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Hope all of you have a memorable week enjoying time with family and friends. Thank you SoxTalk Jason and team for keeping the conversation going. This is the first New Years since 2020 I’m optimistic the White Sox are on the road to measurable improvement as an organization, and have enjoyed the changes over the past four months.

Is it possible that Chris Getz has continually failed upwards and would be unqualified for any of the jobs he’s had in any other org, while also already doing organisational things KW/RH didn’t or were very bad at? Again, we aren't talking about a high bar here. Getz has, at best, a rather questionable track record of success as a baseball executive. What is or isn’t on him is as murky as who was responsible for what in the asymbiotic KW/Hahn quagmire, while also being involved in and or complicit in those failures. I’m all for giving him a fair shot, even with all of those red flags surrounding him, red flags that really aren’t debatable in my opinion. A fair amount of skepticism that anything will be better is quite warranted after what we just went through as fans. Ultimately we know who is pulling his strings, so my expectations certainly are not high that Getz will bring lasting change or can bring this club back from the laughingstock that it is.

For simple math, if you’re selling your car and you would take $5 for it you don’t advertise it for $5. You say $8, and maybe you get $8, maybe you get $7 or $6. You don’t start at $5.

Feliz Navidad everyone!

You keep asking for that much until you get a legitimate offer or you start running out of time. Until then, you keep the asking price high.

I mean, do you actually feel the rumored ask from the Reds is 4x what the likely return would be?

Merry Christmas, you filthy animals!!!

Merry Christmas everyone. 50 days until pitchers and catchers report.

Merry Christmas to all, maybe Santa will bring Sox fans a good season in 2024.

Merry Christmas!

This is the reality of negotiations though. If you are selling a prized asset, the “buy it now” price is going to be ridiculous until you get into a more formal bidding process and start receiving serious offers. As has been leaked to the media numerous times this off-season, Getz was waiting on Yamamoto and the other high-end free agent SPs (Snell, Montgomery) to come off the board first before accelerating trade discussions. The price will certainly come down as real bids comes in and both sides gradually work to some sort of compromise.

Merry Christmas, everyone. I hope to be arguing next year over which of the 2-bWAR DeJong or 2-bWAR Lopez should go to the bench when Colson Montgomery plays his way out of AAA.

That’s not how you say Fire Everyone in Spanish

World Series ring, perfect game, and a no hitter are all some of the highest feats a pitcher can reach. Along with his lengthy streak of 200 inning seasons, or whatever that was. Hall of Very Good, absolutely. Very very good. Hall of Fame? I don't know. While I think he's deserving, I wouldn't call it a travesty if he doesn't make it in.

That wouldn't explain how the White Sox got Lucas Giolito, Dane Dunning, and Reynaldo Lopez for Adam Eaton. I'm sure they asked for more.

If teams will not pay the price for Cease then keep him.

But first, he was visited by the ghosts of his former partners.....

https://x.com/whitesox/status/1739301203178127410?s=46 I can’t, this is just too funny

Still time for Getz to Scott Skiles his sorry ass…

Merry Christmas everybody. .... Interesting post. I can't imagine anybody buying tickets to watch the 2024 Sox. Maybe on a perfect late May evening weather wise against a good team you go to secondary market and buy a couple tickets. But to buy them way in advance and gamble on weather for this team? Don't see many doing it. I can't imagine opening day drawing more than 25,000 but I guess I could be mistaken.

We're giving him credit for guys that couldn't even stay in the league or are fringe backups? Really?

Merry Christmas to all! Have a great Holiday Season!

???

Lopez went from starter to reliever. Gio needed to go outside the org to fix himself. Kopech has massive talent and it's gone nowhere. Eloy had a great rookie season and nothing since. Moncada is basically the same player that he was when he came over from Boston, after debuting in Boston. Cease and Robert he can get credit for. But let's get some others: - Crochet is being mismanaged (you can blame KW/Hahn for this) - Vaughn was rushed - Burger had to go to a collegiate league to develop himself before getting added to the 2020 alternate site - Sheets trained himself to be an OF - Alec Hansen, Luis Basabe, Luis Gonzalez, Blake Rutherford, and Ian Clarkin all had various degrees of squandered talent. - Madrigal lmao. It's been said that Sox prospects enter the system with their strengths and weaknesses — and they pretty much keep those exact same strengths and weaknesses. It's hard to see proof that argues against that. If Getz's track record on producing players relies on trades for Top 50 prospects and $25M signing bonus LatAm players - and even THOSE aren't all hits - that's not a good track record at all. Now, he's in charge, so let's see if it changes with him running the whole thing, but his track record doesn't scream success.

Yeah I don’t see much wrong with that ask

Not in that generation of players...the offensive numbers were just so off the charts, and the fact that he was just an average defender (minus range, but great at scoops out of the dirt) and kind of fell completely apart there at the end of his career. Like Buehrle, very good but not quite great.

The silliest part of all of this is that if he doesn't let Sosa reach first, he probably gets another 20% of the vote

He and Pettite are basically the same. Pettite with more wins but had much better teams around him and also PEDs. Buehrle had better ERA and WHIP. Slightly higher WAR. Yet being a yankee will most likely give him an advantage.

At least they're Oakland A's colors...

He’d be a shoo-in if he stuck around a few more years, which he easily could have. He made his choice (which I admire) to leave the game early and focus on other things. The only way he’ll get in would be the player votes, whatever they call it.

