

However you have to consider that the checkbook of Jerry did limit the front office in the quality of free agents they could target but still even considering they had to take older and slightly washed guys some of the results have been extremely bad.

Blame on front office: 6/10

Why didn't severe payroll limitations impact the Twins and Guardians nearly so much??? 

If you know you're running up against limits... you can't spend more than any team in baseball on expensive veterans when the volatility there is so extreme from year to year. 

Better to take your lumps with young and cheap arms for your pen like the two teams mentioned so they could sign Buxton, Correa, Jose Ramirez, Gimenez, etc. 

[caulfield12]

This year is also proving you can't have lightning in a bottle every year like Rodon, Billy Hamilton, Cueto and Andrus. 

Dumpster diving and going with rookies who might not make some team's Top 10-15 prospect lists, for example. 

I guess you can go Burger Middleton Santos as positives but the apple is starting to turn there too. 

 

No plan to integrate increased contact...hit and run...advancing runners...our pitchers holding runners,  quick to the plate and then throwing out anything remotely close to league average of 17.5-22.5% of opposing base stealers. 

Seems like all the off season pitch clock changes really affected Lynn and Cease...for example. 

[Dominikk85]

I also felt the front office was not aggressive enough in trades.

I can understand that Hahn wanted to keep the minor league depth but he kept many prospects until they basically had no value at all.

 

Guys like Adolpho, basabe, Rutherford and before them Hansen, Fulmer or Collins all at one point where solidly ranked prospects and Hahn could have gotten back something for them even if it was only some relievers, a rental corner OF or a backend starter.

But Hahn kept them until they were DFA material and most of them are out of baseball or close to it.

I felt Hahn should have been more aggressive with those B level prospects. I think Hahn got too gun shy here and was too risk averse. 

Preller and dombrowski got hammered for raiding their farms and they did but so far most of the guys they traded away turned into nothing (except for the sale trade:))

Edited May 24, 2023 by Dominikk85

[Dick Allen]

3 minutes ago, Dominikk85 said:

I also felt the front office was not aggressive enough in trades.

I can understand that Hahn wanted to keep the minor league depth but he kept many prospects until they basically had no value at all.

 

Guys like Adolpho, basabe, Rutherford and before them Hansen, Fulmer or Collins all at one point where solidly ranked prospects and Hahn could have gotten back something for them even if it was only some relievers, a rental corner OF or a backend starter.

But Hahn kept them until they were DFA material and most of them are out of baseball or close to it.

I felt Hahn should have been more aggressive with those B level prospects. I think Hahn got too gun shy here and was too risk averse. 

Preller and dombrowski got hammered for raiding their farms and they did but so far most of the guys they traded away turned into nothing (except for the sale trade:))

Yes. 2021 was a good year, but there were clear weaknesses, and those weaknesses were barely addressed. The FO wasn't totally committed IMO. They tried to get by on the cheap, and where they did spend their money, it was wrong. 

I think they were mesmerized by the fact that they were in the AL Central, and putting a juggernaut on the field wasn't necessary. I look forward to some day having an ownership and front office committed to being the best they can be, and not just trying to be good enough. 

[bmags]

Unfortunately, none of those were the fatal mistakes. The single fatal mistake of the sox org can be encapsulated by the idea that they aim to be good enough not good as possible.

Good enough gets you faster attrition as other teams pass you by. It makes injuries more impactful. It makes windows shorter.

 

 

[Dick Allen]

46 minutes ago, bmags said:

Unfortunately, none of those were the fatal mistakes. The single fatal mistake of the sox org can be encapsulated by the idea that they aim to be good enough not good as possible.

Good enough gets you faster attrition as other teams pass you by. It makes injuries more impactful. It makes windows shorter.

 

 

To me that is exactly it. Never trying to really be the best, just, as you wrote, good enough. They FO lacks killer instinct. It should be no surprise, the rest of the organization lacks it as well.

[caulfield12]

How could any team have a killer instinct when it was actually coached/instructed to deliberately play at around 75% to avoid injury? 

Not only did they not avoid injury... the team aggressivrness was basically neutered compared to the Gisrdians last year, in particular. 

