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He had the Marlins in the WS. Look at the mess he had when he took over the Tigers and he made the WS by 2006. All of the 3 teams he GMd made the WS. Detroit twice. I If he's a dunce, what is Rick Hahn? And I will give him credit for signing JD Martinez. Picked him up as a free agent after Houston released him. And if you are not going to credit him for Martinez or Sale, will you give him credit for his minor deal when he acquired the WS MVP? He also beat the White Sox out for Miguel Cabrera, an AL Central game changer.

Low rent. It's too bad this place has become a cesspool of non-takes. I mean, for God's sake this is worse than a Bulls board. You're watching the best White Sox prospect since Frank Thomas and you still find a way to moan. After a win.

Eloy, Moncada, Anderson tearing it up. The minors is bubbling with talent. The rebuild has been on. Get aboard or get out.

Lucas, stop worrying about soxtalk and go get ready for the bottom of the 2nd

JR being worried about years 9 and 10 in a Machado contract indicates some sort of Reinsdorf ownership for a long time.

Illini and CWS the new Ss2K vs Balta, Caulfield vs DA, etc.

Well fuck this guy, amirite? Total jinx

Mainly because the pitching is still very high risk, and most of us no longer have faith that this FO can bring the right free agents to complete the roster.

Great fucking call. Benetti is a huge upgrade over 70 year old Hawk.

Now hitting 304 with a 347 OBP and just a matter of time before a power surge comes. As I’ve said all week, with the way TA, Moncada, and Eloy are playing I don’t quite understand why there’s so much doom and gloom. With what Robert is doing in the minors, the Sox have the makings of a foursome of everyday players that Will be able to match any team in the league.

^^^ Close enough

What a great call by Benetti

I'm not even going to take a lot out of this start for Gio. Throwing a slick baseball in the pouring rain is not fair. Not to him and not to the fielders either. They shouldn't be playing this game.

I was wr I was wro I wa wrong

Did I just see Giolito listed amongst guys like Johnson & Maddux?

I think we are getting good Gio tonight.

Who needs a catcher, really... Or has Greg's prayers finally been answered and we're putting Tim Anderson there?

Holy fuck you guys will literally cry about anything

95% of the team was acquired, drafted and developed by someone else. You want to pat the guy on the back for signing jd Martinez? Sale is a big TBD too. He didnt do much down the stretch or in the playoffs. He was actually bad. Then he signs him to an extension. I love sale but if you want to pat a GM on the back for thinking that Sale and JD Martinez were good then you better be ready to pat a lot of backs.

Apparently I have heard of literally no one being mentioned on this board today.

Do you know what logic is? Herrera and Colombe are actually good, valuable, and has a good track record unlike Osich who supports a career 5 era. Nice try though

When they lead to world series victories? A lot. You seem to be capable of a lot of cognitive dissonance that actually all of hahns worst moves are okay, and moves that led to a world series were in fact bad.

This isn't my job to do. How many relievers did we use last year? That is the white sox job.

lol GMAB 10 other guys just like him. With Minaya or Brennan there was no one who saw either as more than filler anyway. And between those two, knowing what and who they are, Minaya is the easy choice to keep because he's likely to be able to get some outs here and there at the MLB level. If you want to talk 10 guys, there are 10 actual prospects who needed protection this past winter that I would have protected over Brennan. Sometimes a prospect clicks with a change of scenery. That doesn't necessarily mean the previous team screwed up (though sometimes it does). And again, get back to me in a few months. I think the frustration with the team (which I am totally on board with) is making people overreact to some pretty silly things. Not one person on SoxTalk or anywhere else did I see be upset about leaving Brennan unprotected. Hell when he was taken in the R5 there were a crapload of people around the Sox and overall prospect sites who said "WTF?". Baseball America's JJ Cooper did his usual R5 preview with like 75 players and Brennan never was even considered for it, he later said.

In trying to find positives I was thinking how likeable our future stars appear to be. Moncada, Anderson and Jimenez all smiles and happiness. Madrigal, Cease, Robert and Kopech also have nice attitudes when I see them interviewed. Once this all comes together I think we will have a nice bunch of guys to encourage. Thomas & Buehrle were great baseball players and came across as good natured guys. Great examples for the current group to emulate.

