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After an internal mod/admin conversation and due to a few people posting literally hundreds of "confused" reactions and instead of using it to contribute to conversation using it as a passive aggressive means of detracting from conversation, the reaction has been disabled until further notice.

This is all very confusing.

Kopech's last 5 starts: 31 IP, 27 H, 4 BB, 41 K, 8 ER. 11.90 K/9, 1.16 BB/9, 1.00 WHIP, 2.32 ERA, 10.25 K:BB.

To be fair I think you'd rather get a root canal than see Moncada succeed.

A full 25% of his Ks are bad calls. Turn even 25% of those into hits and his average is up to basically .250. His OPS is probably somewhere around .800 or close to it, and people are talking about Yoan as an all-star instead of a bust.

Save the whining for the Moncada thread. We don't have to hear about #bustwatch every time he has an at bat. I'm getting tired of it. As a matter of fact, I think we should have a thread for all of those who only want to b**** about Moncada sucking. Nobody's happy about it and development isn't linear. Kwitcherb****in people. It makes gamethreads insufferable.

I just wanted all of you to know. That I really, REALLY like all of you guys and gals.

Screw confused trolls. Likes or nothing.

Totally agree, but that stat shows a big hole in the biggest worry about Yoan. The umpiring has cost him probably 75 to 100 OPS points this year. That is insane.

So everyone remembers Hahn’s trades during the rebuild, but I thought it would be fun to look at Hahn’s prior to the official sell-off (which I view as the Duke for Tilson trade). I’ve included my scoring each for the hell of it. Jeff Soptic to the Giants for Conor Gillaspie (9/10) Matt Thornton to the Red Sox for Brandon Jacobs (7/10) Jake Peavy to the Red Sox for Avi Garcia, Frankie Montas, Cleulius Rondon, & JB Wendelken (7/10) Alex Rios to the Rangers for Luery Garcia (8/10) Hector Santiago & Brandon Jacobs in three team trade for Adam Eaton (10/10) Addison Reed to the Diamondbacks for Matt Davidson (7/10) Gordon Beckham to the Angels for Yencey Almonte (10/10) Marcus Semien, Chris Bassitt, Josh Phegley, & Rangel Ravelo to the A’s for Jeff Samardzija & Michael Ynoa (4/10) Andre Rienzo to the Marlins for Dan Jennings (8/10) Yency Almonte to the Rockies for Tommy Kahnle (9/10) JB Wendelken & Zack Erwin to the A’s for Brett Lawrie (7/10) Trayce Thompson, Micah Johnson, & Frankie Montas in three team trade for Todd Frazier (7/10) Erik Johnson & Fernando Tatis to the Padres for James Shields (0/10) Honestly, looking back at those moves there are only two I would consider questionable. Shark wasn’t a great idea from the get go, but at least we ended up with a 1st round pick out of it. The Shields move is obviously a disaster and looks like it may be one of the worst trades in franchise history. Otherwise, I think he’s done pretty well on the trade front with the Eaton & two Almonte trades being big winners. Obviously this doesn’t excuse the misses in free agency and some other mistakes, but his track record isn’t as bad as some people would have you believe.

Isn’t 2 WAR average?

I know, everyone thought Luhnow was crazy...polarizing...Darth Vader...the early contracts for guys like Singleton, the Brady Aiken fiasco, the Appel fiasco, the JD Martinez fiasco. The mysterious proprietary database that set the standard for the industry. Nobody likes change and innovation. He was essentially Moneyball 2, except with even more “tech geeks” involved. Luhnow’s a stone cold killer, the Verlander, Cole and Osuna acquisitions are further proof. Exactly when have the White Sox ever innovated and led the industry since 2006? And Luhnow at least provoked a strong reaction, one way or the other, love or hate. Hahn is probably the most vanilla and least charismatic leader since...well, I guess there’s always Robin Ventura to pick on. Maybe because we’re forced to listen to Maddon and Epstein all the time, the juxtaposition of styles couldn’t be any greater. Maybe he’s zigging where everyone else is zagging, ala a certain occupant at 1600 Pennsylvania?

That is not the question. The question is what occurred prior to Dec 2016that would suggest RH and KW are the team that should be in charge of a total rebuild, to build a team with sustainable success.

