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Are you kidding? He has long been an outspoken critic of Meta and Google monopolistic activities. He got plenty of heat for it in his last presidential run. https://www.foxnews.com/tech/bernie-sanders-says-hed-absolutely-try-to-break-up-facebook-google. https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/01/18/bloomberg-breaking-big-tech/ You are uninformed. Global social democracy and zionism? Take your anti-semitic conspiracy theories and shove them.

Just came to concede that the Sox aren’t getting Conforto. It’s been hard for me to accept the levels of incompetence with this organization, but after witnessing them ruining their relationship with their best pitcher over $50k, it’s very clear that either Rick Hahn is way over his head as GM, Tony has too much influence on roster decisions, or Jerry is meddling too much in baseball decisions (or some combo of the three). Regardless, the Sox seem totally content with the core they have in place and instead of supplementing with impact talent would prefer spending like drunk sailors on ancillary pieces. It’s an absolute shame that we will be rocking such a high payroll and haven’t really moved the needle. What a bizarre and epic failure of an offseason.

If you would have told me in October that they'd sign Vince Velasquez to replace Rodon, sign a 35 year old version of Nick Madrigal at 2B, keep Kimbrel and also sign 2 other relievers for $40 million, I would have wanted Rick Hahn to be fired right then and there.

Feels like today is the culmination of all the stupid decisions coming to a head. Giolito screwed and Kimbrel reminding us he still sucks makes this a crappy Sox day.

What they're doing this winter is infinitely more frustrating than 2011-16.

Does Bernie have the power to strip the Chicago White Sox from Uncle Jerry??

You know I was just thinking, you know what would make this off-season even better, some anti-semitism. Enjoy making up your next new Soxtalk log in.

In baseball it's useful and baseball is pretty much socioeconomically inconsequential. But where is Bernie when it comes to Google and 'Meta' and many others? Nowhere. Because his larger aims of 'global social democracy' and Zionism hinge on this authoritarian corporatism. It's not surprising he would posture as a trust-buster with something trivial like major league baseball.

sox FO completely backs themselves in a corner where only one RF improves them, but has red flags "I don't blame them, I wouldn't spend the money on that guy either" rinse repeat for everything.

In 2022 it's seemingly impossible to even bring up the mention of politics without people hammering their keyboards until their fingers bleed.

I think the general rule of thumb for ST is that if you see nobodies performing like they're Mike Trout, it doesn't mean anything. But if an older pitcher like Kimbrel's stuff looks terrible and he gets hit around, it's a very bad sign. I remember Halladay looked awful in the Spring of 2013 and then he went on to retire that year.

I feel like the general consensus among other baseball fans is that Kimbrel's struggles were a combination of regression to the mean and him not pitching the 9th inning. What they didn't know is that his mechanics were fucked with us and his stuff and control were nowhere near what they were when he was with the Cubs. The fact that he's not even throwing 95 now means he's probably cooked.

I remember thinking there was no way we'd spend $30+ million for 2 closers last year. Now we've done that and spent an additional $16 million on 2 other relievers. It's pure insanity.

Other people who throw tantrums every day.

It’s been about as bad as even the most pessimistic posters could have predicted

If Giolito was a reliever, they would have given him that extra 50k

This ranking only includes players who are still on the Sox. So no Hamilton, Lamb, Eaton, Hernandez, or Goodwin. I also didn't include Mercedes or Burger or Romy. Against lefties. Plate appearances in parentheses. Robert (68) 231 Grandal (96) 184 Abreu (153) 161 Vaughn (141) 156 Anderson (143) 125 Harrison (141) 114 Moncada (135) 99 Garcia (139) 91 Engel (49) 76 Zavala (30) 74 Eloy (59) 60 Collins (57) 57 Sheets (19) - 26 Against righties. Engel (91) 154 Grandal (279) 150 Sheets (160) 143 Robert (228) 135 Moncada (462) 129 Anderson (408) 118 Abreu (506) 116 Eloy (172) 116 Garcia (335) 101 Collins (172) 101 Harrison (359) 99 Vaughn (328) 68 Zavala (74) 63 Aside from the small samples for several of these players, what would I draw from this? 1. Sheets/Vaughn are a tremendous platoon pairing, whether it's DH, 1B, or RF (or LF). 2. Sheets should get full-time duty against right handed pitching, as the 3rd best hitter against them on the team. 3. Andrew Vaughn will need to be eased in against right handed pitching. At the moment, he's only hitting them better than Seby Zavala. Yet he crushes lefties at the 4th best rate on the team, so sending him to AAA doesn't make much sense. 4. Adam Engel might be a better hitter than we give him credit for. He had reverse splits last year, but has hit lefties better in the past. If he can stay healthy and put up the kind of offensive numbers he has put up the last two years (121 and 127 wRC+), he should get a lot of time in RF. 5. Harrison and Garcia are pretty well matched as a platoon as well. But it's close enough that Harrison could be the primary 2B. 6. Garcia shouldn't get as many ABs as he had last year. But he probably will come close, given TLRs preferences. 7. Eloy isn't going to hit this bad or rank this low. If he does, our offense will be in trouble. 8. The Sox need 2019 Moncada back. His wRC+ numbers were 121 against lefties and 147 against righties. 9. The numbers for Luis Robert are artifically low because they include the first half. In the second half, his overall blended wRC+ was 173 compared to 125 in the first half. 10. Jose Abreu is still crushing lefties.

