Leaderboard

Must be what Cincinnati needed to get Luis Robert or something

Someone check on Harold.

The idea that we are 3rd tier free agents away from being even mediocre or entertaining is just absurd. There is no one that is saving this disaster of a season. The sooner people wake up to reality, the better. No one wants this, but it IS happening. The only question is will the Sox do what they need to at the bottom to fix things, or will they continue to half ass it to win a couple of more games now, only to lose a lot more games in the long term. The wanting Getz to operate like Hahn stuff is astounding.

Thank god. The end of that terrible rumor.

These posts are getting absolutely ridiculous. Rebuilding “the right way” isn’t some Reinsdorf trope. Paying market value for good, not great players when you are multiple years away from competing is plain dumb, especially when it’s going to cost you draft picks and international slot dollars. You can continue to plug your ears and scream “I demand we win 65 games next year at all costs”, but it doesn’t change the fact it’s a legit stupid long-term strategy given the current state of the team.

Nice return for the Dodgers.

All I'm sayin. Ive got two young kids who love baseball. But the Sox have only moderately held their attention. I grew up in the early 90s watching my family live and die with every pitch. Id like to share that with them before they get tired of the shittiness and move on to other teams. This crap is having a much bigger effect on the long term fanbase than Jerry realizes. The hell with down the road. Our last rebuild was interrupted by an f'n pandemic. Who knows what 5 years brings. I want watchable baseball from my favorite team.

Yeah but it makes more sense when you're better. They won't be signing free agents with QO next winter either. True. I think it's more about the bonus pool lost than anything. There's zero reason the Sox should be forfeiting draft picks right now though.

Oh man. Hope he’s over the Covid.

That all sounds great...but I would still rather have Gio Lopez Dunning Cease and Kopech as a starting point than that entire list. No matter how you slice it, you're still relying on Smith Schultz and Taylor to carry 75-80% of the load if you want a truly outstanding starting staff from a pure stuff standpoint. At least 1 of those 3 will not make it and the other one will likely get injured. That's just how topline pitching goes these days.

Any longer term Sox fans can tell you the Sox fan base is very fair weather. Put together a product worth seeing consistently and they will be back. They always do. But it isn't like an extra half a million tickets in 2025 hinge on this team signing an international SS that almost the entire fan base has no one knows who is. This year is going to be bad. Really bad. A Benintendi level deal or 3 doesn't change that.

Kinda shocked he couldn't do better.

ohthankgod

Problem is JR has let this organization fall so much in just a few years, there’s no path to a quick fix. Considering how bad attendance will be in 2025, I’m sure they will have to cut payroll again next offseason.

I’m starting to think that Jerry ditched his “2nd place is great” mantra and is now embracing the perpetual rebuild due to how much money it saves him.

How’s that any different than the past 10 years?

I have three near teenagers and they couldn’t even name more than 3 Sox players on the roster right now. It’s so far from being cool being a Sox fan now. I even noticed that the number of Sox hats being worn at travel tournaments was way, way down last year. I hope JR is proud of how he’s let this organization collapse.

To be fair, the PBO, GM, and LatAm Director are all gone and those are the guys who arranged the deals in that signing class. We shouldn’t punish the current regime for something outside of their control. It’s clear that they value the DR more than their predecessors, so hopefully we’ll finally address our shortcomings there. Regardless, you should never make future decisions based on past mistakes. Not using your full slot value is unacceptable and if that trend continues we know who to blame.

Do you actually want to win a World Series eventually or be stuck the baseball equivalent of NBA hell? Because it seems like you want to make moves that make us a little better next year but won’t push us to competitiveness all while destroying real long term value for the org. And beyond just forfeiting draft picks and international slot in 2025, you are also likely weakening your draft position in the 2026 and eating payroll flexibility on dudes approaching their mid 30’s. All because rebuilding the right way is boring and takes too long.

