Dan of Steel

Okay then, Ian Hamilton, Jonathan Stiever, Steele Walker, Micker Adolfo, Luis Basabe, Blake Rutherford, Luis Gonzalez, outside of the list of bonafide studs. Considering all the guys either already up on the team or on the IL, that's a quality list.

Bull. Just 100% absolute Grade-A bull. From June 10th to the All-Star Break, that was the stretch that most claimed was going to send the White Sox into the cellar. That stretch had: - 2 games v. the Nats (57-49) *1st place NL WC - 4 games v. the Yankees (67-38) *1st place AL East / Best record in AL / 2nd best record overall - 2 games v. the Cubs (56-49) *Tied for 1st place in NL Central - 3 games v. the Rangers (53-53) - 3 games v. the Red Sox (59-48) - 3 games v. the Twins (64-41) *1st place AL Central / 4th best record overall - 3 games v. the Tigers (30-71) - 2 games v. the Cubs (56-49) *Tied for 1st place in NL Central That's 22 games, of which only 3 came against a team below .500. Hell, only 6 of them came against teams that are not currently either in the playoff hunt or at the head of the pack. Don't feed us this crap that they had a soft schedule coming off the toughest stretch of the season and making through it with a respectable record.

Sites have the Sox farm system ranked in the top 10 pretty much across the board. Madigral, Robert and Vaughn are big names. But Dunning and Kopech are set to return, plus Alec Hansen. Yeah, stacked. A tad top heavy perhaps, but stacked nonetheless.

Hear hear. This stretch sucks majorly. That being said, you put it perfectly when you said, this team is three bats short in a lineup that's already three bats short, and 2 arms short with 2 arms short already. The Sox are a paper thin roster as is, and then you remove possibly their 5 best players for big stretches, that's gonna be a rough ride.

That's not how it works. You're the one making the claim that the optimism should be doubted, so the burden of proof is actually on YOU. Someone has debunked your brief correctly. It's now your job to try and debunk his proof. As someone else correctly posted, 26-40 is pretty much irrelevant. Of the 23 players you mentioned, pretty much all of them won't be on the team in 2020, much less 2021. So to use that list to doubt the future is not a strong platform to support your argument. The Sox farm is stacked and there's a lot of guys currently on the IL (I mean A LOT) that will be off it in 2020. Plenty of talent that is still waiting in the wings. Just have to look a little.

Even high quality aces have bad outings, and against the best hitting team in the league, it's not all that surprising. People are just looking for something, anything, to hang their hopes on during a really brutal stretch of baseball and the one guy who was having a consistently great season, is hitting a rough patch. This team has taking a huge step back after the All-Star break and nobody is really playing well right now. Having a bad stretch with no silver lining is a terrible feeling.

Your ability to put words in his mouth is quite impressive.

11-11 with a rainout vs. Detroit. Have to say, that is extremely impressive for a very young squad that is currently lacking anything resembling a stable rotation. I probably would've expected them to go 7-15. This team is growing and learning how to win games.

Yeah, because who wants a #2 who is throwing a 3.15 ERA and is in the running for the Cy Young? Pfff, what a hack.

Definitely not. Possibly gets back to pitch for spring and then goes on a small assignment in the minors before being brought back up in 2020.

Imperative that Kopech returns to form and Cease take the next step forward.

Young inexperienced teams with holes being filled by garbage tend to do that.

Lol, such an SJW explanation and woefully incorrect. Or maybe it was a response to a genre of music that was garbage and saturated the radios with it's crap. Also, arguably the most prominent disco group was the Bee Gees, a trio of straight white guys. So much for that. Disco Demolition was as it suggests, a vitriolic response to a genre that infuriated people with it's mediocrity and saturation. Hell, if anything Disco stole a bunch of it's stuff from prominently black genres, primarily funk, R&B and soul.

I hope Giolito brings the usual stuff tomorrow. Just seems like every time we have a chance to break even, we end up getting stomped. Definitely not overachieving. This team is reaching their potential. They weren't going to keep losing 90-100 games forever.

