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I don't know why half this thread is shitted up by Michael Kopech, who remains the only player in sports history to miss an entire season as a result of breaking up with his girlfriend.

I don't know why everyone is convinced Kopech is "fixed." He's always been capable of looking great for short stretches.

Greg, you do this all the time. You attach to an idea and it’s then an unquestionable truth. Venable is not a good manager. Not yet, at least. He hasn’t done the job yet. Don’t get ahead of yourself. He may be the team’s saving grace, or he may be another Grifol.

Hey! We agree on something haha. The narrative that the Dodgers fixed Michael Kopech is insane. He just actually started doing the things that Brian Bannister told him to do. It started with his last five appearances with the White Sox. It's a big reason why the Sox should've been able to get more for him in the trade.

Kopech strikes me as the kind of guy who mentally checked out with the Sox and then turned it up to 11 when he was dealt to an actual premiere organization. Feels like the same situation with Luis Robert unfortunately, he looks like he would rather be doing anything else than playing for the White Sox.

I hate this team and organization but the Dodgers didn't fix Kopech. Ethan Katz had it figured out, just needed Kopech to buy in like he did with Dodgers.

Kopech was already pitching like this at the time of the trade. The Sox failure with him was to not recognize this and pull him back to potentially get more in the offseason. The injuries and lack of playing time, plus going into his age 30 season are all working against Moncada.

You just won the thread

The issue isn't what we got for Kopech, it's what we didn't get for Fedde.

The Bears

That's not very nice. I feel mods shouldn't mock readers/Sox fans but that's just me. Admitting to mockery is not conducive to good message board business by mods IMO.

It was documented at the time:

So to be clear, the argument you are making is the World Series Champions had no impact on Michael Kopech, but instead the success he found in LA can all be attributed to his learnings from the 41-121 White Sox? Just want to be on the same page.

Isn't five consecutive appearances also SSS?

Sorry sir this is a Michael Kopech thread.

The JUST WIN, BABY system Rookie manager has nothing to learn. Just automatically great. Sign 2 vet free agent starters for $15M / year. Someone like Quintana fits that mold, but why the hell is he coming here over a contender after the way he closed 2024? As of right now, we are simply giving Flexen and Brad Keller pay raises. One good, $10 M reliever - um, at this rate, why are these guys signing with the Sox? Add OF: Who it is, we do not know. Michael Conforto might accept an overpay. Second baseman with clue: We try to lure Iglesias away from the Mets. The fanbase hates having another Cuban player that enjoys singing. Bring up Montgomery before he's ready. Just win, baby! Bring up Echo, who uses her superhero abilities to thrive as the first female baseball player in Major League Baseball. Sosa is not useful at second, but he's good enough at 3rd. We accomplish this by using "good evaluation of the free agent market," something the White Sox are famous for doing. Also Jerry not wanting to lose by spending money, something he is famous for doing.

Even if he did win the lottery, do you think he’d invest it into player payroll?

It’s an ILLUSION!

So your evidence that Kopech is the same ole pitcher is that he had better stats with the Dodgers, threw his fastball less, slider more and "that's just not sustainable" Is that the argument I'm reading? He clearly was a better player with the Dodgers. 12 innings of work, you can maybe argue is a sample size. Or maybe "He hadn't pitched all year, came back a week before being traded and here we are". You are arguing that he's the same pitcher with evidence, literally pointing to the contrary.

You can't argue with any of the actual facts so you'll stick to this small sample size noise. Got it. Glad we could confirm that you're as irrational as those who you critique on this board endlessly.

When you wish real hard, don’t care about the minors at all, and repeat “just win baby” with no actual plan…..that’s just a dub. Accept it, everyone

So the editor muted the last two characters but not the first word?

I'm sad actually. He was one of the signings I was really excited about. We were working that Cuba connection. It's just a reminder of when we were on top of the world and reasonably expecting multiple championship seasons. Good luck to him.

What's ironic about bringing up the Yankees and Dodgers series is that you had a great example of a spot where one team lost because they were sloppy and one team won because they were crisp. The team that was sloppy was sloppy the whole year, they were one of the worst base running teams the whole year and they made a ton of mental errors the whole year. That team got by on talent, but they never put in the effort to play the game cleanly. I'm not sure which team was more talented of the two, but I can safely say that better coached team won.