Are you actually suggesting that we should forfeit a high 2nd round pick and $500k of international slot coming off a historically bad year and with no core pieces in place, just so we can pay Anthony Santander 5/$100M for his age 30 to 34 seasons? That’s really the best path to success in years 2027 to 2029? Isn’t this the type of s%*# Rick Hahn did prior to the last rebuild? Trying to retool on the fly with several B & C tier free agents despite massive holes across the roster? And the big difference there, is that team actually had some really nice core pieces in place in Abreu, Eaton, Sale, Quintana, & Rodon. We literally have NOTHING right now outside of Robert and he won’t be here come 2028. You can make this about Jerry being cheap, but your plan simply doesn’t work when the major league roster is this barren. I get that means another year of awful baseball, but unfortunately that’s the price we must pay for years of ownership and front office neglect. Three B tier free agents won’t change that and is more likely create landmines akin to the Benintendi contract when we do finally have the pieces in place to compete.

If you look at the White Sox 2nd round picks the last 50 years, it wouldn't be a huge hit.

Here's the thing about the free agent market: it would be Santander and Alonso plus forfeiting the first pick in the 2nd round, first pick in the 3rd round and $1 million in international pool space so that you might win 65 games.

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2024/10/each-teams-penalty-for-signing-a-qualified-free-agent.html But teams still lose picks.

The front office does what the owner tells them to do and the owner continues to make money so he's very happy with the status quo.

I think it's worth remembering that amidst the Johnson/Vrabel/Carroll excitement, they do have to interview two minority candidates to satisfy the Rooney Rule. While I'm still hoping for Johnson, I hope those candidates still get legit interviews and aren't just checking a box.

Yes, he was a player. Wait, did you mean baseball?

CIN sure are loading up on infielders....does this mean they are ready to trade us Arroyo now?

That all makes sense. The challenge with Kim is he’s going to want some long-term security but also the ability to opt-out. My guess is a signing like that just be a value for a team like us, but there is certainly some theoretical math that could possibly work for us if the market is really worried about his shoulder. The other issue is I think 3B / 2B is one of the deeper positions we have in our system. Sosa, Baldwin, Meidroth, Vargas, & Ramos are all more or less ready. Then you have another wave in Gonzalez & Bergolla at AA plus a variety of semi interesting guys in the low minors in Perez, Albertus, & Antonacci. And that’s just the guys likely to be in full season ball and excludes some of the younger SS prospects who could eventually shift over. Forcing Montgomery over to 3B or 2B for that matter blocks opportunity for a lot of these guys.

I think people here in mock trades picked the Comp Balance pick and Sirota as pieces in a Robert deal. With someone like Arroyo of course. Too bad.

Kenny actually operated a legit farm system in his early days.

2024 was the worst season in baseball history…it should have been the lowest attendance in like forever. The team should only get better from this point forward so I don’t envision attendance dropping too much more, but obviously they need to fix this mess and fix it soon. I think fundamental disagreement you and several of us have is that “soon” is relative. You want to spend money to build a slightly better but still bad team whereas we think we should use 2025 as an opportunity to play a bunch of young players and see who sticks. I don’t want to be bad for five years though…the anti-tanking rule won’t reward us. However, we can still tank this year and try to get one very high pick while hopefully building out some subset of the core. If that latter part works out as hoped, then we can start spending some money next offseason. But even then, any goal of semi-competitiveness before 2027 is likely unrealistic.

Do you know how mutual options work? Unless there’s also a buyout, it’s $7 million. https://www.mlb.com/glossary/transactions/mutual-option

It's weird that our fanbase became "undamaged" in 2022. LOL. Once the Sox start winning again, attendance will pick up.

Lux apparently had more trade value than most thought…

You’re trying to pin this on the past rebuild when the reality is attendance has gradually fallen since 2005. The issue isn’t rebuilding…it’s the fanbase losing faith with Jerry as owner. Unfortunately, he needs to pass to right that issue. I don’t disagree that losing creates a bigger hole to dig out of, but a consistently competitive can help offset those headwinds. The problem is we can never build anything sustainable because have broken infrastructure and constantly try to rush things.

Were they a consistent 70 win team in the 90s and 2000s? And yea, the Sox were still drawing close to 2M fans prior to the 2016 rebuild, even during seasons in which they’d win 70 something games. They’ll be lucky to draw 1M in each of the next few seasons. Hand wave it away all you want but they are going serious long term damage to the fanbase, damage that it may never recover from.

Is this a real post? Like now you’re whining about a team that won 91 games in the AL East because their attendance isn’t good enough. Make it make sense.

