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Which is saying something because it was always stupid.

lol…I legit thought about using it. But when someone basically posts “why is a team coming off the worst season in baseball history rebuilding instead of trying to win right now” I felt the need to be a bit more direct.

Steamer 600 projections for the various 3B / 2B options on the roster: Meidroth: 107 wRC+ | 2.8 fWAR Baldwin: 92 wRC+ | 1.9 fWAR Rojas: 95 wRC+ | 1.9 fWAR Vargas: 103 wRC+ | 1.8 fWAR Sosa: 95 wRC+ | 1.7 fWAR Ramos: 91 wRC+ | 1.7 fWAR Six of our top 10 projections are guys who play those two positions. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think all these guys would hit these projections if given a full season worth of at-bats and Meidroth in particular is such a unicorn that he’s clearly breaking their model. However, the point here is that we have enough young internal options worthy of a legitimate look that we don’t really need a veteran stopgap. And if you’re signing Rojas as a potential flip piece, I don’t think the juice will have been worth the squeeze come July. Again, the story is different for RF. Tauchman has a Steamer 600 projection of a 109 wRC+ and 1.8 fWAR. Fletcher, DeLoach, & Colas all project to be at 0.0 to negative fWAR players. At their ages, they are simply not worthy of committing serious playing time to on a team in desperate need of competent bats and they should have to force their way into earning opportunities. As such, a Tauchman / Slater platoon for RF makes sense as a stopgap since they are blocking guys very unlikely to be productive major leaguers.

We've been saying all off season long, shore up SS, if you're going to do ANYTHING... But of course, we find a guy who just happens to play the two positions with the most depth on the roster in 2B and 3B. Now we don't know for sure if it's quality depth or not, but one would have to imagine at least two of Montgomery/Vargas/Ramos/Gonzalez/Meidroth/Baldwin would be able to handle 2B and 3B. If we go along with the theory that Vargas is slotted as the DH (and not a defined position), with Tauchman starting in RF and Baldwin at SS and Sosa at 2B...just let the kids play!!! If we've already given up on Fletcher and Colas for RF, fine. But at least find a legit CF candidate for when you eventually trade Robert. Don't suddenly act surprised and shift Fletcher there when his best position (and the only one where he has a positive asset/value) is RF. Some are already suggesting that Rojas should get some play at 1B. Why, why, why, when his biggest asset is being an above average field at third and second? Why are we paying Vaughn $6 million or whatever it is and already trying to replace him with a hitter lacking much if any offensive upside?

Yes, but unless Jerry decided to raise the payroll to Dodgers levels this offseason and sign as many free agents as they could, this team still wouldn’t have a prayer at the playoffs.

Is that White Sox Caleb Williams?

I'm not always right, but man I hated this deal from the get-go before I even knew we were putting Bassitt in there.

Was just gonna say, welcome to Chicago, Gavin

47 instead of 45 wins. Big gains

Absolutely. He doesn't have the requisite service time to not be optionable. He also has just 4.1 years of service time, so he's controllable for 2026 as well even though it was just a 1 year deal.

Sox currently holding 24 pitchers and 16 position players on the 40 man. It almost certainly has to be a pitcher. Murfee or Scholtens make the most sense, but obviously Murfee was just claimed, and Sox liked Scholtens enough to hold him on the roster all last year. Obviously this isn't a good roster, but you're getting to the point where you're going to have to cut interesting young guys you recently brought in if you continue to acquire middling veteran talent. This also hamstrings the Sox availability to be aggressive on the waiver wire, which frankly is one of their competitive advantages from being so awful.

Is this a serious post?

Meidroth will get a shot in 2025 but he’s fine starting the season in AAA. He’s only 23 and I’m not in a hurry to start the clock on any of these prospects if there are viable short term vets in front of them. I’m hoping they add a SS next but also wouldn’t be surprised if they roll with the Baldwin/Amaya combo there. I know Miami’s system has sucked recently but it’s still hard to believe Amaya was a T10 prospect for them. I guess the glove is good and that has some value.

that makes you the smartest poster on Soxtalk by a mile.

I think with this signing, you are looking at the following infield to start the year: 3B: Rojas* SS: Baldwin# 2B: Sosa Vargas likely becomes the primary DH who fills in at 3B against LHP as Rojas has strong platoon splits. Amaya starts the year as the main backup infielder and slots in at SS against LHP. This leaves a AAA infield of the following to start the year: 3B: Ramos SS: Montgomery* 2B: Meidroth All three of those guys likely receive a call-up by June with hopefully Rojas being part of an early trade to clear a spot (he does have an option FWIW) and Amaya likely the odd man out unless he quickly shows something, injuries happen, or one of Sosa or Baldwin flops. And with the inflow of so many infielders, my hope is Baldwin eventually moves into a mini Zobrist role and plays all over the IF & OF while still getting mostly everyday ABs. Lots of moving pieces here, but at least I can see some semblance of a plan. I still don’t love adding Rojas, but it does make more sense if you have decided Vargas can’t stick at 3B and you view Ramos as being the likely heir apparent.

Same old tricks. I think I’d rather have twenty 17 YO Dominicans for the money

Anything is possible but for Vargas and Sosa luckily there is DH to get them ABs along with trying to figure out if either of them can play 1st base competently if their bats wake up. As 2 of the only guys the Sox have with middle of the order potential in 2024 at least they are awfully close to running out of chances .

I'd say Vargas gets a season before other prospects start pushing him out. If Vargas can't hit, and Ramos can, now Vargas is scrambling for another position to stretch out his audition. They have too many options for Sosa to mess up another clear shot at starting time. I think if Sosa hits .100 for 6 weeks, he goes to the back of the queue.

