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Now that this thread has gone exactly as expected, can I take a moment to say something we should all be able to agree on? It's just really really nice not having to hear from Pedro Grifol anymore. (And no, this does NOT mean I think Venable should win manager of the year).

Teel looks like Arraez tonight

Love the "day off in case rain on the opener" at Milwaukee's covered stadium.

Honestly, I'm tired of the negativity. No one, at least no one who wasn't delusional, thought the Sox would be contenders this year after an absolutely dismal 2024 season. We were hoping for moderate improvement and a possible light at the end of the tunnel. I think what we're seeing is beyond expectations, and not just in the record. They're going to win upwards of 20 more games than last year, but that doesn't tell the whole story. They're doing this with a lot of young players that will be the future of this team. How long has it been since we've seen this? They have Quero, Teel, Meidroth, Montgomery, Sosa, Baldwin, Vargas, and now even Mead performing every day, making this team exciting to watch. Add to that veterans like Robert and Tauchman playing well and fitting in with the youth movement. And I'm not absolving Getz of anything, although he made some seemingly good moves recently. Time will tell. I think a lot of this team's success is due to the coaching staff. Venable and his guys have done a great job with a now very young team. They know they're not contending, yet you see a guy like Vargas stretch two single into doubles last night. You see Robert and Montgomery with special handshakes. You see smiles, high fives, and guys just having a lot of fun. We didn't see any s%*# like this the past few years. So, I'm fine with seeing posts about how much better the Sox are this year than last. Sure, the bar is low, but why can't we be excited about what we're seeing? I'm tired of being pissed about my favorite team. I'm tired of being negative. Those who wish to remain negative and always look at the dull side of life - go ahead. I'm done with that.

I just don't understand why you don't let Taylor just pitch. If he gets beat he gets beat. It's all a learning experience

Baldwin is a lot easier to like when he's playing solid defense that's for sure. Maybe just park him in LF next year f*** it Beni can rot.

That schedule shows me winning 98 games.

One of the dumbest things in pro sports. Start the season...off day.

For the away series to start the season looks like we have quite favorable weather destinations. Milwaukee (Dome) Miami Kansas City Oakland (Sacramento) Arizona San Diego Los Angeles Seattle San Francisco That takes us to end of May dodging the entire East coast and Min/Cle/Det

Bonds doesn't "look the part". He's also far less whiny post-career than some of these guys. Was watching the Twins broadcast when they played the Sox, their broadcast directed me to Roger's twitter to see his 'reaction' to his son's home run and the post right above it is him talking about "fake news" and playing golf with the president. Whatever, the baseball player is entitled to his political views, he just seems like a stupid person and I can't imagine that stuff playing well with the Minnesota/DFL crowd. why are these dudes always so weird about it...like, are you gonna have a wet dream?

Your posting really has gotten insufferable. You are extremely knowledgeable and clearly have good insider intel. I also actually don't disagree with a lot of what you say, but do you really have to say it ALL THE TIME? You're becoming an SNL caricature like Debbie Downer with your constant Eeyore posts. Like I alluded, I generally like you, but please lighten up a bit.

Better ERA than the Dodgers or Yankees or Phillies. The ERA, before tonight, is 14 points better than league average. Dunno how that changes with ballpark factors. The peripherals suggest the ERA should be better, I think we saw that tonight with a series of softly hit balls resulting in a bunch of runs. Bad calls to the bullpen. Bad pitch calls. And a defense that is 5th worst in combined defensive fWAR with lefties pulling the ball to the worst defender on the team. I'd put this L on Venable. They pull Tayor because 3 lefties are coming up for Alexander who a 5+ ERA in August before tonight and was put into a tough, bases loaded, closing situation. Eisert hasn't pitched this series and has a sub 3 ERA this month. But threw 24 pitches on the 24th in a blowout. Gilbert threw 22 last night in a blowout. Either one of those guys was a better choice tonight based on the trends. Can't say with confidence those two guys also picked up off the waiver wire would've performed any better, but at the very least the recent trends suggest they might have. Shuster or Booser should've been the guy, but they were failed acquisitions to be sure. All in all, pretty marginal, inexpensive relief pitchers in a down season. But might've made the difference tonight if Getz acquired, I dunno, Aroldis Chapman. But he's earning $10mil and why sign a reliever to that contract when the playoffs were never in the cards? Actual good left-handed relief pitchers are rare and expensive. Or they're in arbitration. I think it's a question of why are the Sox using the sparse lefty relievers they have left for multiple innings in blowouts. Seems like the exact situation to use Wikelman or Taylor to help the rookies build confidence and get some innings without pressure. Use the lefties situationally. Don't expect Grant to just be a stud immediately, he threw 16 innings of good ball at A level before being crowned a star. Then was really good at Birmingham before making the leap to the MLB team and being expected to close and deal with tough situations. Seems pretty bad for his development. The box score goes down as 0 earned runs for Alexander, but that call blew the game and it was actually blown the last two games. Should've been thinking this situation might come up. Hopefully it's a learning experience for the rookie manager.

