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how do you say you like white players with lesser skillsets that try hard, without having a screen name Grind.... oh wait.

Patient would be fine - if the Sox had a track record for delivering on those statements.

Kimbrel trade forward he’s been an absolute train wreck. Not that he wasn’t before, but he removed all doubt last winter.

I just went back and reread that thread. Holy s%*# but I used to be an optimist before last off-season broke me. One of the worst five month stretches in GM history IMO. Just so many mind-boggling moves and even worse when you view the off-season in totality. $40M+ spent on a bunch of role players instead adding a single impact talent. Rick Hahn is epically bad at this GM’ing thing.

Given the contracts and the talent on the team at the 2021 deadline, it’s hard to imagine how someone could have messed up things to the point they’re at now.

I would rather have Grandal straight up than Jansen next year. If the Sox were flush with a ton of resources to trade, sure, but Liam is a huge trade piece and using that to fill a need that isn't 2B or OF would be a mistake, in my opinion.

Which is the exact reason we should trade Hendriks. We aren’t a closer away from winning the World Series and should take advantage of this market.

No wonder Pito signed with the Astros. It's got to be such a refreshing change to play for an organization that prioritizes their fan commitment to putting a quality product on the field. CWS has the clearest path to perinneal post-season play than any other MLB major market franchise. Unfortunately that gift was tragically wasted on the Reinsdorf Group. This should be a great selling point to potential oligarchs interested in buying CWS.

Absolutely. We didn’t need hindsight to see it was a terrible decision, either.

It's one thing to suck as a GM. It's another to suck as a GM and be a smug b***h about it. Hahn is the latter

Out of all the reasons to criticize TA, the bat flips is the dumbest reason.

Braves GM Alex Anthropolus. Just guessed at the spelling. Has free reins with no owner. Anthropolus is at another level of Baseball IQ compared to Kenny and Hahn.

Toronto seems to have signed 2 of the best value contracts these last 2 off-seasons. Gausman and Bassitt seem like they're on very reasonable deals.

really like this signing and contract

How is that not a great deal for the Brewers lol

Merkin said to be patient. I wonder if he means like last year when Hahn got Harrison and Kelly and Pollock and Velasquez. Or at the deadline when apparently there was nothing to do.

It is incredibly easy to show up 6 years later and say differently, but literally no one said this on the day of the trade.

These $50M payrolls I feel are worse for the sport.

I fear the Walmart type situation. Walmart comes to town and all the little businesses go under. Works great for the big guy...not so much for the little guy. Most baseball owners have personal wealth ranging from 1 billion to 4 billion. Cohen has wealth 5 to 20 times greater than his peers. Not exactly a fair fight. I don't want to turn the game into a battle of who can afford the biggest payroll. That's not good for the game, or the fan. I guess a league of 10 teams would work great for the players who make the cut, but two thirds of players will be left with no major league team to play for.

Amazing how quickly things change. Logic told me that they knew more than others when it came to the health of Rodon, they were using info no one else had and knew it wasn’t a safe bet. The Rodon/Kimbrel situation is really where all the trust fell apart, then 2022 happened and…here we are

Interesting to see the Cards have seemingly been dangling Nootbar in trades. He is someone I'd be willing to trade Liam for and I think the Sox should be very interested in him if he's actually available.

The number of people who were defending that decision both at the time AND during the season while Rodon was dominating will never make sense to me.

Because f*** him, that’s why. He sucks and shouldn’t be in a job he clearly can’t do.

Give me nine dudes who bat flip and are All-Stars.

It is 2022. It is OK to enjoy success in baseball.

My offseason plan was for the Sox to sign 1 marginal SP and a borderline minor leaguer while letting Abreu walk . I wanted to watch every other decent team shell out expensive contracts on actual good players that will allow them to compete for championships. I was hoping Hahn and JR would make the team worse (as if that was possible) in order to alienate fans like my wife and myself who travel from NC every other year for a couple games. Congrats Sox for carrying out my offseason plan perfectly. I no longer have to waste money to come to Chicago and I can stop watching games sooner rather than later in the year because we will be out of contention much earlier. Go Sox!!!

Hahn could f*** up a one car funeral.

Man what a bummer. Would have also loved to replace Milwaukee in this discussion.

Yeah A’s wanted nothing to do with Sheets last offseason

Not a team in the league offered more than that bag of s%*# for Murphy? I'm not sure I understand the state of this league anymore.

We have several prospects not named Montgomery or Colas better than the trash the A's just got back for Murphy who was supposed to be highly coveted...

Huuuuge bullet dodge.

Everyone else: Arms race Reinsdorf: "You all hurt Tony's feelings, so no."

I'm a White Sox, Bulls, and Titans fan for the big three sports. 2 of my 3 favorite teams are owned by Jerry Reinsdorf and both of those franchises have had enormous, unmitigated FO issues. When Jon Robinson came onboard as GM for my Titans, we were in a really bad place. He worked wonders by flipping the roster, hiring Mike Vrabel, nailed some late draft picks. He literally turned the franchise around. This was only 7 years ago. Last season we were the number one seed in the AFC. He was fired earlier this week, despite the Titans being 7-5 and first in their division. To outsiders, it made little sense. To fans, it made a ton of sense. There are holes all over the roster, FA pickups have been disasters, busted draft picks left and right, worst OL in football (even worse than the Bears), etc. The record is smoke and mirrors. His firing, and Amy Adams-Strunk's comments concerning the firing, REALLY opened my eyes to just how bad of an owner JR is and how embarrassing it is that Rick Hahn still has a job. She demands excellence and improvement, JR demands loyalty. Hahn and KW are so far up JR's ass it's ridiculous. No GM in their right mind would sit idly by while his "masterpiece" of a rebuild was about to be driven off a cliff by Tony LaRussa. But Rick remains. Ridiculous.

Well Devers never got traded cause Boston knew what they had. Moncada was all style and no subtance. Keep being a Hahn stan if you want though. It's been working real great the last 6 years.

HIndsight is a helluva drug.

You tie profits to payroll; spend 50 mil on payroll then you get 50 mil cap in profit, rest goes to charity or the players.

This comment really is the highlight of the thread

I agree that I don't envision multiple teams that would be willing to spend at the Mets (current) level, they could definitely spend more if they chose to do so. This is not directed at you but it's more of a general statement/thought I had, lets not act like if it were the White Sox spending gobs and gobs of money to bring in the best possible talent on the market that we'd be wanting a salary cap installed for "fairness". EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US would be loving them committing like that and it would be a "sucks to suck" for everyone else.

It’s a touchy subject. The Blackhawks got burned and the cap probably cost them another cup or two because they couldn’t pay their guys due to it. I think what this shows is owners make a lot more money then they want to admit. It never made sense. Big time businessmen spending billions for a business that was lucky to turn a profit, and the teams value just keeps increasing. JR has run his team like a mom and pop hot dog stand for 42 years, constantly saying that he breaks even at best yet it’s worth probably more than 100 times what he paid for it. He chose profit over winning. Runs the team anything but the large market they are. Could you imagine how bad his teams would be in Tampa if the state of Illinois didn’t build him a new stadium?

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

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!!!

Can't say I've ever questioned TAs drive

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.

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.