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I also disagree with this. As Ray pointed out, if there was history to tell us “ok the payroll is going to be historically low but when guys start to develop, that saved money is going right back into the payroll” but that’s not how it works. It’s just going into the pockets of ownership. This team still has no foundation. Is signing Santander going to make a Sox a contender? Absolutely not. Is he going to make the lineup better? Yes, and he’s not going to be blocking anyone, because there is no one to block. There were a few boobs here saying “there is no difference in losing 100 games and 120 games.” Which most of us, myself included, strongly disagreed with. But that works both ways. There is a difference between winning 60 games and 75 games. And I think a lot of fans are starved, and deserve some competitive baseball on the South Side. The point is adding some actual talent to the 2025 team shouldn’t be a bad thing. It simply costs money, and shouldn’t take away from the efforts of actually rebuilding the right way. You should be able to do two things at once. The Sox probably can’t because they’re incompetent, but that’s also not an excuse for them.

This. While this team is a joke and maddening, if people want to enjoy the win, let them.

Pretty sure the 3 worst records have the exact same odds.

If they lost your post would have been "only the bears could have orchestrated this losing streak and lost to the Packers in the closing minutes TWICE. Typical. LOL. 🤡" If that small draft position change is what breaks them next year, then nothing would fix it.

They didn't do the thing!!!

Bad luck is related to the new lottery process. When you set the all time loss record and can’t pick above 10th that really sucks. And that’s because the year before we didn’t win the lottery, but also didn’t move backwards enough to keep our lottery status this year. Meanwhile, the Guardians won the lottery this past year and the Twins jumped up to 5th overall in 2023 and were able to get Walker Jenkings. If you don’t consider that bad luck, I don’t know what to tell you.

This is a Josh Rojas MEGA-thread

Ahh see, this is where they're getting you. Don't let them trick you with their shenanigans. The White Sox have had periods where they were top 10 in spending when they were winning - this has been the case for much of my lifetime. They've been top 10 in spending 7 times since 2000 and only ONE time post rebuild. The main difference is this regime committed to a rebuild where they spent NO money. They had three years of payrolls below 100 million after having surpassed 100 million in 2007. They saved probably 80-100 million plus in those years then they came out and they spent only on internal players and ran one year with a top 10 payroll. They were 26, 29, 25th and 20th in baseball in payroll during the rebuild and coming out of it. They then ran 15th, 7th and 14th During their window where they were supposed to spend the money they saved. They should have spent way more money than they ever had, relative to the league, but instead they just returned to their standard level of spending (relative to the league) that had already existed for two decades.

I am obviously very high on Ben Johnson and would prefer an offensive minded HC, but Vrabel would be an acceptable fall back option. If we don’t end up with either of them then that’s a clear fail in my mind. I personally don’t see how Jacksonville would be more attractive than Chicago, but the Bears always find a way to f*** this s%*# up.

Not even close. We could have brought in Soto, Burnes and Alonso, and still be fighting to get to .500.

You can't buy players at peak FA value nearing 30 and believe that's a sustainable team building strategy...those are supposed to finishing pieces when/if your young offensive core hits its competitive window. Right now, there's zero certainty about any positions really other than catcher. You need to get at least 4-5 positions nailed down first. Sasaki is the one and only player any and every team in baseball should be pursuing.

Only the Bears would celebrate a meaningless win like it was the Super Bowl and screw up their draft position. Typical. LOL. 🤡

BEARS WIN!!!! Caleb's first game winning drive win. (He should've had 3 already but coaching...)

Just need to acquire 4 1/2 Bobby Witts and we’re there

They need to improve 45+ games to even be in the Wild Card hunt. If this were the Machado/Harper offseason, I don't think signing those two makes this team a contender in one offseason. There's just too much broken.

At bats and development. As you ignored a million times.

So you want to give Santander say 5/$100M for his age 30 to 34 seasons? The general rule of thumb is that dudes start losing about 0.5 fWAR per season upon reaching 30 years of age. Obviously the fall-off isn’t always linear, but theoretically this would be what you’re getting in terms of fWAR each year: 2025: 2.8 2026: 2.3 2027: 1.8 2028: 1.3 2029: 0.8 So if all goes right, maybe we are competitive by 2027. During our competitive window, we’d be getting a 1.3 win OF on average for a total outlay of $100M. That is simply bad resource allocation and long-term roster building. These type of moves just don’t make sense when you are at least three years out of competing, especially for free agents already in their 30’s. And don’t get me wrong, a $60M payroll is a joke. We should be spending some money on flip candidates that come without long-term commitments. But now is not the time to pay market prices (and realistically a premium to pick us) for B tier free agents. We simply need more building blocks in place before making these type of outlays.

