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Poles is a pretty funny dude.

I don't disagree on the overall losing culture of Chicago teams, but those 50s/60s Sox teams were actually really good. They just had the misfortune (like everyone else in the league) of playing at the same time as the NY Yankees of the 50s and 60s, when they were at their most dominant.

The Super Bowl era started 57 years ago. The Bears are a historically bad franchise. If you want to count the era where the Bears were beating up on the Dayton Triangles, Rochester Jeffersons and Rock Island Independents, go for it. I doubt anyone else is going to find it relevant.

The Bears haven’t done well in the Super Bowl era but they are 2nd in the NFL in Championships won with 9, the Packers are first with 13. The Bears are also 2nd in games won with 793 victories with the Packers winning 799.

They went to the World Series in 1959. It was much harder to get to the postseason in the 50s and 60s. There were no playoffs back then, just the regular season decided the AL and NL champs. Most of those 50s/60s teams would have made the playoffs under the current system.

I heard that he usually goes for a quick swim before bed to stay active.

🤔 Don’t…say…it…

I don't get it. If you don't want to pay the price to sign these high dollar fee agents then invest your money into scouting and development. At least that way you can hopefully produce your own star players and just keep that cycle going. We seemingly like to live in the middle ground of behind the times in scouting/development and only shelling out money for mid tier free agents who wont move the needle. Also, continually hiring unqualified alumni to lead your team/organization.

Chris Getz - 2024 Players Acquisition Tracker Pitchers: Erick Fedde: 5.29 xERA | -0.1 fWAR Mike Soroka: 6.96 xERA | -0.3 fWAR Chris Flexen: 6.46 xERA | 0.0 fWAR Jared Shuster: 2.55 xERA | 0.1 fWAR Steven Wilson: 2.43 xERA | 0.2 fWAR John Brebbia: 7.27 xERA | 0.0 fWAR Tim Hill: 5.28 xERA | 0.0 fWAR Bryan Shaw: 7.41 xERA | -0.1 fWAR Dominic Leone: 8.27 xERA | -0.5 fWAR Hitters: Martin Maldonado: -53 wRC+ | -0.7 fWAR Nickly Lopez: 47 wRC+ | -0.1 fWAR Paul DeJong: 145 wRC+ | 0.5 fWAR Braden Shewmake: 13 wRC+ | -0.3 fWAR Dominic Fletcher: 73 wRC+ | -0.1 fWAR Kevin Pillar: 98 wRC+ | 0.1 fWAR Robbie Grossman: 70 wRC+ | -0.1 fWAR So adding it all up, Getz added 16 players to the roster and through 21 games has been able to get -1.4 fWAR from them. Just for fun, these guys are on pace to provide roughly -11 fWAR on a straight line basis. That is beyond Rick Hahn levels bad. Fire Chris Getz and bring in someone who has actually accomplished something beyond just snitching out the past incompetent regime!

"PARKING!!! WE NEED MORE PARKING!!!"

GMs speak with the media at the beginning of most homestands. Since our beat writers are a bunch on wimps, it'll be a series of softball questions.

Had to look this up on Statcast: Colson Montgomery has struck out 33 times this year, 17 of them looking. No major leaguer had half of his strikeouts looking last year and of those with high proportions of strikeouts looking, none of them were high strikeout players (so usually, if a lot of your Ks are looking, it's partly because you're so hard to strike out by swinging). For April 2024, Colson is an extremely high strikeout player.

Poles has nine picks next year. If I were him, I’d 100% look into trading one my 2’s next year along with pick 75 to jump up and get Johnny Newton in the early second if someone is willing to play ball.

Bob Nightingale said that TLR deserved a plaque for managing that team to 93 wins. He may not be wrong.

Grindy Ass multi-position white guy? The South Side is going to fall in love.

Seriously, I never thought I'd see the day where the Bears have the best WR room in the NFL lol

I am finally fucking exciting about a Chicago sport team! It's been a hard couple of years!

