Leaderboard

Apologies - this was an issue with our server (not the server company) but a capacity issue. It hit and basically ran out of space so just started shutting down. It started happening last week intermitently but wasn't aware of the broader issue. Unfortunately - I was traveling in remote parts starting Friday so was NOT aware and when I became aware, well, I wasn't about to cut a rural vacation short for Soxtalk (sorry guys). But yesterday I dug my car out and first thing I did when I get home was chat through and identify the issue, so everything should be back and working well and I don't expect the issue that persisted the past week to pop back up. So we should be back for good.

James Fegan's article over on the Athletic with his first take on the roster led to a lot of comments wailing about the Sox' inability to fill the RF and 2B slots with above average major leaguers. That's not the Sox' main problem. Here's the problem. This list is not any ranked order. 1. Tim Anderson, 79 games, .686 OPS against RHP 2. Yasmani Grandal, 99 games, 64 OPS+ 3. Luis Robert, 98 games, .702 OPS against RHP 4. Yoan Moncada, 104 games, 76 OPS+ 5. Eloy Jimenez, 84 games. 6. Lucas Giolito, 4.90 ERA over 161.2 innings. 82 ERA+ 7. Michael Kopech, 119.1 innings. 8. Lance Lynn, 121.2 innings, 99 ERA+ 9. No more Jose Abreu, who played 157 games at 133 OPS+ The core of the White Sox cannot stay healthy, and even when they are in the game, do not produce at superior levels. Only Eloy Jimenez produced an OPS+ above 110. Meanwhile, the starting staff had Dylan Cease and Johnny Cueto pitching when called upon at superior levels. Kopech didn't get to 120 innings, and Lance Lynn and Lucas Giolito were sub par starters. They are also a bad fielding club, though taking Vaughn and Sheets and Jimenez out of the outfield should help. For the Sox to contend for anything, these 8 players all need to stay healthy and produce at superior levels. If they do, it won't really matter who plays 2b and RF, because they can carry a couple of weaker spots in the lineup. If they don't, it won't really matter who plays 2b and RF, because those positions cannot makeup for failures from the core of the team.

Yep someone tell soxtalk to only run at half the speed it currently does to avoid breaking

I'm truly not sure how much longer I can follow this team. Absolute losers all around.

Release him and fire Hahn, good lord. It’s not like Clevinger being a shithead wasn’t known.

I donated $5. I think it’s great. I don’t even live in Illinois but f*** Jerry. I’ve spent $5 on much dumber s%*# in my life.

Lift the entire stadium up and rotate it so there's a view of downtown from behind home plate.

I'm gonna put you down as a maybe.

Technically, the game where TLR batted Leury 3rd was also a forfeit.

Eloy- you be the leader. You’ll be in the dugout most of the time anyway.

So human rights is leftist and or political. Cool cool. Seriously, GTFO with that noise.

In the spirit of your excellent post, you can’t even trust that this is the low point.

Man, every time I come back and see this thread title, it makes me angrier. Both for the filthy, shithead nature of the player’s actions, and for the sorry state of the team. This Clevinger incident is probably not their fault, but when you run such a joke ass franchise you realize that this type of gut punch exposes the lack of preparation and professionalism evident in every aspect of the org. You can’t trust that they did their due diligence in the first place. You see the lack of depth and roster prep exposed before training camp even begins. You can’t trust they’ll do what it takes to fill the roster hole. Even if they do fill the hole, you can’t trust they’ll target you he right type of player. You realize how needlessly risky the process of rushing out and “beating the other teams to the market” is on these interesting but flawed project-types, and how much it sucks that the only reason to take those risks is to try to avoid paying market value on middling players. Hell, you can’t even trust they’ll do the right thing with regards to dealing with Clevinger. About the only thing you CAN trust is that whatever lessons they learn from this ordeal will probably be the wrong ones. Well, and I guess you can also trust that the media message we get will be akin to shrugging and feeling sorry for themselves for “circumstances beyond their control” yet again, never stopping to wonder if there might be a reason that those circumstances seem to happen so much more often to the White Sox than everyone else. This feels like a low point that I’m going to remember for a long time.

This tweet is actually the best way to put it:

Good god is this a disaster. So to summarize, this off-season we have lost the following: 3.9 fWAR 1B 2.4 fWAR SP 1.6 fWAR CL 1.4 fWAR UT And assuming Clevinger is ultimately released, the only external addition of any significance is a non-power hitting LF. I won’t blame Hahn for the Hendriks situation or this latest nightmare, but it does highlight how much Hahn sucks at being a major league GM. Literally if anything else goes wrong from this point forward we are completely fucked because there isn’t a semblance of depth anywear except 1B/DH. When you stop augmenting the roster and instead bank on 100% health & luck you reap what you fucking sow. Can’t wait for the day this organization is finally free of the incompetence that is Rick Hahn.

Seems like you’re the one using it to push politics. The post you’re quoting is merely “pushing” some of the great work Liam has done in the local community.

FYI, it’s Chas Jizzhome.

This is gutting. I have no doubt he will survive but he's widely regarded as the best person in the game. My friend works with Howard Brown, an LGBTQ health center in Chicago and the amount of work he has done for them is immense. Also remembering how vocal he was after the Supreme Court ruling. I'm so proud he's a White Sock. Hope this is a blip and he's back either later this year or next. Just hope he is ok.

I know Forbes is seemingly as accurate as we'll get on the public side, but I don't believe for a second the Sox lost money in 2021. Open up the books and prove it.

