White Sox hire Phil Nevin as Special Assistant in Player Development

[CaliSoxFanViaSWside]

11 hours ago, caulfield12 said:

When is the last time they physically even had a single scout covering Japan Korea and Taiwan?

The last original Dominican White Sox signing to make an impression was pitcher Jesus Pena nearly a decade ago.

The only Jesus Pena I can find from the DR who played for the Sox was 2.5 decades ago 1999 & 2000. He also started out in the Pirates organization so it doesn't even look like a Sox signing.

Is there another Jesus Pena that Baseball Reference missed ?

[hi8is]

2 hours ago, caulfield12 said:

"Joel McKeithan, Terry Bradshaw, and Tim LaMont have all been dismissed by the Reds and will not be returning for the 2025 season. The Reds finished the 2024 season ranked 21st in OPS, with several key players experiencing a notable regression from their strong 2023 performances."

McKeithan was quite young to take over as hitting coach with Cincy and only lasted for one season...Terry Francona apparently came in and wanted to bring in all his own staff, which is perfectly reasonable above and beyond the overall team struggles (outside of Elly de la Cruz.)

Cotton Candy grapes are worth trying.

[caulfield12]

1 hour ago, CaliSoxFanViaSWside said:

The only Jesus Pena I can find from the DR who played for the Sox was 2.5 decades ago 1999 & 2000. He also started out in the Pirates organization so it doesn't even look like a Sox signing.

Is there another Jesus Pena that Baseball Reference missed ?

I must have been thinking of Leyson Septimo from 2012.  LHP.

But even he started with the DBacks before debuting with Sox.

Honestly can't remember the last Dominican pitcher who originally signed and debuted w/ the Sox.

Edited yesterday at 11:54 AM by caulfield12

[CaliSoxFanViaSWside]

12 hours ago, Chicago White Sox said:

But winning 55 games isn’t that hard.  In all honesty, Getz should probably be fired if he can’t get us there next year.  As I have stated before, a team full of replacement players should theoretically win 48 games.  We need 7 to 10 fWAR total from our entire roster to have a solid chance of achieving that mark.  Yes, that’s a 14 game improvement, but we underperformed our Pythagorean by 7 games last year.  We also have a lot more players that project to be above replacement level than we did last year.  Tauchman & Slater are older, boring, low ceiling players, but could easily represent four win improvement over the disaster that was RF for us last year.  And don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to hype up 55 wins, but I don’t believe you have to be an optimist to see a normal really bad team vs. the worst in baseball history.

But yes, I fully agree with you, I want to talk about the kids.  The dumpster dives serve a purpose, but untimely don’t change the long-term trajectory.  Hopefully once games start we’ll have some better topics to discuss, whether good or bad.

I hope you have a well paying diplomatic job.

I'm glad you can separate the past from the present without looking at things through jaundiced lenses.

It's a shame you have to quantify differences between bad and historically bad teams as not optimistic as if seeing some signs of life after 2024 is so terrible. There is so much lost in translation and so much bitterness that most do not want to bother doing what you just did while gently criticizing " the drive by , hit and run" style posting.

I just was exchanging holiday greetings with a women Sox fan friend  who does not follow them as closely as we do.

I brought up the Crochet trade which to a casual fan looks bad.

I told her well we'll need a few years to see how it goes . Hopefully they can start improving this year but even a 15 game improvement is still 106 losses.

Basically her responses were Nooooo. I don't want more years of this s%*#. You're making it worse by telling me these things. I was like sorry I didn't do it. She laughed and said OK I guess.

I'm not used to it being that easy.

[CaliSoxFanViaSWside]

13 hours ago, Nardiwashere said:

It looks like they are just hiring someone to work in the international scouting team.... why is that noteworthy?

 

Definitely don't see it as "no one is running Latin America operations" lol

But but there was a job description posted and and um I'm reaching here but I'm ignorant of who was hired to do what but I saw a job description in an ad and um 1 + 1 = 3.  Dude's really got a solid base for his conclusions.

[CaliSoxFanViaSWside]

15 hours ago, Balta1701 said:

What it sounds like on paper doesn't make much sense though does it? Why this guy as a special assistant in player development? 

I hate prejudging hires like this because I don't know how its going to work out, but yeah this totally feels like one of those things that gets thrown into the tell all story about why things broke down in 2 years. "They didn't know how to use the analytical data because Phil Nevin kept saying they didn't want to use that and he locked the GM out of a bunch of group chats" or something equally ridiculous.

And if that seems unfair, it's literally what we just went through. 

Lol I hate prejudging hires like this because I don't know how it going to work out.

You could've just stopped there but then you envision a dream scenario  of ineptitude.

Then if that seems unfair ... No not at all even if you're struggling with why you would post something so unfair. Are you just going with the en vogue flow ?

Has he been compared to Grifol yet ?

[CaliSoxFanViaSWside]

16 hours ago, southsider2k5 said:

Yet here you are just as confidently talking about people who have opinions different than yours.

His opinion is I don't know anything and neither do you and that your conclusions lack any substance based on that lack of knowledge . He wishes he could have the confidence to believe he's as smart without knowledge as you think you are.

You flex more than anyone here and constantly accuse others of it or resort to the old bad parenting /bully  routine of aww did the big meanie hurt your feelings when you got nothing else .

 

[southsider2k5]

1 hour ago, CaliSoxFanViaSWside said:

His opinion is I don't know anything and neither do you and that your conclusions lack any substance based on that lack of knowledge . He wishes he could have the confidence to believe he's as smart without knowledge as you think you are.

You flex more than anyone here and constantly accuse others of it or resort to the old bad parenting /bully  routine of aww did the big meanie hurt your feelings when you got nothing else .