[michelangelosmonkey]

Soxtalk is reaching maximum crazy.   Two playoff seasons followed by a devastating injury year that  still ended up .500 and now a slow start which was a combination of new manager, key injuries and the hardest schedule in baseball the first 40 games....and we are writing the obituary??     If we had only spent money like top four spenders, the Mets (.500 and 4.5 games out), Yankees (3rd place 5 games out),  Padres (under .500 and 8 games back) or Phillies (under .500 and 7 games back)?   Where did it all go wrong as we stand hopelessly...checking...checking...5.5 games out of first after 50 games....with the easiest schedule the rest of the way?   Do we put the 25 year old Andrew Vaughn in the same dumpster as the 26 year old, often appendix victim, Jiminez?   Jake Burgers feel good story is now over because he's had a couple of bad games?   Tim Anderson's 3000 career .750 OPS is an illusion and his last 85 post injury OPS of .471 is the new normal.  Colas and Sosa are now AAAA players because of 80 bad, cold weather, at bats against the five best teams in baseball?   Kopech has no future.  Lynn is toast.  Cease was a fluke.  We have no relief pitchers.  Yet we are less than 14 months removed from many BB writers in the country saying we had the second best MLB talent...and yes since then the luck has all been bad.   But baseball is a marathon and luck changes.  We still have starters, relievers and 7 position players that at their best in the last three years have been all star levels.   This year the Sox are like a Porsche with a flat tire...it looks great in the driveway but on the road its ugly to watch.  But the tires getting fixed.   The weathers warming up.  Jiminez is coming back, Crochet is back, the four top starters all looked great and went 4-0 in their last four starts. Robert is turning into the superstar we thought.  Anderson will burn up the league in June.  Vaughn is so close.  Burger will continue to be a nice surprise.  The bullpen is rounding into shape and It would not be crazy at all to see the sox go 40-20 the next 60 and be 5 games up at the 110 game mark.  Then Liam regains his form and becomes the rallying cry for the team...Colas and Sosa unleash their talent.    The first six weeks of the season was gut wrenching for all of us...but this happens in baseball.  Let's let it play out into the summer.   I think this is going to become a really fun team.  

[caulfield12]

10 minutes ago, michelangelosmonkey said:

Soxtalk is reaching maximum crazy.   Two playoff seasons followed by a devastating injury year that  still ended up .500 and now a slow start which was a combination of new manager, key injuries and the hardest schedule in baseball the first 40 games....and we are writing the obituary??     If we had only spent money like top four spenders, the Mets (.500 and 4.5 games out), Yankees (3rd place 5 games out),  Padres (under .500 and 8 games back) or Phillies (under .500 and 7 games back)?   Where did it all go wrong as we stand hopelessly...checking...checking...5.5 games out of first after 50 games....with the easiest schedule the rest of the way?   Do we put the 25 year old Andrew Vaughn in the same dumpster as the 26 year old, often appendix victim, Jiminez?   Jake Burgers feel good story is now over because he's had a couple of bad games?   Tim Anderson's 3000 career .750 OPS is an illusion and his last 85 post injury OPS of .471 is the new normal.  Colas and Sosa are now AAAA players because of 80 bad, cold weather, at bats against the five best teams in baseball?   Kopech has no future.  Lynn is toast.  Cease was a fluke.  We have no relief pitchers.  Yet we are less than 14 months removed from many BB writers in the country saying we had the second best MLB talent...and yes since then the luck has all been bad.   But baseball is a marathon and luck changes.  We still have starters, relievers and 7 position players that at their best in the last three years have been all star levels.   This year the Sox are like a Porsche with a flat tire...it looks great in the driveway but on the road its ugly to watch.  But the tires getting fixed.   The weathers warming up.  Jiminez is coming back, Crochet is back, the four top starters all looked great and went 4-0 in their last four starts. Robert is turning into the superstar we thought.  Anderson will burn up the league in June.  Vaughn is so close.  Burger will continue to be a nice surprise.  The bullpen is rounding into shape and It would not be crazy at all to see the sox go 40-20 the next 60 and be 5 games up at the 110 game mark.  Then Liam regains his form and becomes the rallying cry for the team...Colas and Sosa unleash their talent.    The first six weeks of the season was gut wrenching for all of us...but this happens in baseball.  Let's let it play out into the summer.   I think this is going to become a really fun team.  