Honestly, the reactions are starting to ruin this board. I know it's not a big deal, but the reactions are clearly escalating the frustration and the stupidity here. My suggestion: dump "confused", just give us "Likes" and be done with it. Only positive reputation or nothing.

It has become a cesspool of people b****ing. They want him to be good right now. These people remind me of Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka."Don't care how, I want it now" This is sports, it is supposed to be fun. Make it fun to watch him grow, instead of frustrating. Be happy when Moncada gets a hit or a HR and shrug it off when he doesn't. Chalk it up to "development isn't linear" When Moncada puts it all together(and I think he will, which is why I said when and not if) he's going to be really fun to watch.

Apparently you missed the irony being quite literally the most confused poster on Soxtalk.

Are you going to quote half of a sentence? Or visit my profile again?

Based on your recent posts today in this thread it is certainly in character for you to read only half of a sentence.

I concur. I am often confused when mods cite statistics incorrectly. My error. You've convinced me based on your modified definition of the statistic that the umpires are out to screw a guy who has never had a problem with the umpires. Very well reasoned.

I must be confused. I thought the stat said "on the edges or outside". Unless 100% of those pitches are fully outside that does not make all 38 of those pitches bad calls. You quoted the statistic, you should actually read it's definition.

That's not actually the statistic. You're ignoring half of it's definition.

Average starter. I don't consider being on pace to be an average starter "struggling to be average". Maybe you do.

Report post Posted 9 minutes ago (edited) No it’s not. I don’t think anyone has said the rebuild is a failure fire them now. I think it is logical to think they shouldn’t be the ones ding the rebuild. It’s also logical to state most other teams if not all, would have changed regimes for such an undertaking.  JR has fired 2 GMs during his White Sox ownership for reasons given, Hahn is just as guilty. Roland Hemond was fired after 1985, a season where the Sox won 85 games, because his minor league system was beyond awful, the Sox had some injuries, and the replacements weren’t major league quality. In honor of Taylor street sox, RH checks that box. He fired Larry Himes, near the end of a rebuild after the Sox won 94 games with the lowest payroll in baseball. Many know that JR didn’t particularly care for Larry on a personal level, but the reason give was can take a team from point A to point B but not to point C. How that was determined I have no idea, but at the deadline that year, Oakland acquired Harold Baines and Willie MCGee, the Sox added Minnie Minoso, who the commissioner then blocked, and Jerry Hairston, as a Pension related favor. Neither move had Himes fingerprints on it. But if you take JR at his word with the A to B to C crap, Hahn has shown when the White Sox were “going for it”, point B wasn’t much of a problem, but point C was nowhere in sight. he is a bright guy and talks a nice game. But the fact is, it’s 2018 and there is no evidence yet any of his genius has to do with baseball.

It’s not the question of what have they done since the beginning of the rebuild. It is what have they done prior to give them a 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 year window before anyone can critique them again? What kind of teams are in a position they have to trade cheaply signed stars! The Marlins? That isn’t exactly high company. As I wrote earlier, I believe at the end of next season, we should see some maturing. If these guys already on the big league roster are still struggling to be average, it may be time to look for some new evaluators. What I don’t get is the GM , a guy who has a far greater effect overall in producing a winning team, gets a far longer rope, and much less criticism than uniformed personnel who can only work with what they are given.

The part about the Astros and Cubs fans couldn’t be further from the truth, Caulfield. Read the book Astroball, which is an account of the building of the Astros by the same author who wrote the infamous SI cover story. Astros fans LAUGHED and MOCKED that prediction. Go check Twitter, if you don’t believe me. Secondly, I do not need to bet my kid’s education fund to be confident in this FO and this rebuild. Would I bet a significant sum of money that sometime in the early 2020’s the White Sox will be a perennial competitor? Absolufuckinglutely.

