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I don't think you can absolve Hahn just because ownership is shitty and won't spend with the big boys. He is well aware of the Jerry factor at this point and it's up to him to be agile and adjust how he operates in turn. There are so many teams that do more with less. Emulate and adjust, or get fired please.

I've defended Bruce Levine in the past, but not anymore. He's a hack who needs yo hang em up. I've been waiting for the first shot at the fans. Sorry Bruce, they rebuilt. A decent amount showed up then. In 2020 when they first became pretty good, fans were not allowed to attend. In 2021, there was limited capacity for a portion of the year. Certainly it's not the fans fault only 2 million showed up to watch a mediocre at best product from whichever way you look. KW has used the same complaint. An amazing way to run a business. If a restaurant operated like that and said it would make better food after people came to support the s%*# they made, they would be done in a week. JR just keeps adding piles of money into his estate.

But Max is also right…it just doesn’t matter. A Jake Diekmam there, and Leury Garcia here…yes they are bad and short-sighted moves, but when teams like the Mets, Yankees, Phillies, Astros etc are making moves like they are, what are we talking about? I know it’s not fun to just throw your hands up and say “it is what it is” but that’s where we are at. The team was a total flop last year and objectively by any metric you want to use, the roster is in worse shape than it was during the 2022 season and they have shown NO indication they have any interest in making it better. The organization has 0 interest in trying to win. They’ll pat themselves on the back if they somehow dust off the 2005 horseshoe they found and get incredibly lucky in 2023, but aside from blind luck, the White Sox are no where close to any sort of contender for a World Series. That’s clearly not the goal of the organization, and they’ve done everything to show us that without actually saying it.

For my money it is still on Reinsdorf. This guy led the group that bought the White Sox in 1981 for $19 million; today the franchise is valued at $1.8 billion. And yet he continues to cry poor and act as if he is in Kansas City rather than the third largest city in America. He blackmailed the state into building him a new stadium (where attendance the first 3 years averaged 2.7 million), then led the lockout in 1994, which antagonized all of the fans and probably cost the White Sox a chance at both the pennant and World Series. He then wondered why attendance fell off for the next 10 years, until the 2005 world champs. This year, for all his supposed crying about attendance, the mediocre ball club drew over 2 million people, the first time they hit that number since 2011. This is the guy who let Dave Dombrowski walk in favor of Hawk Harrelson. It is the guy who fired Larry Himes, who only drafted Jack McDowell, Robin Ventura, Frank Thomas and Alex Fernandez in consecutive years, as well as trading for Wilson Alvarez and Sammy Sosa. Reinsdorf is the same guy who put Hahn in a can't win situation by keeping Kenny Williams around. And then, the brilliant move of overriding his GM by bringing La Russa in. Hahn is not a good GM, but the problem is Reinsdorf. Forty years of him is the same penance White Sox fans had to endure between the 1919 Black Sox and the 1959 AL champs. Sell the team!!!

Hahn is a huge problem. He painted himself into a corner because he's really bad at his job. There is no way other GM's would just sit on all these s%*# players/contracts. They would figure out a way to move them even if they had to take a step back to take two steps forward but Hahn refuses to do it beacuse he won't admit he was wrong. He had the 7th highest payroll last year and finished 11 games back in the worst division in baseball. That's almost impossible to do but Hahn figured out a way because he sucks. Hahn is his own worst enemy. I love to see it because I want to watch him go down in flames but how people continue to give him a pass is unbelievable.

Two things... 1) The money is there, it's just that Jerry won't let it see the light of day. The White Sox themselves told us over and over that the money is there. 2) I wasn't one of the fans getting on you about Outman. But you were kind of obsessing over a tweener triple a star who turns 26 early next season. Those types usually are fool's gold.

They don't need to fire Rick. Firing Rick does nothing. Jerry needs to sell. The rest will work itself out.

Aww don’t be silly. He was their plan A.

who in their right mind would want to sign a contract with the white sox? a franchise whose goal is to f*** players in incredibly team friendly deals and refuse to improve the team? Not to mention the terrible coaching/player development, and one of the worst training staffs in the league. Unless you are a journeyman or old veteran, who in their right mind would sign here?

Caps just promote wage suppression of players. It's not the Mets fault that no other owners are willing to spend like they are.

That "Defensive rating" column though includes the positional adjustment value for playing SS. Tim had a negative UZR last year and if I limit to guys who played 500+ innings at SS he was 29th out of 35. He was also negative on OAA and DRS last year, so all 3 defensive metrics say "This guy was below average for a shortstop". If you want to say it this way, he was a "well below average shortstop but an average player because shortstop is such an important defensive position".

Yankees have been buying up FA for ages, are regularly tops in payroll, yet don't win the World Series every year. Nor do the Dodgers for that matter. Both have been doing it long before Cohen showed up on the scene. And somehow baseball isn't dead yet. Funny.