Whatever drug you are on...I would love to try some. 

Not even sure Baghdad Bob and the Russian war ministry could put such a positive skin on every single thing that has gone wrong with this organization. 

Maybe you can get ghost writing credit for the potentially best-selling  Rick Hahn biography. 

 

I guess Scholtens is also on his way now with a potential RoY campaign, too.

 

I mean, this is an owner who gave up on winning in the late 90s when the team was only 2 1/2 or 3 1/2 games behind the Indians at the time, basically in order to save a ton of money. 

 

Edited May 24, 2023 by caulfield12

[GreenSox]

Dispatching relievers in July for Rule 5/AAAA players and otherwise napping in July (except for a couple of high end players) didn't help; you won't get a ton for the relievers, but if you maximize opportunities, eventually you'll strike gold.

[caulfield12]

Jay Cuda probably has a number like the entire Sox team from 2019-2023 has a lower fWAR compared to Semien, Bassitt and Tatis. 

 

2) Marcus Semien, Rangers
Best finish: 3rd place, 2019, '21

"Did you realize that Semien has finished in third place twice (MVP voting)? Two of the last five seasons no less? Semien is always going to be a little bit underappreciated, a quiet guy who plays every game but is still a little bit streaky. His 2021 season, his only year in Toronto, was incredible (he had 45 homers!), and last year, his first year in Texas, was seen as somewhat of a disappointment, even though he still put up 4.2 fWAR. He has been the best version of himself again this year, hitting .301, leading the AL in runs and putting up a career-high .377 OBP. With the injuries to Corey Seager and Jacob deGrom, Semien could end up being the face of this surprising Rangers team: If they end up winning the AL West, Semien will widely be seen as one of the primary reasons why. With no real MVP frontrunner in the AL right now, he is someone to keep an eye on."

MLB.com

Edited May 24, 2023 by caulfield12

[T R U]

28 minutes ago, michelangelosmonkey said:

Soxtalk is reaching maximum crazy.   Two playoff seasons followed by a devastating injury year that  still ended up .500 and now a slow start which was a combination of new manager, key injuries and the hardest schedule in baseball the first 40 games....and we are writing the obituary??     If we had only spent money like top four spenders, the Mets (.500 and 4.5 games out), Yankees (3rd place 5 games out),  Padres (under .500 and 8 games back) or Phillies (under .500 and 7 games back)?   Where did it all go wrong as we stand hopelessly...checking...checking...5.5 games out of first after 50 games....with the easiest schedule the rest of the way?   Do we put the 25 year old Andrew Vaughn in the same dumpster as the 26 year old, often appendix victim, Jiminez?   Jake Burgers feel good story is now over because he's had a couple of bad games?   Tim Anderson's 3000 career .750 OPS is an illusion and his last 85 post injury OPS of .471 is the new normal.  Colas and Sosa are now AAAA players because of 80 bad, cold weather, at bats against the five best teams in baseball?   Kopech has no future.  Lynn is toast.  Cease was a fluke.  We have no relief pitchers.  Yet we are less than 14 months removed from many BB writers in the country saying we had the second best MLB talent...and yes since then the luck has all been bad.   But baseball is a marathon and luck changes.  We still have starters, relievers and 7 position players that at their best in the last three years have been all star levels.   This year the Sox are like a Porsche with a flat tire...it looks great in the driveway but on the road its ugly to watch.  But the tires getting fixed.   The weathers warming up.  Jiminez is coming back, Crochet is back, the four top starters all looked great and went 4-0 in their last four starts. Robert is turning into the superstar we thought.  Anderson will burn up the league in June.  Vaughn is so close.  Burger will continue to be a nice surprise.  The bullpen is rounding into shape and It would not be crazy at all to see the sox go 40-20 the next 60 and be 5 games up at the 110 game mark.  Then Liam regains his form and becomes the rallying cry for the team...Colas and Sosa unleash their talent.    The first six weeks of the season was gut wrenching for all of us...but this happens in baseball.  Let's let it play out into the summer.   I think this is going to become a really fun team.  

