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I can't find it in my heart to say one bad word about Jose Abreu. Congrats to him and may you break out of your slump with a wrath so furious that it silences all critics.

At least discuss something relevant and that can actually happen. No words can explain how bad of an idea Tim Anderson catching is

Alright, with so many posters here upset with how the team is currently performing, I thought it would be a fun exercise to theoretically construct a roster for the 2019 season that could potentially win it all. There are only two rules. You can NOT trade the entire farm system to improve the major league squad. We should remain a middle of the pack system after all moves are made. Second, the projected 2019 payroll has to be $150M or below. Go ahead and sign as many free agents as your little heart desires. Below is my theoretical plan. And for the record, I am not suggesting we should execute the plan below, I'm saying I believe this team could be a serious World Series contender in 2019. .

Step 1: invent a time machine and hire WSBSF to be GM in 2016. The sox would be well on their way to a dynasty if Jerry just gave him that one shot.

this is exactly what I was going to type....not if you plan on competing.

I agree. It's a shame that so few people who share their opinions actually watch the games or even look at stats. He's been great.

See, now you're straight up trolling Gregg. This post makes zero sense and it's obvious you are whoring for attention. Baseball aficionado my ass.

As ridiculous as the catcher idea is, it's all increasingly irrelevant now anyway. He's a shortstop and a good one.

He was voted in..it had nothing to do with every team getting one guy. I mean..

Whoever suggest that Anderson should move to catcher should be banned from this site. Like, how idiotic can you be?

Collins - 1/2, 3 BB 😍😍 But perhaps even more impressive, he stole his 5th base this season. I'm shocked he was even up to two bases, let alone 5.

Lol...I knew that would come up and probably warranted an explanation. I’m assuming he’s traded for prospects that have no impact on the rest of the 2019 roster. In this highly unrealistic scenario, we can’t afford to pay Yolmer $5M or so to backup three guys who should start 150 games each.

Nah, they thought that THAT crappy 2016 team, with THAT crappy roster, and THAT crappy manager had a snowball's chance in hell to compete. THEN, they thought that a 33 year old SP in steep decline was the "missing piece" to help that cavalcade of bad "over the top." All of that was about as stoopid as attaching jumper cables to your nuts. Trading ANYTHING beyond salary relief to get that bad asset was as stoopid as attaching the other end of the jumper cables to a fully-charged car battery.

Gray has a 3.10 FIP and has put up 2.5 fWAR in half a season. That fWAR total would rank 13th best starter in baseball this year. But hey, if you want to suddenly use ERA to evaluate pitchers and completely ignore peripherals, then more power to you.

Hey! I've got a good one!

How is Adam Engel not in someone's list in this thread? All winter long, I had to read on these boards what a golden god he was in CF, and how he was gonna hit...

This has to be some type of response to Garcia reinjuring his hammy. There are 4 active OF'ers in Charlotte not including Jimenez and Cordell. Seems like overkill to grab a 29 yr. old as depth.

If in August next year the White Sox have this team out there C - Collins/Castillo 1B - Abreu 2B - Moncada SS - Anderson 3B - Sanchez LF - Jimenez CF - Still Adam Engel Somehow RF - Garcia DH - Palka/Davidson SP - Rodon SP - Lopez SP - Giolito SP - Kopech SP - Cease/Hansen/Dunning/Fulmer Bullpen - Fry, Then I don't think it's unreasonable to think that the team is still going to be pretty mediocre. Based on the way this season has gone I don't think it makes any sense to spend money in free agency other than filling in gaps in the bullpen or possibly a short term deal for a CF that would sign for cheap. I don't think it is out of the question that team loses 100 games. I think it's more likely than that team going .500.

Personally I could live with TA at SS or 3rd with sub-standard D if he hits the ball out of the park more, walks more and steals more.Tim can do all of that. I cannot live with Moncada starting every day at any position if he only hits .150 against LH pitching. That has gotten ridiculous.

Unironically true if they're not protecting million dollar jobs by saying these things. That's true for literally anyone else. Even if what Hahn says is true it should absolutely discarded. He has plenty of motivation to say these things.

