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How any of you could b**** and moan while Colome is in the midst of a 10+ WAR season is beyond me. We are witnesses to history, folks!

Yes, we've gone 4-13 in the last 17 and it hasn't been pretty. Yes, it is hard to watch teams like Minnesota and Oakland absolutely trounce us. Yes, it's worrisome to watch guys like Giolito and Cease struggle, sometimes mightily. However, I think we need to get a collective grip on what real swings of a baseball season are, even for competitive teams, because I think the board has taken a sharp dive towards unbearable lately with some of the sky-is-falling/rebuild has failed talk, especially in game threads. The very best teams struggle to win 60% of their games in no small part because even great playoff teams have 20 game stretches where they play like absolute garbage. I urge you to consider the following before condemning the entire front office, managerial staff, and organization for what's been going on recently: That currently, even with the terrifying bad stretch of baseball we've been playing, this team is still on pace to win about 73 games. How many wins did you have them down for at the beginning of the season? I had them down for about 74 and I considered that optimistic. That the following good teams have had the following awful stretches of baseball this year: Yankees: 4-8 games 2 through 13 of the season, and then 3-8 in early June. Red Sox: 6-13 through first 19 games of the season (are 12 over now) Minnesota: 12-16 stretch recently. Houston: lost 7 in a row and 9 of 11. Oakland: started the season 14-19 and are 12 over now. Those are currently the five best teams in the American League, and they've all had 2-3 week stretches where they have played WAY below their ability. Not because they suck, but because that's variance, that's baseball, and those are stretches. Yes, 4-13 is a different beast, but 4-13 for a team that is expected to win maybe 77 games at best is similar to 8-12 for a team that expects to win 90. I think what's also been lost in a lot of talk recently too is that I see little mention of people putting into context that we DFA'd our DH without an ML replacement, have been playing without TA for a while, and Eloy went down, and much more mention about how this is failing. We are in a bad stretch. At some point this season, this team will snap out of it and suddenly with 4 in a row or 7 of 8 and that won't make any sense either. Because that's baseball. I still think we are on track.

I’m a little confused as to your comment “the way things are going”. I think TA and Eloy’s injury cost us some winnable games, and DFAing an absolutely listless Yonder was necessary so we could try a couple of new options in seasonal garbage time. However, I don’t buy in to the theory that injuries have become organizational and I certainly don’t think it’s some sort of referendum on the franchise direction. We are three major league bats short on a team that is already three major league bats short. We are also two major league starting arms short on a team that is already two arms short. Cease needs to develop at the ML level so there will be some hiccups. Losing games in exactly that way was always going to be part of it.

There are no parallels that I see. Sox sold on Quintana at the absolute height of his value for an outstanding return during the start of the rebuild phase. This would be the Sox buying low on a great talent just prior to their window of contention opening.

And it’s totally fine you feel that way as this ownership group and front office haven’t done much to earn our trust. The problem is when certain poster repeat ad nauseas that Hahn is the worst GM ever and is definitely going to fail this offseason. Or when people imply the Sox are going to rock an $80M payroll next year because they claim Ivan Nova types are the best we will ever do in free agency. It’s one thing to be cautious or even to have a negative outlook on certain things, it’s another to be completely irrational out of spite and start polluting the board with the same hate-filled takes over & over. This place has stopped becoming a message board for certain posters and purely an outlet to voice their anger & hate to the detriment of everyone else. At some point that posting style just becomes selfish as it brings down the overall quality of the board and dissuades two way conversation.

Fantastic post OP. I get that there is a place for grousing, criticism, and blowing off steam, but when the majority of the posts on this board are nothing but repetitive negativity it makes me not want to interact with Soxtalk. That makes me sad. There are some fantastic posts, posters, and discussions that happen here, but the effort required to filter through the miasma is becoming increasingly tougher lately. Respect to those posters that continue to add value to this place.

He's 13th for all qualified relievers in K-BB% striking over 13.7/9 while walking less than 3/9. He leads all relievers in BABIP. Safe to say he's had some back luck.

This team is on pace for a 10 win improvement from last year’s team with essentially zero contributions from free agency. Stay the course. Increased participation in free agency in 4 months, specifically signing second tier guys which they didn’t do last winter, combined with continued improvement from the young MLB guys and promotion of top minor league prospects should lead to another 10-15 game improvement next season. That puts them into the wild card conversation at a minimum.

This isn’t about 10 years. 8-10 years ago the approach, manager, personnel was entirely different. So was everything up to when we decided to actually rebuild. 18 GAMES ago, nearly all of the board would have said we were ahead of schedule with the rebuild at 41-42 and in the hunt for a wild card. And 18 games later, many of the same people are jumping off of a bridge.

