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Solid move, was gonna be tough to block all the infield prospects without an addition of some kind.

Maybe…I’m just concerned they won’t use him in that capacity. I’d also rather use our limited budget on a free agent reliever who might be able to close. I think there is more flip upside with that type of player vs. utility guy.

Again this is what he SHOULD be. But recent vintages of roster management haven't looked like this. Getz has very actively put mediocre veterans in front of young players who should be playing, even those ones he acquired recently.

It’s absolutely wild. The only spot we have multiple prospects at is 2B & 3B and we just blocked them all. No fucking clue what we are doing here.

Or they "claim" they don't have money to spend.

No player worth anything wants to sign with this organization when it’s been in such disarray over the past few seasons. The Sox can only sign players who don’t have a lot of options to play elsewhere.

That requires money.

I'm excited for Sosa and he deserves tons of ABs

Getz obsessed with post-30 guys coming off years of regression. Weird market to corner.

Let me play Devil’s Advocate and it is about development. Ramos is a decent defender who has lapses throwing the ball. Sosa is pretty bad at 3b and a knucklehead at 2b. Vargas is brutal wherever he plays. The Sox have like 15 young pitchers they are gonna try and develop over the next 2 years. What if you have a plus defender at 3b to take platoon at bats and some late inning defensive replacement innings? Might that not help the pitchers develop? Ramos, in particular has massive platoon splits. Is it so bad to ease him into mlb at bats? I think this is a decent signing that may reflect a desire to have some of the Sox B/B+ prospects earn their time rather than just handing it to them. Plus, I would love to see Vargas DH/1b only. He is a hazard with a glove in his hand.

I actually am on the side of being ok with Rojas. He's reliable positive WAR year in year out, and you have to at some point have a guy like that.. after last year, you cant really pretend those guys are in large supply. As far as blocking young talent, im sure Sosa, Meidroth and Baldwin will have plenty of PAs, especially post trade deadline. Baldwin might be opening day SS for all we know. Sosa is out of options though so honestly he may not even be in this org a full year anyway.

Rojas is not really a SS though. If you play him at 2B, you are blocking one of Sosa, Baldwin, or Meidroth. At 3B, he’s blocking Vargas, Ramos, & Sosa. Those are the only spots we have multiple young options that actually need playing time. Those five dudes are going to lose a lot of at-bats due to this signing. And I’m not trying to be a hater either. I didn’t dislike the Tauchman / Slater additions as none of Fletcher, DeLoach, or Colas have done enough in AAA to be handed an opportunity. That’s not the case with several of the guys mentioned above.

The 2024 White Sox team had one of the worse offenses and bullpens in their history. Nothing has been added this off season to make those areas better. This losing on purpose is really lousy. I realize that the low payroll will make the franchise one of the most profitable teams in MLB but still this whole situation is shameful.

My God. Just let Vargas, Baldwin, Sosa, Ramos, etc get all the reps available. I don't understand why they always need to pay for useless veterans to clog play time?

It's amazing how many old guys that I have never heard of are signed by this organization. I guess the fact I barely watch their games any longer keeps me from hearing of these guys.

Sosa, Vargas and Ramos should be given every opportunity to play before a guy like Rojas. Hopefully it will play out that way

Bowden just said “You, you, you, you, NOT YOU, and you”

Someday maybe we can argue about trades that actually matter.It's so sad we are arguing about 8th round picks and 31 year old DFA'd guys. But that's all we have.

Look having Josh Rojas isn't a problem for me in general. He was a free agent signing who cost you nothing but money. But there are two things of note here. 1.Decent organizations have all kinds of good fielding/no hit utility guys falling out of their trees. 2. These kinds of guys aren't used to block guys who need ABs during historically bad seasons for exactly the value proposition you just outlined. They are literal roster filler.

This is definitely part of the issue. Meidroth was the third piece of a Garrett Crochet trade. He was 31% better than a league average hitter in his first go around as a AAA infielder. What else does he have to do to earn an opportunity? Baldwin was stellar last year in the minors. Sosa was very good in AAA last year. Vargas has destroyed the minors. What else do those guys have to do to earn an opportunity? My beef isn’t with Josh Rojas himself…he’s a perfectly fine role player and may end up being a nice little value signing. The problem is whatever you might get for Rojas at the deadline is a fraction of the value of what it would be if one of the kids above worked out. It’s simply poor and none of the rah rah Getz guys are going to convince me otherwise as I just witnessed how little Getz was able to extract for much better assets this past year.

The Sox seem to have more faith in 3other teams 30s relievers than they do in developing their own young pitchers by their own recent moves. If they believed in their own people, why do they need other people's journeyman in another in a string of 100+ loss seasons, instead of developing their own for pennies on the dollar?

You have clearly never seen Baldwin play once in your life

Completely different situations. The Brewers are contending and looking for bullpen help now. The White Sox just started yet another rebuild, are not even close to competing in their own division, and should be prioritizing developing young pitchers rather than trading them away for veteran relievers. God knows they will have plenty of time to do so. Anderson’s numbers with the Rangers were terrible but his strikeout rate in both the majors and minors looks pretty good. The Brewers were buying low on his arm and thinking he will help the big league ball club before Molina who may take 2+ years to develop.

We are not talking about the same players. The minor leaguers have gained a full year of experience and some of them have even take some initial lumps in the majors. There are simply more quality, major league ready options now at 3B & 2B than there were last year. Additionally, Meidroth was acquired after putting up a 131 wRC+ in a full season at AAA and Vargas was acquired as our key deadline piece who has already dominated the minors. These guys and a couple others need to actually play so we can start assessing if they will be viable pieces for the future or if we need to find other solutions at those spots.