Bringing in a different front office is an entirely different debate. We are losing lots of games right now which is part of the plan. That has been communicated to our fan base by our front office. It will take a couple years, which has also been communicated. This is no different than what the Cubs said & did and I don’t recall anyone calling their rough years as embarrassing. Sure, a lot of fans temporarily lost interest in the team, but that’s only natural. But for some reason, a relatively large group of fans here despise the rebuild but can’t help watching it anyways. Our 2018 season is exactly what a 1st/2nd year rebuilding year looks like. If you guys can’t handle it, please take some time off. Developing multiple young players at once is not always going to be fun and right now we’re still trying out a bunch of fringe major-leaguers. Take a few weeks or even months off and come back when some of the ugliness has passed. It won’t make you any lesser of a fan. I can fully appreciate how enduring it is to watch this team on a daily basis.

All he needs to do is make all of the starts for the rest of this season and be healthy. To look at his stats is futile in my opinion. Same with Rodon at he MLB level.

It's such a simple fix in my opinion. We don't need to go full nuclear and ban shifts, make strikeouts 2 strikes/walks 3 balls, or anything like that. All that needs to change is that the commercials need to be slightly shortened and pitchers need to deliver the ball in less than X seconds. (I haven't done enough research on what that number should be but watch an AL East vs AL East matchup and you'll agree with me. It's excruciating). Those changes alone can shave half an hour or so from average game length.

Hard to say. The rumor is that teams are balking at Hahn's asking price which is Soria + Greg775 for a used handmade embroidered jockstrap.

The Cubs were losing so they brought in new front office: a front office with world series cred. They told the fans it would take a few years. They went through 3 managers in 3 years. What stars did they trade? Samardzija? 34 year old Dempster? They didn’t really tank, they just built. Very little comparison to how things work on the southside. And it doesn't take much imagination how the casual fan would be more excited about the Cubs approach to building a team.

The Trump administration made trade threats to Ecuador over … breastfeeding The "pro-life" party.

Disregarding the weird recent conversation, I thought Tim answered the original question in a near-perfect way.

I would be entirely against banning the shifts. Maybe it was a poor choice of words but banning or limited the shift wouldn't put more balls in play it would just mean that the balls in play would result in more hits. If anything the shifts should theoretically get more balls in play when and if hitters make adjustments . The game has always been a game of adjustments. The best hitters spray the ball everywhere . The most predictable hitters get shifts. Why punish the defense for playing where the ball predictably will go ? Start hitting where they ain't , If there are huge gaps on the field than learn to hit the balls there. How would you ban shifts anyway? Defenses have always adjusted to situations ,Double play depth means playing a bit farther back and shading up the middle. Infield in when you want to cut down a runner scoring from third. Outfields in closer when a sac fly will win a game while at the same time increasing the ability to catch a game winning single or a blooper. Outfielders have also always shaded in one direction or another. If a second baseman is playing in shallow right field and the SS right by 2nd base because some lumbering slow guy who only pulls the ball is up more power to them .

I thought a trillion to one was sufficient though the thought did occur to me to add a few more zero's.

Moncada can't hit left hand pitching after parts of three season in the majors and 140 or so ABs against LH pitching. On this forum it is not good enough to opine that a player might develop as a RH hitter. There has to be some statistic or a statistical trend to bolster one's argument or some definite short term trend that meets the eye test. Otherwise, I suppose, some attempt by the player to change his approach, or in this case, perhaps to have Moncada stop batting RH altogether and platoon with someone who can play second and hit LH pitching. I guess Moncada will have the rest of the 2018 season to prove he can hit LH pitching. If he can't then there are other options and decisions to be made. I am really disappointed in what it appears we got for Chris Sale, at least to this point. Time will tell though.

My odds that Tim moves to the OF at some point 1 out of 5 . Odds he moves to catcher 1 in a 1,000,000, 000, 000, 000.

Now I’m sad. I guess it’s up to Chance the Rapper to hold the Sox accountable.

Quietly having a nice season. Happy for him and the Sox. #14 in qualified fWAR at SS. TA leads the Sox in fWAR easily.

That's assuming he wasn't on something else before the Tetrahydrogestrinone. The "I'm going to go on the hard stuff" line he fed to Griffey according to that one book could darn well have meant he was on softer stuff before that, there are plenty of drugs like the Stanozolol that can help you build muscle and recover from injury without having your head expand 3 sizes, and it's not like we can assume he's an honorable person who wouldn't cheat on principle.