In hindsight, not signing Machado worked out for the Sox. I don't think Moncada makes the same strides in his game without being moved to third. Doesn't happen if Machado is signed. Would've liked Harper though, but seems like he was dead set to stay in the NL.

Yeah, but let's be real. What did the White Sox do from 1920-1980 that was so insanely great? 1 world series appearance in the span of 60 years. One. ONE. ONE!!!! I'm sorry, but fans deserve a little bit more success than 1 world series appearance before they collect their social security check. FFS. Reinsdorf has been polarizing and has done a lot of things that make me question the core of his capability to turn this franchise around, but this is far from a Reinsdorf issue. This has been an issue with the White Sox for a vast majority of their history.

Unless you're just chugging the White Sox 2019 Wild Card Kool-Aid, I fail to see the issue here. It takes two to tango. I imagine Keuchel barely thought of the White Sox as a destination this year. Braves and Yankees were the rumored final destination. Both teams made the playoffs the previous year and are firmly in contention to make runs again this year. The White Sox are not. Keuchel improves a woefully thin rotation, but not by much. Suddenly you go from 1 reliable arm, to perhaps 2 (assuming that Keuchel just picks everything up after missing 2 months of baseball). Perhaps a year from now if the Sox are firmly in the midst of a quality playoff run, then we can get made if Hahn can't land a Keuchel-esque FA.

Lopez is 25 and prior to being traded had already been called up to the majors. Cease is 23 and up until this season, hadn't seen AAA action. Different circumstances.

Funny. I think Cub fans were saying the same thing back in 2012 when the Cubs were awful and the Sox were trying to win.

Nuh-uh. The Twins series was set up for catastrophe. It was the Twins offense at their absolute best vs. the worst of the Sox rotation. This team competing for a playoff spot in July-August would surprise me. I don't think they're that good. However, they are not so bad that they're gonna finish the season 39-67. Keep in mind, last year's squad was 18-38 at this point in the season and finished 44-62. This team is A LOT better than a measly 4 games over the 2018 squad.

Excuses? For f*ck sake. Minnesota spent years in the sh*tter, and have finally started to play competitive baseball. They are a good baseball team as currently constructed. It was bound to happen, because unlike the White Sox, they chose to rebuild years ago, and not continue to drag mediocre squad through the mud and call it a competitive unit. The White Sox are currently amidst a complete ground zero rebuild, have a lineup with more holes in it than a fine Swiss cheese and a pitching rotation with effectively one guy who is established for the future, and a bunch of guys who are looking like pen arms at best (MAYBE Lopez turns it around, but it's looking bleak, and I don't have much faith that Covey can put his stuff together consistently). Those aren't excuses, those are the facts. If you want to brush them off, that's your prerogative, but don't b*tch at other people because you choose to live in blissful ignorance.

Extremely disappointing given how the team rallied to split in Houston and got off to a great start in the first game. After going up 4-1 in Game 1, they were outscored 25-1 the rest of the way. Yikes.

That's about right, record wise. The Twins series was just downright atrocious on all accounts, but that's just more of the same. The bottom of the Sox rotation going up against one of the hottest hitting teams in baseball. Yeah, that's a recipe for success. I expected at least 5 losses, but I expected a lot better out of the offense. I mean, outside of 1 inning in the 1st game, they only scored 1 other run the entire rest of the series. What the f*ck!?

Renteria is awful, but Ventura is in a class all his own. Ventura wasn't just tactically incompetent as a game-manager, he was probably the single most uninspired and un-charismatic manager in modern baseball. Renteria is just tactically incompetent, but I can at least see him being a quality clubhouse voice. He's similar to what Fox was for the Bears. Awful for competing, but good for laying the groundwork of a consistent winner and eliminating the toxicity of the previous regime. Now is the time for the Sox to start looking for their Matt Nagy.

Hahn is also a scUM grad, but I'll be willing to let that slide if this rebuild turns into a gem.