White Sox fans "fragility" should be understood. They haven't had a bad week or two. They have had a bad decade, and they still have the same people calling the shots.

A LOT of problems here, but for starters, replacement level does NOT equal average. It equals replacement level. The average MLB contributor is roughly two wins above replacement level. Secondly, WAR seeks to assign wins in a context-neutral setting. A save is about the most context-dependent statistic in existence, so it is completely unrelated. Thirdly, if you were going to try to make the argument that Alex Colome was worth six or seven wins because of his save totals, you’d have to first make the argument that a save itself is worth an entire win — which, if you think about it, makes no sense at all. How could playing in one half of one inning be equivalent to winning and entire game? I’m not trying to sound condescending here man, but what “research” did you do here? Nothing of what you said above has anything to do with WAR. If you really do want to understand WAR, I can point you to some resources.

I mean, we’ve pretty much been rail-roaded with injuries on the pitching side. Rodon & Kopech should both be in the rotation, Dunning would have probably been pushing for a spot right now, and Lambert was one of our better, more advanced prospects. All those guys lost for the season. On the bullpen side, losing Jones, Hamilton, & Burr (and Burdi to a lesser extent) for the year forced us to give fringier guys opportunities. That’s a lot of injuries to overcome for any organization.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/lucas-giolitos-rough-july-was-just-a-blip/ Good information and surprising his spin rate continues to improve through this rough stretch. I agree the changeup to righties have been killing him (Cruz, Contreras, etc.)

I think there just needs to be some bridging of the gap with people here. Some fans are used to using stats descriptively because that's often how they used them growing up. In this view, Alex Colome's 21 saves are important because it underscores how we watched him come in 21 times and finished with the win. Same with RBI, each being tied to watching the batter come up and end up with a runner scoring at home. These are re-enforcing the description of the season as it occurred and the memories tied to it. But what those stats are not answering is "how good is player x". And that's a question many on here and in baseball fandom want to answer because it helps us understand the game better, helps us enjoy the game more, and part of that is due to wanting to theorize how to make the best team possible. I think everyone here enjoyed Scott Podsednik having 38 stolen bases before the ASB in 2005, which led to him being an all star. But that didn't mean that he was one of the best outfielders in the game. And this gap happens were people feel like they are diminishing the things a player did in fact do, when really it is just trying to answer a different question. It's awesome Colome has come up 21 times in the 9th and shut it down. It was fun to watch. But if I'm a GM trying to trade for the guy I don't get to transfer those 21 saves to my team. I'm trying to figure out if the guy I acquire will nail it down for me. That's what the "statniks" are trying to understand: how much of a players performance is indicative of their talent, and how much is indicative of the context it happened in.

Great post, especially the last paragraph. It's hard for me to see this season as anything but a major success for the rebuild so far, as all the players who actually matter are performing well. For all the freaking out about the ebbs and flows of the season for the players you mentioned, it's interesting how Moncada has been a top-12 position player in baseball, a legitimate MVP-caliber player and the best all-around position player on the White Sox since either Magglio Ordonez or Frank Thomas, yet the only posts I see about him (for the most part) are complaints about the occasional misplay or minor injury. It's clear to me that incessant complaining about anything and everything is preferred for many, even when glaring positives are staring them right in the face. I'm not saying that everything is perfect, but I am saying that things aren't nearly as bad as people are making them out to be.

Great post Hibbard. Unfortunately what separates us fans from baseball executives is the need to remain rational during rough patches. This recent stretch has been enduring for many reasons and it’s admittedly hard to remain level-headed & objective. That being said, a lot of the reasons just don’t matter. The pitching staff outside of Giolito, Lopez, Cease, Bummer, & Fry (and Ruiz, Colome, & Herrera to a lesser extent) is pretty much irrelevant. The vast majority of these guys won’t be around next year. The same applies to the offense and even more so in recent weeks with Anderson & Eloy out. Guys like Reed, Jay, & Sanchez don’t matter and aren’t worth freaking about on a daily basis in game threads. The part that does bother me a bit is the relentless panicking over any struggles from the young guys. The hot takes & over-reactions to Giolito’s rough patch have been ridiculous as the kid is just 25 years old and has made significant strides this year. He looks legit now even when things go wrong. There have been similar over-reactions to other guys as well (like the move Eloy to DH every time he makes a bad play), but to a much smaller degree. At the end of the day, this season has been fantastic for the young guys, with Moncada, Eloy, Timmy, Giolito, & Bummer all showing significant improvement. Young guys are going to have their rough moments, which is why we shouldn’t overreact to every single pitch / at-bat like some occasionally do. There is reason to be cautious right now given the lack of depth behind our top prospects, but there’s absolutely no reason to panic until we start seeing key guys failing.