Heaven forbid we discuss things here. He doesn't remind you of Alomar size wise? How bout the fact our organization has sucked at catcher forever? His stats project great for a catcher. Forgive me for living and breathing. Excuse me.

What famous folk are Sox fans? Barack Obama? I think he’s busy. Whoever is dating Kopech?

Sox are an embarrassment to a great city; wish some famous folks would call them out publicly.

Now would be the time to try out TA at catcher, if that is Hahn's latest trick in his toolbox. Nobody is really blocking him there.

Every game against KC is a must lose game.

I hate the term "alt-right" Call a spade a spade. They're all fucking Nazis.

Yeah, message board posters are much more reliable

I was beaten mercilessly for saying this 2 -3 years ago (although I didn't express it nearly as eloquently as you did in this post). The media never called Hahn to task on anything. Less than a month after the Shields trade, the FO indicated intent to rebuild, diverting the attention. The Sox bloggers/insiders have basically fawned over Hahn; they've never called him to task either. Perhaps it's because they get access from this regime.

The reason i'm not madder at Hahn is KW and Reinsdorf. All of the dumb moves reek of Williams trying to please JR and win now. When did Hahn actually start doing it his way? Did it start when he made Hostetler director of scouting? Every one of us has to admit when KW was in the draft room we were a joke. In the last 2-3 years we've made more good decisions than Kenny made in a decade.

While losing right now may be understood, I would also add that the fans have every right to be pissed about it. The losing in 2018 is a direct result of choices the White Sox were making in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016, and the people who made those choices have suffered no consequences. By the end of 2016, Rick Hahn didn't just deserve to be fired, he deserved to be tarred and feathered. After the Shields trade people should have been burning Rick Hahn in effigy. The only reason they weren't is that after so much ineptitude, nobody really cared any more.

Perhaps you need further clarification. Keith Law wrote a fairly scathing (even for him) ESPN insider piece from the season before the trade went down (it was late summer '16) and he mentioned that Moncada was having problems consistently making contact (not that he wasn't hitting it hard when he was) in AA and that if the Red Sox were relying on him down the stretch to fill in holes they were likely to be disappointed. And...he was right. Moncada was (and still is) a very raw, toolsy prospect. A lot of loud contact and highlight plays and a lot of strikeouts and blunders -- as we've found. Of course he then got traded, proceeded to do fairly well in AAA (while striking out way too much) then fairly well in MLB (while striking out way too much) and then coming out this season and tearing it up before having a minor injury and cratering again. In retrospect, hindsight, whatever -- Keith was right. Moncada was very raw and for whatever reason (Law, as a former scout, thought it was the toe tap timing mechanism) was going to struggle to make consistent contact. Law is just one opinion but I remember at the time hoping he wasn't right and it turns out he's been quite right. Patience is in order of course as we've seen from Yoan, he's got plenty of talent. Just needs to refine it. Hopefully the Sox can bring it out eventually. TA is proving a nice case study.

The problem is, when you state facts, it's considered fake news if it isn't praising Trump. The facts are, he lies a lot. Once you are caught lying, not just once, but hundreds and thousands of times over, what you say isn't taken as truth. That's true if you are in politics or an 8 year old kid. Trump invents wars with people, getting them to what his supporters would call ganging up, and it works. When people here gang up on Greg, it doesn't work to his advantage like Trump. Facts and truth don't matter anymore. People will hear what they want to hear.

It's pretty obvious by this post that you're not that familiar with the White Sox, nor with baseball for that matter. Soria has been pretty good, and I could definitely see a team desiring his services. Not necessarily as a closer but as late inning relief for sure. Jones has been hit and miss, and he has some injury concerns. But he still can be serviceable if used properly. Avilan, however, has been very good. And he's under team control through 2019. Of those three, he's the most valuable, and I think the Sox could get an interesting return for him. To answer your question about releasing Soria, Shield, and Santiago...yes, if released teams would be interested in them. Teams will be interested in Soria and Shields without them being released. Just because YOU don't like a player, that does not mean they aren't liked or desired by MLB teams.

Sure, go for it -- I stole it too, so feel free.