Props to you for the optimism, but this team has been in total decline since about halfway through 2021. This isn't a 2023 issue, the issues have been festering for a few seasons now.

[The Kids Can Play]

The initial sell-off trades in 2016 were good. That was phase 1, but there are more important phases that have to occur in subsequent years that went seriously wrong. 

Here are the problems:

- Unwise draft picks between 2017 with high picks in 2017 Sheets 1B, 49th, 2018 - Madrigal 2B, 4th, 2019, Andrew Vaughn 1B 3rd.

- Horrible trade deadline trades with Madrigal and Heuer for Kimbrel, Reese McGuire for Jake Diekman and Konner Pilkington for Cesar Hernandez.

- F grade for Free Agent signings and not landing one high end significant Free Agent and settled for Kuechel, Grandal, Benintendi and Clevinger.

- Complete debacle of scouting, drafting and developing prospects in the farm system after the initial first few years of the rebuild. When the Sox brought up all the top prospects they did nothing to re-stock the farm system. In the last five years the Sox farm systems have been ranked 2019 - 9th, 2020 - 11th, 2021 - 16th, 2022 - 30th and 2023 - 26th. With the shambles the current Sox farm system is in, the Sox will probably be even lower than 26th going into 2024. 

- After the Sox fired Renteria, the next manager LaRussa was an utter disaster and Grifol isn't that much better.

- Bad choices in hires of pitching and hitting coaches. The Sox plate discipline is one of the worst in baseball, as is their situational hitting. Katz is over his head and has done nothing to improve the pitching staff. 

- Most important failure was when things went wrong in the rebuild, we had the worst owner in baseball who did nothing to make any changes in the front office...to stop the downfall of the failed rebuild. 

[michelangelosmonkey]

51 minutes ago, caulfield12 said:

Whatever drug you are on...I would love to try some. 

Not even sure Baghdad Bob and the Russian war ministry could put such a positive skin on every single thing that has gone wrong with this organization. 

Maybe you can get ghost writing credit for the potentially best-selling  Rick Hahn biography. 

 

I guess Scholtens is also on his way now with a potential RoY campaign, too.

 

I mean, this is an owner who gave up on winning in the late 90s when the team was only 2 1/2 or 3 1/2 games behind the Indians at the time, basically in order to save a ton of money. 

 

This is precisely why I rarely engage here anymore.   The primary dozen posters on Soxtalk are White Sox haters or trolls.  Anyone that tries to find a fun narrative is hunted by the mob.   I write a commentary about things being darkest before the dawn with a bunch of reasons why things got ridiculously bad (that first forty game schedule was unbelievable especially for a new manager) and why they could turn around and your response back is 1) personal insult, 2) Personal insult, 3) personal insult, 4) made up argument that makes me sound ridiculous though I never said anything like that 5) tired old story about something that happened 30 years ago that could be viewed negatively.   Hey, all of you, enjoy your hatred.  Abandon all hope yea who enter Soxtalk.  

[Greg Hibbard]

 

17 minutes ago, michelangelosmonkey said:

This is precisely why I rarely engage here anymore.   The primary dozen posters on Soxtalk are White Sox haters or trolls.  Anyone that tries to find a fun narrative is hunted by the mob.   I write a commentary about things being darkest before the dawn with a bunch of reasons why things got ridiculously bad (that first forty game schedule was unbelievable especially for a new manager) and why they could turn around and your response back is 1) personal insult, 2) Personal insult, 3) personal insult, 4) made up argument that makes me sound ridiculous though I never said anything like that 5) tired old story about something that happened 30 years ago that could be viewed negatively.   Hey, all of you, enjoy your hatred.  Abandon all hope yea who enter Soxtalk.  

Eh, I appreciate your perspective, so keep coming back. The Sox got very lucky in that the rest of the division has played down to their level allowing them to hang around. In any other division, they would be toast and the rebuild would have started. 