There aren’t many since 2012. Abreu, convincing Robert to sign and the amount of money earmarked, more draft spending/focus, Avi’s 2017, Anderson’s rookie year and parts of 2018, Moncada for stretches...Giolito and Lopez for stretches. Rodon fell into their laps as the obvious choice at #3. On the other hand, how close are we to having Tanaka and Gordon on what would be franchise killing contracts at this point in 2018? What assessment have they made since 2011 that was spot on in the FA market? What has been the real payoff of Marco Paddy? When have we hired a manager who wasn’t there to absorb flak from the media/fanbase and cover for JR/KW/RH? Greg’s not right on many baseball insights, but he was dead on about Francona when he joined the Indians. Even the revenue-starved Indians were willing to pony up legit cash there.

It doesn’t matter. That decision was already made. You cannot allow them to preside over this process if you have no confidence in their ability to do so effectively. They have done absolutely nothing of any consequence since this direction was taken which would lead one to believe they should be fired. If you want to fire them for the mistakes made in 2015, so be it, but that shows a tremendous flaw in reasoning and decision making.

Someone please answer this question for me: What, within this FO’s control, has happened since December 2016, that would lead anyone to believe they should be fired? The point that something has occurred since then which is even remotely close to a fireable offense is entirely lost on me.

No the Sox must wait for the extra year of control. No bringing up players in the middle of the year.

Right on cue, here's Tom to derail a civil, productive discussion, all the while being guilty of the very thing he's accusing me of doing. It's shameless trolling at this point, and it's quite unfortunate that one poster has singlehandedly lowered the bar for quality of discourse throughout the entire site.

A lot of young players are up but not many have been really good. Also a lot of good prospects are still down. Which pieces of the current mlb players do you think will be significant pieces and who will be pushed out or relegated to a bench role?

I don't care if someone likes loves laughs or is confused by my posts. Is there someway to turn it off? I'm only interested in replies. It's annoying to get notifications and then see it's just somebody being "confused" by post. I looked in the notification settings for a way to turn it off but can't find it.

Out of the 5 most important players on the current roster, only Rodon has taken a big step forward. If you want to include Fulmer, it’s 1/6. Or you can argue Lopez and Anderson have made “tremendous or moderate” progress, but that’s open to interpretation.

So the Twins rebuild was going well and it went south. What does that have to do with the ridiculous statement "The rebuild isn't going well"?

Tell that to Terry Ryan, who built the #1 farm system from 2014-16 and formed the teams that reached the playoffs from 2002-2004, 2006, 2009 and 2010. Ryan stepped down in 2007 but returned in 2011 after hand-picked successor Bill Smith could not continue the team's success. The Twins are in the middle of their fifth losing season in the last six years. A 2015 season that saw them return to contention in the division proved not to be enough when the team sank to the bottom of the American League this summer. Ryan handed out big money to pitchers Ervin Santana, Ricky Nolasco and Phil Hughes in an effort to address the team's biggest weakness in the starting rotation, but all have been disappointments. The decisions to sign South Korean slugger Byung Ho Park, hold on to veteran third baseman Trevor Plouffe this offseason and move promising youngster Miguel Sano from third base to right field all proved to be ill-fated. Sano was injured while playing in the outfield and is back at third base, Plouffe is on the disabled list and his trade value has been diminished and Park has been sent to Triple-A to try to ease his transition from Korea to the United States.

Third best farm system in the sport but "the rebuild isn't going well" Are people seriously reading these posts and saying I'm baiting?

The rebuild isn't going that well currently but I don't think Hahn can be blamed for everyone getting hurt. Maybe a small blame can be put on the minor league fitness coaching and medical staff but then again health was one of the few things that worked well for the sox in the 12-16 time frame. Maybe it was just bad luck. Health is a big issue for everyone in mlb and if the sox want to win this needs to get better.

People were pretty excited about him, but quite frankly he wasn’t very good his first year. Bush’s start has been unbelievable and the scouting reports back it up.

Were the White Sox rebuilding in 2013, 2015, and 2016?

Who cares who moved eaton to RF he was fine there, the real trick that we somehow pulled of was keeping Eaton healthy for 3 seasons.

That is not what I said, I said he would still snap out of it and wasn't a .500 OPS player, but he's also not a .850 OPS player any more either, he's getting gradually worse against fastballs every season. And the one this game is the first time I've seen him turn around a fastball this entire hot streak.

