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I think he should apologize to the Sox for not taking steroids earlier in his career.

Here's the list of the guys who have accumulated 12.5 WAR as OF'ers since Luis Robert entered the league: and CF'ers specifically: Robert is the 2nd youngest name on the list, and on a rate basis he's the 4th best. Lastly, here's Cody's company over the same window (since Robert debut): And I'm back to square one with having no idea how anyone can compare these two players from a value perspective. Very basic analysis.

They really want him to be the opening day SS. He was dealing with an off the field issue last season and he really impressed them with the way he grinded thru it then peformed in the AFL. They think he's ready to take off and I would agree.

My issues with Schriff are: 1. When he isn’t invisible. He actually does a good job when he’s just… doing the job. He has a good voice and a nice delivery when he actually settles down and lets the game flow through him. The “we aren’t gonna take that” kind of stuff where he’s trying to create action or a back story where there isn’t (or shouldn’t be) one is cringy. 2. He doesn’t do all of the homework that Benetti did. Like it or not, Benetti (his immediate predecessor) was generally well-liked, well-respected, and is known throughout the industry as one of the best-prepared announcers. To make gaffes like mispronouncing the immediate previous ownership’s name or a hall-of-fame player in the sport you’re currently calling is just embarrassing, especially when contrasted with how Benetti prepared and handled things.

And he shouldn't have to. He literally played in the "Steroid Era" That name wasn't given to that timeframe because a handful of guys were juicing. Additionally, Mark McGwire became an MLB coach, ARod and David Ortiz are on national MLB broadcasts, etc. Lastly, this insistence for Sosa to have to "apologize" in order to be welcomed back to an organization that is owned by someone who wasn't involved when Sosa committed his malfeasances seems petty. Everyone is aware that Sosa, and others, are flawed. It was a different era that shouldn't be ignored. He doesn't have to have a statue or parade, but completely ostracizing a fan favorite who was a huge part of objectively saving baseball after the strike has always been stupid.

The Cubs absolutely used the s%*# out of Sammy Sosa knowing full well he was drugged up to the max. It never stopped them from exploiting him and profiting from the show he put on. Screw them and their sanctimonious BS. I sure also didn't see them do this to any other juicers that went through their franchise.

Lol sox would have this dude playing RF by mid April.

Clickbait title but its true. I know the board is skeptical of all things White Sox but just cannot help themselves either hating everything or looking ahead since things have perked up this offseason. SInce Getz made so many new hires recently , if you've been paying any attention at all, you've seen them in multiple podcasts all over Youtube . They all express optimism about creating a winner. I can hear the laughter now . John Ely is not a recent hire. He was the pitching coach at AA Birmingham Barons and he gives you his perspective on many of the pitchers he coached this past season. He particularly says very good things about Noah Schultz. I hope you all enjoy and have a wonderful holiday season !

I'd like to see Elko get a real shot at it. Unfortunately we kept Vaughn. John Ely says Elko can really pick it at 1st and saved a lot of throwing errors.

Vargas Zavala

If I had 3 guesses, I would pick Padres, Mariners, Dodgers.

Yea, I'm sleep deprived from our sick newborn and totally misunderstood the tweet that I saw. Carry on.

Because their career trajectories have been incredibly different. You keep talking about Bellingers MVP season. He had shoulder surgery following a seperation in the playoffs that destroyed his swing. This isnt a secret to anyone in baseball. Since then, he was a different player. The new player he became was about half as valuable over a very extended period of time as Luis Robert. Robert is a guy who's best year MAY not have happened yet. That's his trajectory. Bellinger is a guy who's best years were undoubtedly behind him. This is why these two have never made sense. It doesn't means Robert and bellinger won't be equally valuable over the next couple years but it's more likely that Robert is more valuable.

Or a billion dollar movie idea!

Rick Hahn signed Clevinger without doing a background check on him, and had to admit he wouldn't have done that signing had he done his due diligence. He got fired. Literally all of Clevinger's performance came from Rick Hahn. Chris Getz signed known domestic abuser Clevinger for $3 million, at a time when no one around the league other than Chris Getz would touch him. He was a full free agent again, so the White Sox could have gone elsewhere, he could have gone to Korea, whatever. He was worth -$0.9 million. I will take $2 million to produce 0 War sitting on my ass and that would make me a better signing than Clevinger was for Getz.

If Schriff gets "Robinson" from that, well, that's another issue.

Counter point: Would you rather have more Frank Thomas and Jim Thome or more Dylan Cease and Michael Lorenzen.

