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You just used 889 words in a topic titled " How to Fix Shane Smith and Miguel Vargas" and your conclusion was: - Miguel Vargas: I don't know how to fix him - Shane Smith: Pitch less than he is, because he's been bad Just riveting stuff.

Former White Sox player who also played for and managed the Cubs has died at age 87. I remember him in his only year with the Sox which was 1966 but he will be famously remembered for his classic rant against Cub fans in 1983. May he rest in peace.

If you scroll past this video title really quick, and don't stop and read it, it can be mistaken for "We will never see the playoffs again" 😂

Why would people be disappointed with Jamie Arnold? He's been a pretty consistent top 10 name for a while now.

This is the correct answer

There is no reason that this team should be handing high dollar contracts to 32 year old starting pitchers at this stage of the rebuild. There will almost certainly be a trade offer worthy of sending him off that benefits the long term future of this team provided he doesn't get injured or fall of the face of the earth over his next 1-2 starts before a trade. If he isn't traded, and he keeps this up all year, he can hit the market as a 32 year old starting pitcher coming off a 6+ bWAR season and would easily get paid more than whatever the Sox would offer in an extension. For this team right now Adrian Houser is what you are looking for, a veteran having a smash season that you got for nothing that can be flipped to help solidify the future. We aren't contending anytime soon, his only purpose for the White Sox is to help make the roster better when they WILL be contending.

There was literally zero time for the Sox to work with and fix houser. Identifying the stuff change that occurred in the offseason was the value here, not developing/changing houser.

I'd invest every penny in modernizing the scouting and player development system. Consulting, equipment, personnel, etc. Unprecedented scope of reporting, purging, and generally turning a gigantic ship around despite all collateral damage.

If we are talking about a mere year into the future, I am pouring millions into turning White Sox operations into the developement envy of the league. Poach the best minds in scouting, developement, data, etc. Whatever it takes. I leave FA alone for the most part until there is a homegrown foundation in place.

lol…you actually think I’m lying when I say an obviously dumb post was intentional trolling. f*** man, you got me. I guess I never posted the comment below in the 4th of July gamethread and unfortunately you weren’t there that day to agree with me. Oh wait…🤔 As for Robert, I have never argued he is a star player or even good in his current form and it’s fucking wild you are arguing otherwise. But I get it, you are butt hurt that I call you out for your consistently poor analysis & blindly pessimistic takes and are hoping to gotcha me. Unfortunately, tonight won’t be your night buddy.

Excuses for me? Lol Pal, get it together. None of this is that serious.

I never said you did . The point is anyone can say a player sucks with bravado in that kind of acquisition . He's picking low hanging fruit. There's no need to be fair . In his usual I know way more than you all style of posting with ultra confident declarations of who sucks and who doesn't I don't see the need to make excuses for him.

Roger thinks rain will start 7:20-7:30 and last for at least an hour so maybe 845-9pm start best case?

These are the moves that Rick Hahn and Kenny failed to try, why not take a chance on a dude who has had 10 MLB ABs to see what he can do. He’s got pop he, he could stink or he could turn into a late bloomer like a Brent Rooker or Christian Walker. He’ll have plenty of opportunities to play

I assumed this post was in jest. I can't see him getting 3/$20M let alone $20M per for 3 years.

I think we all would have felt a lot better about this s%*# show if Tony wasn't in the picture, and someone with some actual baseball success was in charge at the top who has actually been a part of a winning organization.

It just never ceases to amaze me that we will drop a few million on a crappy utility back up middle infielder, when the same few million dollars in the front office could pay 100X in the future by giving you cheap players with 6 years of control so you didn't waste millions on negative WAR players to fill out a roster.

Yeah it’s totally fair. I wasn’t trying to justify anything. Hagen Smith is a really good prospect though and ownership will never pay for guys like that. I still would’ve taken a bat though.

Love this. As much as I dislike the guy, I'd take the "Deion Sanders taking over Colorado" approach, basically come in and say "most of you aren't going to be here next year so you get to decide if you leave on your own or I show you the door". Real drastic shakeup, say the Sox are open for business and overpay to build a whole system of the best and brightest. I'm sure it's naive to think we can actually do this (if it was so easy to just pay the best people a little more to get them to work for you, why doesn't every team try that now?) But anything to shake out the stink of the last three+ years.

