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Media literacy is at an all time low in this country. Jesus christ, guys.

Luis Robert put up a 5.0 WAR in 2023. Last year he was hurt again, and the team beyond dreadful. People act like he's never been good.

Sounds like a Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings character.

I don’t think we turned it down, I think Gammons said we were asking for Martes, Tucker and Musgrove for Quintana

Now…if we could just flip Robert for say a good young catcher prospect, things could really start to look up around here.

Robert isn't half the player Tucker is by numbers Robert is hype and Tucker is substance

Astros losing both Bregman and Tucker would make me so happy.

One White Sox angle - its darn smart that Getz got the Crochet deal done when he did, as Framber Valdez is clearly on the trade block from Houston now and, although he's more expensive in dollars, he has a postseason pedigree that Crochet doesn't have.

Dead pull homer hitter who led the world in wall scrappers. Wrigley deep in left. He'd have like 78% of his current career Homers if he played all his game in Wrigley if you trust statcast. He's going to absolutely mash with those crawford boxes.

I think the Sox will be at least a top 3 farm by summer 2026 depending on graduations. On top of this group, they’ll get a haul for Robert. Personally I’d prefer they get young MLB guys like a package of CES, Noelvi Marte plus from the Reds, but regardless it’ll be a haul. theyll get a nice player at 10 this year and at least a top 4 pick in 2026 which seems to be stacked with elite prep bats. The big factor this year will be the emergence of Colson, the turnaround of Jacob Gonzalez, and an explosion from Wolkow. I really believe in Wolkow. The swing and miss is a monster concern obviously. 158 strikeouts in 337 bats is bad. But he’s turning 19 in January and was a super raw player out of Downers grove. He’s learning on the fly and shows flashes of dominance. when Judge was 18, he was still playing high school ball. At 19 he had 2 homers and 42ks in 187Abs in the WAC. Another 6’7 stud James Wood had 124ks in 323 ABs in AA at 20. He struck out only 42 times in 190 AAA ABs the next year. Spencer Jones (6’6) struck out 200 times in AA in his age 23 season in 482 ABs. My point isn’t that he’ll be like those guys. Mainly, that the Ks are going to be a thing and that he will probably never lose the swing and miss in his game. Plate Discipline and pitch recognition can develop. He led Kanny in Homers at 18 years old when I watch him hit a few things stick out to me. 1.) his pitch recognition isn’t there yet. He watches a lot of good knee high fastballs and looks fooled on breaking stuff. It’s not that he’s chasing stuff, he just doesn’t look like he has a plan at the plate sometimes. If he was 23 with 3 years of college and 2 of pro ball I’d be worried. But we’re a long way from that. I2.) he is swinging too hard. His head goes flying. The bat speed and exit velos are probably great, but he’s swinging like he isn’t built like a tank. 3.) the swing is beautiful. Yeah it’s too hard, but watch the cut at 3:10. He keeps his head down and lets his strength and launch angle do the work and hits the ball a mile. 4.) he’s built like a major leaguer already. Scratch that built like a tight end. His legs are massive and he looks comfortable in his size. Really rooting for the kid this year. As MJ said, the ceiling is the roof

I believe Cody is now the banner of every Orioles fan site. After all, they are counting on him as their hitting coach and probable 5th starter.

If I'm a "rah-rah" type, I generally accept that the Cease trade was a bit short, and the rest of his trades range from inconsequential to good. Your portrayal is that everything before the Crochet trade proved that Getz is a horrible GM, which you need to post multiple times a day, across the entire site. I believe the jury's out on Getz, and he's growing in his job. I don't care about a single trade of Matt Thompson for Bailey Horn. I do care that Getz is redoing scouting, development, stats analysis, ML coaching, hitting and pitching coordination. I think that's way more important than if he waived Jake Cousins too soon.

Red Sox golf crony of mine here in Florida thinks the White Sox fleeced the Sawx. Only time will tell.

It’s somewhere in middle for me. I know 99% of the board had their mind made up on Getz less than 12 months into the job but it was obvious he was left holding a bag of s%*# and I believe he deserved more time. I don’t think we really know anything about GM Getz for another 12-18 months but there’s no denying he’s rebuilding the farm system, scrubbing the mlb roster to bare bones (like the bears recently did), and making a number of ancillary moves within the coaching staff, player development, and international that hopefully pay off eventually. I see positives but the jury is still out. I want to see him continue to build off this momentum over the next 12 months and we’ll see where they land. Realistically, this team isn’t competitive until 2027 even if he does a great job.