trash team doing trashy s%*# did I mention I hate Chris Getz

Snatched defeat from the jaws of victory

What contending team would offer a fortune for an unproven rookie like that ?

Nice pitch there

Vargas doing what he does, miss hittable fastballs early count.

The two singles were both barely hit at all, but once he got into trouble, you could see Leasure tighten up.

his FB is so fucking awful, straight as an arrow with zero movement

I know it will piss some off, but give me Baldwin in LF, Robert in CF, Vargas at 3B, Colson at SS and Sosa at 2B (to go with the catchers), and go fill in the rest

One of my main takeaways from the good seats in Seattle this year is that baldwin is built like an NFL running back and Mead is built like an Italian midfielder. No knock on mead he's obviously a pro, but physically baldwin has longer levers and way more power in his lower half. Whoever the scout was that recommended baldwin 12th round did a great job.

Umpire is missing a pitch almost every at bat

Someone in the stands just yelled "Helen Keller behind the plate" i shouldn't be laughing at that

It's supposed to be officially voted on "this summer" but I don't think it has been yet. Based on the success in the minors, spring training, and the all star game, I would expect it next season.

I'll never forget Hahn saying that he would not make the Shark trade with Oakland if they didn't include Ynoa.

Over two seasons?

should we just have new game thread makers to keep it up? ....even without OP's making proper game threads and a "Sunday" lineup today. -Shane smith best start of his (young) career? -Bullpen settled down finally -Baldwin flashing his power AND speed/defense with a great catch -Korey Lee with a GREAT game both offensively and defensively makes our C' spot even better

Because it makes zero sense to pay a talented player $20M when you are going to be losing 100 games for those two years. Their value is greater being traded for assets than it is playing CF for the White Sox.

Habit. I truly believe Sox fans are a group who are preconditioned to b****, moan and whine about this franchise. It's the result of damn near 50 years of incompetent ownership and underperforming rosters....it's essentially part of Sox fanhood to complain. You can't follow this team closely and not complain. I don't watch NEAR as much Sox baseball as I used to...the LaRussa/Grifol debacles were the last straws. When I do happen to watch a game and jump in the game thread, I'm amazed at how negative they usually are. And then I remember, these are the DIE HARDS still watching damn near every game no matter the Sox record. They have a completely different perspective than I do. I'm fucking thrilled to see the young guys hitting..could mean I can get back to regularly watching the Sox again (I miss them!). People that watch every game? They sure as s%*# aren't happy consistently losing. Losing means far more to them than me, and a month and a half of good offense means a lot more to me than it does to them.

Your definition of mental gymnastics isn’t what it really means. I don't remember if it was this thread or another, but a post stated that if Getz is fired today he will never have another GM job in his life. Stearns will be hired tomorrow if the Mets cut him loose. That's reality. Twisting an argument into a pretzel to frame it another way isn't reality.

