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He would have been like adding whip cream to a s%*# sundae.

2-0 to start the year without White, encouraging start

Sure, but baseball is not like football or basketball in this regard. In the latter two sports, the better team usually wins and this is reflected in the win percentages. The White Sox's "worst team of all time" has a winning percentage similar to 4 or 5 NBA teams every year. There are multiple NBA teams every year that would win 130+ games if they played 162 games a season. MLB playoffs are a crapshoot, bad teams can beat good teams in a 5 or even 7 game series, hence teams can 'sneak' into the World Series. I mean, our Sox swept the 92 win Guardians in 2024, that doesn't make them a good team. Financial parity is objectively good for any league. Take it out of the owners' hands. NBA and NFL players and owners make money hand over fist too with a salary cap. They also have a salary floor. Leveling out spending is simply good for the quality of the product. If the NFL was like MLB, teams like Buffalo, Kansas City, Green Bay (especially) would not be any good at all because they'd have no money to spend relative to the J-E-T-E Jets, Giants, Chargers, etc. In the NBA, Oklahoma City and Indiana are not playing each other in the NBA Finals under the MLB financial system.

You realize you’re responding to a post from essentially two years ago, right? just trying to understand what your point is here.

Well, we now have hindsight to say that the worst team of all time was not in a contending position. Varsho on this team might be helpful next season but then we'd probably lose him for nothing or otherwise have to re-sign him for a bigger payday, making the trade as pointless as simply keeping Cease to play out his contract. It might've been a good deal in the sense that Varsho is probably more valuable than Cease the last couple years and could be traded for better prospects. Whether or not we got good players in return for Cease, it was definitely the right idea to get guys whose MLB clocks haven't started yet/have barely started. Varsho is one of the guys I'd like to add to this team and we might be in a position to do so, but the trade route wouldn't have made a lot of sense. Still, I think this is a good bump in the sense that people were laughing at you for thinking Cease was far more valuable than Varsho. He probably still is because ironman starting pitchers are quite rare, but Varsho is simply more productive. Although I doubt he hits above .800 OPS again.

When you are the worst, and 2nd worst, team in baseball the solution is not to trade for players with short term control. What Varsho did the last two years is immaterial to a team that has lost 223 games since you proposed this.

Perhaps Jerry should send John Fisher a box of cigars as thanks for keeping him from being the worst owner in sports?

I hate billionaire owners as much as the next guy and wear out the FieldofSchemes.com link. However, Fisher made the investment to get free land, infrastructure and tax breaks to build a little tourist village. Oakland offered him something like that, but it wasn't his preferred location. He bought to fleece the city. There's no concept of "doing the right thing" and selling before he got his money pump.

There were years where Oakland drew over 2 million fans a year. The present owner (Fisher, a multi billionaire) could of done the decent thing by selling the team to local owners. Both Bill Gates and Reggie Jackson wanted to buy the team and keep it in the Oakland area. Gates would have built a new stadium with his own money.There is speculation that Fisher will sell the team after the first few years its in Vegas. He should have sold the team to people who wanted to keep it in the Oakland area.

Murphy does throw strikes. I wasn't paying attention to Schweitzer's handedness. Yeah, they probably select his contract. Murphy seems like the type of finesse lefty every team has a few of. We also have Jake Palisch and Grant Umberger. I think Preller head-faked a few GMs one year into protecting guys who were well away from the bigs. Preller took four guys in the 2015 Rule 5 draft and that spooked Hahn into protecting Micker Adolfo and LA Basabe years before they would sniff AAA, starting their clocks early, and forcing a situation where they had to be rushed.

Many things about Mason Adams scream that. A pitcher getting injured is irrelevant. As everyone else has said, the dude is simply quite good and many teams would want him. It's not even a Shane Smith scenario, Mason is an actual prospect.

Lamar is out.

The perfect argument that a GM does in fact matter. Not the token “we can’t criticize Getz because Jerry won’t let him spend” argument.

Bump

TLR baby! But only because they were foolish enough to bring him back and his presence haunts the org to this day.

Knowing what went on in TLRs clubhouses over the years, I wouldn't bet on it.

Mason Adams 100% gets taken in the R5 if Sox don’t protect him. He needs to be added to the 40-man.

I wonder of the Brewers said the same thing about Shane Smith a year ago.

The argument is whether Moreno is worse that Jerry Reinsdorf, not whether he's a bad owner. I don't see anyone suggesting Arte Moreno is a good owner for the Angels. I have a hard time concluding that he's actually worse than Jerry Reinsdorf.

How about wasting numerous years of Frank, Ventura, Magglio, Lee, Konerko, Durham, and Valentin? Wasting two superstars is brutal but so is wasting almost an entire starting lineup of stars or above average power hitters over the years.

In regards to the Sox, if they were trying to contend and had limited 40-man space to work with, leaving him off would make more sense given the injury. They aren't trying to contend and have plenty of 40 man spots to play with, so losing a young valuable arm for nothing would just be negligence IMO. Admittedly I'm a fan of his and would hate to see him go elsewhere.

lol, no

Program is in the best shape it has ever been.