Fair or not, Caleb should set franchise records for the Bears in his rookie year. It's all right there for him

Do you not know Caulfield? It’s a three name minimum.

What a fucking an amazing draft.

Bear, Motherfucking, Down

f*** YESSSssss

All roads (should) lead to ROme

let soxtalk manage the sox.

Exactly correct.

It worked great the last time we hired a guy who hadn't managed in a decade.

Klassy

They never won a thing during that stretch and the franchise has always been known as a loser franchise. Chicago White Sox - "at least we aren't the Clippers" The Cubs success has nothing to do with winning and everything to do with Lakeview becoming the premier neighborhood for postgrad Midwestern transplants.

Pedro being Pedro: Lee catching on The combination of 37-year-old Martin Maldonado’s .048 batting average with 25-year-old Korey Lee’s .279 average and .791 OPS as well as Lee’s superior defense resulted in Lee catching three of four games of the series, including Thursday’s day game after a night game. “I want to get him in there a little bit more consistently,” Grifol said. “At the same time I want to make sure he’s developing at the right pace and not trying to do too much too soon.” Lee struck out with Robbie Grossman on third in the second inning, but finished with two hits. He made a sliding catch near the dugout in the bottom of the inning. Grifol said Lee workload would be “inconsistent.” “Sometimes he’ll play three out of four, sometimes he’ll play two out of four. Sometimes he might play one out of four. It all depends how he’s coming along on his development and the things that he’s got to work on.”

From 1951 through 1967 the Sox had 17 straight winning seasons. Six or seven of those, can't remember, included years where they won 90+ games. They outdrew the Cubs in 16 of those 17 years. During that time the Cubs were an afterthought.

This is exactly where I stand. They suck and will suck, but why let this guy do any more damage.

Regarding the bolded. I HIGHLY doubt that is the case. Its obvious he's no favorite, but he'll absolutely get another chance.

See what The Beast said. I do think there will be some time of unexpected expense (that's how it always works), which is why I think they beat the Sox to the punch. Because if you're funding the Sox stadium with the same revenue stream, your budgets have to be tight and you have to be in cost cutting mode if you're short at that point. But once shovels go in the ground (which Kevin Warren is aiming for this spring), then they're not going to stop. It's not. It's already something that's in place. It was set to expire, but if you've followed state or city politics, you should know that it was never going to go away. It was just going to be repurposed for something else, even if it's not a new stadium. See Illinois Tollway for example.

He’s pushing 90 and it’s 9:30. I’m sure he’s been sleeping for at least 2 hours.

Exactly. This is bigger than the team on the field—the brand has been completely destroyed beyond repair. This is a product of not a few bad decisions, but decades of bad decisions. The Sox logo—once endeared—literally angers people now. It’s a symbol of total betrayal as far as baseball and sports “fanship” goes. I do not believe ownership/upper management understands either. We’re still throwing the Nicky Lopez’s of the world at this problem. No one respects what this organization has become. It’s built on endless spins and elusive narratives that turn out to be blatantly false—straight lies. Because of this—any possibility of positive intent is met with disbelief. It will take decades of sustained success to rebuild what these people have done to the White Sox brand.

People cite the Wheeler and Harper/Machado stuff, and they are absolutely right. Having Bryce and Wheeler on those 2020/2021 teams would have changed a lot in my opinion. However, while they did a solid job of building the core up in Robert/Anderson/Abreu/Eloy/Moncada/Cease/Giolito...there was never a next wave coming. Under the reign of Williams/Hahn, they never could develop prospects, and if you don't do that, you can only sustain success at the MLB level for so long, doesn't even matter what your budget is. Rebuilds never go as planned, guys you pencil in as part of the core just don't work out, it's simply an odds game. Eloy/Moncada/Kopech being great examples of just not hitting, but guys like Robert and Cease performed at levels maybe even higher than anticipated. But it's a numbers game, and you need a wave behind those guys to test your odds out again at hitting, and the Sox just didn't have anything in the system to support any sort of sustained success, which has been true for the last 3 decades basically.