This thread is overdue. No bad vibes in the Abreu appreciation thread, only love for a franchise GOAT (20th in fWAR, if you want a quantifiable stat). Here's hoping his Houston tenure boosts his shot at the Hall, even if that gives the Sox a tougher road.

I can blame all three of them equally for sucking at their respective jobs.

A hard cap might stop the richest of the rich teams from buying up every FA, but it does nothing to stop the cheap owners from pocketing revenue year after year and refusing to put out a competitive product. JR would love a cap I’m sure, but he would still have zero incentive to spend in FA.

Some December Colas for yall.

Firing Hahn only does so much. It’s window dressing. The organizational dysfunction starts at the top. That said, Hahn still sucks and should be gone, even though he’s a mere middle management mouth piece.

This is absolutely right. Nothing will change until there’s new ownership

The Met spend over 7+ times the money to spend as some of their rivals...and baseball claims to want competitive balance. A hard floor and a hard cap are needed before the game is given up for dead.

I think some sort of floor would be ideal, I'd prefer to not cap what a team could spend if they're willing to do so.

I think a GM needs to know how to operate with the confinements given to them by those up top. It happens in everyday life, and in all organizations. Your boss wants you to make something happen, but makes it a little bit more difficult than it needs to be due to certain constraints out of your control. So you either make it happen or find an organization that better fits how you need to operate. With that stated, it's long enough to realize that one of the following is true: Hahn is bad at his job or Hahn sucks at working within the rules his bosses want him to play. Regardless of reason, he's shown enough that he needs to be put through that door. In my mind, I think he's just flat out bad at his job. I appreciate that he breaks the 4th wall and gets upset like we do and shows it. I was happy enough with him blowing up the team a few years ago and getting some major players like Eloy. But, IMO, whether it was due to payroll, or teams overvaluing their players, or him just not having a plan, it's clear that he doesn't know how to do anything other than blow up a team for the Chicago White Sox. His forecasting has sucked when it comes to players wanting more money (Machado fiasco), his use of assets made available to him such as trade chips or money has sucked (that bullpen, Leury, etc.), he has allowed his players to become depreciating assets (Grandal, Kimbrel, Hendriks, etc.), his answer to filling starting voids on the team is to have players way out of position or to fulfill with backup minor league options. IMO, I can't put that on Jerry. If Jerry told him that they were going to roll back on payroll, that's understandable because they sucked in the worst division in baseball. Hahn should've sold off the team at the deadline, especially Abreu. He didn't even do that. So now we are stuck with the exact same team again and expecting to do 12-15 games better based upon hopes and dreams.

There's very few choices out there who can both field and hit. I mean what else am I supposed to look for ? AAA stars are not a bad thing. He took a while to get to where he's at now. That's what happens when you take a guy in the 7th round with a great body and a great athlete who didn't have much of a college career. I wish the Sox could develop a guy like that. WE always have to keep in mind that minor league players players missed all of 2020 which is the case with Outman. In 2021 somewhere between A+ and AA the things the Dodgers had been working on him with all started clicking. The 2nd half of 2021 in AA he started blooming. In 2022 the Dodgers started him off in AA again to make sure the changes would stick and he did even better . Then promoted to AAA and did even better. So basically he's had only 1.5 years of good results with only .5 seasons in AAA. Based on that I can't call him a "tweener" because he's hasn't been bouncing back and forth between AAA and the majors. If he had done in 2020 what he did in 2021 he might have started getting some national attention in the rankings and then higher after if his 2022 performance came in 2021. Will he be a good player ? I don't know. 1st round draft picks bust all the time too. I'm just going by skill set and recent performance. I don't have much else to go by. Speed, power and defense. Most guys the Sox have picked up in the OF never had this guy's skill set. Haseley, Cordell, Palka. If it helps there's Jarred Kelenic too . He's only 22 and he might hit MLB pitching well some day. He needs time to develop too. If he becomes a star 2 or 3 years from now with another team I don't think that team will mind at all. Even a guy they let walk like Luis Gonzalez showed he can play in the bigs. Who else are recent OF that the fan base had high hopes for in the last few years ? Rutherford ? Basabe ? Adolfo ? Nothing wrong with targeting players who have skills in a position lacking talent and depth. You show how good he's been and how far he's come and list everything you can about the guy and then some wise ass says you're basing in it all on a 4 game sample (1.400 OPS) with the Dodgers. Even if I was basing it on that a 1.400 OPS for 4 games its better than going 0 for 16 and looking bad . But as you can see from above with his progression and the missed year in 2020 there's more to him than 4 games in MLB. For all we know if the Dodgers don't fix their own OF problems he might get 300 AB's with them in 2023. But the Dodgers have all kinds of money to spend but even they are having a hard time finding a guy ATM looking at retreads like McCutchen and Heyward. The Sox aren't the only team looking for OFers in a barren desert. It's slim pickings and even more so for a LH OF with skills and 6 years of eligibility. On the bright side I see his name more so I've convinced some people he might be worth a try. I'm not going to apologize for hoping the Sox get better and making suggestions on how they can do it given the apparent payroll restrictions.