The thing is, there were a couple of teams in on him, at least with the rumors. Did the Sox offer him more money? Maybe, but significantly more? Kind of doubtful. I'm guessing they offered him playing time. But you never know. I was watching MLBN a couple of years ago and Kevin Millar was talking about fringe players being free agents. He said panic starts to set in right around Christmas when you aren't signed. It could just be this guy didn't want to wait because he might have had to sign a minor league deal.

Lol…you are guessing too. The only difference is I’m actually considering where he’s played at in recent years to make an educated guess and you are just going with what’s easiest to justify the move and play devil’s advocate. I don’t think he’s a bad player, but I wouldn’t be signing a guy who takes away playing time from the only few positional areas we actually have some internal options. And Brooks Baldwin is a very legitimate prospect who shot through the system last year. No idea where you came up with that notion, but he’s a dude worthy of a ton of playing time next year.

If a good catcher were a good hitter, he wouldn’t be a backup catcher. Regardless, Lee is about the least of my concerns with this team

I don’t see why. He’s a good catcher with some power and decent running ability

There's never going to be a better situation than now to let the kids play as much as possible. What were doing is going to end up with us giving up on someone and seeing them blossom somewhere else.

Meidroth also started more games as SS than anywhere else last year. Did this guy get his name from Tolkein or what

Why can’t Rojas just be a guy who plays everywhere to give guys a day or two off per week? Then nobody’s “starting spot” is really being blocked, and Rojas will get plenty of playing time.

Buying yourself some time so you don't bring Colson up immediately?

This also likely ends the Lux rumor

The owner is claiming that they don't, yes. Has nothing to do with the front office. They're spending what has been budgeted.

Sosa is out of options and Meidroth isn’t on the 40 man. I think there’s a solid chance Meidroth and Ramos begin the year in Charlotte.

Eat your heart out, Roki

I mean…I don’t think it was at all realistic to expect him to want to come here. But I do appreciate they seemed to make a genuine effort to go through the courting process if for no other reason than it’s good practice for down the road when hopefully we’re better positioned for similar circumstances.

That’s the funniest tweet he’s ever written though I give him props. I laughed extremely hard.

Getz out here playing 4D chess.... "I'm going to use my fringe prospects to trade for elder bullpen arms. And if those arms do something useful in the 2025 season, I can trade them at the deadline for fringe prospects!"

Lol'ing at the thought of Getz spinning this into a bullet point for his resume for the GM position: Directed efforts to supplement organization with over 20 WAR from players with no previous MLB experience

When does Getz step up to the plate and go after a player who can actually swing the bat and produce on offense? I’m not against this signing, but it would be nice if F’ing once we signed a player who can flat out rake!!!

We heard about how the process was so good in the Burger/ Eder trade. How's that working out ? Was it a bad trade a flawed process, bad scouting ? Nice way to never be happy about any trade or take accountability for it. Our process was good it was just one of those things. Trades are a result oriented thing not a process oriented thing. It's not about the process its about what works out for you and what doesn't. It isn't flawed just because you say it is. You'd have a lot of problems proving any process is flawed without flawed results. And it isn't a process unless you have a sample size. I don't think you have a process or a flawed process right now. He's trying to add incremental RP depth so he can keep any young RP near MLB ready and trade the older ones. It's not that baffling. And it's likely not to make too much difference in this year's record. Some of those young RP MLB ready arms may be helpful this year while they get their feet wet. But more so in the coming years when we have our better SP hitting their stride and position player prospects also getting better , health permitting. But I am having a hard time keeping track of all the new pitchers and am very curious to see who is put in what roles and how it all plays out. If they trade some of the older guys and young guys step in i think the BP will be less than horrific this year. Can't really expect more than that unfortunately. Much ado about nothing.

Underrated response.

Where would they have been had Reinsdorf not bought a team that already had the greatest player in NBA history?

What a way to start the new year.

Oh did the 30 year old reliever have a nice line in AAA

Which part of his four decades of what now looks like one, long list of one franchise-crippling decision after another will somehow look better somewhere down the road? Absent the one hit wonder that was the 2005 championship season, what could any of us possibly later point towards and re-assess as “that wasn’t as bad as we thought back then”? Do you have an example of what you think that could be? I can skim his entire reign of terror starting all the way back in 1981 clear through today and there is nothing to my eye that the simple passage of time will change my view as to the absolute disaster this guy has been as owner since day one.

For those who had to look up the names like me: Tyler Gilbert is the guy who threw a no hitter in his first major league start a few years ago. He’s 31 years old. Bullpen piece. Aaron Combs was our 8th round pick in the most recent draft. Also a bullpen guy.

1. “Baseball strategies were better in the 1990s” is a plan that might have worked in 2005. Coming out of the Steroid Era, only the start of the Moneyball era of GMs getting smarter, well before the Strikeout era we are in now. It is now well out of date. 2. Kenny Williams wasn’t the best GM in the sport, but he was pretty good. Aggressive strategy, employed some good people. It worked pretty well for years, until personality conflicts worked their way in. That may be a message about his later years, guys who he trusted when they had success became full of themselves and has no leadership from the owner. 3. I think we all know the Jerry Krause story. The Pippen trade was brilliance. Bringing in Phil was brilliance. Grant, Rodman. Some of the historically best moves ever in basketball. Dismantling the team so he could get more credit for rebuilding it was unchecked arrogance, and again Reinsdorf let it fester. 4. Jerry Reinsdorf bought a franchise that already had Michael Jordan. His story is very, very different without that one key detail.