Leaderboard

I previewed the international signing period for the White Sox at FutureSox. It's currently available on Patreon: https://www.futuresox.net/2025/01/03/2025-white-sox-international-signing/ The White Sox have $6.2 million to spend and their agreements total around $4.2 million so far. The group is headlined by Cuban 3B Alejandro Cruz. They've also signed Cuban righty Yobal Rodriguez. Pitching has been a focus and they've given some other bonuses as well. Cesar Familia RHP Dominican Republic $350K Jhonny Morao LHP Dominican Republic $300K Roderick Medina RHP Panama $275K Yordani Soto SS Dominican Republic $750K Diego Natera C Venezuela $225K Jeremy Aponte OF Venezuela $200K Igor Escobar Inf Venezuela $70K. I'm curious to see how the presence of Roki Sasaki affects the White Sox. Can they trade money to help someone sign him? Can they sign a player that gets their deal voided from the team who actually signs him? I'll be curious to see that.

Sox gotta save money so the next time they're competitive they can not spend it.

I think Schultz makes big league starts in 2025

Exactly, they have nothing. So what’s the harm in adding quality major league players? With the new anti tanking rules it doesn’t help as much to lose 100+ games every year like the Orioles did for awhile.

Paying market value for wins isn’t progress though. If you try to build out a core in free agency, then it’s almost certainly going to fail. You have to have some semblance of our core and right now we have nothing. That’s why any talk of achieving 83 wins by 2026 is wild to me. We don’t have a single player we can say with a high degree of certainty will be a key contributor for 2026 outside of Robert and even then there are questions. We are basically starting from zero and that means it will take multiple years just to get to any level of respectability. I know that sucks, but it’s the unfortunate reality we face.

It would be basically impossible to be as bad as they were last year. Everything went wrong with a manager who was doing more harm than good.

A new academy should also help matters down there. Hopefully they'll begin to deploy two DSL teams so they can bring in & play more talent regularly.

Man I really hope not. Unless you think he’s got a decent chance of finishing top two in the AL ROY vote, play the team control game and send him to Charlotte. A great AFL should not overide a tough season in AAA.

This is great stuff but a sad reminder of where things stand and how long it will take to right the ship. That being said, Paddy needed to go and someone had to convince Reinsdorf that signing teenage Dominicans isn’t evil and provide the highest ROI of all forms of talent acquisition. And despite all his flaws, it appears that Getz may have finally got Jerry over the ledge based on how David Keller has been talking.

Anyone using the word "efficiently" to describe the Sox need to be the cheapest team in baseball have had their brains broken by the misery.

It appears Jerry has done a good job convincing Sox fans that a sub $60M payroll is acceptable for a major market team. It’s sad. It hasn’t amounted to much success yet but at least the Cubs are signing guys like Swanson and Bellinger during the early days of their rebuild to field a competitive team. Must be nice.

Yeah, and Bobby Witt Jr. put up 10.4 fWar. Develop 1 guy like that, then spend all you want on FA.

Bannister likes to give starters some exposure to mlb out of the bullpen when they have basically reached their innings limit a la Iriarte last year. They are not putting Schultz and Smith on the Sale/Crochet plan.

I think it's a terrible idea.

No, that's not how it works. If you have a number of average prospects, you have to play them. They may or may not get better with experience, but they won't get better if they don't get experience.

I’d start Ramos and Meidroth in AAA. Sosa starts at 2B, Rojas at 3B, and Vargas/Vaughn at 1B/DH. You can mix Vargas in at 3B if you want to see how he can handle it. If Ramos or Meidroth deserve a call up, chances are somebody will be injured or performing poorly by that point. And if not, then that’s a pretty damn good problem to have.

Is San Francisco in a place where they are one player away from a title this year? If not, it’s plain dumb for them to give up multi year assets for Crochet or Tucker. That’s literally the logic of Hahn’s worst trades - disparage it all you want but hugging Semien, Tatis, and Bassitt was a helluva lot smarter than all in moves on 75 win teams.

Prospect hugging is a thing. No doubt about it. A trade for you top of rotation starter or superstar OF should hurt although Tucker was just one year so not as much. Even Boston really didn't feel any pain because they kept their 3 best prospects . Of course fans want to keep them all. We cry over an 8 th round RP being traded because of the process even though we know the trade was likely insignificant .