Well, not gonna get into a political discussion past this post, but I'm not going to say you're stupid like you said I am. You might be really smart, I don't know anything about you. I didn't like that comment you made asking what the female umpire was wearing. That seems inappropriate and backward. Most conservatives I know don't speak like that, they seem to respect women as equals. I don't think misogyny is even a political opinion, although this specific president seems to empower it. I don't think a guy in his 60s talking about "fake news" and offering all other kinds of lowbrow political takes on social media is necessarily intelligent though. It seems petulant and like something a 14-year-old would do. Throwin a fastball gud doesn't make you intelligent. Being a cheating drug user probably helped in that regard. I think conservatives cared about moral decay or whatever.

Yeah, he's at 1.7 WAR, and he had a pretty bad start to the year. He's on pace for about 16 HRs and 37 2Bs, with an improving glove. And again that's including his bad start. Definitely not a bench player

They’ll pick up the option and try to trade him this winter. If there was any chance of not picking it up, they would’ve traded him in July. This whole thing isn’t this complicated.

I think I'm the only one doing it. Maybe not, but I mention it quite a bit. I think it's a funny bit because the Mets are not as good as they ought to be with an unlimited budget and with the guy everyone thinks is the best GM in the league. I mean, the Mets were way better in 2022, weren't they. I suspect Stearns probably has his fingerprints over the excellent Brewers team this year, systems he developed, but if we follow your logic, the Brewers are a better team because of their new GM and all it took was replacing Stearns. The MLB roster has clearly improved since Stearns left, the W/L record isn't up for debate. To that point, I think many realize that Rome wasn't built in a day. What you're describing is a team that Hahn/Kenny built and decisions the new GM made to get "prospects" who didn't play for the Major League team last year or most of this year or still aren't in MLB. That singular record is not indicative of future success. "Worst team ever" stings a little, but ultimately I'd rather have the prospects than keeping Tanner Banks, Erick Fedde, Greg Santos, Dylan Cease, etc. Or signing a bunch of veterans without a future on the team. Not all of those trades are working out as we might hope, but we would've obviously performed better if we kept them and what would be the end result? A playoff berth? The team was on a downward trend because of decisions the previous FO made, it seems illogical to stick it on the new guy in his first season. It's simply not how baseball works, did you really expect him to magic up some superstars? Or to make Moncada, Eloy, Benintendi suddenly play well? To go back in time and not hire Grifol? I wish our GM could do magic but it seems like an unrealistic expectation. In terms of magicking up superstars, perhaps Colson doesn't perform like he is now without the new-and-improved Arizona complex. Hahn had years and years to do that but didn't. Kenny's ego would have never delegated responsibility to someone like Brian Bannister or Ryan Fuller. At the time, I thought it was cool that the Sox posted an open position for 'biomechanics analyst' and it seems to be helping and to be the sort of thing that modern MLB teams do that we previously did not. The organizational culture is clearly much better, it's not two guys micromanaging everything, consequently the players appear to be having fun. There isn't the 'white guy clique' anymore. We're not hearing players talk about how dysfunctional the team is. I probably wouldn't have done the Bummer or Mena trades, ostensibly the in-place systems that scouted those players who were acquired were from the previous front office. Maybe the new GM learns something about acquiring players like Rojas and Nicky Lopez, though it's not like they were paid handsomely or for multiple years; otherwise pretty much every player on the worst team ever was a Hahn/Kenny guy. Some of the reliever signings and trades were a miss, Booser this season is clearly a miss, but they're just relief pitchers and ultimately it's pretty marginal. Are Fajardo and Mena moving the needle? You'd probably prefer to have them, but it's not of the caliber of trading Tatis or Semien for bad, old pitchers. Although, seems like there was improvement in that department, the free version of 'Inside Edge' seems to think the Sox are pretty good at that this season relative to other MLB teams (see bottom). In terms of building a team for the future, you ought to be paying attention to what the rest of the organization is doing. It takes time in baseball relative to other sports. To me, that's a lot of the fun about talking about baseball. It takes some time to bear fruit. Some amount of guesswork and prediction is involved and I could be totally wrong, I'm not the sharpest mind, but we all have access to the same information to help guide our perspective. The White Sox will probably bear fruit before the Bulls though, that's an actually poorly-run organization. In fairness, I can understand why that's not appealing to a lot of people, to go through a rebuild, especially when we fans have been burnt before. It's still a necessary evil unless you're the Yankees or Dodgers. The Sox weren't fun to watch last year. Birmingham was a lot of fun to watch and I bought some of their merchandise. Although I'm still waiting for someone to say "hey nice hat" instead of "why are you wearing a Red Sox hat?". Some homeless guy in my neighborhood yelled at me because I was wearing my '83 Sox hat too much ("we stopped wearing that hat 40 years ago!" or something), but I digress. Now some of those Birmingham guys are in the MLB and are still fun to watch, they're actually performing, at the highest level. And are continuing to improve. I completely tuned out of the Sox by this point last season, I'm heartened by the performance of our young players and I wonder why we all aren't. It's fun when they have good games and I don't really care when Owen Wilson or whatever 30-year-old reliever who won't be on the team next year blows the game. Baseball is fun, it isn't that serious, and sometimes being optimistic is the same thing as being logical. Anyway, this is my essay for the week.

