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Well the end of the minor league season has hit while I was traveling and no Sox affiliate made the playoffs. Interest has unsurprisingly dropped off with football starting. I don't know if AZL will have threads but I just wanted to thank everyone on this board for contributing and helping this season. Despite the dreary season, people kept it civil over here and thanks all for that.

You aren't familiar with our owner, are you?

No they wont. That's just a projection from someone suffering from habitual losing fanbase syndrome. Coulda, woulda ,shoulda, They are rental players. Do you really think the Cubs ignored any offers? They did the right thing. There's only room for one white flag baseball team in this town,

GM Chris Getz: "Why would the previous farm director put me in this position?"

I mean, it makes sense. We knew Fischer was gonna Major League his team. We didn't know Kenny and Hahn would make moves separately, get fired, the next GM would be internal, a team expected to contend for the division would COMPLETELY bottom out, Cease would collapse, Tim would be horrid thanks to Hanser Alonso's defense (i.e., preventable), Liam would get cancer, Sox fans would get shot, Pedro would be Boylen/Trestman 2.0, Middleton would be so ready to leave he'd shave his beard, our best pitcher would have domestic abuse lingering over him, rumors of a move to Nashville AND we're not even guaranteed a top pick. Basically, Sox fans are Mrs. Lincoln being asked if she enjoyed the play.

Dude was definitely being (I cannot think of a better word, I'm so sorry) groomed to be the future manager here. Abhorrent what he did and he can rot in hell.

This is a pretty good discussion with a lot of good questions asked about Pace's regime and what they were thinking when they drafted Trubisky and then Fields. If you don't feel like watching the video: -In 2017 they were only looking at Trubisky and Mahomes. They were never looking at Watson because they didn't believe the way he made unscripted plays would translate to the NFL. Lucas also believed Mahomes was a legit talent but did not have him ranked ahead of Trubisky for basically the same reason - Mahomes is a wizard and he wasn't sure he would be able to pull those plays off in the NFL (obviously they were all wrong about this). Trubisky is very intelligent and understands all the concepts for every play, what the defense is doing, what his checks are, etc. but it did not translate well into live action (he mentions that around this time, the S2 tests were new and people didn't trust them, but they are very accurate at measuring this). - They thought the Browns were going to take either Trubisky or Myles Garrett and if Trubisky had gone, they would have gotten Mahomes (trading up if necessary). Lucas also believes Mahomes is a transcendent talent and he may or may not have been a candidate for best QB ever on the Bears, but he's too talented for the Bears to ruin him. -Fast forward to 2021 and they have the QBs ranked Lawrence, Fields, Jones, Wilson, Lance. Fields scored high on the S2 test (not the highest, but very high) indicating they felt it was likely that whatever deficiencies he had with processing plays was something he could overcome, along with his physical tools. Lucas is stunned that Fields looks this bad, and also believes his confidence is shot and that all the swag he had from his rookie year is gone.

How crucial of a series can we ask for.

You can say that at the KW and Hahn level and it appears accurate. HOWEVER, at all the other levels of this organization, we constantly are talking about failing to do basic jobs - basic advance scouting, basic big league scouting, minor leaguers who are unable to obtain the type of coaching and feedback that they need to have success and who are sort of on their own to figure things out. We see people who are sloppy, we see people who aren't doing their jobs well. The Dodgers give AJ Pollock a huge amount of information, a giant book every day to prepare for his at bats, he comes to Chicago and they tell him that there's probably a pitcher who throws with an arm who will be on the mound tomorrow and he should get to work. The ticket sales and customer service departments have sounded awful the last few years, events and outreach and even just the general things that leave people feeling good have been stripped away. There's no one to say "Hey maybe Clevinger using 'gold digger' as his walkout song" doesn't reflect well on the team, so it just slips through. They haven't established a clear structure at the top, fair. However, at all the other levels of the organization, people are overworked and incapable of providing the type of information that players and decision makers need. They're all swamped, they're doing the best they can but the organization is so completely bare-bones, built to save money on staff, that it hurts everything else. That contrast shows up dramatically when you compare to the Cubs. The White Sox have 1 guy getting the same title as 3 or 4 guys there. They have a pitching expert, an international scouting organizer, etc. The White Sox just lump all that onto one guy, and we've seen how bad the results are.

I’ll be so annoyed if they don’t reach 100 losses. They don’t deserve to dodge that mark of futility.

Brian Shaw in for his 175th appearance since joining the Sox in mid-season.

lol yeah ok Len, Snell is going to skip a start against the White Sox to try and preserve his league leading ERA.

2024 Opening Day starter vs. Jarvis*

“Did everyone bring a 32oz cup? Begin scooping water out, now”

He’s done a deep dive? Wasn’t the entire stated reasoning for hiring this clown that he wouldn’t need any catch up and an outside guy would have to do a deep dive? Dumpster fire.

What could Grifol’s salary actually be? A few million a year? That’s almost negligible for a baseball team. I don’t buy that as the reason he’s being kept around.

Agree. It is beyond dumb to bring back the manager of such a bad performing team. I guess the main reason is that he is under contract and JR does not want to pay him as well as a new manager. IMO.