I know people love to s%*# on the Sox no matter what and a lot of it is warranted but I just don't get why people are making such a deal out of it. The Cubs had a press conference for Tucker Barnhart yesterday. He's a part time catcher who had a .554 OPS last year. The Pirates had a press conference for Vince Velasquez. Why are the Sox getting s%*# for having a presser for a guy who was an all star last year and just signed the biggest contract in Sox history? There are plenty of things to complain about around here. This aint it.

Rick Hahn content with mediocrity, news at 11.

Yet this guy still wears a sox uniform and cant be fired due to his ability to keep JR informed of the dugout.

Don't be the person who looks to make excuses for people like this, even accidentally.

Yes, we need these whippersnappers to play the game the white way!

LGBTQ right are leftist politics?

I’d rather spend $5 towards this than $25/30 for parking at the stadium lots.

Please be the white Sox getting put up for sale.

Since they had the LaRussa Lounge after the DUI, I fully expect the Clevinger Day Care Center to be next

Sure but likewise if you take the people in KC that haven't been murdered out of the equation, then the murder rate there is 100%. Pretty scary.

It honestly doesn’t matter if the Sox knew or not. If they did, it makes them look worse, but how much lower can it really get at this point? If you’re already swimming in s%*#, if someone dumps some more on, does it really matter? The point is they are so far away from earning any benefit of the doubt, on anything. Literally any move they make should be questioned by everyone. Their track record, especially over the last 24 months is hard to fathom. If you tried to make every wrong move, I still don’t think you accomplish what the White Sox have somehow done. The incompetence is borderline impressive.

This is exactly why victims are afraid to report. THEY get put on trail instead of the actual criminals. False reporting is such a small sliver of reports, and of those, people who are willing to report are also a small fraction of those who are abused.

I have no interest in playing your games on this topic.

The sad thing is that despite the White Sox claiming ignorance here, after what they pulled in the TLR hire, I can't even give them the benefit of the doubt that they didn't know what was going on. They need to do the right thing here.

Is it me or is Eloy clueless

You in mid-season form and it's not even February. He's wearing sneakers throwing off a mat lol.

A catcher who can't catch would be the most on brand signing ever.

Awful. Liam seems like a fantastic guy and I’m sure he’s going to raise a lot of awareness and money for the cause. Really hope they caught it early and he’ll be Ok. Baseball doesn’t matter with something like this.

Wow. Hope for the best, baseball is secondary.

$1M to get out of this hell hole of an organization. Dude got out cheap. I'm sure there are lots of other players who would take that action.

Don’t want to care, f*** that guy

This is gonna end up with some stupid s%*# like Eloy winning a Gold Glove in right field, but completely forgetting how to hit.

That's funny considering you posted in the Clevinger signing thread plenty, but never once alluded to how he has a bad person. Does anybody take this fraudulent insider's opinion seriously anymore? He's no more reliable than the foodies.

This is not true. You may be thinking of North Korea?

I keep seeing people say this here and even more on twitter, but beyond Clevinger just sort of having a rep for a being a bit of a dirtbag, how were the Sox supposed to know about this? There is no police report. Extremely likely that even if they pulled a detailed background check, nothing about this would have come up. The MLB doesn't report to local police departments. The league is quite literally bound by confidentiality on issues like this prior to the player having their day in court and they cannot essentially blackball a guy from the league for allegations. I understand why folks have a hard time wrapping their head around that, but that is quite literally what the legal document says. Go look at @Y2Jimmytwitter page. Are you expecting someone in the MLB offices to break those rules and call up the Sox when the caught wind of the signing? I mean, that is literally what people are insinuating should have happened. That would open up the MLB to all sorts of risk. Now, I can get people saying that Clevinger has always appeared to be a dirt bag and just steering clear of that type of character in general. I don't necessarily agree with that because I think alot of professional athletes are dirtbags and you're just putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage by avoiding all adulterous athletes, but I can at least see it. But to insinuate the Sox knew about this is advance, lied about it in their released statement, and just chose to sign this guy anyway is beyond silly.

Everyone wants Montgomery and the top guys. Sox aren’t going to do that for marginal upgrades. They needed to keep spending but Jerry lives to draw arbitrary lines in the sand

Imagine for a second, a poster like yourself, has already made multiple posts in a thread about this domestic violence situation. A simple click on your profile shows us you haven't made a post on this board since December 19, more than a month ago. That post on December 19th? Talking about how entertaining Trevor Bauer's YouTube channel is. I'm going to let all the facts play out here, but it would be easy for people to start making assumptions based on the evidence presented, no?

sox have a lot more information so it's a hellish thing to waste a 4th overall pick on a guy like this. But I could write a book on that lead up to his draft. I was happy sox selected madrigal, you read the write-ups, and a whole bunch of things that to me were not projection were written about him. You were getting a guy who was a defensive whiz. Amazing base runner and instincts. Prodigious hit tool. Sure, lacks power but what he does have, he gets all of it. Insane makeup. (that last one is unforgiveable from Hostetlers team) And what makes me most annoyed is these same writers started to walk back this stuff about madrigal by August (so 2 months post draft). And by time he was in charlotte, man it was clear a bunch was bullshit. So, basically as much as he is an annoying person to read, you have to take keith law seriously. His sourced scouts are very good and critical especially against romantic stuff like madrigals grindiness. Now, the other thing unfortunately is the 2018 draft was garbage. Some post in 5 years is gonna be like "actually Nick Madrigal had like 6th most WAR in the first round" blah blah.

I know Liam reads through our posts on Soxtalk.. Liam, you got this buddy! We love you, we’re praying for you and we wish you a speedy recovery. The 2023 season is dedicated to you!

Nobody thinks this will get him to sell. But that doesn't mean a little embarrassment wont be fun to snicker about. Hopefully this gets a little snippet on national tv.