Chicago White Sox

What do you mean we’re not in the top 10 for Machado?

I’m not guaranteeing anything, but given our organizational need and significant financial flexibility, we should no doubt be one the favorites to land a premier 3B free agent. Saying our chances are “slim to none” is just purposely being negative for no objective reason.

Great post. Obviously no one should ignore their retirement planning, but at the end of the day tomorrow isn’t promised. My view is to enjoy your life while you can & try your best to balance current and long-term objectives.

I know you love being a negative Nancy on here, but the statement above is absolutely ridiculous. At this very moment, we have to be one of the favorites to sign a premier 3B free agent

Why would we trade for guys with three years or less of team control? Go out and buy stopgaps in free agency if we need short-term fixes. Money should not be a problem for us.

How quickly Theo turned the Cubs around is no doubt impressive. He added a significant amount of positional talent in a very short period of time and that gave them a great foundation to build around. Having said that, him completely ignoring pitching development has cost them greatly. The Cubs got very lucky that Arietta & Hendricks both developed into quality starters and neither Lester or Lackey busted. They’ve had to trade a ton of high end prospect talent and commit big dollars to try and address pitching holes in recent years. Even Theo has somewhat acknowledged this being a problem and has changed their talent acquisition strategy quite a bit. I completely understand valuing positional prospects over pitchers when all else is equal, but the concept of TINSTAAA is quite frankly stupid IMO.

When are we out of the penalty box for internship signings? The next signing period in June/July? If so, we can’t realistically sign this kid unfortunately.

Oh shit, forgot his TJS recovery will likely carry into the 2018. In that case, I think they’ll start him in AA when he finally returns. With him already on the 40 man roster, we can’t be too conservative with him.

Here’s how I see the minor league OFs shaking out to start the season: AAA - Eloy, Cordell/Engel, Call (AAAA type) AA - Rutherford, Gonzalez, Basabe (Booker) A+: Walker, Robert, Adolfo (Frost) A: Dawkins, Gonzalez, Sowers (Destino) I would expect a lot of early in-season promotions for the higher end guys, with Basabe getting a bump to AAA and Adolfo & Roberto promotions to AA by the end of May at the latest.

I’d say Robert >>> Basabe >>>>>> Gonzalez >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Rutherford & Walker.

With Kopech’s injury & Hansen going 100% backwards, we really need Dunning to come back strong this year. If he & Cease can be pushing for rotation spots by year-end that will greatly improve our chances of competing in 2020.

Burger’s injury was truly devastating to our corner infield depth. I really want to believe he’ll come back strong next year, but at this point we’ll have to start thinking about addressing 3B without him. And outside of moving Moncada to 3B, we don’t really any options in the near term.

The org really needs to find a way to get Sheets to tap into his power next year. Not a good sign for the development staff that a kid with 70 grade raw power only hit six HRs playing half his games in a bandbox.

Man this year was a disaster injury wise and the kicks just keep coming.

You can’t have both Jack. Either you can acquire Mack (costing cap space & draft resources) and build an elite defense or you can save those assets for a rainy day if our GM is wrong & Mitch ultimately flops. I’m not sure what the latter really accomplishes if your goal is to win a championship. I’d rather trust our front offices evaluation of Mitch and go for it while he has a cheap contract.

100% disagree with this post. The Bears had a pretty complete roster short of a proven edge rusher. With Mack they have what could be a top 5 defense. Offensively they have a ton of weapons that could ultimately make it dangerous, but it’s going to take some time for all the parts to gel. Acquiring Mack made a ton of sense once we plugged our other major holes with high prices free agents. The biggest single question mark is obviously Trubisky. I can openly say he hasn’t looked great so far this year, but as I’ve said repeatedly in this thread no one should expect him to at this point. The Bears did him no favors last year and really curbed his development by giving him no receivers and forcing him to spend a year learning a terribly poor & conservative offense. He needs more than three weeks before we start jumping to conclusions. Regardless, this team is much better than you’re giving them credit for. The defense alone gives them a pretty solid floor. And it’s not unfathomable that Mitch makes some major strides over the next few months as he gets more reps and that the offense starts to click in the second half. Clearly Pace believes in Trubisky or he wouldn’t have paid the price he did for Mack. And guess what, if he’s wrong and Mitch doesn’t develop into a quality QB, the lost draft picks won’t really matter that much in the grand scheme of things as Trubisky is getting at least the next two years to prove himself. Failure at that point means the beginning of another rebuild & regime or AKA bigger fish to fry than a pick swap in the 2020 draft.

As painful as that loss was, there were some significant positives. The front seven of the defense looks like it will be elite (health permitting), with Mack looking like an absolute game changer. The offense has a ton of weapons, perhaps more than I can remember in my lifetime as a Bears fan. And they all offer different looks/skills, which should work wonders for an innovate mind like Nagy. Regarding Mitch, he flashed both good & bad at times. There were moments I thought he looked very composed in the pocket despite being rushed whereas down the stretch when the pressure turned up a notch he was missing passes by a wide margin. I’ll keep saying it but he needs more time to learn the offense and adjust to the speed of the NFL. People have way too high of expectations of him here. The biggest disappointment to me was Nagy. Whoever said he was playing to not lose in the second half is right. The play calling was way too conservative (and stupid at times) and it’s clear he didn’t want to risk Mitch turning over the the ball. And I’ve already said, but not going for it on 4th & 1 while on the road against an all-time great QB with all the momentum was just plain dumb IMO. Having said all that, one game doesn’t change my long term outlook on Nagy which is incredibly positive. He’ll learn from this and become a better coach in the long-run.

Bears meatball fans have to be the worst in all of sports. I might actually have to listen to WSCR tomorrow just to hear all the hot takes.

100% agree. I’m a huge Nagy believer, but I think he made some mistakes tonight. All part of the learning process.

Jack, if your analysis of Trubisky includes any games from last year then it’s flawed from the get go. He was a fairly raw prospect coming out of college and played with what might be the worst WR group in recent NFL history. He was setup for failure last year. And his first game under Nagy doesn’t mean much either. We all have to give this kid half a season under Nagy before we hit the panic button.

And if we want to blame anyone for the loss tonight (other than Fuller), let’s rip Nagy for not going for it on 4th & 1 on like the 12 yard line. The 3 points we got there don’t really mean much when you’r going against a QB like Rodgers with plenty of time on the clock. If I had to guess, Nagy didn’t want to be burned on two aggressive play calls in one game and decided to play it safe. And I’m not playing the hindsight card, I was pissed the moment they decided to go for the field goal. Very dumb decision IMO.

Horrible loss, but some of these takes are beyond hilarious. Mitch didn’t look great tonight by any means, but let’s give him a bit more time with Nagy before we determine he sucks.

This Kopech news has hit me hard, but the worst part without question is having to endure Tommy Longo trying to use this as part of his agenda. Rick Hahn did NOT cause the tear in Kopech’s UCL and using that against him is just plain trolling.

100% agree on the need to trade Rodon now.

I’m not really worried about that as much. Losing 1/6 of our team control with him and now having him work through growing pains in 2020 rather than 2019 changes the complexion of the entire rebuild. Thank god we kept Eloy down because next year is a lost cause now.