Borrowing this from southsider2k5's post about TLR hiring...between Kimbrel, this year's current FA debacle and now the way Lucas Giolito was treated so disrespectfully by the White Sox (just like Black Jack McDowell, although Lucas is 10X the more mature and even-keeled individual in comparison)...don't know how to communicate how disgusted Sox fans actually are with the current state of things heading in what was once supposed to be one of the greatest seasons in franchise history. This feeling today is what we spent a decade building towards???? REALLY? It has already been self-sabotaged in a variety of ways. How do you go from last October to now selling LESS season tickets than you had at the beginning of the 2021 season??? If he was just carrying out Jerry Reinsdorf's orders to punish Lucas for being the team union rep and involved in MLBPA negotiations with Manfred, shame on him for doing so...that's not the type of GM that will ever lead the White Sox to the promised land, it's just not the right way to treat employees, whatever legal-ese nonsense he puts out there on social media about it not having affected the relationship one bit moving forward, yadda yadda yadda. You should know better with all those years of education at elite universities. Treat others how you would like to be treated, it's actually quite simple. Scott Reifert's email address is SREIFERT@chisox.com Brooks Boyer is bboyer@chisox.com Hopefully people feel free to let them know what people think.

This is another good point that has been overlooked.

And for all the anti-Conforto guys, just wait until Leury gets 50 starts in RF. I know we all want Vaughn to be the guy, but La Russa is going to ignore splits and the play the shit out of Leury there. And Engel will also get time out there as well. It’s going to be a hot mess out there without a high paid veteran to claim the spot.

You're doing Ray Ray's job for him. Something involving Kimbrel sucking and James? You'd think he would be in here like the Flash.

James might be correct, but I guarantee teams interested in him would have rather seen him at 96-97

It’s true though. They’ve spent a lot of money on this payroll, just in a ridiculous fashion though

Again, why anyone follows him is beyond me.

I'm a Jewish communist. This is offensive on so many levels.

What an offseason! Just an incredible performance by these guys, really getting the fan base fired up.

What? The NBA and NFL, two leagues that don't have exemptions, are much better constructed for the "good of the whole" than MLB. I don't think you seem to understand what an anti-trust exemption grants. Might want to read up on what it means before spewing off a bunch of nonsense. edit: the way MLB operates the MiLB for example would not be allowed had they not had an exemption and no one can argue that isn't a large worker base that is being greatly exploited.

End of the day, I think I'm more mad at how stupidly they handled 2b/SP. There were so many "no duh" options to solve or help things, be it giving Rodon the QO to help improve this farm that doesn't allow hahn to get players he thinks he can, not trading for Wendle or signing Eduardo, etc. They can pull a rabbit out of their hat and trade for an SP and sign conforto but nothing will make me believe they aren't among the worst front offices in baseball anymore.

You know what’s really crazy, we gave Vince Velasquez $3 mil and now we’re doing this to our ace pitcher.

Spending like drunken sailors on role players and relievers. Penny pinching on one of your best starting pitchers. That's the FO in a nutshell this off-season.

Paying 50 mil for a bullpen and haggling you’re best starter over a rounding error is certainly a choice

this guy is exhibit A through Z as to why spending money on the pen is stupid. ironically if it's one area that nobody really complains about with the Sox it's finding cheap bullpen arms within the system or cast off from other systems. And yet here we are spending apparently about 30% of the payroll on it.

Last year, it was overcoming TLR. This year, it's overcoming TLR and the front office. Next year, it'll be overcoming TLR, the FO, and JR.

We are going to do nothing to try to maximize our window, aren't we?

Battle of $500 million worth of Semien/Seager vs. Free Agents Only Their Mothers and White Sox Would Love

well if you believe rbh700 on Twitter has sources within the org, then the Sox aren’t high at all on Conforto and the trade market for starting pitching and is too expensive in terms of demand. Sure seems like Hahn and company completely botched this offseason.

Nah this isn't true. This is very surprising. Sox very rarely go to arbitration.

He's got a bad case of White Sox Stockholm Syndrome.

C'mon now Ray, how do we know that 50K isn't going on the back end of the Giolito extension? Now you are just not being fair.

This is kinda low even for the White Sox. For a good long while they took pride in avoiding the contentious arbitration cases because telling your players why they're bad and you don't want them isn't a good look. There's precedent in the org's longer history, but this is still pretty darn low.

Over under on when this gets locked? I got page 4.

You’re assuming we don’t extend Kimbrel in order to further prove we won that trade…

This annoys me more than the offseason moves so far. What the hell?

It is really hard to imagine a team in such a powerful position coming into the offseason having a much worst offseason without selling off the franchise players or something like that. I literally can't figure out what is going on in our front office right now.

Man this org seems to hold grudges against certain players. $50k is like a penny laying on the ground in this business. Absolutely ridiculous that they wouldn't pay one of their best pitchers $50k to avoid possibly going to arbitration IN-SEASON. Fuck this org.

That is absolutely brutal.

Going to arb with Gio over 200K when they *should* be hoping he'll sign an extension in the ~150M range is a strange one. I know it's part of the business, but not finding a compromise when the gap is that small seems unnecessary.

They'll find out quickly enough Berrios is not QUITE as good as his reputation that precedes him. A very solid pitcher, but closer to a 2/3 than a 1/TOR.

I'm gonna side with Crick then.