Well he signed Chris Sale in March of 2013, Jose Quintana in March of 2014, Traded for Adam Eaton in December of 2013. I’d say these moves alone keep him from some of the ridiculous statements you make above.

So @flippedoutpunk and @Goober this thread seems pretty confusing to you guys?

Here we are, back at point number 1. You have absolutely no idea what the owner of the team wanted. Have you ever read actual accounts from GMs about how operating an MLB team actually works, in real life? Most GMs are simply doing their best to carry out the orders of their Owner. Sometimes, their owner is not being entirely reasonable. You should read Ned Coletti’s book to get an idea about that. Not everyone gets to come in and make the decision whether to compete or not simply because they are the GM. See Jake’s post below. And before someone says it, NO, IF YOU WERE RICK HAHN AND JR INSISTED YOU TO TRY AND COMPETE IN 2014, YOU WOULD NOT QUIT YOUR JOB. That is a downright ridiculous, disingenuous notion that couldn’t be further from actual truth. I suspect there is some truth to what Jake is saying, and it very well may have taken the futility of 2013-16 to convince JR to allow them to rebuild. The Cubs winning in 2016 also has a huge influence on JR, and this is fairly well-documented. You admit that it was basically impossible for the White Sox to win between 2013-2016. While I have been watching baseball long enough to disagree with that, you are correct in stating it was an incredibly difficult task. In the end, I don’t lay much fault at their feet for not succeeding in a such a task, particularly since it was very likely not a choice they had in the first place.

Wait, what? You just let this FO make the most important decisions for this franchise in probably 20 years. And you are going to fire them before you see whether this pans out or not? What did people expect when we chose this path? What has gone so drastically off track since then? What major offense has been committed SINCE we let this FO trade Chris Sale? People need to have patience. This was never going to be a win in 2018 thing. 2019 was always best case, and while that isn’t looking great at the moment, a LOT will change between today, and next 8-12 months. We will add a potential ace. We will add a potential all-star caliber hitter. We will potentially spend hundreds of millions of dollars in free agency. We will have a top 3 draft pick. The years the Cubs and Astros first competed came out of absolute nowhere. Let’s all keep our eyes on the things that truly matter here.