White Sox fans have every right to be pissed off. That's the bottom line. If the fan police don't like it, who cares? You started a rebuild 3 years ago, got 10 prospects for 3 players. Had a #10 pick, a pick, then new golden boy scouting director said he would have picked 1-1. Excuses shouldn't be made daily for missed pop ups at this point.

How can you say the approach is different too after the Manny debacle and listening to them about how they viewed their contract offers? They really thought having 2 less guaranteed years was a better offer than 10 years. That sounds like the same management to me.

But the biggest decision makers have been in charge for this entire amount of time — Jerry (since 1981), Kenny (since 2000), and Hahn (since 2012).

I read a interesting article that was about the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Pirates have been bad since the All Star break . Pirates GM Neal Huntington said that he should be held accountable for the Pirates lack of success. I don't know if he will lose his job but its certainly possible. I don't see anybody in the White Sox front office/ownership being held accountable for this present mess. This so called rebuild appears to me as if the team wins or if the team loses so be it. As long as this franchise is making money hand over fist, that's all that matters to this ownership.

A big part of the problem is that it’s almost August of this 2019 season, the 7th year in a row of absolutely putrid baseball, and its hard for many fans to imagine at this point that our fan base will be lifted out of this constant losing rut in 2020, the way things are going. And it’s just not enough to say things will be super duper come 2021. That’s still a long ways away.

When the Sox trailed the Twins 9-0 on Sunday a pair of voices from young fans stood out in the crowd. They were cheering their hearts out with “Let’s go White Sox” chants. Renteria had NBC Sports Chicago’s Chuck Garfien find one in the crowd and gave him a signed ball. “We were 9-0 and that little kid was out there yelling,” Renteria said. “I can hear it. I thought he was way up in the stands or something. I told Chuck, ‘find that voice.’ “When you have kids who are looking upon Major League Baseball players with so much joy and enthusiasm. For me as an adult, we can become very cynical, sarcastic and very negative in any sport professionally because it’s all about performance and coming out on top and blah, blah, blah. Just hearing the voice of this kid just cheering you on, cheering you on and cheering on the team and talking about ‘Let’s go White Sox.’ For me, that lifted me up. And I wanted to find out who it was because, believe it or not, even us old guys and players in the field, need to hear that support sometimes. When it comes from the smallest little guy that you can see out there at that particular point for me. For me, it was a blessing. I’m glad I heard him. We gave him a little baseball. That’s what it’s all about and at the end of the day I think if we have child-like joy and desire and excitement and willingness to go out and just leave it out there, we’ll be OK.” Renteria signed the ball, gave it to the kid and it said “Thank you. Keep it going and keep believing.” https://www.nbcsports.com/chicago/white-sox/young-fans-child-joy-put-things-perspective-white-sox-despite-big-deficit Scott Merkin has a similar story up at the team website

Alec Hansen? Heh, haven’t followed him the past two seasons have you? http://m.milb.com/milb/player/641662 He’s about to fall off the Sox top 30 prospect list for a reason.

Sonny Gray was a borderline ace with tons of team control. Frazier was trash, Robertson was good but made a ton of money and Kahnle was a dude without a track record. To compare these returns is absurdely disingenuous.

I don't care if Yermin is a fat mess, give this guy a damn shot.

Nice to see the opposite field power from Rutherford!!

Rutherford and Sheets back-to-back homers

Good catch there. Nothing on the MLB transaction page, but I believe it. Probably Anderson and Hector Santiago added tomorrow. edit: the MLB page is updated. Anderson activated and Cordell optioned.

I mean I understood it but I'm not sure what that says about me

Are these real words?

This is a pretty good summary of this place. Add in about 5-10 posters who add pretty much nothing of value but post about 15-20x a day, and you have a lot of BS to weed through to find the stuff that I try to come here for. It's a shame.

And where they have failed mightily is signing free agents they could flip for value.

Bmags this is no place for sensical discussion. Please leave

I know Lip is a respected historian of the game (and good on him for that), but he lacks fundamental understanding of simple things in today's game. His comments are not even worth reading.

There are better ways to compare relievers to other relievers. But it's pretty on point when comparing relievers to anyone else on the diamond.

Rick Hahn being trusted to fill out those spots no matter how many there are is the problem.

