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It should've been a big signing in a series of acquisitions to push the team over the top. The problem was that it turned out to be THE big signing while other gaping holes were never addressed.

Gross

That Jon Lester move never came for the Sox....they just pretended it was Grandal, Keuchel and 'ol Meat and Potatoes instead of Machado/Harper/Wheeler.

I will go to the grave believing if Andrew Vaughn was drafted and developed by a better organization, he's a totally different, and better MLB hitter than he is today. What a waste.

Who

You'd honestly have to be a complete dunce to think there's any justification for the level of spending taking place right now. The Sox have already proven once they won't save and splurge later.

Loved the interview. Thanks for posting. I run a smallish organization and how he talks about delegating, getting info, process, etc. is spot on. Very impressive.

A few things I found interesting. 1. He spoke to David Keller that morning about signing someone on international market. Sox were in attendance to watch Cuban teenager Cristian Rego. 2. Peyton Pallette is a dude in relief 3. He expects to sign someone to a $100 million contract 4. The story about his buddy from the day he was hired was tremendous

we're 4th after trading everyone. any other team could do the same. the trick is to draft and develope good players. that way you don't go 41-121. my january cynicism is starting to boil up to the top.

I don't care if he was getting paid a dollar. He's not worth a single fucking cent to this team. Maybe he has value as the wrong side of a platoon on a team that is so loaded they can carry a RH DH on the occasional need for a pinch hitter. The amount of money this sad sack team has spent on worthless players when they could have spent the same on fewer actual good players is mind boggling. No matter how many times they get burnt, they just keep on doing the same.

So, we’re up to $14.35M between Rojas, Vaughn, and Perez. That’s about one year of Ha-Seong Kim. Personally, I’d rather have Kim than those three and give Vargas/Elko a look at 1b.

Naw, he’s young he’d be benched and blocked. Hed get signed by the white Sox at age 33, then started at 2b and wound up with a .540 OPS.

It's not even timing. A team can't run a farm system by relying on only their first rounders to succeed in the majors. It's getting an international scouting flow working, it's maximizing the draft, and it's being able to target and grab players who are underperforming in other systems.

They all do it now. Jersey swaps, go on each other's podcasts. I'm only 40, but it sure ain't like it used to be.

This was uplifting. Thanks for posting it.

I thought he was incredibly candid in the interview and comes off (TO ME) that he is moving a lot of things in the right direction.

Definitely the best appearance Chris Getz has had anywhere

Wow!!! What a relief.

They always “have” the money. But they are not willing to spend it this year.

This might be his biggest payday. Hope he's saving his pennies. 1B with below average D and warning track power aren't in high demand.

Four straight years of being the same player. He is who he is.

Andrew Vaughn has played in 562 games and has a career bWAR of 1.1 He is not, and has proven he wont be, fine.

Only 3.5m next year, 1.5m buyout. Honestly, this is a slam dunk move by Getz. 2nd half of the season with the Padres he had a 3.4 ERA with a 1.2 WHIP. He pitched his ass off. Given the salary restrictions by the owner, this is an A move by Getz.

For what it's worth from my story in November 2022. I spoke with a half dozen people connected to the organization or covered them, sometimes for decades: “The problem with this team is there was no real leadership, nobody to hold guys accountable. No red-asses like the Sox had in the past… Carlton Fisk, Jack McDowell, A.J. Pierzynski. Paul Konerko was a quiet guy but when we weren’t doing well he’d get really pissed. Elvis Andrus tried to supply some leadership when he came and Lucas Giolito tried.” “I’d come into the locker room after a game and you couldn’t tell if they won or lost, just nothing.” “You’d go in the locker room and all the Latino guys would be in one place, the whites in another and the African-Americans someplace else.” “I had heard that groups were apart and not close but part of that could be human nature, language divisions for example. I know the Latin guys were always around Jose’s locker, Moncada was always there. The Sox locker room is a big square so guys aren’t close to start with, the Cubs locker room is circular. I don’t know if that was by design or what but that lends itself to guys getting together.” “The problem is some of these guys just don’t care, they want to win sure but they already have gotten their money with these contracts before they proved anything. Moncada would strike out and just walk back to the dugout like no big deal, he fouls a ball off and now he can’t play for three days? His contract makes him untradable but he needs to go.” “There was a lack of urgency the entire season. People would say the right things but they never translated.” “To me it was the May 9 game with Cleveland, (Author’s Note: The Sox blew an 8-2, 9th inning lead and lost in extra innings which snapped a six-game win streak.) That showed Cleveland that they could play with the Sox but what I noticed was the only person that game seemed to bother was Tony LaRussa. Another one was the Triple Play Game against the Twins. (Author’s Note: The Sox ran themselves into an 8-5 triple play on July 4. They wound up losing the game 6-3 in extra innings) Adam Engel faced the music afterwards, he made a mistake and owned up to it. Moncada who also made a mistake was nowhere, he was already gone. Then the next day he was saying that he didn’t know people wanted to talk with him.” “They were the most disappointing team in baseball. They were consistently redundant, by that I mean day after day they’d make errors, have dumb base running mistakes, take bad approaches at the plate and lack effort. They were the dumbest, laziest team in baseball, I don’t know if they were the most disappointing team ever in Chicago but I’ve used the phrase that the 2022 White Sox were “Trying Barely”… they reminded me of the 2004 Cubs.”

