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I keep reading that the Sox are rebuilding so their record doesn't matter. The White Sox are not rebuilding, they're simply bad. Baseball has changed dramatically, and while people keep pointing to the Astros as a case of a team who was very bad and got good, they share nothing in common with the current White Sox. During the Astros "rebuild" years, they were able to draft at the top of the draft every one - unlike today. During the Astros rebuild, they had a top 10 farm system in baseball from 2012 to 2019! Seven straight years, with 4 being in the top 5. The White Sox, who have the 2nd worst record in baseball, don't even have a top 15 system today. Plenty of teams are just bad, and the majority of teams who are really bad don't become very good with those group of players. The White Sox are one of the laughing stocks of baseball, yet some fans believe their used car salesman GM that he's turning the organization around. Lastly, people claiming the Sox stopped spending on players so they could reallocate resources crack me up. The cost of the things the Sox have invested in are likely less than 5 million dollars total. Not even the cost of one player. The White Sox organization and fan base is dying, but some here love the direction the team is heading. It's is absolutely fascinating. To all the rebuild claimers, what are the White Sox rebuilding around? What is their edge in the market? What advantage do they have? The answer to anyone who is being honest is nothing.

If Harper signed with the Sox it would have coincided with Andersons run as one of the better hitting shortstops in the league for the first 3 seasons of that contract. Who knows what happens with any of them, maybe Harper gets the injury bug that got all of them, maybe guys like Eloy avoid those stupid injuries, maybe everything stays static and the Sox have their run Peter out as fast as it came about. The point is, they didn’t invest in one of the best players in the league who is also a clubhouse leader, and wanted to come to the White Sox. They pretended to make an effort to sign him, and that’s worse because that is a stain on the organization around the league. Not that Jerry cares about any of that

Cute that you think he currently has any say with the building of the team

There is also a portion of posters here that live inside the Sox vacuum and don't compare the Sox to other franchises, they just weigh things against other Sox seasons. It's been beaten to death at this point, but it's why there are "optimistic" posters here talking about how much "progress" was made over the last year. And yes, the Sox won 17-18 more games than they did last season. A 17 game improvement off the season before, in a vacuum, is a great thing. But zooming out even slightly shows you that going from 41 wins to 58 wins really shouldn't be celebrated, and the team that made a 17 game improvement from last season is without question the worst team in the American League in 2025. Good chance the Sox don't win 60 games this year. The Twins need to win one more game to reach 70 wins, which would mean no other AL team will finish the year in the 60-69 win category, everyone at least won 70 games...while the Sox won't even reach 60. That's how far away they still are from the rest of the pack. I haven't even mentioned Jerry yet, and the restrictions he will place on payroll additions, along with the 2027 labor impasse. Again, anyone can fan the way they want to fan. You want to be "optimistic" about the future of the White Sox, knock yourself out. But if you're going to argue with me (or anyone) that people are being too negative, too pessimistic...that's where I have an issue. This is objectively the worst franchise in the American League, has been for quite some time, and there is no where near enough evidence to tell anyone that it's going to change anytime soon.

It sucks to say it, and it's a shitty thing to experience as a fan. The Sox used to live in a pretty nice house. It wasn't the best house, but it had it's moments and memories. It had some serious flaws with it's foundation, and some plumbing challenges which needed repair, but they spent to money on upgrading the kitchen and entertainment room for cosmetic reasons. The core issues needed repair. Chris Getz came in, blew the entire house up, replaced it with a 300 sq foot one story house made of plywood. All his supporters are yelling about how he fixed the foundation and it's not leaking anymore... It's madness.

This guy is still comparing Getz to Stearns. And now hes comparing him to Luhnow. This is unbelievable. The amount of delusion about Chris Getz is incredible.

The Barons are the car.

I'd put it another way. "Losing is a choice" The White Sox, Pirates, A's...if you gave their owners a lie detector test and asked them if they wanted to win, I believe all would answer yes, and they'd be telling the truth. I think every owner wants to win. But in the case of the teams listed out...winning is not their main priority, and it's viewed as a "nice to have, not need to have" Being an owner of a professional sports franchise is an incredibly lucrative investment, no matter where you finish in the standings. That's the easy part. The hard part is the willingness to make capital investments in scouting, talent acquisition, player development, etc. And when you have 29 other teams trying hiring from a very similar pool of qualified candidates, it becomes challenging and often times expensive. Owners then have to make a choice. "Do I want to find the best candidate for the job? Do I want to invest X amount of millions in a Latin American complex? Do I want to outbid my rival on Free Agent X?" Those choices are everything, and unfortunately we know how Jerry chooses to answer them.