They need to hire either Ron Washington or Jim Leyland this offseason. They will enforce discipline.

I watched the game and I still don’t know.

Thank goodness they got an F and are being called out. The White Sox are doing a great job in only one regard: Turning longtime multi decade "lifelong fans" into people who no longer care about their passion, White Sox baseball. They've turned many many fans into front runners. It used to be we loved our Sox thru thick and thin. Now ... wake us up when you actually have gotten your bleep together and have a contender. Worst season in Sox history with little hope for the rest of the decade. Thanks Sox (sarcastic) ... you made me not care. They make no effort to keep one likeable player in Abreu and then for some reason trade the semi-loveable Burger whose name truly fit that pudgy loveable face.

I know a GM is supposed to be somewhat positive, but boy, I really wish that when he was asked this stuff, he gave answers that were a little more realistic. The White Sox are obviously in a messy situation, I wish he would be forthright about that. If he's asked about the state of the team and his first response is that there's a lot of players on this team that can help win the division, it leaves a sour taste in my mouth, because this is a 100 loss (or nearly so) team and it's darn hard to believe anything that starts off with talk about winning the division right now. If he is just playing to the reporters, it leaves me with an ugh because it's not honest, and if he actually believes that, it's far worse since that would be in denial about the mess in this franchise . You can even give some credit to the guys who are here, while still stating that it's going to be a tough job. "We think we have some solid pieces here, everyone has seen what Luis Robert has done in his first all star campaign this year, Dylan Cease was a cy young award runner up last year, but at the same time a team doesn't change GMs when everything is going well. We have some talented players here, but we know we have a lot of work to do at a number of levels and we're working right now to make decisions on those topics."

ESPN+ has ranked White Sox season #30 last in majors with an F ranking, citing front office mayhem and underperforming. An embarrassment by the Sox this season.

Korey Lee's 0-3 today drops his 2023 OPS to .259 That has to be some kind of record.

Not close to 23,000, maybe 8,000.

Frank Thomas, Jose Aberu, Mark Buehrle and Chris Sale are my Mount Rushmore of this list under Jerry. I bought a $1 ticket but ended up staying in bed (usually sleep from sun rise to early afternoon. They listed attendance at 23,522, but I believe that includes all the tickets given out to their Season Ticket holders. How many appeared to be there?

Appreciate the daily threads. I'm biased as a prospect nerd, but it might be worth having a weekly thread or something for AFL and winter ball?

We don't know the structure yet, but the fact that these guys are getting such broad-ranging titles makes it seem pretty obvious to me that they are just replacing the overworked guys who were here with new guys in the same basic roles. The new guys think things will be ok, then they are going to be hit by the amount of tasks on the table for them, try to do the best they can, and wind up half-assing everything because they can't possibly do all the tasks they're supposed to do but somehow things need to be finished. Just like the guys right now.

This is all a great point and I don't disagree with it in principle, I just have trouble imagining a scenario where they hire or promote or otherwise create this many executive roles and then hire the ensuing staff to make it worthwhile. Somehow I imagine it's 6 VPs, Getz, Jerry and 5 personal assistants because the 6th VP's just quit due to a pending sexual harassment lawsuit. I think it's great that they hired the supporting VPs they did and maybe that means turning over a new leaf. I don't rule it out, I'm just not optimistic that Reinsdorf actually wants to pay salaries to staff an organization. I'm not the sort of fan that thinks Reinsdorf is "cheap" when it comes to spending on the Sox or Bulls roster, but I imagine he views players as assets and front office staff as a sunk cost.

No. He's a starting pitcher who is arb-1 with an ERA of 5 this season that matches his career ERA of 5. His FIP this year is 5.01 and it's 5.2 for his career. His WHIP is 1.41 this year and 1.46 for his career. He could very well wind up in the rotation of the White Sox next year, because the White Sox have so little in their organization that grabbing guys with an ERA of 5 to be their 4th or 5th starter is ok to them, but that's what bad teams do. On even a decent team, he's a guy who gets picked up when they have had 4 different starters go on the IL at the same time, because guys like him are available on waivers.

I think a better analogy is that the boat is actually a submarine and everything will seem normal for a while until that extra gravel or air (dead) weight added to the ballast causes the sub to sink slightly lower than it ought to and it implodes and everyone dies a horrific death. at least with a boat, there's a chance to evacuate.

MLB.com must have been hacked, they had us winning 3-1 Anyone know the real score?

SOX WIN,SOX WIN,SOX WIN

Shaping up to be a horrible win

Hell yeah great season BamaDoc. Minor leagues gonna be huge next year

Random thought, but it totally fucking sucks we had to see Frank Thomas play for teams other than the White Sox.

Free parking also, tells you how bad and un-exciting the Sox are, they're not even worth a dollar to watch them.

Yeah I don't buy this for a minute. The Sox were playing "meaningful baseball" last September followed by a choke job too -- nobody around here was all carpe diem. The Cubs' greatest triumph is a fanbase that somehow bought and sold the fiction that a mediocre few months bumping between second and third in a shitty division was a storybook season.