I figured a 6-1 deficit on Italian night at "Rate Field" in a downpour was the same vibe.

There’s really no reason to decide what Vargas is until after the season. Let him play out the rest of the season and if he mostly struggles, yeah, he probably ain’t it. That’s a lot of at bats to go off of at that point. But the Sox are in a position to let him work through things and see if he can make more adjustments.

I don't think people realize how cheap this is relative to the payroll. The White Sox could merely pay market value (which would be well above the rest of baseball who pays under market and sells "experience"), establish a team of roughly 50-100 analysts, MLops and Data Engineers, scouts, specialists, etc at market rates and supply them with all the equipment and you're still only talking about 10-20 millionish dollars probably. I'd argue that's a high-side estimate though. The Sox should do that regardless. This is what it costs to run a baseball team. 100 would probably be too many/overkill given that it's only a 2 billion dollar organization, but if you want to be the best. So what are you doing with the other 80-90 million?

I don't know about Vargas, but we know for a fact that Shane Smith is approaching a career high in innings not even halfway through the season, and his previous career high of innings was achieved over a 6 month period and not a 3 month one. Because of this it is tough to pick apart what is conditioning, what is the league figuring him out, or some combination of both. Obviously on the conditioning side of things, the Sox need to get more involved in picking their spots to give him shorter outings, longer breaks etc. It would be nice to let him continue on, but you really have to monitor his stuff his health to make sure that he isn't hurting himself to continue. Injuries increase with fatigue, and we need to make sure we don't let that happen into a more major injury.

There's that influx of Ishbia money!

Maybe he can produce like that 27 year old the Brewers recently acquired.

Ha, when I saw the move yesterday I immediately thought: "Danger Will Robertson. Danger."

I believe Deloach is on the full season IL.

I’d be shocked by Jace at this point. I think Kilen and Houston were the college bats referenced by Shirley I don’t think anyone with those strikeout numbers has ever translated. He reminds me of Jeren Kendall

You're no longer close enough to the team if you ever were, to pass judgement on so many people. All Getz is doing is working what he was given which is pretty much nothing and a lot of it was new hires , some last year and some this year. So maybe you better do some real journalism again and start constructing a time line starting with when Getz took over and investigating who was hired for what roles and when, in every department along with timeslines for when the new Dominican Academy will be finished. Also depending on agreements already in place with the most promising youngsters, figure out what year to expect to start doing a better job in the international market . Have someone take you on a tour and show you the Sox pitching ,hitting, and R & D new equipment. Maybe you can learn the purpose of a Trajekt machine, see the motion capture biomechanics in action and things you've never had a chance to see before. I think you have lost the objectivity necessary to do an honest assessment . It's a shame too because you use to do good historical work. But you're stuck in the past while the organization has been taking steps to move forward with some dusty money from the bottom of JR's change jar.

I'd basically put everyone on notice since the franchise is about to have its third straight 100+ loss season. You have next year to prove your worth, period. Full stop. That goes for the baseball side of the operations, the marketing side, the broadcasting side, the medical, training and conditioning staffs. Everyone from scouts to equipment people to everyone in between. The incompetence, dysfunction and ineptness needs to stop.

It’s not about the best player available in baseball. It’s about maximizing the bonus pool space and getting as much talent as possible for the finite amount of funds afforded. Chris Getz thought Hagen Smith would be a front of the rotation starter (still very possible) and he trusted the orgs pitching development to maximize that player. He thought it was a better idea than Konnor Griffin (swing change) and Jac Caglianone (corner profile, chase rate) etc. The White Sox had no hitting infrastructure in place yet and Ryan Fuller was still employed by the Orioles. The medical team also red flagged JJ Wetherholt. I would’ve taken Konnor Griffin.

I just don't understand how you all plan to get hitting. Last year this board was blown away as top 50 pitching prospects were being traded for expiring contract hitters. 4 to 1 deals (all pitching prospects) sent out for hitters and pitchers. But it took sending out a starting pitcher and top reliever to get a 24 year old hitter with his prospect shine off in vargas. Milwaukee traded an ace for a deal of way weaker position prospects than this board expected. Catchers and pitchers - that's what's available in trades. Our BPA pick last year is awesome until he had forearm soreness and we realized the guy already had TJS. Was a smidge away from a 2-time tommy john pitcher before he stepped foot on a mound for the sox. We'll be a team of Mike Tauchman-level signings and whomever first-round pitchers aren't on the shelf for tommy john for the next decade. BPA just is not a thing in the mlb draft.