To your first points, everyone - literally everyone - has said they have not added a proven MLB 1st tier superstar. JR and Co have billions - they needed to open the pocketbooks to the tune of a $300 million mega star. They didn't do that. It's not that everyone else succeeds when they do, but it is a glaring, glaring oversight to not have added more than Benintendi to this mix - especially when you need HR hitters and he is not one. 

I was just going down a rabbit hole of HR hitting for the Sox historically - it's really not good. What is it about playing for the Sox that really stymies power? Is it that the ballpark is facing in the wrong direction? 

[Lip Man 1]

Simple answer: An incompetent, dysfunctional and inept front office led by an owner who feels "fiscal responsibility" is more important than winning despite the fact MLB is a 10 Billion dollar a year business.

[The Mighty Mite]

 3 things:

A terrible owner that has hired incompetents at the Major and Minor league levels including TLR.

Dissension on the team with TA most likely the cause of it.

Too many injuries.

 

Edited May 24, 2023 by The Mighty Mite

[Snopek]

5 hours ago, T R U said:

- Chips pushed all in on starting core. 
 

- No depth put into minor leagues, thus no next wave to support starting core. 
 

- No marquee FA signings to supplement core. 
 

these things mainly

Kind of goes hand in hand with your second one, but specifically the inability to draft and develop talent.

[South Side Hit Men]

An overlooked aspect is the Sox don't have a 2019-2021 Leury Garcia and a 2020/2021 Adam Engel on the team.

Leury Garcia shouldn't have gotten 3/$16.5M contract, nor did it appear his health and or abilities allowed him to continue in 2022/2023. Tony's continued regular usage as though he was a starter and not a solid 60-70 game per season player didn't help keep him healthy and on the field. That said, Leury was a very valuable reserve player under the 13 position player roster.  He provided cromulent defense across infield and outfield. 1.3, 0.7 (60 Game season) and 2.1 across 2019-2021 really helped the Sox when players were injured or just off for the day and they had an adequate replacement player.

Same with healthy Engel, who was a superb outfielder who also figured it out at the plate in a limited role until he got hurt and never recovered (2020 36 Games  .811 OPS, 2021 39 Games .832 OPS). The Sox have not replaced either of these two players, and the results show especially with the injury prone Eloy and Robert, and continued black holes at 2B (all garbage) and RF (Sheets WTF).

bWAR

2023 2B / RF Starters and INF/OF Reserves

• -0.4 Elvis Andrus (39 Game 2B Starter)
• -0.9 Oscar Colas (25 Game OG RF Starter)
• 0.0 Clint Frazier (3 Games OF Reserve)
• -0.7 Romy Gonzalez (25 Games INF/OF Reserve)
• 0.0 Billy Hamilton (3 Games OF Reserve)
• 0.0 Adam Haseley (23 Games OF Reserve)
• 0.4 Gavin Sheets (36 Game RF Starter post Colas demotion)
• -0.7 Lenyn Sosa (22 Games INF Reserve)

2021 2B / RF Starters and INF/OF Reserves

• 0.0 Adam Eaton (58 Game 1st Half RF Starter)
• 1.5 Adam Engel (39 Game OF Reserve)
• 2.1 Leury Garcia (126 Game overplayed INF / OF Reserve)
• -0.5 Brian Goodwin (72 Game 2nd Half RF Starter)
• 0.3 Billy Hamilton (71 Game OF Reserve & Heart and Soul of the Team)
• -0.7 Cesar Hernandez (53 Game 2B Starter)
• 0.0 Jake Lamb (43 Game Friend of Tony)
• 1.2 Nick Madrigal (54 Games - Traded with Heuer for horseshit, Rick Hahn's self-admitted "best idea")
• -0.4 Danny Mendick (71 Games - INF Reserve)

[michelangelosmonkey]

13 minutes ago, Greg Hibbard said:

 

Eh, I appreciate your perspective, so keep coming back. The Sox got very lucky in that the rest of the division has played down to their level allowing them to hang around. In any other division, they would be toast and the rebuild would have started. 

To your first points, everyone - literally everyone - has said they have not added a proven MLB 1st tier superstar. JR and Co have billions - they needed to open the pocketbooks to the tune of a $300 million mega star. They didn't do that. It's not that everyone else succeeds when they do, but it is a glaring, glaring oversight to not have added more than Benintendi to this mix - especially when you need HR hitters and he is not one. 