After the Allstar break, they were enjoyable to follow for a bit but that really did not last long. It is just sad for a major league baseball team to be this bad. Most days, they just have no chance to win a baseball game and that should be unacceptable for any fan base. Of course they are better than last year for crying out loud, but that is the lowest bar ever.

It's been the theme of the past two years. If you disqualify all of the "bad" things, and ask a bunch of leading questions seemingly highlighting some of the things that haven't been obvious failures, making them seem like they could be successes, you get to Baghdad Bob everything that puts a bad tint on things. -Resume? Resumes don't matter, look what else these great guys did, what else could Getz have done?!>?! -Losing? Losing doesn't matter, but what if you look what these losing teams did! Then ignore the fact that we literally can't pick like Houston and Baltimore did with the changes in the CBA. -Hey the cupboard was bare, except where these guys succeeded, but what if it was the changes that did it, even if the changes didn't work for most everyone else! -Ownership is still the same. I don't know why we are pretending that Jerry isn't still meddling, when he obviously is, and still operating with the same 1984 team building styles. Think about it, what does Rick Hahn's arc look like if he got to bring in Machado and/or Harper? What does Kenny Williams look like if he got to bring in Arod? Does anyone honestly think Jerry is going to allow Getz to spend at the top of the market even if all of this succeeds? Nah, operating with doubt is absolutely fair with the 45 year history we have here.

I do wish the players union would admit that anti-tanking efforts were a failure and baseball could admit that just absolutely creating a cyclone of rules that uniquely screws 2-3 fanbases (not franchises!) is stupid but fortunately for them those fanbases have been so whittled down nobody gives a s%*# about them and baseball can talk about moving them to smaller locations where they can hand them cost-controlled goodies.

This has nothing to do with hindsight, Einstein. Luhnow was a top GM candidate who was obtained via a search process where multiple candidates were interviewed. He was in charge of Cardinals minor leagues during a stretch where the team made the playoffs 9 out of 12 years, including TWO World Series wins and certainly never lost 100 games. Chris Getz has been in the White Sox organization since 2016. In that time, they've lost 100 + games TWICE as often as they made the playoffs. Stearns and Luhnow were HIGHLY qualified candidates who were hired based on merit. Edit: I don't have much basis for it? The White Sox are the worst organization in professional baseball since Getz took over. How is there not much basis? What the hell are you watching, pal? Is it the same thing we're all watching?

Ah I see. Nothing matters. Carry on

Go root for the cubs . Tired of your whining.

Blackout game was awesome. Leury Garcia game was awesome. Those teams didnt win it all, but those were fantastic moments made possible by fielding competitive teams. They lost that series, but it was a great experience with friends and family of mine. I think i even claimed I wouldn't rip leury ever again after that which lasted 6 months.

This would be a spectacular failure by Jerry if he negotiated a deal with someone who he didn't get reassurances from about how he would operate during the status of their deal. Personally, I don't believe Jerry is this stupid, and further more, we KNOW that Ishbia is paying off the operations debt that Jerry's group accumulated in the last half decade, so I personally believe the idea that this franchise isn't going to "spend money" is already demonstrably false. They might not be willing to "spend money" on the daily roster of a team in one of the worst stretches in MLB history, but if you look at similar historic situations, you will notice most of those franchises didn't spend until they were into a level of recovery that made significantly adding to the team something that could propel it to at least mediocrity, if not competition. There is also a really good chance that the "spend money" part is probably going to a new stadium for this franchise, which is why a guy with truly deep pockets was brought in to take over for a guy who is real estate rich and probably couldn't write a check for a billion dollar stadium himself.

As we know, Ishbia started buying WSox shares in 2021 and then entered into some kind of 5 year option in 2025 to purchase and supposedly invest in the team starting this year... After year one of the option....no public comment by Ishbia on anything and no moves by him that appear to help the team or clarify things for the fans. In the meantime, why should JR or Ishbia spend any money on this organization given the nebulous option agreement and uncertainty for any return on investment? Salting the roster via trade or free agency could really propel the team toward respectability. However, that does not seem likely, at least for the next several years with the odd ownership dynamic as it is.

The last point … I knew the last rebuild would never work because no one was fired but it (and frankly the franchise) was doomed to failure the minute they screwed around with Harper with no intention of signing him. A guy who would have been an historic franchise player, affordable by today’s standards. Once they played their games this entire franchise was exposed. (Of course you could go back further still, Navarro instead of Clemens for example.) Signing Harper could have given Hahn some massive success. Once the other hand this franchise is where stars come to die so Harper probably would have been a replacement level player had he signed with the Sox.

The way he talks about the Mets, you'd think they set the MLB record for losses in a season.