Congrats

All things are things I've been talking about for years some of you who agreed and some who would argue that I jumped the gun on the problems in the DR. Music to my ears.

Some of these signings were publicized by their trainers years ago. You can see if you look up their IG pages or twitter accounts. I would love it if they took a page from the Dodgers every year and sign like 20+ players every year but they need to complete the new academy for that to happen. I like a lot of the things Getz is doing to modernize the organization but overhauling this department is going to take the longest.

Merk's selling tickets .You play up Montgomery having a shot to make the opening day roster when it's pretty unlikely to happen. I know Montgomery thinks it's possible. He'd need one helluva Spring Training.

I’m still blown away that Witt put up 10 fWAR. I knew he had a great season, but didn’t realize it was that insane. Can’t wait for Walker Jenkins to make the show and give the Twins their own superstar. Just wild how badly the draft has worked in our favor since the first rebuild, both in terms of bad selections when we actually had high picks and general bad luck when it comes to the entire lottery process. Got to love being a fan of this god forsaken franchise.

Are you comparing the Cubs’ revenue profile to ours? We can’t spend what they spend…full stop.

$200 million? Big deal. Machado signed for more than $200 million alone. That wasn’t enough back then and definitely isn’t enough now. Especially not after going years with a completely stripped payroll and banking the money. Take a look at what the Cubs have spent over the past ten years, and they still get ripped on for not trying to win.

We practically spent $200M on payroll during the peak of our window. Money was spent…it was just allocated extremely poorly.

Losing 90 games is not the same as losing 120 games though. Signing Kim and another B tier free agent isn’t vaulting us anywhere close to 83 wins. I get the desire to want more interesting baseball, but trying to take shortcuts won’t work where we’re currently at the process. I think if enough goes right this coming season, then we start to see some legitimate moves next offseason. Until then, just hope some of our fringier, but major league ready prospects turn into something useful because otherwise it’s going to be an ugly season.

How about pretend like they’re at least trying to be somewhat competitive? Sign Kim, Santander, and Hoffman. they’d still be rocking a lowly $100m payroll even if they kept Robert.

Call me crazy but I don’t think adding good players is such a bad idea. The entire team is a hole, so worrying about blocking prospects seems kind of absurd. If you signed a couple guys like Kim then it would be Rojas, Vaughn, Tachman, etc potentially blocking them, not the better players. Do the Sox actually have 13+ prospects who will convert into legit mlb batters over next 2-3 years to cover every roster spot so that we have to worry about them being blocked by signing a couple quality players now? I seriously doubt it

Kim alone isn't going to get them out of the basement and JR isn't going to spend the money needed to make them not embarrassingly bad. At least this seaon they should get a higher pick. I will never understand putting together a team the GM said 110 losses wouldn't have surprised him when the highest you can draft is 10th. I can't wait for the team to be sold and common sense is used to clean house.

I'd like to watch major league baseball next summer. The Sox can develop and not offend the game at the same time.

I hope you aren't trying to tell me that Kim is going to be Bobby Witt than either, because if not, again, there is no need to grab anything like a 2nd or 3rd tier player. Again.

Your closer doesn't cover all of those BS. How many of those were 9th inning flops last year? Most of that was middle relief, which again goes to this franchise needing tons of help, and not one guy.

The whole roster is immediate need, and you might actually have the guy who can do it internally for tens of millions of dollars cheaper by the time this team has few enough holes to spend big money on immediate needs. No more half assed roster building. Take the pain now and give yourself the most chances to get it right instead of panic buying for a couple of more wins on a historically bad team.