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.

I think Schultz makes big league starts in 2025

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.

Also worth adding that he received a qualifying offer so the White Sox would lose a high draft pick if they signed him.

It IS hopeless...right now. New ownership changes the situation...it can't be any worse.

Depends wholey on who picks OL in front of them. If the top 2 are gone, it's a disaster.

It was two when I first looked, then the Jets won, so the Bears would have picked in front of them had they lost.

Check back a few pages, right around Christmas his people spoke to someone at ESPN and placed an article saying he was interested in coaching the Bears. Yeah the age thing is an issue at least to figure out. I have no idea what his motivation is right now or why he's thinking this, but a Super Bowl winning coach saying "I want to come out of retirement and coach this team, put an article out saying that" at least gets my attention.

Ah, so you were talking about his legacy as the Bulls owner, not as Sox owner. None of those Bulls’ championships impact his deplorable legacy as Sox owner.

It would depend on the progress of the pitching. Right now, it looks like a staff of 4s and 5s; if some progress to 2s and 3s, just a couple of hitters would make a huge difference. We'd also need similar progress in the pen. While the idea is rabbit's-foot stuff, the one kernel of possibility is that several of these wildcardish teams have pretty lousy lineups outside of 3 or so guys. That would put us on par.

It will be one of those open secrets that we figure is true, but won’t know until Dan Wiederer of the Tribune confirms it after Poles is fired next season. If the cards fall that way, it’s Carroll or bust.

Yea unfortunately Vrabel to Pats is probably a lock. Sucks as he was my #1 option. I also think Ben Johnson goes to Jacksonville. Poles not being fired will be the reason why they don't get him.

It would be a tremendous thing from a PR standpoint. Problem is this ownership is content with a losing team and a low payroll. I read yesterday that there are only 3 players on the team making more than $2 million a year. I have no doubt ownership is going to keep having losing teams with low payrolls as long as possible. The franchise looks like it is in its darkest period in their modern history. This looks like a very hopeless situation.

Another coward decision from Brown. Go for the 2 point conversion (the correct call), then after a penalty on GB that brings them to the 1yard line…..kick the extra point. He is playing like Flus, not to lose

Maybe his weapons are overrated? None of them except Odunze create any kind of separation. Moore is fantastic but you have to scheme him open. Allen looks like a shell of himself. Kmet has never been a guy who creates separation as a TE. Not athletic enough either.

These two don’t even make this team a contender for a .500 season.

For most teams there is a salary cap…it’s called their Operating Profit before player expenses. Sounds like your expectation is that owners should make bad financial decisions to keep fans mildly entertained during a rebuild because they can theoretically course correct down the road by taking on losses when they’re finally good and eat into their own personal wealth. Unfortunately, baseball is a business and most owners are going to let a franchise operate on its own financial merits. I too wish we had Steve Cohen as our owner, but that’s the exception and not the rule.

A waste of what? Jerry’s dollars? You’re worried about his money?

https://www.si.com/nfl/lions/news/lions-called-league-office-vikings-ticket-purchase Vikings buy up a 1,000 tickets and sell them at a discount to their season ticket holders, many of which flipped them back to brokers for a profit lol Lions contacted the league office.

I laid out my plan in the other thread as to what I would have done. Compile lottery picks, continue to invest in development, and spend 130+ million to put MLB talent on the field.

I can see why another team would be interested in Combs. 7 + innings at Kanny with 13 K's last year. Two years in SEC showed a ton of strikeouts. Sox gave him $250 K to sign. I don't get it.

I don’t think that the callups for either Schultz or Smith should be determined by what roster spots they need for other pitchers unless those pitchers have clearly earned the spots by pitching better than Schultz and Smith.

$200M was an annual payroll figure, $250M was to be paid out over eight years. You are comparing apples to oranges.

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

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.

What do you think young Yobal is hiding under that hat?

Another can't miss Cuban....

I wouldn't necessarily be opposed. Although going from starter, to bp, to starter doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. There is no "need" for this. Id rather they just come up and start a handful of games at the end of the season. The first half may be abysmal again, but the second half could be fun if we see C montgomery, quero, teel, smith and schultz all up.

“WS to Sign Cuban Teenager“ Jerry has him cleaning all of the bathrooms at Rate Field for under minimum wage.