My goodness. Some crazy takes in here about what a new manager says and judging how much effort someone gives. You called it loligagging but not everyone sees through your eyes. I see it as a series of mental errorss. He clearly misjudged how much time he had. He took his eye off the runner going to 1st base and kept his eye on another runner. He also could've tagged the runner going to 1st. For the less talented or rookies we often hear about how things move much faster at higher levels which require you to speed up your thought proceseses, increase your preparedness, train harder, eat better, sleep better. It's not enough, you just can't do the right thing often often mentally or physically to get to that level. You could make a massively long lowlites reel of bad play for every team in baseball. Did Judge want to screw up a routine fly ball in the biggest baseball stage in one of the most important days of his life ? That whole inning was a s%*# show. There are mental and physical errors, concentration lapses, plays that you make while doing things wrong, and errors you make while doing things right. They play through pain that slows them down , they may have a sick family member. Yet fans get on here and think they see lack of effort through body language. When you lack talent you look bad against the more talented .It weighs on you, it brings you down . Sometimes the less talented win because they are all better than 99 % of all players wordwide so even the Sox can beat teams far more talented on ocassion especially in a sport where pitching can dominate and make you look bad.

A new manager like Venable basically takes the job because it coincided with his family and career taking steps forward while he espouses positive vibes about the future. I hope it's not the end of positive steps forward for his life. He could hold this job for quite a while as part of the Getz plan to claw back to respectability.

Love this post because of the honesty. I might not agree with you all the time (although I agree more than I disagree), but I enjoy reading your posts because they are intelligent and well thought-out. We could use more posters like you.

Yes

Ding ding ding. I'd honestly have been fine with Perez and Albertus for Kopech. Which makes it Pham and Fedde for Vargas, which, what the f***? Edit: Or even Kopech for one of Perez/Albertus.

The great Moncada nightmare is over. Finally Hahn and Moncada in the same year. I should go play the lottery.

Do other teams try so hard to show their one trophy 20 years later? Do you see the Diamondbacks or Marlins trophies in their introductory videos? Serious question.

Sure but he said that he finally started to listen to what he was being told. Then he went to Dodgers and continued success and even improved. They definitely had some impact. The narrative that "they fixed" Michael Kopech is nonsense though. I think that trade was a bit short. Kopech for Albertus and Perez is probably fine in isolation.

This is why I'm calling him a hypothetical bucket of water for this dumpster fire. He may be a part of putting it out! He could also be gasoline. Or just empty. Right now, the industry thinks he's water, but we won't know until April.

People never factor in competing with a team with something to play for.

That jumped out at me. 43 innings is a small sample size. 24 innings is a small sample size. But 5 appearances? Clearly enough to say the Sox righted him. And if the Sox did fix him, and then traded him for the garbage they acquired, then that speaks even less of Getz.

"Since coming to Los Angeles, no hitter has gotten a hit off his cutter anywhere in the strike zone, or even in the “shadow” area just around the strike zone. Those cutters have led to extra strikes and the count leverage to let that fastball rip above the zone, his bread and butter as a reliever." Clearly two differentiated pitches...but that's where charting gets more complicated. Cutter sweeper slider. All with different spin and drop rates.

Has anyone found audio / video to the beat writer scrum after the press conference? Ive heard some bits and pieces on the CHGO podcast, but would love to listen to the whole thing. Thanks in advance to anyone that shares. My biggest takeaway from the presser was how drastically different it was than Pedro's. Basically no frills. All over video conference. No put a jersey on. No rah rah. No Jerry. To me, it means the Sox (or at least Getz) can read the room. Not surprised, just found it interesting. Looking forward to the next chapter.

Agree with you on plenty of things. I'm just more inclined to post when I disagree; don't take it personally. I'm a dick in real life too!

if grady's up for it I"d prefer him be in the minors again, between him, santos, jirschele that's a much better set of voices for development based on what we saw last year.

4 years into a rebuild got them Witt. 2 years later they are in the playoffs. Also invested in the minors as far as I know. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ seems like when you actually see a rebuild through to the end there is a light at the end of the tunnel. We saw a sliver of that light, then TLR stood in the way and Jerry said we are done spending real money

Hmmm, how exactly did the Royals get into a position to draft one of the better players in the league? Did they…..rebuild?

The Royals signed Michael Wacha and Seth Lugo. Both were very good for the Royals in 2024. The Royals made a 30 win improvement over their 2023 record. If the White Sox make a 30 game improvement in 2025, they'll be 71-91. The White Sox also don't have anyone in the same stratosphere of Bobby Witt Jr, who coincidentally was drafted 2nd overall by the Royals, after a season where they are bad and "rebuilding"

If paying superstars lots of money because they might go into slumps is wasting money, what do you consider paying less money to bad players who end up, in fact, being bad?

That’s completely not the point. Two of those guys have “scrap” level ceilings, while the other two were acquired with much higher ceilings in mind. The fact that they are all likely to end up as scraps is irrelevant to the initial point, which was that Getz did not “dump Kopech for peanuts” because he thought he was getting much much more than that in Vargas.

Lmao, Jerry won't pay contracts that are a fraction of that.

Getz lost you here, here, here, here, and here.

True Lip, but we now have a good respected manager.

Maybe he did think they brought energy, but just completely lacked the talent to compete? They did lose a s%*# ton of close games because they couldn't score or hold leads.