There are multiple arguments being made here. Yes, if you went out and signed Greg Maddux to a 20 year contract right now, technically, he would be part of the "future". The most efficient use of a free agent signing is to sign them when you have a point of need on the win curve. The way teams are built now is that they sort through their internal options to determine where they have holes, or need depth. It now takes 85-88 wins to make the playoffs. If you are a .500 team, obtaining a 4-5 WAR player or two puts you over the win curve. That is the point where those wins are most valuable. If you're a 50 win team, adding 5 wins doesn't change your team's ability to make the post-season. So, what you are doing is adding 4-5 wins to a 50 win team. (Some here would argue they're a 41 win team, or less.) My highly optimistic view is that the Sox won't really be able to use those extra 5 wins to put them up over the win curve until 2027 at the earliest. Others here would argue that critical year might come in 2028 or maybe not even until 2030, either when Kim's skills are diminishing, or he's even gone. Pretend the Sox can contend in 2027. You're paying for 2 full years of 5 WAR production until his contribution puts you over the win curve, and probably for diminished production for a couple of years afterwards. The most efficient use is to hit the youngest and most productive seasons in the first years of his contract. Are you saying there won't be shortstops on the market in 2028? You seem like a fairly positive guy. The Sox will draft #10 this year, top 5 next year, and maybe #10-15 in 2027. Will there be no good shortstops available in the first round in those 3 drafts? Will we not get better at developing prospects and have a package to trade for a shortstop by then?

As I said earlier, I don’t know what you have to do to earn a callup in the white Sox organization if Meidroth doesn’t break camp with the White Sox.

I’d much rather have Baldwin playing the infield utility role than Romy Gonzalez and it’s not even close.

Even picking spots, romy was worth just 0.2 fWAR. I would expect a guy like Brooks Baldwin can do that in a utility role, which is where he should be unless he proves otherwise.

Romy was a 0.2 fWAR player last season. Rojas was 1.9 and has been 1-2.5 in each of the last 4 seasons. The two aren’t comparable..

What's ironic here is Romy Gonzalez is a perfect example of why this is a problem! Romy got 239 plate appearances with the White Sox over 3 years. He was quite bad in these spots overall, despite ok numbers in the minor leagues. He never got a chance in the bigs with the White Sox because we needed veterans like Elvis Andrus, Nicky Lopez, and now Luis Rojas. Romy was then waived by the White Sox, picked up by the Red Sox, and bang, last year, tolerable backup/utility guy for them, performing just about as well as Rojas, with multiple years of pre-arbitration control remaining, presumably at like 1/4 of Rojas's price.

Fair. I didn’t realize he has that much experience in AAA already. I still think there are plenty of at bats available at 3B, 2B, 1B, and DH for five guys (Vargas, Sosa, Meidroth, Vaughn, Rojas), especially if Rojas plays OF every once in a while. It’s not like guys won’t be getting days off.

In terms of Meidroth, he has 558 plate appearances at AAA already. He put up a .437 OBP in those appearances. What exactly does a guy have to do to earn a callup? What are we expecting he needs to learn by getting more walks from AAA pitching? If we treated Thorpe like this we'd call it lunacy, sending him back to AAA and hoping he gets 12 starts in the big leagues, but that's the plan for one of the guys we just acquired apparently.

I do not see how there's enough plate appearances to satisfy what the White Sox seem to need unless they have already thrown in the towel on Vargas. Between 3b and 2b that's perhaps 1300 plate appearances, 800 after we give Rojas 500. Vargas, Sosa, Ramos, and Meidroth - even if you throw in the DH slot some of the time, for 4 guys that's what, 250 plate appearances a piece? 300 max? Unless Sosa is your everyday SS to rope in a full additional position, this doesn't work.

C. Monty may not stick at SS, but he'll probably get a season or two to show he doesn't belong there. In the meanwhile, Kim's taking PAs away from whomever should be getting them at 2B & 3B.

Yeah you're right I'm probably a little light on him. He's gonna have to overcome the small college thing but if he crushes it he could definitely be in that mix. There are some interesting bats to follow this spring.

Fun, or sad, fact. The White Sox have had the #1 international prospect in a signing class join the organization, MULTIPLE TIMES. MLB Pipeline rankings go back to 2012... 2013: Eloy Jimenez (Adolfo #2, Gleyber #3, Devers #6) 2016: Luis Robert 2019: Yoelqui Cespedes (Jasson Dominguez #2, Norge Vera #5) 2020/2021: Yoelqui Cespedes In 2022 we didn't have the #1 guy, but we have the #4 guy (William Bergola) and the #5 Oscar Colas.

Boy, the latter sounds like…Keppinger, Bonifacio, Beckham, Rollins, Leury (post-extension), Andrus (post-resigning), and quite a few others.

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.

If you get a minute, watch this ridiculous screwball from Ettore Giullianelli https://www.instagram.com/p/DEBWFhxMQxC/?img_index=1&igsh=MWVpYWlkM21scXo4OQ==