I know he has an option which is why I suggested sending him to AA if anything. He still takes up a 40 man spot. That in a vacuum isnt a concern with what we have on the 40 man but it quickly does when Quero/Teel take a 40 man spot above a guy in AA. Haven't heard anything official about Quero/Teel moving to 1B and that does not seem to be in the immediate plans. You certainly don't make that decision because of that guy. Both should be given every opportunity to fail at catcher.

I see both sides of the argument. Keep payroll low during the rebuild and then spend like crazy when the team is good again. However, it doesn’t seem like Jerry is truly willing to “go all out” after saving millions during a rebuild phase. So I could understand @JUSTgottaBELIEVE’s stance of why not spend money? It’s Jerry’s money so who cares and he likely won’t ever go all out when the team is good again. Maybe a decent signing could help the team and/or be traded for an asset later.

Says the guy that was devastated by breaking the loss record and continues to bring it up. Sounds like you want them to break it again!

I realize top starting pitching talent is super expensive but how do you throw $50 million at Tyler O’Neill but are only willing to give out one year deals to Sugano and Morton for $13 million and $15 million respectively? O’Neil wasn’t all that much of a necessity when we all knew starting pitching was. Very strange.

I think he means the other Kim the Dodgers just signed.

I wonder if paying them a good amount of money would help…soften the blow a little…like forever luxury living money for them and generations to come?? I loathe the idea of moving. Buuuut someone could probably talk me into moving somewhere for 6 months for say…25 MILLION DOLLARS EVERY YEAR for a half decade. I don’t know…I might check with my wife but something tells me she would ok that.

I know we have plenty of catching prospects but I’d still claim the catcher the Dodgers just DFA to add Kim. 23 year old Diego Cartaya, the Dodgers 16th ranked prospect.

So that means they shouldn’t sign any good players over the next 3 years?

Because uprooting your family twice in six months sounds fun.

I believe we both thought it was Ha-Seong and he is certainly not a utility infielder.

If we can roster 15 catchers then we can roster 8 second basemen

Oh I agree, just joking. I hope.

Oh I don’t think it happens, just teasing Harold

But where's he gonna play? It makes no sense even if the INF wasn't already super crowded. Makes even less sense now.

And now the Lux for Robert trade to undo all of the Getz goodwill from the Crochet deal.

Thanks for clarifying, didn't realize that. In that case, @WestEddy was spot on, my apologies.

It was always the SEC teams that were so against the NIL as well. Pretty sure Dabo has a bunch of extremely shitty comments about “players don’t need to be paid, the college is payment enough” and Saban always railed against it. And Saban steps out the side door as soon as it takes effect

He has a nice write up.

I’m referring to the “175 pounds soaking wet” comment. He’s clearly a much smaller player than Zobrist, but that doesn’t mean he’s some scrawny little slap hitter which is how I have taken your series of comments to imply. Baldwin can actually impact a baseball.

Future Sox just posted this on Wikelman Gonzalez. He really reminds me of Cease with how hard he throws and the way he follows through by kicking his right leg towards 1st base.

So I looked into an antenna for my house and found a bunch of cables downstairs leading to different parts of the house - outside, up through the floor to extend to the three seasons room, up in the attic and into the bedrooms. Then, when my dad and I were putting up some lights so we could see in the attic at our main staircase and in my wife’s closet and we found an antenna set up with a cable connected in the attic and on the east side of the house. We found the cable that hooked up to the TVs, an input and output box in the basement and some cables with a tag that said “ANT” on it. Once those were plugged in, the tv found all of the channels through the air, including CHSN. It was pretty sweet that we had an antenna all set up just sitting there in the attic. Good thing the previous owner didn’t have it taken down when they got Direct TV and then Comcast.

BOOM. 💥 Exactly.

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.

This right here is the type of stuff the Sox should be looking to do.

We have this belief that 'oh give that guy 500 PAs he can prove he's for real'. when in reality a bunch of guys end up sharing at bats on bad teams and there's going to be time to go around. and sosa probably wont even be in this org much longer b/c he's out of options so that'll be one down. good teams in 2025 arent even making everyone prove they are 500-PA-good, even after they do it! good teams will platoon the spots that benefit from platooning and frankly i'm ready for that in RF since we have tried to anoint a RF with baseless belief far too many a time

Rojas is depth. Injuries happen. Amaya isn't anything beyond a utility player. I agree that Ramos should get a shot, and C. Monty probably will have every opportunity to open the season at SS. But as we've just seen, Sosa/Baldwin/Ramos/Amaya/Vargas are all certainly capable of sh*tting the bed for a month. They're going to go through a bunch of players, again. Rojas is just one more.

The White Sox are now getting feelers on the availability of Davis Martin, a 14th rounder (2018) that the Sox developed into a legitimate option in their rotation this season. Mason Adams is probably the next name who will crash the rotation, after Bush, Nastrini, Eder and Iriarte. He's a 13th rounder (2022) the Sox developed. I'm pretty sure the Sox are comfortable in their ability to develop nobodies as viable major leaguers.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/team.cgi?id=8b2f2040

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.

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.

Why do you even bother ? Let everyone whine about trading young for old even though that's not really the issue. If you want a team that isn't going to lose 121 games but you have no money to spend on impacts bats then maybe you can dig up enough decent cheaps arms to prevent total bullpen meltdowns and win a few games in late or extra innings. Come at me when any one turns into a serviceable MLB player for more than a year . It's a younger arm that's worth practically nothing for an older arm worth slightly more if it can be used in MLB to get a few wins for a team that'll struggle to get 50 wins. We all know its all about getting the #1 draft pick but not setting all time embarrassing losing records again. It's a nothing burger trade .