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Nice of the White Sox to let the Dodgers have the Ohtani spotlight for a bit before they dropped this bombshell transaction.

Ohtani pls buy white Sox.

Anyone also complaining about him skipping last year...his wife delivered their baby 3 months early and the baby fought for his life. If anything this means he is a good guy. The team needs more of those.

You could see this move coming a million miles away. AA is fucking feasting left & right on premium talent while Getz is pouncing on the has-been scraps falling off AA’s table. Jerry Reinsdorf isn’t a serious owner and the Sox aren’t a serious baseball organization.

Why do you all hate this move? He's a good player who was acquired for nothing. Atlanta doesn't have room for him with a superstar catcher and another very good backup. Are you paying his salary? It was him or Maldonado, good defenders, biding time for Edgar Quero. Catcher and shortstop is exactly where you should be playing defense first/bat second players. All of this will help the pitching staff. He is far better than Carlos Perez. My only concern, which I noted in the other thread about Maldonado, is that Hackenberg is probably major league ready and looks really good.

Why are people upset about the Sox adding a bonafide defensive catcher for a couple million $$?? Are you upset over the PTBNL that you don't know the identity of yet? They could literally dump Stassi in ST if he's really that bad, however, given how he's an elite defensive catcher it's clear they are continuing to give our young pitchers every benefit they can next season. This is a low risk, low ceiling move. Nothing to be too excited about but certainly nothing to be upset about ether.

This organization spends so much money on players that are worthless.

This is by far the worst contract in sports history.

I’d rather have 7, 100m players than 1 700m

I think this is very alarmist and hyperbolic. The White Sox aren’t leaving Chicago.

Certainly a lot of bitching about acquiring a good defensive catcher for a PTBNL, with a good chunk of the salary to be paid by Atlanta. Do we remember who the Sox rolled out there the past few years?

This like Farrah Fawcett deciding to die the same exact day as Michael Jackson.

@Bob Sacamano - I called it!

Not in Japan where Shoei is the equivalent to Michael Jordan and that is all that matters in this equation

Thank god. Now the offseason can really begin.

I am hoping this signing is the move where Jerry calls a board meeting and says it is time to exit baseball and they put the team up for sale.

Can’t imagine how upset Angels and Jays fans are. I’m pumped it wasn’t the Cubs.

The dodgers now have a player paid nearly 10x the highest contract the White Sox have given lol Comparable market size

I think it’s pretty clear that you killed this guy by making this thread.

Just saw this tweet and didn't see a good place to post it...please merge with a different thread if there's a more appropriate location for it. This seems like a complete 180 from whatever the last front office was doing, hiring people with science (kinesiology) backgrounds to assist in player development. Feels like Bannister has his fingerprints all over this and seems like a modern approach to baseball.

Better Braves than KC.

It’s a low bar.

7 mil for 2024 and a 500k buy out for 2025 for a catcher who his .190 in 2022 and didn’t play due to injury and family matters in 2023….yay

Better than Salvy. Thankfully I feel like that rumor can be put to bed.

All that said, if baseball does not institute some form of revenue sharing/soft cap and hard floor, the sport is going to die much more quickly than even most pessimists thought. The parity between a team like the Dodgers and the Pirates getting even more vast will be the death of the league.

It’s not about the Jersey sells, just wait till LA gets a television deal in Japan for Dodger games. That alone will probably cover most of the contract.

Dodgers are the new Evil Empire.

I hope Kikuchis sushi dinner was very nice

Jon Morosi lmao

The fact that they have a 700 million contract and the sox haven’e even been close to 100.

The Hahn regime had this too. What hopefully will be different is he just added people and expected them to be Superman and integrate it themselves rather that work to get whole org aligned

They would become so irrelevant that there would actually be reason to believe they would leave for Nashville.

I loved that team, naturally Nellie was my all time favorite, attended game 2 of the World Series which was a heartbreaking loss to the Dodgers.

Wow. Thanks. lots of great thrills from that team. I was in high school. Aparicio was an all-time favorite of mine. I just hated the day they traded him to Baltimore.

This literally is like the least concerning part

Unless they become a super team like the Patriots or the mid to late 90s Yankees...the combination of those two brands (LAD/Ohtani) still lifts the sport because he's almost impossible to ignore like he was with the Angels not making the postseason.

Dodgers have been planning their entire roster around this for two years.

They’re already very irrelevant in this town.

This is just a crazy take. If Ohtani came to the Cubs, the White Sox would become even more irrelevant than they already are. In fact it would probably cause them to have to move eventually because absolutely no kid would choose to root for the Sox and that becomes a factor down the line.

I agree the only way MLB allows them to leave is if another team commits to taking their place. I do also think the Cubs getting Ohtani would be quite a blow to the White Sox It is hard for me to believe thee rest of baseball doesn't see how incompetently the White Sox haveww been run, and the potential to print money is there for an owner truly committed to winning. There really is no excuse the White Sox haven't dominated their division this century. A guy who just wanted to win and hired good people, not yes men, has so many advantages over all other ALC teams.

Lou Skizas played outfield for the Sox in April, 1959. Passed away recently at 91. RIP https://legacy.suntimes.com/us/obituaries/chicagosuntimes/name/lou-skizas-obituary?id=53687282 https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/lou-skizas/ 5 surviving members of the 1959 team- Joe Hicks, 90 Luis Aparicio, 89 Ken McBride, 88 JC Martin, 87 Claude Raymond, 87

There really hasn’t been big leaks of offers so I don’t know how you say they are using leaks to drive interest. Can you give an example? I’m guessing not. Using that logic, Ohtani is having a tough time getting legit offers. We heard he was signing before the winter meetings, then during them, then on a plane to Toronto.

That was just Reinsdorf playing 4D chess. If Roberts talking about the Dodgers upset Ohtani's camp to the point that he now won't sign with the Dodgers, Jerry makes it appear the Sox have no interest in Ohtani months in advance . Now there are no leaks, no nothing indicating Ohtani to the Sox. Reinsdorf is one shrewd dude.

It certainly can't hurt. I hope they continue to go down these avenues and get caught up with the rest of the league.

RIP Joe Hicks, 90 December 2 https://www.hillandwood.com/obituaries/William-Joseph-Hicks?obId=30058749 B-R has birth year 1933. Obituary 1932.

You think Jerry cares about $/WAR? I think he cares about $/TWTW. This is the guy that said his favorite player of all time is David Eckstein.

I mean, ok. How do the Cubs stop the White Sox from competing against Detroit, Minnesota, Cleveland and Kansas City? Jerry Reinsdorf living another 10 or so years is the worst thing that can happen.