No I will not and I have no interest in this. It's a baseball discussion, I'm discussing baseball. Some interesting points are made here, including: Bellinger's performance is way closer to Robert's than I thought Bellinger's return was really bad Robert's defense is still strong so even without his offensive performance in 2024 he wasn't awful, but that was relying entirely on defense Some people still believe that "protection in a lineup" is a key factor in players' performance The prospects on the Mets are being looked down upon more than I would have thought for 1 year of performance. This is the point of discussion. My level of sarcasm here has been "Yeah but Robert gets hurt even in the seasons people are pointing to." What exactly offends you so much about the idea that people have different levels of hope for Robert than you do?

Quit complaining.

What's the argument here? That Robert is unlikely to ever have a decent trade value, therefore dump him this offseason for a pile of crap? The Sox already have a ton of 45s in their farm system. 3 more will not move the needle at all. Conversely, Robert is probably the most talented position player the Sox have under contract. (You could dream on Wolkow and maybe Bonemer, but otherwise, no one is close). For $55 mil of Jerry's money, I would much rather watch Robert in a Sox uni playing great D and maybe running into a few balls than run Dominic F-ing Fletcher out in cf for 150 games just so we can see exactly how many games this team can lose. If someone offers you a 55 for him, sure, consider it, but otherwise, this is madness.

Because despite his flaws and injury risk, Robert’s ceiling is still incredibly higher than Bellinger’s, and that’s enticing. And it’s not like some Jared Mitchell or Courtney Hawkins scenario where it’s just theoretical upside. We’ve actually seen it from Robert very recently, on a god awful team no less, which is why I don’t love the MVP argument. There’s way too much team context that goes into it.

This is exactly what I’m talking about. You constantly find a single data point, ignore all context, and use it to aid your extremely biased positions. Bellinger came in 10th place in NL MVP voting in 2023…Robert came in 12 place in AL MVP voting that same year. There is basically no difference in those results. Additionally, Robert played for a terrible, 61 win team, whereas Bellinger played for a team that was basically in playoff contention until the end of the season. That makes a huge difference when it comes to MVP voting, but again, something you conveniently leave off the table because it doesn’t support your views.

You can make excuses for him if you want but it’s not going to make him any better. He’s bad.

The guy is a HoF legend and played at Cincinatti. It really shouldn’t be that hard to get his name right just once. It’s all over the place in that gym. And if he did the work as you say, he would have seen RobETRson on the statue he mentioned. Professional announcers get things right. Hacks have people make excuses for them. As I have written, John seems like a nice guy, but………..if the mouth can’t say what the brain was telling it like you claim, much like someone with eyesight problems being an Uber driver, announcing is probably not the correct line of work. I don’t expect perfection. But these mistakes really upset Cincinatti fans. it’s a pattern with him. He had no idea how many outs there were several times. Called left field right field and right field left field multiple times. ESPN has him doing G league and espn+ games, so they don’t consider him one of their best. Sox fans deserve better.

If there was no Benetti doing highest level (Fox #2 team for CFB) work in TWO other sports, while basketball might actually be his strongest...50% of the Schiffren stuff would quiet down. Not to mention constantly being too much of a cheerleader and overly optimistic/rose-colored glasses...the juxtaposition with DJ/Kasper as the second half of the season approached an all-time horrific finish was just too jarring. Perhaps the most pathetic thing last year was Schiffren losing some of his professionalism and getting too close to some of the veteran guys on the team like Sizemore, Pham and Sheets. I remember the complaints about his constant presence around the clubhouse, on the team plane trying to "hang out with the guys and be part of the cool/in group," Pham really laid into him about that as he departed for KC and told his side of things. Benetti was never ever in a million years the cool guy in the room...thus there was never any attempt for him to pretend to be something he wasn't/never was.

TBH, that’s too rich for me too. WOW.

Even Bennetti's biggest haters have to admit he actually knew, well, words.

I'm Polish, and my name is mispronounced pretty much every single time I'm out in public. I'm all for easy names being mispronounced at every opportunity. Why is this even a story?

Not to mention the betting company gets to sit on your $1000 interest free for the next 9+ months.

That there is an off-season, two-page, 34 reply thread on this board about a Sox announcer misprononucing a name during a basketball game just shows how hard people are looking for things to complain about. It's just ridiculous. We get it: you're unhappy about the team and the 121 losses. But then again, after you post a few hunderd times (no hyperbole with that few hundred times number, it might over a thousand for few) that Getz, Riensdorf, Sox players and management all completely suck; after doing that over and over and over . . . I guess you're forced to find something new to complain about.