I guess we could lose. Rita would be a bad loss after clobbering them earlier. You mention some name schools but Rice is special this year. I will risk hyperbole and say if we don't win it all this year we never will. It's that good a Rice team.

Holy bleep we are good this year. Folks this is the best team in BR history. I don't care what happens the rest of the way. Q has the best team in Rice history. Can we complete the deal? Teams that could knock us off in playoffs, the only ones: Mount Carmel, Fenwick, East St. Louis, Loyola. That's it. I have no idea which teams are in our classification. St. Laurence has a good coach, not sure of their record, but we mauled them tonight. If Rice does win it all this team will go down as legend on the south side even tho we lost to MC.

This is a sad sad place some times. Caulfield is a great Sox fan. He wants to help and has ideas and is brave enough to share his ideas with us jerks he knows will scorn him and laugh at his ideas because we can't express ourselves in any other way than short chaotic bursts of sarcastic derision like cavemen grunting. Caulfield I think the mistake you are making is thinking the Sox actually want to compete quickly like Jerry told us. I, too, at first thought trying to get younger established high floor guys with control was more of a sure thing and the Sox could use more tradable assets. So early on in the Cease trade talks I suggested getting a controllable younger player who had already had a good year or 2. After all the Sox are so bad every avenue we turn seems like a dead end. So I figured try to get mix of a tradable controlled player and a prospect for Cease. I forgot the young controllable guy I wanted in return but it wasn't seen by the vocal majority as a good idea. We saw first hand how even the best prospects are extremely inconsistent in this organization or get injured. We think it's JRs fault for not hiring good scouts and development people and we probably are right . It also could be true that the Sox could be experiencing what other teams do with injuries and inconsistencies of many prospects. But what other choice do we have than to cling to the idea that Cease is a rare commodity worthy of the high asking price as recently described in a fangraphs article ? Getting top prospects is still viewed as the only way of actually getting in a strong position to be truly competitive again at least in recent competent organizations like the Astros, Tampa Bay, Orioles, Cubs Diamondbacks. Despite the way the rebuild crashed and burned, a bad organization like the Sox managed to get to the playoffs for 2 consecutive years for the 1st time in the franchise history. Those were exciting times and the glitter of top prospects is so very shiny until the corrosion sets in. The currently deceased rebuild showed us how destructive that corrosion can be when those prospects don't pan out. The corrosion is the nature of prospects, bad development, a bad organization , bad luck. Right now it could be all of those things combined. That makes for a very angry, divided, and confused fan base. Getz isn't calling it a rebuild because his boss says we want to compete as fast as we can . That's the excuse JR made for hiring Getz. Hit the ground running. A new guy from outside the organization will take time to learn everything Getz already knows. The scary thing is we can't yet get a handle on what Getz is doing for the future of the franchise. Everything he's done so far seems to be based on improving the current rosters defense and pitching at the expense of hitting . The only thing is it's all very temporary based on creating tradable pitching pieces out of the cheapest arms he could find. How could that go wrong ? It has very little chance of succeeding but that's how desperately the Sox need more guys who can brings in prospects . Getz knows it's a rebuild and he has to start from a terrible roster while Hahn got to start with a mediocre roster. Getz and the Sox are fucked if Cease or Robert start showing that same Sox corrosion that tarnished Giolito, Moncada , Eloy, Vaughn, Kopech and others. He's also fucked if he can't magically create some tradable pitching assets using defense and his staff to create something out of mostly nothing's. This is one high level SNAFU where nobody has the right answers and all ideas are inherently bad because the Sox haven't shown us that they are capable of running a Tampa Bay like organization that stresses low cost high level development of prospects , or do much of anything else right. This is everything we are getting from the fan base now. 1. We actually are expecting too much for Cease. 2. Cease is worth the high asking price but settle and trade him because something is better than nothing. 3. Start the season with Cease . Hold out for the best trade you can make by counting on a healthy and very good Cease. No further corrosion allowed . Cease will be shiny again. 4. Trade Robert ASAP before he turns into a pumpkin . Sell high before his shiny season gets Sox corrosion. 5. Robert, Jr. is too good to get what he is now truly worth based on his 1 healthy breakout season. Hold him for another year when he'll the model of health and a glorious vision of a shiny nice thing . 6. Getz is doing great. We might be able to win this crappy division if a few things fall our way. I like this new idea of speed, pitching and defense. f*** the HR , give me more Go Go Sox/ Royals championship baseball ! 7. We are going to be really bad in 2024. What the f*** is Getz doing ? He hasn't done one thing yet, as far as player transactions , go to improve the future. 8. Hope the Sox are just good enough in the 1st half of 2024 to actually trade half the pitching staff ,Moncada, Robert and Eloy for more prospects. We are a really traumatized fan base who finally realized that rebuilding with JR in charge is doomed to fail but now have to rebuild with JR still in charge hoping for more shiny happy prospects that can make us shiny, happy fans again... until the corrosion...

Mike Trout is pretty all right. How has not being willing to spend worked out?