They're picking in a weird. It just depends on the craziness in front of them. None of these players are worth the slot values so teams will be deal hunting early. He didn't. Best player on the board though.

You might be able to cancel some early season games the day/hours before due to cold/snow. It's a Jerry Special because they know that they're already on the hook for a couple of hours (workers only get paid for hours worked - not expected shift). So might as well milk the cow.

Schultz is avg 4.8 bb per 9 with nearly a 5 era and a significant reduction in his stuff quality regardless of what getz says. There's not a pitcher on that list that should prevent you from signing genuine mlb starters.

But then Jerry would lose out on thousands of dollars of concession/parking profits?

yeah if they weren't gonna start the game on time before the rain, they should've just postponed it immediately. sucks for all 30 of the fans who showed up.

We have a winner. I thought more people would have caught onto my blatant trolling, but my post was apparently just insane enough to seem dumb also sincere. Regardless, I 100% believe trading him is the right thing to do. If you want a vet SP to add to the mix, add one in the offseason.

Or a murderous horde of horsemen.

You can't ignore Smith's injury history since high school and Wake Forest, the total innings count the last three or four seasons as well as the more recent velocity uptick and seeming crash in his results and just have him try to pitch through it when this is all completely new to him as a rookie in the big leagues...need to really sit down and map out a new plan or strategy to address what's going on.

That sucks man. RIP to a legend.

Others have said that's crazy so I'm not going to pile on too much, but I'll present it in a little different way. Adrian Houser has been incredible for the Sox, basically a 3 WAR pitcher in 9 starts. Can't deny what he's done. Removing those 9 starts (57 innings), Houser has pitched 608 ML innings, holds a career 4.21 ERA and has a total WAR of 2.7 in his career. So in 57 innings with the White Sox, he's put up a higher WAR than his previous 608 ML innings. So with that in mind, along with him being 32 years old and being on his third team in three years..doesn't the historical evidence tell you the odds of him keeping this up seem incredibly slim? Wouldn't this be buying on him at just his absolute high point? Do you expect Houser to get better than this? And how comfortable are you paying a 35 year old Adrian Houser 20 million in 2028? Adrian Houser, to me, given where this team is at in their "rebuild" is the most clear cut, obvious trade candidate that I can remember. All of the evidence says he's not the guy you make an investment in. It's incredible what he's done and I hope he keeps it up. And maybe he's fantastic the next few years, it's possible. But he's literally pitching at a HoF level right now, I would not be comfortable paying him at that level based on the totality of data we have on Adrian Houser.

Most fans don't care. It's not like it's the NFL or NBA. Most fans couldn't even list their farm teams.

I want to see Vargas with a full off season with these changes under his belt. I’m not too worried about him right now, the league figuring him out was due to happen, now he has to learn how to adjust back.

Something that takes the original Fedde 2/15 deal and maybe adds a bit to it isn't a bad thought. Obviously I think we all want to see if he turns into a pumpkin and regresses to his career norms, or even to his expected outcomes for this year, but something in the 2/20 to 2/25 range might be an interesting starting point with the history he has behind him.

Holy crap that's wild, you would extend this guy $20M a year based off 9 starts.

I like Baldwin as a super utility player. A Jack of all trades ( run, hit, throw, field, good instincts) but master of none. Elko has a good glove and a history of clutch hitting, if there is such a thing, but with 3 k's today, looking bad, I'm beginning to wonder if he is 4A. Stick with him a little longer but, c'mon man, make some contact.

The Reinsdorf era can't end soon enough for me. At least he might be doing one good thing for this franchise on his way out in getting a local, deep-pocketed billionaire lined up to be the next owner.

It feels like this group might be working in their redirection techniques with all of the contradictory rumors floating around. I don't remember there being any talk of Hagen last year, and then poof there he was. Be interesting to see who ISN'T being talked about that would fit their needs best.

It’s not about wins and losses yet… Job security for years!