This has been said by Sox GM’s forever and NEVER happens.

Thats exactly what a team in their position should be doing. They’re not trying to win, they’re not at the point yet. The best case scenario for the Sox this season is that they end up with the first overall pick in the draft.

They should have added someone who could play SS instead of Rojas for sure

I know the report is garbage, but boy how bad would that Rojas signing look if they went out and signed another SS? Literally blocking the entire infield with vets.

lol Kyle Tucker is 100% going to be a free agent. The Cubs knew that before the trade. If he’s the player next year he was before a freak foul ball injury last year, that’s a massive boost to his value. No one knows if he can be that player again, so there’s a big issue with valuing him. If he drops an 8 War MVP caliber season next year we might look at him as a $500 million player.

The Cubs not able to come to an agreement with Tucker is absolutely insane. What are they doing?

putting him in rf was so stupid

And to be fair, Eloy may have felt he was taken advantage of, but there is zero evidence to suggest that his beef with the front office caused any riffs in the clubhouse. That’s absolutely fan fic and I’m blown away anyone would even try to make such a ridiculous claim.

At which we have been absolutely failures.

Eloy and Robert got massive fucking extensions. And for Eloy, he came out well ahead of what he would made otherwise. And neither player has been known to be involved in any sort of clubhouse altercations. But yes, both purposely got injured on a regular basis because they thought getting paid millions before reaching the majors was unfair relative to Vaughn who got nothing and is now set to cash in free agency without that service time manipulation burdening him. I’m sure back in spring training 2021, Eloy was thinking “f*** that evil front office for forcing millions on me…I’m going to shred my pectoral on this fly ball to show them what’s what!”.

Kris Bryant went to war with the Cubs and that seemed to work out.

I can’t fathom how “the stupid ways we treated the last set of prospects contributed to the team hating themselves and to so many prospects busting” is a controversial or hard to follow statement. If Colson had pushed the issue, no I wouldn’t care about service time. If they call Quero up to start the year, I’m ok with that, he earned it. Colson should only be held down because he stank last year, not for service time reasons. Simple rule: call guys up when they earn callups. Anything else - we saw how toxic the white Sox became, that was a part of it.

It’s amazing how you can literally make up talking points that aren’t based on reality. Like who has said any of these things? And I have no idea how you read Balta’s post and jumped to this strand of thought.

White Sox need better fake insiders. You listening, Orlando?

This was the problem last time....we had our first wave of talent mixed in with the likes of Rodon, Abreu and Anderson...Robert/Moncada/Jimenez stalled out/got injured, there was never a second wave (Vaughn/Burger/Madrigal/Crochet) for various reasons, and the veterans we signed all started going backwards from 2021-22 onward (Keuchel/Grandal/Steak & Potatoes/Hendriks-Graveman-Kelly). They really need to get the timing right with this thing or it's going to be that 3-4 year abbreviated window like the 2014-2015 ROYALS. Of course, every SOX fan would give up anything in the world (well almost) for two consecutive WS appearances after the last 15 years or so being a White Sox fan.

Sometimes you just gotta sit down with Caulfield and make some damn lists.

Grandal is treated like a punchline here, but the stat-head, framing nerds loved him. That was a big signing when it happened.

Hope perez pitches well and they can trade him for someone who can actually help down the road when it actually matters.

That seemed kind of weird to me. I never would have thought a player would ask an opponent for a jersey. But the main comment is right. I have a few friends that played pro sports. Whenever they made comments about not being good enough I remind them they signed the back of checks to be at the game.

At the 45 minute mark - he talks about not spending right now, basically about being on the right point of the win curve before you splurge.

Let's hope he gets off to a better start than last year. If so, he'll be fine.

Murfee or Ellard is my guess. I don't think they cut Colas just yet (maybe that is just a hope).

It almost has to be a P. Going to guess it's a DFA pick up we made earlier as we try to wash them through waivers

I was kind of leaning Scholtens but he will still probably miss some time at the beginning of the season to the point he will prob be a 60-day IL guy (meaning, you can open a 40-man spot at the start of Spring Training). I'm going to guess Murfee as well.

I remain convinced that ron marinaccio is a made-up person.