It's a big off season for him and it certainly looks like he's putting in the work. I really like the adjustments he's made to his swing. Hopefully he can make a tweak to his approach and get a little more aggressive early in the count. If he can do that he's setting himself up to have a really good year.

Laptop? Can we get him to throw out the abacus?

Watching a rebuild is fun to me. It's the reason I won't watch the Bulls anymore, the treadmill is not a fun place to be. I'm excited to watch the Sox next season if it's just a bunch of 24-year-olds trying to make it in the league and maybe break out. Some guy last spring training, maybe Soroka or Shewmake or some new(bad) addition, said the team was going to impress because it's a bunch of 28-year-olds fighting for their careers. I don't think anybody bought that, but I might buy it when they're rookies and second year players. There's some potential for fun or a surprise when there's players who could break out. In other words, I'd much rather watch Brooks Baldwin play second base than Nicky Lopez, rather watch Ramos than Moncada, Vargas than Eloy, etc. even if it means another 100 loss season. Sports is still fun. Maybe watching it on TV gets old after 70 years or whatever the average age of this board is. Or posting about it on the internet since the day of newsgroups. But its a timeless thing that has been fun and socially relevant since, I dunno, they started recording history.

Miguel Vargas, former Top 40 prospect?

It definitely did, until he came to the Sox and forgot to hit like he did with the Reds and Nationals.

Which of Sale or Quintana did we turn down a Tucker focused trade for? I remember he was almost on our team somehow.

Before he fouled a ball off his shin this year, Tucker was otherworldly, he was on a path to the AL MVP award with a shot at 50+ home runs. If you see that player again next year, I could seem him maybe even pushing close to $500 million. I have no concept of what it would take for the Cubs to extend him right now.

Dunn's signing elicited an ejaculation of happiness in Sox fandom. He was the obvious trade acquisition that should have happened in 2010, but didn't. He was the stat-head darling, the 3 true outcomes dream. He was going to save the franchise until he didn't. LaRoche and Encarnacion were reactions to missing out on all the big pieces of that off-season.

I'd rather have Kyle Tucker for one year than Kyle Tucker for no years, he's really freaking good, worth the cost

He would have been a great catcher. Probably would have even stayed healthy, and with the foul balls to the groin, probably would have had a few less side pieces.

I believe Meidroth was a minor character in The Silmarillion

I don't see any reason why they can't rebuild and add short-term (1-3 years) type deals in FA. You at least field a somewhat MLB team and have guys that can either be extended later or traded at some point for more young pieces. Although I guess the time for that would have been last year after the #10 pick was a lock.

And he identified this as a hole and revamped the system. People learn. They grow.

The good news is the red sox can survive getting fleeced. The white sox, well, you can't kill us we're already dead.