I think its two things. 1. Hiring Tony LaRussa to manage to club when it was time to take the next step in the rebuild. 2. Missing out on Zach Wheeler and failing to even get serious with Bryce Harper or Manny Machado. Zach Wheeler has been great, Harper has won an MVP and put up 18.7 bWAR over this timreframe and Machado has put up 20.3

Ask Hawk who he would hire/promote/fire if given the powers of GM and you'll figure out who knows what they're doing. Just keep everybody that Hawk wants to fire

Jerry always said 2nd was good enough....we're 2nd now, in all of MLB history!

As Jerry himself has said he makes enough from his negotiated domestic and international deals to cover his payroll before a single ticket is sold, a single car is parked and a single beer is sold. To understand Jerry it comes down to basically this, he wants to win but he wants to win HIS WAY. That is keeping salaries low since he still feels players make to much money, not hiring top of the line managers and coaches because, as he has said, that don't impact the game that much, not investing that much in the farm system/player development because as he has said he doesn't believe in paying for "potential", he also doesn't want to take the time and effort at his age to really deal with massive change. He has a large ego and that ego won't admit his way simply doesn't work. When I put out my story on the State of the Sox in November 2022, I specifically asked about JR and these were some of the replies: “JR is 86 and he’s in great shape, he looks good, still drives himself around but I just think at this point he simply doesn’t want to be bothered with having to bring in a new front office, maybe he thinks in a few years it won’t matter anyway.” “People, his friends… have tried to tell him what has been going on, “Hawk” Harrelson, the late Ed Farmer… God rest his soul, Darrin Jackson, Scott Reifert (Author’s Note: Scott is the Senior Vice-President for Communications) , Bob Grim and others but it’s just not registering for some reason.” “I wonder what impact his wife passing away earlier this year has had on him.” “JR has told his family he does not want any of his sons owning the team when he is gone. The Bulls are fine he said because they make Michael (Reinsdorf) money but baseball just doesn’t allow you to do that. (no salary cap)” (Author’s Note: Was told by an individual who knew some of the minority owners that “The Sox haven’t lost money in a long time.” A second source agreed with that statement. Seems to be a conflict doesn’t it? Maybe JR isn’t making enough money to suit him vis a vis the Sox?) “With :30 seconds left in their selection time on draft day JR would say things like “You know this college right-handed pitcher has the lowest injury risk.” “In October 2005 some investors asked JR to sell and get out while the going was good, but he wouldn’t.” “Andrew Berlin, twice tried to buy the Sox around 2008 but wasn’t successful.” (Author’s Note: Berlin, grew up a Sox fan and is now the owner of the Cubs farm team in South Bend, Indiana.) “I heard that JR owns 12% of the team but with some of the original investors passing away that has probably gone up to 18%” (Author’s Note: Even though he only owns a small percentage of the franchise Jerry Reinsdorf has absolute authority to run the team as he sees fit. It is written into his contract. That includes selling or not selling the club despite what the other investors wish. The only way he can be removed from his position is if he has done something illegal, appears to be losing his mental faculties or is being financially irresponsible.) “I was talking with an agent and they said the next owner of the Sox can’t be a group of investors, it has to be a big company. That’s why Dennis Gilbert, who tried to buy the Dodgers won’t get the Sox, he can’t come up with enough big money investors” “JR has become oblivious to things and what he’s allowed to happen is sad. He’s probably the most successful owner in Chicago sports history given the Bulls titles and the White Sox one which is dear to his heart, but what has happened the last two years is just sad. He is out-of-touch. And even worse he’s inaccessible. He’s either afraid of having to answer questions or he’s incapable of doing so.” “JR likes the structure he has because it gives him an extra layer of protection from criticism.”