Luhnow had an incredible run in the Cardinals organization running their minors and was brought in to fix the Astros scouting and development. quite the opposite of Getz run in our minors. They couldn’t have more different resumes leading up to their GM jobs. And, you know; Luhnow actually interviewed for his job as opposed to having the league grant some weird ass exception to Reinsdorf if you want to compare them, then start at the beginning.

If JR were to fire him they'd have to 'waste another year' and we can't have that. So he stays.

Don't you mean "still in genuine progress"?

Dude, stop talking s%*# to everyone.

What a couple of suckfest teams. 🤣

The Tigers' fall has just been unbelievable. And, as someone who lives in Michigan, I absolutely love it.

Colson and Taylor bail out the pitching staff. Whew.

You have said this a lot and I wish you would stop. It’s incredibly insulting to the fanbase and it’s one of your worst, least thought out theories. And that is saying a lot

Here's my take on this: -It is incredibly annoying to hear the analysts, and the LEADERS OF THE ORGANIZATION say that the record doesn't matter. It absolutely matters and that is a shitty message to be sending to the players of the entire organization. -I agree the Astros rebuild and the Sox rebuild are not apples to apples. It took the Astros one rebuild to start winning world series, that was over 10 years ago, and they've been consistently in the conversation for championship contention ever since. The Sox had one failed rebuild, where they made the post season one time and lost in the first round. Now they are on their 2nd rebuild. -Yes, the White Sox have had some really good players on their rosters during their rebuilding years. Especially pitchers, who are currently spread across the league and all on good teams that are going to the post season (Crochet, Giolito, Cease, Rodon, Quintana, probably others). The Sox were not able to win with them. -I disagree the organization and fanbase is dying. I went to a few games this year. The org and fanbase is very much alive. Sox park is still a very fun place to be, despite the losing. But, a winning team would put the ballpark experience up with the top 5 in baseball. We all know how electric the Southside is when the team is good. Especially in October. -The reality is, there are some pretty good players on the current team and in the minor league system. But, the other part to that reality is recent history will show the organization doesn't know how to build wins with those players. So I am very skeptical that they will be able to pull it together even with new management, advisors, directors, etc.

Anybody remember larry from SSS? Anyways, here's what he'd post:

That isn't working so far Like we want. It hasn't worked that way for quite some time. The more I think about it that trading a stud pitcher for some guys that play more than every 5th day is not so bad. There's the risk these days with pitchers that all teams face with the TJ virus. The timing can be bad when that virus happens. The only solution is to have great coaching, scouting, development which some large markets do. The Sox are also bad in scouting at the big league level when they have spent money. Culture has a lot to do with it. We think tossing enough money would bring a Naylor or Tucker but some athletes like winning and the chance to play in October over a large payday. So I would say Ishbia's bigger challenge is to remove the identity of being a s%*# organization brought to you buy Reinsdorf. That may be the biggest challenge. There's 40 years of fans can't have nice things.

They wont. These guys are use to pitching 4 innings max. Then around July the discussion is about mothballing pitchers.

On the post game show last night, Our Chuck made a big deal about Getz attending the Barons game, saying that it shows how important winning at all levels is to Getz and this new front office. Except for winning at the the major league level apparently… 🤣

I think I'd say the reason I'd be especially skeptical that Getz will work is for the White Sox to work he'll need to be uniquely good at getting B/C level free agents to be successful and even the Dodgers struggle on that on a year to year basis. But the sox don't have a choice unless this is the greatest drafting and developing team in the league. And I'm skeptical.

Buddy, Smith and Schultz are no lock to make this team after last season.

I think for my part of the other discussion, the farm system success was relevant because it was translating to major league success. Luhnow was winning minor league titles and those players were moving up to an extremely good Cardinals team. and the Cardinals replacement for Luhnow went to jail for hacking his computer because he knew Luhnow had a great system!

The City Council approved the Chicago Fire Stadium. As of now, nothing has been done about the infrastructure around the stadium. I find it difficult to believe that over $900 million dollars of TIF money is going to be built for the infrastructure for 20 Soccor games a year.