Quero's .370 average vs. LHP is top 3 in the league (min 100 PAs) He's also been doing this overall:

He deserves a long look. The guy can hit the longball on mistakes for sure. He can end up being a good OF. They could use more power and speed and another switch hitter.

im glad Colson has happened because if he hadnt i was considering deleting my soxtalk account and throwing my computer out into the street. now i have something to talk about here

I love how you criticize Stearns because of his year 1 results, but then absolve Getz of any blame (as If he was an outsider brought in and not the guy in charge of PD on that historically bad team) because it was the prior regime. The mental gymnastics people will go through is remarkable. Also, I said it elsewhere but one sign of a great leader and builder is that when you leave, things don't miss a beat.

100% JR decision to save money or mitigate risk. He just makes his own GM look unreliable or untrustworthy…in the end. No way this is Getz’s decision to make alone.

The argument is what they do with Devers’ money instead…payroll/salary allocation. See Magglio C-Lee and Valentin traded before 2005. Part went to Devers and bringing in Lowe, for example. Obviously what additional freedoms do they have to make moves now in the offseason? The biggest mistake in recent Red Sox history was clearly Bloom trading Betts to the LaD for Verdugo, but that was 100% John Henry. But he let his GM take the fall for that terribly unpopular move with the fanbase.

Anthony was drafted in 2022 a full year before Breslow was hired. Maybe the Red Sox did some developmental magic, wouldn't rule it out. Probably he was just a good player scouted by someone the previous regime hired. Sometimes over-slot 3rd rounders turn out to be pretty good. I dunno that Devers had a vision, nobody was questioning his personality in his previous seven years with the team, he was simply jerked around this past year and had enough. I don't think he looks very good either, but clearly he was pushed into it recently, otherwise they wouldn't have signed him to that giant contract. It's only addition by subtraction because he was fed up. At the same time, he was clearly better with Boston than he is with San Francisco, 151 OPS+ vs 116. He is also exclusively playing 1B/DH with the Giants and seems to be happy about it. Our man Liam Hendriks had a similar impression about the front office. BoSox traded the OF prospect in that deal for Dustin May who's pitched to a 4.50 ERA with them. Jordan Hicks has a 6.19 ERA in 16 innings since joining them. Kyle Harrison is in AAA and is worse than he was with SFG's AAA affiliate. Similar ERA, but went from a 4.75 Strikeout:Walk ratio to 1.84. 20-year-old Jose Bello looks OK after 14.1 IP at A ball. I think Harrison will be good, but if that's what you're getting back for a career .853 OPS hitter, it doesn't look like a good trade. The vets are nice additions, but Story was there for a while, Bello was also there before the new GM and was clearly good, Lowe has 20 plate appearances with the ugly sox, Chapman is pretty much just some guy. Bregman is a good player, but he's not exactly a diamond in the rough. He's being paid a lot of money. Luv Gio, but he's well-paid for what he is doing and plenty of teams might've paid him. It was dead salary for a year. He's had an awesome year and I hope he keeps it up for a while. It's funny that they keep acquiring our pitchers, frankly. Why can't they develop their own?

Is this performance art? Vargas is a league average bat with 30 doubles. That's not a bench player.