Brennan was a guy I had as an "Adopt A Prospect", so I know a little about the guy. I've seen him pitch, I even interviewed him some years ago. The reality is the guy came into the system with interesting stuff (mid-90s sinker, slider that showed promise) but repeatedly struggled with command, and injuries, and re-tooling of his arsenal. His stuff in the upper levels never really indicated future MLB success. So this one, I really don't mind it. In fact I am skeptical that he keeps it up. Let's see how he is doing come July. Is it possible the Mariners saw something the Sox didn't, had him make a change or two and now he's playable? Sure. The Sox have done that with pitchers successfully too. More often than I've seen it the other way around in fact. It just doesn't bother me I guess.

Cringe x100

Just sell JR you have no interest in being competitive

Re: the financials: It's far more complicated than you're presenting and I get that as you may not have the understanding necessary. Knowing how much ISFA paid for the Sox deal is only one piece of the puzzle. In order to answer Fan O'Faust's question, you would need much more detail. As his question was about the White Sox operating results (not the ISFA financials that you're clinging to in hopes of salvaging your initial inaccurate comment), that additional detail needed would have to come from the Sox. Further than that, assessing what the Sox would be paying in a market scenario would be a daunting task in itself. His question is only answered if the cost of the alternative is understood. Butt since you're going to get personal I'll bow out since we both know how you play with the rules. I am not sure of the relevance here. Enron was a fraud based upon bogus special purposes entities, recognizing profits before they'd been realized and conflict of interest creating Independence issues between the executive team and the public accounting firm. The White Sox took advantage of corrupt political environment. Also, Enron was a public entity so their financials and operating results are readily accessible to anyone whereas the White Sox are a private institution. Furthermore, Enron's execs were creating dubious financials to pump the publicly traded stock. Publicly traded stocks created hundreds of thousands of shareholders that the executives screwed over. Where the Sox are only beholden to only their private group of ownership and their creditor(s) (if any). Sometimes it's a lot easier to just admit you're wrong on the first point you made rather than moving goal posts to open up another can of worms that you can't intelligibly speak to. I should say though, congrats on your recent SoxTalk anniversary. 16 whole years of making 26 posts a day. That's quite an accomplishment.

We are 11 games into a 162 game season. My sincere advice to boarders who are (understandably) extraordinarily frustrated is to not get wedded to a doom and gloom board persona wherein you are rationalizing your position that everything sucks for the remainder of this season. They might break out versus the Yanks this weekend. They might next week. Let's all just relax and let it happn. Certainly, at some point, they're going to go through a stretch where they play much much better baseball than this. There's no pressure on this team from a record standpoint - so who cares how many wins and losses we have? Silver linings are in a bunch of places - Gio's first start Rodon's first AND second start Moncada/Eloy/Anderson's great starts Even identifying things like "Palka is a sure fire NON major leaguer" is way better than him dabbling with 20 home runs and a 0.8 WAR to have him hang around. Same goes for a player like Yolmer. The sooner we move on from placeholders, the better place we will be in medium term. I'm gonna give it 30 games. I suggest everyone think about doing the same.

Imagine trying to put down Theo Epstein to make Hahn seem not as horrid. Couldn't be me

So a collection of Theo's worst signings came out to a 17 mill/War, $4 million per WAR less than a collection of all of Hahns signings minus Abreu. That tells me a lot.

Not exactly sure what swapping Frare with Osich accomplishes. Take the 25 year old lefty reliever that has a future with the organization and trade him out for a 30 year old lefty reliever who doesn't have a future with the organization and has been mostly terrible in his previous chances in the show.

Part of the bad watchability is the game is close to over in the first inning. The first inning was a problem last season as well. It would be nice not to be down a couple of runs before they came to bat.

You sound like my Cub fan friends who want "good guys" with Clark the bear roaming around. I don't care one lick whether the Sox have a team full of surly bastards if they win the division every year. AJ was a total jerk and the fans loved him.

He was also a 27-year-old who needed 3 seasons in AA to find success at that level. Who would you have removed from the 40-man to keep him this past winter? I understand it is frustrating to lose talent, but let's keep the full picture in mind.