The resume is irrelevant though. We can compare side-by-side the moves the guy with the "great resume", David Stearns, has made with the Mets relative to Getz with the Sox. The Mets could've kept Vasil, Orze, might've signed Houser, might've even signed Michael A Taylor instead of trading for Jose Siri and would have a better team this year. Among other moves and wasted mega-expenditures. Stearns signed Soto, right, and retained some key players because of the massive budget. Any GM could've signed Soto to that team. If the Mets acquired pitchers like the Sox did, they're not fighting for the playoffs with a $340mil payroll. The good pitchers on their team (sans rookie McClean) are from the previous front office. The resume, "the past", isn't really the question. Tony La Russa has a great resume too, he's a Hall of Famer, how'd that work out for the Sox? The point is about how past success doesn't necessarily indicate future success. The Astros had Hahn-esque, recent-Sox type teams under Ed Wade, and the MLB team immediately got worse when they hired Luhnow. The MLB team was really bad for several years under Luhnow. Do you think posters on this board would care about his resume with the Cardinals when the Astros are bottomfeeding? And yet, look how it turned out for them. Speaking of those Cardinals teams, "Luhnow's hiring initially prompted skepticism, since he had no previous experience in baseball and had not played the sport since high school. He was derided with nicknames like "the accountant" and 'Harry Potter'". Sounds like somebody we know. They won 105 games the year prior to Luhnow taking over the scouting department and not many of his draftees made MLB before being hired by the Astros. Had some MILB championships (The Barons just won their second straight). He didn't have anything to with Yadier Molina for instance. He did draft Lance Lynn who debuted prior to be hiring by the Astros. Maybe reliever, proper MLB reliever, Joe Kelly debuted during his time there. Several other 'meh' MLB players whose names I don't remember joined the team and contributed to their WS team (83 wins) in un-meaningful ways. He opened an academy in the DR (something the Sox just did). His resume is essentially that of Chris Getz the farm director with less baseball experience. The actual point being made is that it took several years for the Astros to turn into a dynasty after being a terrible team for several years. Sox fans would've been calling for his head. Hiring Mike Elias would've been even more eye-rolling. I'm not sure that Getz is either one of those guys, I just don't think the argumentation checks out. Talk about what is being done in the present day in order to build an effective organization, not their "resumes". Rookies and first year coaches don't have a resume but everybody starts somewhere. Young people in the real world wouldn't ever get hired over people with a 40 years of experience or privileged brats who attended Ivy League universities because their parents forced them to study from day 1 or did 'extracurriculars' in the third world. Talent wins out over pedigree. Or it ought to (it typically doesn't except in sports). Harder for us in the peanut gallery to analyze that in baseball executives. But the signs are there. If the signs aren't actually there as I think they are, let's talk about it. I like to analogize Chris Getz to David Stearns because it seems like a very easy argument to make that Getz would've done a better job with this Mets team. Stearns could have hired Bannister or Venable over Mendoza (not sure either one is a good manager, but one was a hot commodity). Within the Sox, the organizational deficiencies have certainly been addressed...it's just, again, too early to say if it'll actually work. Are Fauske and Bonemer good picks? Will the new Dominican academy bear fruit when the Sox haven't operated there since that one guy was convicted by the feds for stealing from children/the org? Is Marco Paddy's replacement any good? Did the new Arizona facility actually help un-bust Colson Montgomery? Will an unsheathed Mike Shirley's draft picks do anything? tl;dr: pedigree is meaningless and so is the w/l record during a rebuild

Your 2025 Chicago White Sox....we are less awful than you thought we'd be

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6645928/2025/09/20/white-sox-padres-losing-season-column/?source=user_shared_article Boy do I love perspective 😂

White Sox pitchers and catchers need to take a course on pitch selection. Two 99 mph fastballs that Nunez looks at then speed his bat up with a breaking pitch.

I thought the same thing after that airmailed throw from the catcher.

Schriff, dude, this team has not shown a great ability to reset lol

This team is on pace to finish with more losses than any team in franchise history outside of the 1970 and 2024 squad. So no, they're not "less awful than most".

But at least they were competitive...everyone knew the Tigers were better on paper, and that team was relying on way too many rookies. 2010 was a lot of fun in the middle of that summer... Same with 2003 and 1990. You remember the years and those teams decades later, like the SouthSide Hitmen or 1983's Jerry Dybzinski/Tito Landrum. 1959 GoGo Sox or 1983's Winnin' Ugly. Those teams had genuine/authentic identities and later specially reserved places in our memories...all set to a James Earl Jones monologue. We recenot fans only got Covid Year, TLR, 2021 and finally the Field of Dreams game after waiting patiently for half a decade.

Playing competitive games is all you can ask for as a fan. It's something we've been denied most of the last 20 years. It's hard to care too much about Colson's accomplishments or Garrett's last year in the face of so many losses. In a way it robs both fans and players of the bond that should be created over time.

Todd Frazier

Here you come, absolving Slick Rick Hahn of any blame again.

This is why having a producting drafting AND development system in place is so important. We have seen low payroll teams have varying levels of success, but the ones that are the most successful do the best jobs at selling high and developing their own cheap talent. We can't exist through trading our stars for talent being the only source of developed talent in our majors.

WestEddy said the White Sox were better positioned entering this season than the Padres...I guess if the goal is saving money on payroll and avoiding the postseason, that's pretty accurate.