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I want everything thrown at this game. Get a cortisone shot in Lynn’s knee, steroids into Leury, adderol for TA, shock collar to moncada for any strike three not swung at. A real wizard of oz approach.

Just to clarify, a franchise that has never given out any 100 mil deals would now give out a 500 mil contract. Sounds unlikely.

Here’s how I’d rate them with the benefit of hindsight. Cueto = A+ Graveman = B McGuire = B- Harrison = C- Velesquez = D- Pollock = F Leury = F Kelly = F Overall, I’d give the off-season an F though. Not only did Hahn ignore multiple important needs, the vast majority of the moves he made were either dumb at the time or have simply not worked out. It’s an impressively bad off-season and we are super fortunate to play in the worst division in all of baseball.

Single to RF in AB #2 for Colas. 107 exit velo. Both of his AB's have been against lefties today.

Soto will come here and hit .230 avg, 300 obp, 350 slg for 15 years. We all know this

Who knew that hitting the ball over the wall multiple times results in wins?

The Sox are headed for the dark ages anyway. They are a big market team (get less draft and intl capital than their division) but don’t use a big market budget. They have not tried to compensate by having world class scouting or player development or analytics. They have bad mlb scouting which negates what payroll advantage they have. They hit the lottery with Sale/Q and sold them when the top teams in the league had the top farms. This team is pot committed with this team and Hahns mid GMing. This gets them top talent at least. Otherwise, we sign joc pederson next offseason and enjoy having Colson Montgomery on a 70 win team in 2025

Colson singles in the 6th. Streak continues.

Lynn has bad knees from carrying all that extra weight around for all these years. The first thing a DR tells you is to lose weight to lessen the load on your joints. He is a friggen professional athlete who you think would take care of his body and pay way more attention to his conditioning and fitness than the average friggen joe. Pitchers get their power from their lower half. When your legs are bad your velocity goes down and you mess up your mechanics. Like my grandpa used to tell me, fat and lazy is no way to go through life.

Did they improve RF? Did they improve 2B? What was Goodwin/Hamilton producing at this point last year? What was Leury/Madrigal? They also didn’t use those positions to balance the big weaknesses of RHP and too groundball heavy.

This remains 100% true and accurate. The off-season was and is still a massive failure. And the worst part is he gave multiple years to a few awful signings so the ramifications won’t be fully realized for a while yet.

Don’t stop now, boys! You bet your ass I’ll be there again tomorrow.

I find it interesting how many people here make fun of Lance Lynn for his weight, while we all love Cueto. Who is also a fat ass. Lol Baseball history is riddled with fat asses that performed just fine.

Are you Rick Hahn on a burner account? I was a fan of the guy...but look what he's done to this rebuild. It's truly awful, man. You can spin crap however you want. All this talent and this team is sitting here 1 game before the allstar break as an under .500 team. Holes like right field should of been filled years ago. Bryce Harper was there and couldn't find a team to sign him.

Keuchel looks awful again

I wouldn’t have argued against the signing, obviously Schwarber would help a ton. Although, Eloy and Schwarber as the corner Of’ers would definitely cost us some games too… I also think it’s fair to question whether Hahn had the capability to hand out a $79M contract this off season.

Cueto has been so much fun to watch — an unbelievable pickup

Engel bailed out Jax by running into a triple play in Chicago. He got his payback tonight with the big 3 run homer.

https://southsideshowdown.com/2022/07/15/liam-hendriks-alludes-dallas-keuchel-clubhouse-problem/ Didn't see a thread for this yet. I've disliked Dallas for some time based on his shitty attitude and the fact that Liam would even imply this (even if it isn't true) makes him look that much worse. Seriously, fuck that guy, I hope he continues to crash and burn in AZ. What a shitty teammate.

Lynn vs Bundy Statement Game right here. If you are better than the Twins, show up and prove it. Now is the time to put up or shut up. LFG!

Lynn Postgame: "I sucked. Blah Blah Blah. I eat steak. Blah Blah Blah."

I solely hang this one on Lance Lynn. Just a deflating performance.

Opposing managers should just intentionally walk him whenever he gets in an 0-2 count.

This wholly unprovoked attack on pizza is unfair to say the least.

We love awarding $18 million contracts to veteran pitchers in their 30’s but NOT to Carlos Rodon in his 20’s. Idiots… That likely doesn’t happen without LaRussa’s involvement, either.

“a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result” The day was billed as a celebration of the longevity of Jim Kaat’s career and how that perseverance led ultimately to the HoF. Lynn is pretty much the exact opposite, where he pretty much acknowledges that he doesn’t have a very healthy diet and yet makes no attempt to change his behaviors and yet is seemingly surprised by the dismal results. As someone noted, the worst thing the White Sox did was give him a guaranteed contract at that age. Guys like Keuchel and Lynn are or will be finding themselves without a job because they became complacent and started resting on their laurels instead of working twice as hard to remain at that top level. And Lance Lynn actually had the highest fWAR in the AL from 2019-2021 among qualified starters but is nothing like that same pitcher anymore. But now he looks like one of the worst pitchers in baseball.