No I mean the reported packages. When stuff like this gets out, especially in context of what was asked, there’s no point in discussing reds. These packages aren’t happening.

One way you know a trade isn’t going to happen is when returns are discussed this openly.

First Billy Pierce then Buerhle and I also think Paul Konerko is deserving.

Just had a really fun AZ/Florida Atlantic game over the v weekend that went into 2OT.

Merry Christmas everyone! For anyone on the road listening to Westwood One Jason Benetti is calling the Chiefs / Raiders game on the radio.

How the Southpaw stole Christmas...I refuse to believe they're this obtuse and are just trolling the fanbase at this point.

Here’s to hoping JR was visited by three ghosts last night…

Leury was held and shoulders the best player that WestEddy named. Chris Getz was an active player when Leury joined the White Sox.

We really should credit the leap in Yermin with his independent league play in Texas. The goal of any system is 2+ fWAR players being produced. None of those guys mentioned could consistently play at that level or we would have gotten something worthwhile back for them. McCann and Narvaez did quite well...but they gave up on Omar because of his defense. We saw that with Semien Burger Narvaez and numerous others. Or simply forcing guys into positions where they didn't belong, like Vaughn and Shields in the OF. Well we did try to play Avi Garcia in CF. Guess even he will counted as a success by some.

I am trying to be optimistic, but I just came back from Christmas Eve. My nephew (to his uncle, my brother): Do you think you'll go to ANY Sox games this year? My brother: I dunno. I'm really not feeling it. Probably not. My nephew: Me neither. These are both huge, die-hard Sox fans and the last 2 seasons have killed their enthusiasm. It would have helped if Grifol had been canned. Both pointed to how dumb/arrogant he is negatively impacted their enjoyment of the product. It's gonna be a long, maybe 3 years?

You seem to be having an argument with somebody inside your head, because you're not quoting me. However, he was the director of player development while the recent core all came through the system. So he's not "inexperienced". Does the director of player development generally deliver prospects to the majors who never need any fine tuning, never regress, and always succeed henceforth? Or does the big league club have coaches who work with them going forward? If you want to be angry they didn't go out and get a big name as GM, good for you. Nobody's stopping you. But I'm not going to pretend that dude's an outright failure because you believe that everything good about a player happened elsewhere, and everything bad happened here. I suppose Getz made Kopech into a head case, or broke all of Moncada's conditioning equipment so he couldn't last a full season without injury. And yes, players do go outside their organizations to pitching or hitting labs to fine-tune their game. Mookie Betts and Clayton Kershaw have worked with Driveline on their own. I guess that means that the Dodgers are a massive failure in developing players. Everyone in their organization should be fired.

Yes. Why wouldn't I? His job was Director of Player Development. Minor Leaguers were developed. Dylan Cease spent 2 full years in our minor leagues. Can you tell us what part of Cease's abilities they didn't hone? I don't see where I say that KW was the problem. I do think that the executive VP and the GM were not on the same page. Hahn tried to quit on at least one occasion, and was told he would be forced to honor his contract. So Hahn was working in a job he tried to leave. I also don't see what team records have to do with their relationship.

Why are we to believe KW was the problem and Hahn was just the poor victim? Last I checked, KW’s record as GM blows Hahn’s out of the water.

Least talented infield roster? Moncada can't stay healthy, Anderson preceded Getz, and Vaughn was rushed to the bigs. Lenyn Sosa actually looked like a major leaguer after the TDL. Zach Remillard just making the bigs and holding his own for a while is a huge development victory. Other organizations seem to just churn out guys like that who can slot in for a season, play reasonable defense and hit you .250/.300/.375

the point is that I wouldn't pay 32 million dollars to a 30something journeyman pitcher on a rebuilding team and expect anything good to happen. Would much rather see young guys and bounceback candidates. royals spent $77mil on two good but not great 30something starting pitchers, I'd rather see what the 20somethings can do on arbitration/pre-arbitration deals or slightly richer guys like Fedde or Yariel Rodriguez. spending actual money on those pitchers would've been as pointless as signing Benintendi over Bellinger, at least with Bellinger we could've gotten back one more prospect last trade deadline. it really would not surprise me if Fedde has a better year than Wacha at half the price.

In the time he was Director of player development, (2017-2020), Luis Robert, Moncada, Eloy, Kopech, Giolito, Lopez and Cease came through their system. The Sox also became somewhat adept at developing catching prospects. Seby Zavala went from a rough defensive liability to a legitimate backup. Is your point that since we're not fielding a team of 26 All-Star caliber players we developed, he sucks at everything and shouldn't be working in baseball?

realistically, I don't know how anyone on this forum could say with any certainty if he was actually good at this job or not. is minor league records the only indicator? he wasn't signing the players. do you give him credit for Montgomery or Schultz becoming great prospects? or for Cespedes or Kath falling down in the system? the GM job is more visible, we can see what moves he's making and who he's hiring, and I'm not sure what he would've done differently to look better to fans. he seems to be doing a fine job thus far, what would David Stearns have done differently? still, the first big test IMO is what he's able to get from Cease; nonetheless, the organizational structure already seems better than it has in years. it genuinely wouldn't surprise me if the Sox compete in the central, the team actually looks better than last season, the wildcard being the pitching staff. still, I prefer to see Fedde and Soroka than I do Flaherty or Wacha.

In a sick and twisted way it's kind of impressive how quickly things went south.

Fire Pedro. Ad Infinitum.