I was just going down a rabbit hole of HR hitting for the Sox historically - it's really not good. What is it about playing for the Sox that really stymies power? Is it that the ballpark is facing in the wrong direction? 

Yes...it's been frustrating...but still a top 11 payroll and $190 mill spent...and like I said...all of the top 4 payrolls in MLB are at or further behind their division leads than the Sox.    

I think the idea that the Sox aren't trying or are stupid is one view, the other is they accumulated a lot of talent and then they've just run into incredibly bad injury luck the last 18 months...Seem to remember they had a 10 year run of good injury luck. Sometimes life is random.   The idea of burning it all down seems so pessimistic.  As for the home runs...seems like Comiskey park used to be one of the most cavernous parks in baseball.  

[South Side Hit Men]

Just now, michelangelosmonkey said:

Yes...it's been frustrating...but still a top 11 payroll and $190 mill spent...and like I said...all of the top 4 payrolls in MLB are at or further behind their division leads than the Sox.    

I think the idea that the Sox aren't trying or are stupid is one view, the other is they accumulated a lot of talent and then they've just run into incredibly bad injury luck the last 18 months...Seem to remember they had a 10 year run of good injury luck. Sometimes life is random.   The idea of burning it all down seems so pessimistic.  As for the home runs...seems like Comiskey park used to be one of the most cavernous parks in baseball.  

Well they have six weeks to prove it on the field and prevent a sell-off, perhaps buy a piece or two.

I think much of the pessimism before Opening Day was not filling the 2B and RF positions, par for the course, and the offseason swapping out Abreu's salary for a corner OF with no power and a 5th starter with various issues. I stayed away from here for 3 months, but came back and have been grateful being engaged with the Sox playing well. Perhaps they are playing bad teams now, but I remember when the Sox were solid and lost to these same bad teams, so I'm glad they are taking care of business and perhaps they will have a healthy Eloy, Tim, and Liam back when the stronger teams hit the schedule in June.

[caulfield12]

42 minutes ago, michelangelosmonkey said:

This is precisely why I rarely engage here anymore.   The primary dozen posters on Soxtalk are White Sox haters or trolls.  Anyone that tries to find a fun narrative is hunted by the mob.   I write a commentary about things being darkest before the dawn with a bunch of reasons why things got ridiculously bad (that first forty game schedule was unbelievable especially for a new manager) and why they could turn around and your response back is 1) personal insult, 2) Personal insult, 3) personal insult, 4) made up argument that makes me sound ridiculous though I never said anything like that 5) tired old story about something that happened 30 years ago that could be viewed negatively.   Hey, all of you, enjoy your hatred.  Abandon all hope yea who enter Soxtalk.  

Watch the home games closely.

Other than the weekends, it’s depressing…although the small crowds do their best to be small and supportive.

As noted many times, the attendance is heading towards a historical low…prices in numerous areas were actually increased coming off that disaster of a season, and the team now has the biggest YoY decrease in attendance in the majors compared to 2022 base years.

What does that tell you?

The fans are not buying it…which leads to payroll decreasing and decreasing.  But when the fans bought tickets in 2022 based on the 2020-21 seasons and multiple championships and unprecedented financial flexibility, we got NONE of those things.

No stars…just solid, overpaid veterans, and spending in all the wrong places.

I still watch or follow most of the games, but it’s now largely for Robert and Burger…with the rest of the once promising core just a year or two remaining with the Sox.

There’s nothing anyone can do to change things, but we’re also not going to trick ourselves into believing we are a legit threat to advance past any first round playoff opponent with the current roster composition.

 

I mean…look at the Bulls for a similar comparison, they will tear down their Big 3 again coming off another playoff disappointment.  That’s the reward to fans for having the best home attendance in the NBA.

So if one of the most profitable franchises in sports doesn’t care about its fans, why would we expect the White Sox to?

JR simply thinks of them as a headache and hardly profitable and is more concerned with extra gambling revenues than reinforcing the sinking rebuild.  Period.