 

It's either that or stalk someone for years because they disagreed with me, right?

[Quin]

5 hours ago, CaliSoxFanViaSWside said:

Because why exactly ? Does every person Tony LaRussa thinks is a good baseball man automatically mean he isn't ?

Yes, that's exactly it. 100%. No other reason. Just cause TLR looked at him and said, "Phil, my boy! You are baseball smart!"

[caulfield12]

19 minutes ago, Quin said:

Yes, that's exactly it. 100%. No other reason. Just cause TLR looked at him and said, "Phil, my boy! You are baseball smart!"

https://movie-sounds.org/comedy-movie-sounds/quotes-with-sound-clips-from-old-school/you-re-my-boy-blue-you-re-my-boy

[WestEddy]

6 hours ago, CaliSoxFanViaSWside said:

Are we now cancelling anyone who can be connected to LaRussa in any way as unfit for hire or anyone who doesn't object to that hire as a shill for the Sox organization ?

And then, that must mean that we all revere Hawk Harrelson as an elite baseball mind, since he fired TLR. TWTW!!

[WestEddy]

4 hours ago, CaliSoxFanViaSWside said:

But but there was a job description posted and and um I'm reaching here but I'm ignorant of who was hired to do what but I saw a job description in an ad and um 1 + 1 = 3.  Dude's really got a solid base for his conclusions.

Because we're pretending that 2 weeks before the new signing period, the White Sox haven't hired anybody to scout people, which doesn't seem to be true. 

[WestEddy]

1 hour ago, southsider2k5 said:

It's either that or stalk someone for years because they disagreed with me, right?

Which you regularly do. 

[southsider2k5]

6 minutes ago, WestEddy said:

Which you regularly do. 

Oh man.  Oh you got me so good.  I think I will spend the rest of my life mad about it. 

[Lip Man 1]

With Nightengale delivering praise and the details of the assignment about a guy whose track record doesn’t necessarily point to massive prior successes in those areas, the initial suspicion is more along the lines of “Did Tony La Russa’s shadow government just hire the manager it wanted?”

https://soxmachine.com/2024/12/christmas-eve-notes-nevin-in-eloy-gone/

[Balta1701]

1 hour ago, WestEddy said:

Because we're pretending that 2 weeks before the new signing period, the White Sox haven't hired anybody to scout people, which doesn't seem to be true. 

Well considering that just a couple weeks ago they had something like $750k to spend in international funds and apparently did nothing with that available space, just let it vanish, I think there's enough criticism to go around.

[WestEddy]

6 minutes ago, Balta1701 said:

Well considering that just a couple weeks ago they had something like $750k to spend in international funds and apparently did nothing with that available space, just let it vanish, I think there's enough criticism to go around.

Then criticize things that are real. 

[nrockway]

8 hours ago, CaliSoxFanViaSWside said:

I hope you have a well paying diplomatic job.

I'm glad you can separate the past from the present without looking at things through jaundiced lenses.

It's a shame you have to quantify differences between bad and historically bad teams as not optimistic as if seeing some signs of life after 2024 is so terrible. There is so much lost in translation and so much bitterness that most do not want to bother doing what you just did while gently criticizing " the drive by , hit and run" style posting.

I just was exchanging holiday greetings with a women Sox fan friend  who does not follow them as closely as we do.

I brought up the Crochet trade which to a casual fan looks bad.

I told her well we'll need a few years to see how it goes . Hopefully they can start improving this year but even a 15 game improvement is still 106 losses.

Basically her responses were Nooooo. I don't want more years of this s%*#. You're making it worse by telling me these things. I was like sorry I didn't do it. She laughed and said OK I guess.

I'm not used to it being that easy.

this is a good idiom, I will be fitting my rose-tinted glasses with jaundiced lenses. Merry Christmas, Sox fans.

[Y2Jimmy0]

The White Sox are likely pretty locked into Marco Paddy’s signing class for January 15 at this point. Players have had agreements for years at this point. Best case scenario at this point would be a team signing Sasaki and reneging on some deals. Then maybe the Sox could potentially break some agreements or use their signing money to grab players who are now left without deals. Alejandro Cruz is getting $2 million from Sox. No other deals have been reported at this point. Leaves them around $4.2 million available. 

[Chicago White Sox]

31 minutes ago, Y2Jimmy0 said:

The White Sox are likely pretty locked into Marco Paddy’s signing class for January 15 at this point. Players have had agreements for years at this point. Best case scenario at this point would be a team signing Sasaki and reneging on some deals. Then maybe the Sox could potentially break some agreements or use their signing money to grab players who are now left without deals. Alejandro Cruz is getting $2 million from Sox. No other deals have been reported at this point. Leaves them around $4.2 million available. 

What’s the deal with Cruz?  Is he a top 50 guy in the class?

Edited 14 hours ago by Chicago White Sox

[Balta1701]

39 minutes ago, Y2Jimmy0 said:

The White Sox are likely pretty locked into Marco Paddy’s signing class for January 15 at this point. Players have had agreements for years at this point. Best case scenario at this point would be a team signing Sasaki and reneging on some deals. Then maybe the Sox could potentially break some agreements or use their signing money to grab players who are now left without deals. Alejandro Cruz is getting $2 million from Sox. No other deals have been reported at this point. Leaves them around $4.2 million available. 

Have they actually used their allotment this year or nearly so, or is there a large amount remaining again?

[Sleepy Harold]

43 minutes ago, Chicago White Sox said:

What’s the deal with Cruz?  Is he a top 50 guy in the class?

By bonus amount he fell in the top 20 from BA. Was number 33 on Pipeline's list.