While Tatis would ease a lot of pain and maybe prevent other blunders (drafting Madrigal for need), the Sox developing him is a long shot, keeping him healthy is a longshot, and if he can't keep his s%*# together in San Diego, there's no chance he'd keep it together here. Though again, my theory is that the Tatis trade has intertwined the two teams' destinies until they meet in the World Series.

Giolito was absolutely rocked by Cincinnati last night. He has nothing in the tank. Basically, he has morphed into nothingmore than a pitcher (thrower) serving up beach balls to the hitters in a home run derby contest. It is remarkable how far he has fallen this season. He may only get a spring training invite next year without any guarantees. He can forget any possibility of a lucrative long term free agency contract. Who is the "real" Lucas Giolito? Maybe Donaldson was correct about the sticky stuff. His fastball velocity has dropped to the 91 range which eliminates the past effectiveness of his changeup.

60-98? Wow. Who would have thought the team will lose 100 games and only win 60 or 61. Couple of comments. ... -- Despite the lack of talent on the team, Pedro must be let go after the final game of the season. Give him a trophy for having to coach this oft-injured, bad fundamental bunch. But he needs to go far away. It's INEXCUSABLE to let him stay after an 100 loss season. Cmon. This is Bevington-ish. -- Sox must SOMEHOW win trades for Anderson, Moncada and Eloy and Cease. The future of the team depends on it. Next year figures to be a 50-win season. The year after, if the Sox get good players in those trades and actually sign some GOOD free agents, the team could be .500 by 2016 and maybe a winner after that. I see no way this club is anything but awful in 2014, 2015. It might show a little progress in 2016, like maybe finish 8-10 under .500. 2017 better be a winner. Bring in Joe Maddon for gawd sakes. Somebody like Dusty Baker. Anybody but Pedro. Why would you want Pedro to coach the abysmal teams of 2014 and 2015? Bring in somebody the baseball world respects. Get Francona to un-retire. Wish we could get Rob Thomson.

Remind me to quote you on this with basically every front-office move the Sox make. This might be the most flexible and applicable quote I've seen on this board, and for that, I thank you.

I truly believe he is a good DC. Whether he is a good HC or not, probably not. One thing I do know - this is a scheme that requires a good dline (not dissimilar to other schemes). The Bears aren't remotely close to having a good d-line. Think about the Bears good D's in the Cover 2 era, whether it was Tommie Harris disrupting the middle or Julius Peppers on the edge - you needed to have one well above average dlinemen and other parts to do the job. Maybe the Bears 2nd and 3rd round picks evolve to that point - but they aren't there yet and they were raw to begin with (which isn't a huge surprise). We are also talking about 2nd & 3rd rounders (with the 2nd rounder being a later"ish" pick). Now Poles needs to hit on his picks, you will have misses, but he also has to have hits across his drafts. I actually think the Bears have players at other levels of the defense - but none of it works without a more disruptive line. Not saying the best line in football - but this is the worse dline in football (or at the very least bottom 3). That is a big problem and I do put some of that on Poles. Or Poles knew that would be an issue, hoped it wouldn't be this bad, but just realized that was all he could do from a team building perspective given all the holes to fill.

At this point the Sox need 1/10 guys to fill out the rotation. If the coaching staff is back, might as well bring back a guy who Katz has had success with + let Bannister get his hands on him.

I imagine someone would give him a 1/10. But that is looking like best case scenario at this point.

Yep. One thing Ricky (seemingly) did is to establish a culture. The players seemed to give a s%*#. To me, this is the biggest thing that this team needs... to give a s%*#.

David McCallum, 90 -Actor Man from U.N.C.L.E. tv series and Ducky on NCIS

Buddy we have sat through the Trestman and Boylen catastrophes, there is always room for more

That's using quite a bit of hindsight. CJ Stroud was no better than Fields as a prospect. CJ Stroud also came into a worst QB class. Next year's QB crop is considered much stronger by many with two QBs who many believe would go #1 any other draft. Also, if you traded Fields and he was good, you would've been killed by the media. Lastly, it's been 3 games. You saw Fields have 8 pretty darn good games last year. Anyone could put together a string of decent games. It's a matter of, can you win with them and is their success sustainable?

I don't even think it's that, it's all just cliche's out of the coaches press conference playbook. I understand different philosophies and not taking the approach of throwing players under the bus or going really hard, but that's not even what I'm asking for. I'm just asking for a bit of transparency and being realistic. As you said, which I agree with, it's ok to say "That was awful and unacceptable. We all got to get better in a hurry to turn this thing around. It's on all of us, right now, to dig deep and be the team we know we are." Instead, we got him talking about how they didn't have a lot of time to practice with each other, this is a new team and it's going to take time for this team to gel. YOU made the choice to not play multiple people in the preseason. You have the worst defense in the league since taking over, and you can't point to a single player that has gotten better since you arrived. You're 3-17 with the Bears. I need to hear a little more sense of urgency after your 13th straight loss, you absolute douche. Sorry, that was a rant on Flus, not you. But I'm just so sick of the bullshit from this city. We deserve so, so much better.