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Hahn missed out on Jansen

No offense, but can you blame her? I like you ray ray, but you're such a colossal jagoff most of the time. It makes sense that people would get passive aggressive or straight up aggressive with you in real life.

We are in a familiar cycle. At the end of a season, falling short, a sober Hahn sits in front of microphones and coldly addresses how they must address the clubs faults in order to compete with the best teams. Their weaknesses always tend to be the things most expensive to acquire, and so they go around the offseason saying "hello mr. all-around-power-hitting-lefty, here is our amazing market level contract for you" and then telling every mid-level employee and contract lawyer near them how aggressive they are and smart they are and then their jaw drops when mr. all-around-power-hitting-lefty leaves with another team. But since we are an older, wiser, mature group of posters now we know that you can't force your life partner (in this case, our white sox) to be someone they are not. They won't be a forward-looking, disciplined, well rounded organization no matter how hard we pine. But they are a damn good team. And if they want to win a world series with just first baseman and relief pitchers, then I am going to love and support them. And god damn it, White Sox. Be who you are, and go and sign Nick Castellanos. This team is so good, and you are right, you only need Right Handed fat players if you also have Luis Robert. So go be the white soxiest team that can white sox. Thank you for reading my vafan post. (the actual white sox move is Gavin Sheets in RF, we know this is happening, this is the bargaining phase)

The Dodgers did want Kimbrel last year even when they had Kenley.

If they're willing to give 3 year deals to relievers (Hendriks & Graveman) not being willing to go 4 or even 5 years with a position player like Conforto makes 0 sense at all.

We had a .671 OPS out of RF last year. Conforto is his career worst year filled injuries was .729. His career number is .824. If you leave off 2021 it becomes .843. Even at his worst, he is a large improvement. At his career average he is a huge improvement. If he gets near his career upper end, he would be worth an almost 300 point OPS improvement.

Your batting average arguments however, these are impeccable.

It's about an even money trade if it's Bellinger. If they just signed Jansen it's an additional 16.

Worked great last year

That’s why you trade Kimbrel and reallocate the funds. Seems pretty obvious you’re not a Conforto guy. That’s cool. Hope you’ll be disappointed at the Sox improving vastly in the next week or so!

This fan base cracks me up. Kyle Schwarber is somehow the greatest hitter ever and despite his shitty platoon splits that are worse than Conforto’s no one seems to care if he cost ~$20M per year. It’s so fucking clear that many Sox fans are incapable of evaluating a player beyond just looking at their 2021 results. Hopefully Rick Hahn isn’t as narrow-minded.

Both

We've been trying to get a left handed power bat forever, but now that left handed power bat also has to be great against lefties too? Isn't that the strength of this offense? So the only guys we'd be okay giving money to are Juan Soto-types? The fair market rate for Conforto is around $20 million a year. If the Sox aren't willing to pay that, that's fine. But let's not act like that would be some kind of bad contract and that whoever pays that is absurd. Cause guess what, if Conforto were able to also hit left handed pitching well, he'd cost north of $30 million a year.

It's a mission statement.

Much like Balta's offseason long take on the CBT not raising past $212M, he'll dig his heels in on Kimbrel being untradable until it happens. Just his bit.

Yeah, I’m confused as to why Castellanos at 5/100 is bad news for us? Shouldn’t Conforto be quite a bit less, based on a comparison?

I keep thinking the only way the Sox rid themselves of Kimbrel and get a semi solve for RF is some exotic 3 way trade with the Dodgers and some other team. Or it solves the SP depth and RF remains as is.

Good. Now this should get LAD to come to the table. Finalize the damn trade already and get Bellinger

I'm anxiously awaiting the meltdown here the minute he signs elsewhere. (Insert Michael Jackson Popcorn ?. gif)

No writer has suggested Conforto is going to Chicago. He is beyond the Sox budget yet has inspired a petabyte of postage here. Who started all of this, Putin?

He’s 29 not 32. If you’re worried about a free agent declining at the back end when most guys don’t hit FA until 28-30, then you’ll never sign a FA long term. Some risks are worth taking when there is no one in the system close that can adequately fill the gaping RF hole.

The Sox *should* be a very appealing team for Conforto if he has to go the short-term route. Hitter friendly park, great lineup around him, and he'll get to play on a high profile team/contender. But would the Sox really put a higher AAV on the table than a team like Boston? Especially when it seems like they have money to spend and can check all of the same boxes for him our Sox would.

I’d be pretty surprised if Michael Conforto hit $100 million from anyone at this point.

Jim isn't perfect, but he does have a strong historical understanding of the organization and it's players and is a good reference for White Sox history imo. He also doesn't pretend to have knowledge or ideas on potential trades or inside info. Nelson on the other hand... he has been portraying himself as that kind of person in the last year and it's just not a good look on him. He's that drunk guy at games yelling behind you things that leave you wondering if it was their first baseball game ever, or if they've ever even picked up a bat before.

We need an actual roster move to talk about. Help us out, Rick.

It isn't worth 5/100 for a platoon player.

The way our lineup is currently constructed, you sign Conforto BECAUSE of his vR splits. 100%. Not everyone in the lineup needs to kill lefties.

94 wRC+ vs lefties is abysmal huh. I was hoping we can scrape a 94 wRC+ total out of our 2b.

He is 2021: .232 AVG, 14 HR, 55 RBI's 2021 Splits: Vs RHP: .243 AVG, 13 HR, 43 RBI's Vs LHP: .200 AVG, 1 HR, 9 RBI's ?? _____ No one with those stats should ever be paid $20M+ and he's almost 30. So he is more of that than what he was he was younger. Hard pass for me unless they get Conforto on a big discount.