This is probably true, but I think the "we'll turn over half the roster when it's time" crowd is whistling past the graveyard.

Don’t you think we’re all jumping on the Bummer bandwagon too quickly? Look at Fry last year...he looked almost as dominant in long stretches. Or the career of Nate Jones. When it comes down to it, we don’t really know how he will pitch in high leverage situations in the middle of a legitimate pennant race. Not saying he’s Daniel Palka and empty stats, but we’ve seen a lot of false positives, like Yolmer and Delmonico...a really decent stretch from a Covey here, Engel looking like the best CFer in baseball for a month or so. There’s always that fear that it will just fall apart. “Poof!” as Hawk would often say. I’m not sure the last three years have added one position player who wouldn’t be the last roster spot on the Dodgers or Astros.

You are way too hung up on a throwaway remark Hostetler made in a fluff piece about Collins.

Didn’t we already try this by making a poor trade for Samardzija and signing Robertson/Cabrera/LaRoche...as soon as we start to place our contention hopes on the backs of the Todd Frazier’s of the world, we’ll be stuck in baseball purgatory forever.

I don't think all of the board would have thought 18 games ago the team was ahead of schedule, especially if you looked back at the schedules 2 or 3 years ago. They had a very soft first half schedule. The second half is a bit tougher. Their run differential which Steve Stone, now Mr. Optimist likes to use to say some other teams could be playing above their heads, was and is one of the worst in baseball. Beating Kc and Baltimore, and Detroit, while nice, and needing to be done, doesn't put a team ahead in a rebuild. You are, if the goal is to win championships, expected to be able to hang wjth good teams on a nightly basis. They don't seem very close to that right now. And JR, RH, and KW, whose bad decisions led a bad team to rebuild, are still calling the shots. That is pretty unprecedented.

Four pages of discussion for another Kinander rumor? Suckers

The biggest problem of all is that we’re so thin...a major injury to any of the Core 6 position players (three in the majors already) and it feels like rebuild could be set back yet another year, like it seemingly was when Kopech went down. For all the plaudits and praise received in 2016-18, we haven’t been able to produce enough 1.5-2.5 fWAR players to surround the core. It’s a combination of the sloppy play, dumb managing (bunting against MN in the first when they’re setting daily power-hitting records?) and McCann/Giolito/Abreu slumping. Then Cease struggling, and Jimenez scuffling too...it’s almost putting too much pressure on Luis and Nick to be the saviors as rookies. Madrigal can definitely handle it, just not sure how Robert will react.

I realize even good teams have bad stretches. The 2005 team lost seven straight in August and came thisclose to blowing a 15-game lead. Good thing the Indians finally ran out of gas during the last week, or we might still be waiting for a World Series. I just tire of the excuses. Injuries. Rebuild. This team hasn't gone to the post-season in 11 going on 12 years. It has never won a wild card spot since the wild card was created a quarter-of-a-century ago. And the club just looked lifeless in Kansas City. Things may improve greatly, but nobody can predict when that will happen. That's not a good feeling.

The Sox still are a bad baseball team. The bad stretch has now stretch many years. There seems to always be an excuse. This team has butchered 4 or 5 pop ups the last 2 weeks. You don’t see that at the Pony League level.

How can we say that when the Red Sox have four World Series titles to the Yankees’ one over the last 18 seasons? To judge the GM with the most resources to work with...and compare him to Billy Beane, the Atlanta Braves organization, Friedman in Tampa and LA, Antonetti and Chernoff in Cleveland, etc. That’s an impossible task. But the obvious choice at any rate is Jeff Luhnow...other than DFAing JD Martinez and picking Appel over Bryant, almost every big move has gone right for them, with the possible exception of bringing Osuna with his questionable background on board.

So after a 3 year NCAA career where his per 162 average was 33 doubles, 36 homers and 151 walks... And after 1100 minor league at bats where his 162 average was 31 doubles, 24 homers and 129 walks... and with him being only 24 playing one of the hardest positions on the field... And you have completely written him off because of 26 at bats in 9 games spread out over a month? He'll never make it to the Majors again??? That is a weird take. Are you talking about Zack Collins or is there another Collins you are slamming? Weren't you also a huge hater on Madrigal? The site would be better without loud apocalyptic predictions about important players in the rebuild based on a couple of major league games.

Lol...it’s like the moment OneDog gets the ban-hammer you step up your irrational hate game to fill his place. Marco Gonzalez is currently 29th in fWAR amongst qualified starters (one spot behind your beloved Bumgarner). Calling him a “weak #5 starter” is one of the worst takes I have ever seen on this site in years.