In CST, from a guy who has seen him at various points on this ride: “He’s still Luis Robert, man,” starting pitcher Davis Martin said. “He’s still the best player I’ve ever played with. It’s fun to see him loosen up and be a focal point.” I do think there's something to it. He went from the pressure of living up to the early extension, to the pressure of trying to "save" the last core, to the pressure of constant trade chatter. Been a while since it's been solely "just go play your best baseball" for him. I know the assumption has been that he'd instantly take off on another team, but maybe that just introduces a new set of headaches. Trying to fit in/impress in a new place, worrying about the option, having to find a new deal if the option is declined...and that deal would probably be a short term prove it situation, so it's the same cycle. If Luis (and Boras) would entertain it, I'd at least inquire about a reasonably priced extension. The worst of his injury concerns seem behind him, there's no glut of high ceiling OF prospects knocking down the door, and maybe he responds well to feeling more secure and settled in without having to be "the guy" for this core. And as a side note, I really, really like Davis Martin. Smart, hard worker, seems great in the clubhouse.

To be fair to Hagen, I think there's a lot more to like with him than those two guys. Has shown far more aptitude at missing bats than either of them. Ring showed up with control issues out of the box in a relief role and stopped striking people out once he reached AA. Poreda is a guy I don't think would have been much-liked in today's game because (I suspect) he was a guy with high fastball velo but not able to make people miss it. Smith has serious problems throwing strikes but the foundation of the slider + fastball is extremely strong too. If he can stay healthy he has very good odds to at least be a useful relief pitcher. Here's hoping he can straighten out over the offseason...sometimes I think you have to just get a heavy dose of guys not swinging at your stuff when it's out of the zone before you really find the desire to fix yourself. FWIW, the Carson Fulmer comparison is more interesting to me. Of course I'd say Carson simultaneously had worse stuff but a better college track record. I don't know if Carson ever could have made it even if he was coached up perfectly — baseball is hard — but I always felt like they really hurt him by promoting him out of AA. Carson showed serious command problems that weren't being appropriately punished by AA hitters much like we're seeing from Hagen Smith right now. But then Carson had 3 good starts in a row in July and they promoted him to the majors where he immediately gets lit up out of the bullpen. Then he spends years languishing in AAA where he never figures out how to stop walking people. Sox don't seem like they're keen on making that same kind of mistake with Smith, who I think has to start next year in AA unless his AFL and spring training production is stupendous. I'll note that the thing I'm glad they didn't do with Hagen Smith, they did do with Noah Schultz. Hard to understand exactly what they were doing, given that Schultz walked 5 in his last AA outing (which, to be fair, was scoreless and he allowed just one hit). I'm a little more open-minded with how Schultz is being handled simply because command issues are not something we've seen before with him and I'm allowing for the possibility that there's more than meets the eye with him.

Trade him Get what you can. Not a Robert Fan. Doesn't Hustle on normal plays Rarely hits in clutch

He looks refreshed. I wonder if the weight of being labelled a "bust" and the almost certain trade was hindering his performance. It's a rate stat, but he's been on pace for about 4 fWAR going on 6 weeks now. Basically he's gone from replacement to almost on the verge of a decent season at 1.3. He'll probably finish around 1.8 which while poor for his talent, certainly isn't a horrible effort and is worth picking up his option off.

Lance Johnson says "hello"

Montgomery is a mega savage. To have two catchers with OPS above .800 (or even around .800) is insane. FG absolutely loves Teel. 1.3 WAR in only like 50 games...positive offense and defense. Vargas is also showing encouraging improvement. His WRC+ is now right at league average even with his big droughts during the season and his xwoba suggests he should probably be a little better than average. If Baldwin can learn to play a competent CF he could be good. Just need Meidroth to consistently hit some doubles to keep the defense honest. If he can get back to being a .360+ OBP, he can still be a 2-2.5 WAR player. Braden being added at some point next year also should be great. I'm excited.

Wait, when are they getting this for Robert????

Sports fans are fickle. Ishbia takes over and signs some guys and they start winning and everyone comes crawling back. Look at what the Blackhawks did.