Buddy, we haven't even broken the glass to pull out our Jake Burger

Engel can't survive a full season, and really, should be the 5th OFer in terms of what expectations should be.

Engel Engel Engel, you beautiful, fragile adonis.

He was a complete piece of shit to Renee and i'm not convinced it wasn't workplace harassment to begin with. You need to rethink your heros.

I wonder if we should let Hahn know, as of today, there are still 27 RHP relievers and 5 LHP relievers available as free agents? You can never have too many bullpen arms.

Remember when the Sox didn't pursue Harper because he was going to block Rutherford, Basabe, and/or Adolfo? Good memories.

narrator: turns out, he was never their guy.

In keeping with the Austin Powers theme of this thread...

If memory serves, two things impact future injury likelihood more than other factors: 1. Prior injury history (Think: Eloy, Robert, Engel, Grandal, Kelly, and others) 2. Age (Think: Harrison, Abreu, Grandal, Lynn, Keuchel, and others) I am a man of faith, but faith without action is dead. Failing to buttress an OF with young talent, but ALSO, plenty of injury history is inviting disaster. Failing to secure a 2B who has a higher likelihood of positive WAR than a geezing geezer is inviting disaster. Failing to reinforce a rotation with plenty of age and a lack of depth is inviting disaster. I have faith, but one doesn't have to squint too much to see a repeat of AAAA types all over the OF. One doesn't have to squint too much to see too many Leury starts at 2B. And one doesn't have to squint too much to see too many Lopez/Lambert/Stiever starts. I get that we have talent, and that the offseason isn't done-yet. But we're running out of time and options. FFS, I'd praise RH if he landed Conforto and, I dunno, Teheran or Pineda? I'd be HAPPY to eat crow if they admitted their fuckups, and fixed them. We'll have to see.

Start negotiating with OAK, see which prospects they want, then don't trade those guys....

Montas was a fireballer in the Red Sox system, came over in the Peavy trade. Got developed by the Sox, made the majors. Turned into a Top 100. Traded to Dodgers, throws 16 innings in 2016 in theirs system. They're good, but 16 innings. Traded him to Oakland. Not good in 2017 or 2018. Good in 2019, busted for steroids. Bad in 2020. Great in 2021. The White Sox developed him as a prospect - a lot like Semien. Also like Semien, he was bad until 2019*. J.B. Wendelken and Bassitt didn't take time to adjust. The counter point is that the Sox did fuck all in that time period and it would have been great watching the four of them grow up with the current core (assuming the Sale, Quintana, and Eaton deals pan out the same without the Samardzija, Shields, and Frazier failures goading the rebuild). Edit: Semien put up his first good fWAR (3.9) in 2018. He exploded in 2019.

I disagree. I know of the two guys who run that pod and they aren’t like that at all. One of them is heavily connected to Kris Bryant. They aren’t looking for clicks in the way a random Twitter “insider” would.

Vaughn just wasn't ready to play a full season. He was essentially still a college player because of circumstances beyond his control. Sheets had the advantage with his experience of coming up through the minors, working on his game and when he arrived he took full advantage of that experience and the chance to hit against a lot of RHP. I thought it was great the way he stepped up. If you like Vaughn you don't have to be anti Sheets and if you like Sheets you don't have to be anti Vaughn. They both honestly have a shot at 30 HR's this year if the Sox can find the playing time for both of them. Vaughn has the pedigree and seems likely to be the one to take a massive leap forward. Him stepping up would be huge. If Sheets just does what he did last year over a full season he hits 30 HR's this year. Sheets doesn't have the pedigree so he has more doubters . Him stepping up and filling that LH power void would be huge. We all know the what the problem was last year. Lack of power because of injuries. This could be a very powerful team if they can all stay on the field . Robert, Eloy, Vaughn and Sheets all need 550+ plate appearances. Vaughn and Sheets both appear to know the strike zone well while Eloy and Robert are both not as choosy with what they swing at. They all need to stay on the field and mature to offset any decline from guys like Abreu and Grandal. Find spots for the young guys to play. Rest Abreu and Grandal more and don't let them play DH. Keep them as fresh as possible. DH should be Eloy, Vaughn and Sheets primarily and not necessarily in that order. Vaughn and Sheets should get some 1st base time too. Vaughn should get some LF time. RF playing time for both Vaughn and Sheets is up to the coaches if they see some improvements or if the lack of a true RF is not forthcoming.

If you are just going to trade him for another bad contract, why did they pick up the option? Just buying him out opened up those funds at the beginning of the winter to be used on something useful. Now, even if a miracle occurs and those funds are freed up, most of the options where you could have used those funds aren't available.

I just want Kimbrel dealt so I never have to argue on his behalf again, which is not an enjoyable debate given what we gave up and how shitty he was with us. Although I fully agree with @ChiSox59 that we better get something useful for him or use the salary relief towards a SP or RF. Getting rid of him to simply line Jerry’s pockets makes no sense.

From a pure spectator standpoint, I'd love to see the division of the fandom if Kimbrel wasn't traded and reverted to his 2021 Cubs form. The hot takes at the deadline would be WILD. You'd have a shit ton of people demanding he be traded for max value, others screaming keep him for the Super Bullpen (idk how everyone else is doing in this scenario).

I don’t want Kimbrel either, but he’s useful. Honestly if we can’t get anything but salary relief in return and those dollars aren’t immediately reallocated to Conforto, the Sox are better with Kimbrel on the roster.

Have Oakland trades scarred me that much? Geez.

I will never get people who catch hurt feelings when our players do well.

His face looks exactly like Yoenis, but you can tell he is a bit shorter