People often ask what the objective is, but what we have to clarify is WHOSE objective do we mean when we ask that question. Over simplification, but: A - Fan A wants another year of tanking because the Sox are still rebuilding. Their objective is to get a high draft pick again. Record be damned. B - Fan B thinks this is year 3 of the rebuild and feels progress should be apparent. In their opinion the objective should be to see improvement and maybe win 70+ games. C - Fan C never wanted a rebuild in the first place. They believe the objective for 2019, as every year, should be to try to get to the playoffs. D - And then what is the objective of the front office for 2019???? That we have no idea about. I'd guess that right now they're somewhere in the area of B above, but the problem is it's looking more like A is still happening. Hence the frustration on the part of a lot of fans. Personally, I'm probably in the range of B above. But ..... I'd feel WAY more comfortable if option A ended up happening IF I felt category D knew what the hell they were doing. Unfortunately, I'm losing more hope on that front every year. And this winter my hope took a major hit. EDIT to summarize: There are definitely C people on this board and get totally get where they're coming from. But I think a lot of us here are B people, who see A happening, not intentionally though, but by what appears to be the incompetence of D.

Meh...it's not like the Sox need any pitching help...at least we've got Covey stretching himself out again in AAA

I agree that the young guys, including Cease, Robert and Collins, in the Minors, are generally very encouraging. There is one more guy, who might be a candidate to provide some depth to their beleaguered rotation. Lots of people in the organization are very impressed with Jimmy Lambert and he did have a very good start, last night, for the Barons. Perhaps they should consider giving him a chance. I just wanted to clarify the objective, regarding wins and losses, for this year. If it doesn't matter, and in fact, tanking for another high draft pick is the objective, then fine. Just take the losses. But, those who advocate that approach, shouldn't complain, right?

Yeah not gonna lie I'm extremely frustrated by his early success.

Outside of Gio and Lopez, we're seeing what we want to see...production from the guys who will be in our lineup for the next several years. Those guys (TA7, YoYo and Eloy) know that W/L this year isn't incredibly important. Our W/L will improve as the ML team is augmented by other core pieces coming up from the minors. In the interim? Who cares.

Ok. I grew up in Billings. I now live in Helena. (which no longer has a minor league team)

I think his stuff is fine. He kind of reminds me of a young Bartolo Colon.

No worries (other then Coop needs to be fired ASAP). Rey just need the weather to warm up and I think he will turn it around. He hasn't pitched yet in a game over 39 degrees I think.

First off, sorry.. I reread my post and I sounded like a dick. But if you are going to assign grades, with mlb guys especially, you need to factor in the highs and lows. It’s movement, velocity, deception, overall ability to execute. I would say Shane Bieber has a 60+fb and reylo is 55, despite throwing harder. Gio has a 45/50fb and is a fringe starter/swingman. If I was giving him a fresh look and didn’t know his pedigree I wouldn’t give him a second thought Every pitcher looks elite when everything is working.

So the dollars won't show up on the agency who sent them out, but they will magically show up for the White Sox? Do you work at Enron?

Yes to all this. I was thinking about how other teams just look a hell of a lot more competent. - First of all, as for rebuilds, people seem to like to reference the Cubs and Astros. Those are NOT comparable at all. Those two organizations didn't just change the 25 man roster or upgrade their minor league talent. They tore everything down to the studs, up to and including a new front office and building world class analytics departments. Did it right. - I thought the Tigers were supposed to be rebuilding. I'm not even sure what moves they made, if any, but they seemed to have passed us by on the way to at least being competitive. - Tigers again, and Indians. Two mid-market teams that have had stretches of division winners while the Sox can't seem to get out of their own way. - Mariners. Whisky tango foxtrot. It sure seems like they traded away their entire roster in the last five months, and I know it's early in the season, but I'll be damned if they don't look like they might be for real. - Look what the Phillies pulled off in one winter. - Friars. Enough said. - I'm not sure what to call the A's or the Rays. Are they always rebuilding? Whatever they are, they are really small market teams that seem to be able to sprinkle in some competitive years. Hahn hasn't even been able to pull that off. And the worst part: none of those teams listed above had ANYWHERE NEAR the assets the Sox had to trade away to start a rebuild, let alone the surplus value attached to them because of extremely team friendly contracts. This organization is a friggin clown show.

And when 1 or 2 things go wrong in 2020 and a couple additional people struggle, we'll say that 2020 became another tank year and 2021 should be better. But we will never, ever, ever evaluate the quality of the people making those decisions, nor do we ask why things are behind schedule.