I assume @Balta1701 was referring to the fact that Bellinger was just salary dumped by the Cubs, even though he has outperformed Robert over the past two years. Basically inferring that Robert probably doesn’t have as much trade value as people are thinking. The Yankees now have Bellinger for either 1/$25 or 2/$50 with the cash the Cubs included. However, Robert is a bit cheaper at either 1/$17, 2/$37, or 3/$55.

I certainly wasn't Sammy's biggest fan when he was playing but it's absolutely absurd that Ricketts forced a Steroids apology out of him to let him back back around the organization.

When I saw the thread title, my first reaction was "is there a different Mike Soroka in the league??"

That implies he is in on the bit and actually the funniest one of the bunch to which I highly disagree

Right? This is an all-time Sox performance. It's a tragedy he'll never get a real chance.

Lol I guess Soxtalk would not exist if fans weren't ultra whiny about things that wouldn't have even been a story before every idiot with a Twitter can criticize everyone on the air who happens to mispronounce names or get facts wrong. Being a professional is not about being flawless . He put in the work .His mouth just didn't translate it from his brain right. Are we all so un empathetic we cannot just say oops instead of getting hot about it. So many angry people in the cheap seats losing money on their betting apps and fantasy leagues drunkenly yelling at the TV and pretending to be Siskel and Ebert. Mellow out.

He can allocate the budget he gets but what is the budget he gets compared to other teams ? Questions like this must always be asked if you think you are fair. Not just compared to the big spenders but compared to teams who also are known not to spend much. The problem with the international amateur scouting has been around as long as Reinsdorfs been owner except for the brief time they got Robert and Abreu it's sucked. It's like the the DR doesn't exist for the Sox even though it's been providing top players to baseball for the entirety of Reinsdorfs ownership. I admit I'm as ignorant as the next guy which is why I feel I can't judge .Others like yourself feel you have everything you need. Since I have no say in the matter of what goes on I don't torture myself blaming the puppets under Reinsdorf .They are all handicapped likeany others do the same jobs in other organizations. When you do see international success stories on other teams in the Sox financial stratosphere do you ask yourself why can they get those players and we can't ? We almost had one with Tatis but someone snatched him away before most with the Sox even knew what they had. That's just sad. I'm more likely to think Getz will be a better GM than his previous job. We already see a series of hires related to infrastruture that most of the talking heads reporting and offering media related opinion in Chicago never judge these seem impress Getz has gone outside the organization and hired people that appear to be qualified. I have no idea how it'll turn out. Seems like a long term project and things change all the time.

Not in the Pirates picture. However, it looks like he gained some pounds with the Brewers. Too many Leinies and cheddarwursts.

The guy went 0-10 with a 4.74 ERA and an even higher FIP, and triples his salary. I wish I was younger and a better baseball player.

To me, Fegan was as good as it gets. He alone was worth the subscription.

The Sox was from being a bad team with little interest. Several years ago, the Tribune went without a Sox beat writer, but for some reason had one for the Cubs. Back when the Tribune owned the Cubs, all of us complained about the uneven coverage. Now we just accept it. And why is because JR has let this team slide where everyone knows they are not a worthy cover. Vinnie didn’t deserve to lose his job. Fegan didn’t deserve to lose his. If JR would have done his job, they both would still be doing what they are doing. And the sad thing is, it wasn’t like they were making millions.

Payton Wilson ran a 4.43 40. Looks like Bryse lost the genetic lottery in his family.

Girthy, but he’s doing just fine…

While true, Jerry isn’t free from blame here. Interest levels are super fucking low because of the incompetence he has allowed to fester for years.

Jerry Reinsdorf should be forced to sell with the damage he has done

“Breee-Say Weelson”

Is his name pronounced like Bryce? If so, God help us all with Schriffen.

Hes still alive. He doesn't have to know about Oscar Robertson, but he was the one that brought him up 3 times in an effort to know history. You want to mention it on the telecast, be a professional and get it right.

A lot of times these guys get hired because they have a good voice and some knowledge or multiple sports and look pleasant enough on camera. These tweeters are morons. There's no one who knows the history of every teams great players. Robertsons been dead a while .He played long ago.of course Schriffen prepared so he learned about Robertson on short notice most likely. The trouble is even without weed or advanced age your mind doesn't always remember correctly and that's not good for an announcer. Sucks he said it wrong and had people screaming it's Robertson not Robinson you douchebag. He should have someone in his ear telling him he made a mistake after the 1st time but chances are the producers or someone back in the studio doesn't even know it's Robertson.

You get what you pay for.