Jose getting fastballs down the pipe and doing nothing with it.

Let him wear it at this point.

Lynn starting to hit 94-95. Good to see.

91-92 right down the plate won’t cut it

?

Definitely gonna be a white Sox.

hes just putting it in perspective

Besides, it’s too easy to just look at results.

I’m sorry, I know it’s “just money” but if you know that in two years he’s an FA and he’s going to cost your franchise AT least 500 million in order to keep his services for the rest of his career, the cost to acquire him shouldn’t be that great. The Nationals are in an absolutely terrible spot and that franchise is a mess and needs a total rebuild. Soto isn’t really “helping” them the next few years. Yes, he had tremendous value to other teams, the White Sox very much included, but because of his earth shattering contract requests, I can’t fully get on board with a team shipping out a incredible trade package as well. The only way the Nats have ant leverage is if other GM’s act foolish, which seems to always take place.

Hoping it’s nothing serious for Robert. Scary stuff

And he's sucked when healthy since 2021.

While Cueto has been a revelation, letting Rodon walk w/o the QO or even a decent offer remains shortsighted and IMO stupid still. 2B has not improved - Harrison while better than Leury recently has been bad half the year, is completely redundant, and only plays part time. He neither supplanted TLR's over use of Leury nor does he bring anything unique to the lineup. RF is still a catastrophe. Sheets remains awful in the field, Pollock who was acquired to start there rarely does, and as much as I love AV, he is no better in RF than Sheets. This team still has no starting quality RF, still needs consistent LF power, they are still awful vs RHP, the depth remains paper thin, injury still plagues, and TLR is still fucking awful. How exactly was any of this improved by the laughably bad offseason?

What is everyone grading these acquisitions based on? What you would've wanted an acquisition to be for that position? The value (trade pieces or $ amount) given up for the player? The expectations of how that player should be performing? If we are grading the front office then we should look at the positions as a whole. So we should consider the cost to acquire and alternatives. Reese McGuire, although he hasn't been great, has been a solid defensive back-up catcher that only cost us a player with less value for our team. Reese McGuire shouldn't be anywhere below a C because there isn't a reasonable expectation for a cheap back-up catcher to put up 2 WAR. I'd say he's a B because he was solid as a backup and has done well when injuries require him to play most days. The other way of looking at it is how we would expect a player to perform based on their own track record. I think this is a bad approach to grading acquisitions because its really just grading performance and can be done for every player on the Sox. Harrison has averaged out to be what we expected him to be at this point. I think he should be graded slightly below his current stat line because of how terrible he was to start the year, but he's roughly been what we would expect out of age 34 Josh Harrison. I'd give him a C- if we are only looking at how we were expecting him to play. Still I don't think we should grade based on that second method so we should analyze JH based on who could've filled the 2B role and what that would've cost. Madrigal has been terrible this year so we don't have to relitigate that right now. Eduardo Escobar has produced similar value to JH. Trevor Story has been much better than JH but I don't know that I would want to be on the hook for that contract. It really seems like a cop out because JH hasn't been good, but I don't honestly believe there was a substantially better option to fill 2B this off-season. I might give him a C grade because he gives the team flexibility to get the right guy to play 2B for next season (which I'm sure they will manage to screw up).

This is a fun thread at this close to halfway point. I still think two biggest errors which have been said often is picking up Kimbrel option and not at minimum giving Rodon qualifying offer. I think Rodon even stays with a decent offer. Not giving QO will look even worse tomorrow night at draft.

And pay no attention to the GM behind the curtain.

I mean that’s from two scouting directors ago. Shirley had gone after pretty athletic or physical pitchers in Thompson, dalquist, kelly, Burke, macdougal. Not sure any of those guys have an unorthodox delivery. I know crochet will be thrown at me. This is where Sox rumors are hard for me to trust from national writers. The Sox don’t have organizational philosophies, the people in the positions do.

I feel like there are two grades to give out, because the decision for a contender to sign Velasquez as the only SP depth add is an F. But I agree that he’s been more or less what was expected. It’s just that the expectations very low to begin with. I don’t recall most disliking this signing. I thought many saw it as a no brainer to help fill Lynn’s innings. But yeah, A+++

Any sort of Cease gem would be a hell of a way to go into the all star break and a giant middle finger to the fact that he isn't an all star.

I don't have numbers, but it seems like homers are the story recently.

This is the best white Sox team I’ve ever seen

There is no way that's what it would take It would be more like Montgomery, Colas, Sosa, Kopech and Vaughn It would also take an owner who would give out a deal like that which the Sox *checks notes* do not have