These are different ownership groups…the money the Sox make doesn’t just transfer to the Bulls because Jerry wants to invest in real estate around the UC.

Orioles were once a great franchise. When I was growing up in the 90s, they were drawing 3M+ fans in the late 90s and early 2000s. Then they went on an extended draught and gradually their fanbase deteriorated. They had some success between 2012 and 2016 and the fans slowly came back. Attendance peaked at 2.46M in 2014 after bottoming at 1.73M in 2010 but then shortly thereafter they started intentionally tanking again. I believe those extended periods of shiftiness have permanently damaged the fanbase. The Sox have been doing the same thing but the fanbase destruction is really accelerating right now. All this be patient talk isn’t going to work when the fanbase is falling off a cliff. There’s more at risk here than I think lost realize based on the comments I’ve seen on this forum. They absolutely need to find a way to be competitive on the field again within the next few years or they risk a fate similar to the A’s. That might sound dramatic but it’s reality.

That's 40 wins we need to make up just to get to .500. a bunch of C list free agents isn't doing that. This team has more holes than a prairie dog infestation.

I feel you brother…I am in the same boat. But giving Santander 5/$100M is not the answer. Three years from now people will likely be bitching about him being an albatross that prevents us from upgrading an OF spot.

Chris Davis STILL haunts that franchise lol. More of an impact than Navarro, Dunn and Danks combined to their collective psyches.

Well the guy who was in charge for your 9 year window was also in charge for the next 4 years, and was the VP 11 seasons after that. KW had a core of cheap, home-grown players (Buehrle, Garland, Crede, Rowand, Thomas, Konerko, Lee, Ordonez), and he added to it. And this all springs from the original "core" they built through the minors of Thomas, Ventura, Durham, Guillen, McDowell, Fernandez, Alvarez, Bere, Konerko, One-Dog. They didn't start that by signing a bunch of over-priced, aging, B tier free agents.

if a $100 million or less contract is all that's realistic for Reinsdorf, then frankly I don't care. If Jerry Reinsdorf thinks he can half-ass another rebuild, without being willing to fill in gaps like an adult, then it's not worth talking about. Perhaps the number 1 biggest problem with this franchise in the last rebuild was his unwillingness to go out of his comfort zone, on contracts, scouting, drafting, expanding his staff, player philosophies, Jason benietti being too smart, etc. If nothing has changed, then yeah to hell with him. He can enjoy his 4th place finishes.

To me it be really, really, really weird that every single year Marco Paddy came back to the Sox and said there isn't enough guys to sign down here, take back this couple of million dollars. That decision almost certainly came from higher up, but how much higher up is the question. It almost felt like an intentional strategy to leave the DR on the table in exchange for maybe getting Cubans in the current year, or the Sox refused to negotiate with the younger kids and because of that were cut out of most negotiated with most kids because they were already signed. Whose strategy and directives those were is very important here because if it was Jerry refusing to commit to 13/14 year olds, that same guy is still in charge.

At one time, the Sox at least had some talented players. For some reason, they didn't go the post season all that often, but there were times they could provide some entertainment. But since 2008, they have been a complete disaster. There is little reason to the ballpark to watch this team. When this will change is anyone's guess. You have to go back to the 1970s to see a team this bad. It is amazing to see how this FO continues to let this team reach new lows.

If Johnson is the real deal, Poles looks like a genius and gets to keep his job for as long as he wants and will look like an "architect' building a winner. If he picks someone else and they are bad then he will never be a GM again. It would be so stupid for Poles to not want Johnson, but I don't know the guy or how he thinks - so maybe he would be mad if Johnson starts getting credit or something.

So planned interviews so far: Ben Johnson (OC / DET) Aaron Glenn (DC / DET) Anthony Weaver (DC / MIA) Vance Joseph (DC / DEN) Jets not planning to interview Johnson. Glenn apparently a favorite of both the Jets and the Saints. Vrabel makes a lot of sense for the Patriots. The Jaguars keeping their GM Trend Baalke may impact the attractiveness of the HC role. Johnson should be ours for the taking potentially…

Jimmy's got a dark side. Think of his last season here where he and Dwyane Wade did their best to sink the team. I certainly don't want him back here regardless of the deal.