Too bad they cancelled Soxfest. Nick Avila and Victor Reyes could have been introduced as the big offseason acquisitions.

Couldn’t be because the guy came into the league and immediately made Jerry look bad and super cheap

Can the Mets buy Jerry Reinsdorf? Please?

I tell myself for every dollar Cohen spends, a piece of Jerry dies to deal with the pain.

It is good for baseball because cheap owners can't hide the truth anymore. Either get with the program or GTFO.

Stop supporting Reinsdorf, thats what you can do

I am sure they will find an okay player no other team wants eventually.

Comparing a true DH to someone with legitimate defensive & base running value doesn't make a lot of sense even if they are similar profiles as hitters.

The Sox aren’t going to bag the 2023 season. The play is to keep TA, hope he has a healthy and side piece less season, Hope Montgomery continues to develop to the point TA is expendable next year. They may talk about it, but IMO, there is no way they trade TA unless they have a capable replacement.

Love TA but it would be nice to actually have a great defensive SS who is solid enough with the bat. Much more valuable than a guy with a great bat, but s%*# D (in my opinion).

How has he worn out his welcome? Maybe it’s because I’m an out of town fan and I miss out on stuff, but I really don’t understand the dislike for TA. Are people really on their high horses pretending to care about what he does in his personal life? Is there something else I’m missing? There’s like 6 pages of people crying about the idea of trading a soon to be 34 year old closer (Hendriks), but the idea of trading out 29 year old all-star shortstop gets everyone on board? Someone explain please

Another feather in this franchise's hat, Not just the clubhouse but the franchise is toxic. Its run by a cheap owner who cant afford nice things, and a front office which at this point is beyond accountability. Is anyone held accountable for hiring TLR who was never held accountable? TLR would hav e been back next year if his health wasnt failing. It's no wonder our franchise players either cant wait to leave now or are being shown the door. TA being traded is holding him accountable for his actions, wearing out his welcome, but it seems this only applies to players? f*** this garbage ass franchise. Easily nothing more vomit inducing than this group of people.

I’m sitting here thinking about how toxic that clubhouse must have been for them to show Jose Abreu the door and for rumors to be swirling that TA is next. Players are people too but WTF? These players all seemed tight AF playing for Ricky, and after 2 years of TLR everything goes to s%*# and faces of the franchise have supposedly worn out their welcome? Something doesn’t add up here.

It also punts a chances to make the playoffs, which is quite literally the whole point of this thing. The Sox were never selling last July. Its not even worth discussing.

Aside from the obvious things, I’m also going to miss him randomly sprinting from first to the dugout on the third out of the inning.

If they can’t even afford Gallo it really makes me think they will push for that TA, Liam, Gio combo of trades to shed payroll. As ass backwards as it is to be selling off parts in a supposed contention wisdom.

NO COULD YOU LET US KNOW WHAT IT WAS?

This one of Balta's better posts. Sox should get some sort of compensation for being stuck with Hahn.

But they're not going to GTFO and nobody can make them. That's the problem. Even in a big market we're screwed while this guy owns the team.

That’s an avocado from Mongolia, right?

Classic. If ain’t broke, don’t fix it. If it is broke, also don’t fix it. Because then you have to fix it.

In my opinion, Moncada was one of the people Pedro was referring to when he observed that it was obvious the Sox didn't always look ready to play. I have a hunch that Moncada, Robert, and Eloy among others will have some needed attitude adjustment with the new coaching staff.

HIs delivery reminds me of Karinchak.

Here is an interesting writeup I came across. https://rogermunter.substack.com/p/rule-5-decision-nick-avila Talks about his re-worked repertoire he used this year.

They won't cut him, but he is tradeable.

I was actually thinking the opposite. If Rick Hahn had reason to think a payroll cut was possible, it is outright criminal mismanagement that he didn’t sell off last deadline. Abreu, Cueto, Lopez, Graveman were all absolutely moveable. They needed to move McGuire, but they didn’t need to take on money in the process. If they had traded away all those guys, they would have saved roughly $10 million last season and have a payroll $15 million lower right now. On top of that, those trades should have brought back like 6 players. Presumably some of them would be in the lower minors, but if you got back a Pilkington level starter, a guy who could slot into the bullpen along with Lambert with an option remaining, or a rotation player in the outfield, the funds could be targeted way more effectively. No Clevinger, one more swingman in the pen, and a backup OF somewhere and now I have $25 million free to spend on a starting LF.