The entire premise is simply ridiculous. First of all, it presumes all kinds of things in regards to what has happened over the last 6-7 years, which is speculative, in most cases likely flat-out wrong, ignores Hahn’s history with the organization, and because of that, is a very weak foundation upon which to base the entire argument. Secondly, how are we going to judge the guy in a role he didn’t have? Balta wants to suggest Hahn would have been fired by every other team for this performance, and yet, Hahn wasn’t working for the 29 other teams. He was working for the White Sox, whom he has worked for since November of 2000. Since then, he’s been entrusted with a number of high-profile negotiations, including Mark Buehrle and Paul Konerko several times each, Chris Sale, Jose Quintana, Adam Eaton, Jose Abreu, etc. While it is true that Rick has been GM since November of 2012, and we can only speculate in regards to the decision making process our FO utilizes, I think it’s a fair guess to suggest JR, KW and RH collaborate with a lot of direction coming from JR. Given the relative strength of the Central division, the starting rotation the FO was able to assemble, the state of the Cubs at the time, and some of the transactions Hahn and Co were able to make, I think a fairly strong defense can be levied for continuing to make a run at being competitive between 2013-2016. It is very easy to criticize now in hindsight, particularly with the success of the Astros’ and Cubs’ rebuilds, but in those years it was still very unclear as to whether those tear downs were going to be successful. I remember quite a bit of mocking of the Cubs and Astros around these parts as we cheered on our own failed attempts to supplement our roster through trades and FA signings (remember the excitement around here as the White Sox were hailed as being FA “winners” in 2014?). Again, hindsight is a wonderful thing. Thirdly, Balta assumes that the fact that some GMs are fired because they didn’t win is a wise reason to fire them. Again, there are 29 other teams. Not every team can win. I understand the arguments about the playoff drought. I do. But in my view, neither KW, nor RH have ever made a move that one would call a “fireable offense.” While their moves have not always worked out well (Adam Dunn, trading for James Shields, etc), I challenge you to track the transactional history of whomever you believe to be the top 5-10 GMs in baseball, and I guarantee you they have moves on their resumes that look entirely foolish with the benefit of hindsight. Ultimately, KW and RH have provided a very good balance of aggressiveness and forward-thinking responsible behavior. The result of this blend of perspectives has been an opportunity to try to compete when competing made sense, with the ability to entirely pivot and reposition the organization towards a more modern, sustainable approach within a very short timeframe. If you are of the opinion that talented people with a good thought process should be fired simply because the results don’t always bear out those talents, then you are going to be firing a lot of good people. From my perspective, the FO should only be fired because their thought process was entirely wrong, or they lacked the ability to execute on that thought process. I feel that neither of these is the case with our FO. The team simply didn’t win. And that is indeed partially their fault. But the more important measure of their work during this time period, tbh, is that they did not make any moves to seriously handcuff the organization moving forward. Say what you will about the efficacy of some of their efforts, but a seldom mentioned one is their ability to retain future flexibility as a result of avoiding the really crippling moves. Fourthly, if you’ve witnessed the transactions which we’ve made since the decision was made to rebuild, and you think RH is the worst GM in the League...well, I simply cannot understand that logic. The trades of Sale, Eaton and Quintana, while perhaps not perfect in every respect, are fairly difficult to really criticize in my opinion. Those are all strong returns, particularly the first and the last. The Yankees move I was not enthralled with, but to be frank, that isn’t looking too bad the further we get away from it, and to be fair, in reading the reports of how that trade came to fruition, I suspect that may have been a transaction which was negotiated more so by KW than RH, due to KW and Cashman’s longstanding history. But this FO, whomever is doing the actual negotiations, took a handful of assets with surplus value (whom they acquired, signed, etc) and turned a bottom third farm system into a top 3 system in all of baseball, the headliners of which, should all be on the mlb team within 18 months or so. The execution of these latest transactions, including the Robert deal, are incredibly undersold around here. The ability to get the return for Sale they did (despite the fact that he is a HoF pitcher), is to be commended. In the 12 months leading up to that trade, the VAST majority of folks here thought Sale was untradable (Balta, yourself included) because no organization would pay the necessary return. WRONG. The Eaton deal was widely praised everywhere (with the exception of ss2k, who was furious we didn’t get a few bats...was he wrong, in retrospect?), and still is likely to end up a big winner for the organization. The Quintana deal needs no explanation. The discipline to wait and wait and wait, while Quintana made lukewarm start after lukewarm start, to finally POUNCE on an aggressive GM caught up in the moment was BRILLIANT, and will likely provide this Organization with two extremely critical pieces moving forward, each of which could very easily provide more value individually than the player which was traded. So in conclusion...is this FO the best FO in basebal? Is RH the sharpest mind in baseball? Likely not. There are some incredibly taklented folks in this business. However, is he the worst? Absolutely not. Not even close.

I normally would agree, but he does have a point. RH would have been fired by just about every other team given his team’s performance since he became a GM. Maybe not 4 times, but at least once. Considering he was part of the decision making process previous to that, it isn’t like he was put in a position of cleaning up someone else’s mess, or had no idea just how bad the mess was. That said, these prospects are anywhere near as good as they claim, he will totally redeem himself

Does the NFL do the type of continuous monitoring blood-testing and isotope checking that you have criticized MLB for not doing?

I just don’t understand what the folks are watching that are already calling the guy a bust. I cannot pretend as though his stubborn approach at times doesn’t frustrate me. However, when he does square up a pitch he likes, do you not see how the ball comes off his bat? Do you not see how f’ing fast he is? Even when he is down 0-2, do you see how he pisses on pitches out of the zone? Did you see that in July, his RH PAs have taken a large step forward? I don’t know how else to say it, as so many other folks have said it, but Yoan already HAS the most difficult to acquire tools/skills he needs to be a superstar player. The ones he has to improve upon are those that come far more easy. He learn that he simply cannot be so selective. He will understand how much damage he can do on pitches in the zone, even if they are not precisely to his liking. This will come with more PAs, and with continued study. When it does...watch out

What is it you guys say? Go Cubs Go, right? You and your little Cubbie crew aught to leave the White Sox discussion to people with real thought.