This is probably a thread for caulfield. I couldn't sleep (because I'm old now) and started thinking about how I liked the trade and some of our prospects but how little of it matters if we can't find and develop position players through our organic channels (draft, intl budget, waivers, rule 5, stuff you get regardless of anything). Then I started thinking about to prove that point, had we just kept all our star players whom we acquired that way, it would be an incredible rotation. Then I started to think twice, and came up with this scenario to even SEE if that was true and realized there was a fun alt-world. Our Alt-world: We have a still annoying owner who puts strong guard rails on how we can operate. He loves the yankees from when he grew up in the bronx as a kid, but not the winning as much as just having the same players every year. He runs the white sox with the following rules: he spends, but ONLY on retaining talent. And he'll spend big. BUT - he does not believe in trades. He got swindled on a baseball card trade at 11 and thinks its hogwash. Do we sign FA? I don't know i just want to see this team in this scenario. Starting Rotation: - Chris Sale (6.4 fWAR) - Garrett Crochet (4.7 fWAR) - Chris Bassitt (2.2 fWAR) - Carlos Rodon (1.7 fWAR) - Jose Quintana (I consider waiver acquisitions still organic) (1.0 fWAR) - Jonathan Cannon technically had more fWAR, but QUintana pitched 175 innings so I'm gonna keep that young whipper snapper on the backburner. If you are thinking What about Cease? Lopez? Montas? you need to re-read my long-ass paragraph about our fake owner that I came up with. So that is 16 fWAR. That'd be tied with Philadelphia for 3rd most WAR in the league in 2024 and second behind the Royals. Alright, now let's see what I got for lineups C - Carlos Perez (I'm gonna give him -1.0 fWAR for season?) 1B - Andrew Vaughn (-0.2 fWAR) 2B - I don't know what to do here, I feel like it's fair to say we'd have had a terrible Madrigal year but am going to give us 0.2 fWAR for Romy SS - Marcus Semien (4.2 fWAR) 3B - Jake Burger (I'm gonna remove -.4 fWAR for having to play him at 3rd, but he'll be a 1.0 fWAR guy) LF - Fernando Tatis Jr. (3.2 fWAR) CF - Luis Robert (0.5 fWAR) RF - Alex Call (1.2 fWAR) - gd did not realize Alex Call had a better year than Robert omfg DH - Ok we all know this would be a terrible Jose Abreu year, but I"m just gonna say we'd get 0 war here i'm assuming it'd be Sheets? Ok Total Position Player fWAR is a GENEROUS 9.1. That would have put us...25th. (LMAO we had -6.1 fwar on position players this year jesus christ) So 25.1 fWAR between pitching and hitting, not yet bullpen because that seems super hard. I'm just gonna give us 3.1 since that's middle of the pack. We did not have a dominant closer drafted I think? WHo knows. Anyway we'd still be the 10th worst team. I don't really remember anymore why I did this but the alex call thing alone was worth it. But...yeah you gotta...you gotta get more hitting. This whole "Develop pitchers to trade for hitters" thing isn't enough.

For a fleeting second, I pictured two guys sitting in a golf cart together, texting each other.

I see we're all having some sort of peace conference.

I'm sorry, this is third after betting homes and TA at catcher.

This is a fake quote lol

White Sox: We don't hit the ball good.

I think the Sox have addressed their weaknesses in drafting and development but now they have to show results going forward.

Your 2025/2026/2027/2028 White Sox.....We're all hoping for the best

This is correct. I’m sorry, but I can’t muster much emotion around any of this. Yes, the Sox seemed to acquire some young players that have the potential to be solid MLB regulars. Why should any of us believe they will be developed? It would be simply a faith-based argument, which is fine I guess, but it’s history has continually showed us this organization has failed consistently on player development. We’re all hoping for the best, but at this point in time, my expectations are still incredibly low, until shown otherwise

Again, this team has to make up 40 games with Luis Robert on the roster just to get back to .500. They need to gain 45 to 50 games to get back to the playoffs. Is there any logic that sees Jerry swinging the resources necessary to pick up 40 to 50 games in the three years, all while paying Luis Robert too? We already know they are cutting for this year, so forget that one. We are now down to two years left. To me logic dictates working on the most probable path back to decency, thinking this mess can be fixed in three years doesn't seem logical.

Eder as any kind of a usable pitcher would be nice.

I see 121 losses last year with Luis Robert on the roster.

Eder as a shutdown closer would make everyone on the board feel vindicated to some degree about the Burger trade and full of I-told-you-so's, so I want that.

MLB regulars. You know I don't play the stupid anti-White Sox clique thing on this board.

ASCHE...otherwise, you'll get a relative of Arthur.

Kris Bryant was a ROY, MVP and 4-time All-Star. Dude was on a Hall of Fame track until he landed in Colorado. Let's pump the brakes on calling Braden better — and for longer — until he's got some MLB hardware.

The odds of that are barely above 0.

Couldn't agree more.

And that is why sports frankly are no fun anymore. It's 2024 with the 2025 season coming up. Lot of wasted summer afternoons ahead. I heard all this down the road stuff during our first failed rebuild.

Me too Garrett, me too.

idk, I married someone from my home town. We moved back when we were planning on having kids but never lived very far away. We live 10 minutes from either set of grandparents and my kids see their grandparents weekly (and even more when they were preschool aged). I've spent the last 20 years traveling all over with my wife. I live next to several hundred acres of restored prairie while being a relatively quick train ride from the best city in the world and two major international airports. Lots of different paths in life can lead to good outcomes.

I have been all over the place and enjoy nothing more than being stuck in my hometown.