Leaderboard

There is a pretty good case to be made Rick Hahn has committed fire able offenses. There is a pretty good case that could be made that KW and RH shouldn't be the architects of this rebuild. But I don't see where current performance should get them fired. That's fair. But I don't think they deserve a real long rope. Next year isn't looking too promising. Obviously, it doesn't mean it will be awful. 1977 was supposed to suck, 1990 was supposed to suck. 2000 was supposed to suck. I think even 2005 was supposed to suck. But as far as rebuilds go, 1990 and 2000 are the years we should be encouraged something many of us, me among them, don't see happening, may happen. But if it doesn't, fine. It's a rebuild. But there has to be some things to hang the hat on. Legit things. Not BS like they did on the pregame show yesterday trying to spin Giolito's year as average. It's been terrible. His ERA is over 6.00. And 2020, they should be a better than average team. If either of those don't happen, I think it's very fair to clean house.

And this all has to do with Rick Hahn’s background. Thank you caulfield for tying it all together as you do

Good, more to spend when the time/ opportunity is right.

Keep in mind that the 2018 White Sox are 30th in MLB payroll, and they are 27th in attendance. Forbes Magazine says the White sox are 14th in MLB revenue. The White Sox franchise is making nothing but money in this so called rebuild.

Thought this was relevant. You have to click for the screenshots

At what point is Rick Hahn accountable?

Being a lifelong White Sox fan I've seen different owners, players, managers and GMs. I've never seen a GM with as little success as Hahn. He has been here 6 years and has not produced one winning team. I'm hoping the 2019 season will be a better season than the past six years has been. I'm told that Hahns contract runs thru 2019. I would think if 2019 is another bad year the Rick Hahn era will be over. Maybe if Hahn is gone JR will come to his senses and interview me for the job of White Sox GM.

Because he plays for the White Sox. We don't get nice shiny new toys. We're the red headed stepchild of baseball. I have zero faith in this organization to develop hitters. I gave them a chance with Moncada and they're failing him. I get that Eloy is more highly regarded but to me he and Avi were/are very similar as prospects. I have no doubt that if Moncada were still with the Red Sox he'd look a hell of a lot better than he does here. This organization is clueless about player development. They haven't developed anyone from scratch that had a 5+ year career since Brandon McCarthy. it is approaching a decade and a half of utter incompetence. Every one who questioned whether the current FO was the correct choice to identify talent and acquire and develop it so far has been proven correct.

That's not fair. I don't see any reason he should be denied the right to buy a ticket and take in the game like any of us.

No reasonable fan is calling for KW/Hahn's head right now. That being said, if the team is not contending by 2021 something went way wrong. On a positive note, we are likely at rock bottom in our second year of the rebuild. 2019 should be slightly better than 2018 and trending upwards.

His July average being .231 isn't really telling us the whole story. His OPS that month was .749.

I'm a huge Moncada fan too. I used to think he'd be fine eventually, but going through his splits on fangraphs made me change my mind. I've taken it from "he'll be fine eventually" to "We'll see" This is coming from the guy who said that if he puts it all together he could be a notch below Trout.

There are a number of posters here who went from Rebuilds don't work (Cubs win World Series) Our organization can't rebuild (White Sox start rebuild) Okay fine we'll rebuild Why isn't the rebuild over yet? What are Rick Hahn's qualifications? I don't know about all the Twitter era stuff, but when this team kept "reloading" and going for it with high paid bums only to be out in July, I was more angry than anyone here. My tune changed when the White Sox did the right thing and moved to build a younger squad.

I am a big Moncada fan and I do think he'll be fine eventually. But only a small portion of that post was cherry picked. The following is not, and its still really bad. What concerns me is that it has just gone ridiculously south on him. Moncada is 9/74 with 33 K since the ASB. That is absolutely putrid. It isn't just 18 games. In May he hit .197 In June he hit .205 July was .231 .107 through a week in August. His April props up his entire season, in which he hit .273. Since May 1 he's below Mendoza. Roughly half of a season. Also, He hit .188 in July and August last year. Evidence is mounting he's either nowhere near ready or completely overmatched at the MLB level. His wRC+ is down to 89 for the season.

"Why hasn't anyone fired that general yet?" "When are they going to call up B Company?" "If only they had gotten rid of C Platoon when they got the chance?" "Why have a nuclear bomb if they aren't going to use it on the battlefield?" "Excuse me Drill Sergent, what are your qualifications, exactly?"

So what's the deal with the Braves and Phillies right now?

The extensions only matter because of what they were able to gain in trade because Both Sale/Q were signed to such nice team friendly extensions. Where the accountability comes in is that they had two seasons to get a damn supporting cast around Sale/Quintana/Abreu/Eaton/Rodon and they failed miserably. They weren't allowed to spend the money, there was failure in player development, and the fact they couldn't convince JR to open the wallet a little more and they didn't make any shrewd moves for distressed assets is an epic waste of that talent. KW did that and that is how he kept his job for as long as he did. They had a hell of a core and they put absolutely nothing around them. That is a fireable offense.

He's got an elite educational background, not uncommon with modern GMs. He's spent his front office entire career with one team - not ideal. He's already had a chance - and he failed. People get 2nd chances, but usually with a different organization. Too many excuses. I don't see much discernible progress...sometimes there isn't any and teams just suddenly improve. Nevertheless, there should be some timetable and some accountability - and on Williams as well.

Avi didn't have good game power in the minors but he hit damn near .400 for half a season in AAA before getting called up to the Sox. It means nothing. If Moncada isn't going to see 96 mph fastballs consistently in the minors neither is Eloy. Which means that take minor league stats with a grain of salt.

WTF? I like you Jack, but I have no idea what similarities you see between Avi & Eloy. Jimenez is arguably the second best hitter in the minors right now after Vlad Junior. Avi was never in the same stratosphere as a hitter or prospect.

What is up with all of the insecurity on Soxtalk lately? People even have to get into personal backgrounds now? Cripes.

Why the fuck does this matter at all? What kind of experience did Jeff Luhnow have exactly? Oh right, nothing since high school and yet he just built the best team in baseball. You got to move off this ridiculous tangent man.

As of 8/8/18, he's Theo's daddy

He never wore a varsity jacket and therefore is unequivocally unqualified for the job.

The bolded is a fireable offense.

The good news is his range stats are top 3 in baseball for second basemen so he has all the tools to improve defensively. And he has, to an extent, recently. If (big if) we turn 3 years of Sale into 6 years of a solid starting 2B (even if not a superstar), 6 years of a MLB starting pitcher in Kopech (ace potential but, barring injury, probably no worse than a #3 with development), and whatever Basabe becomes, that's still a really good deal IMO.

I don't think he'll ever hit .280 in a season. I do think his peak years will be something like .265/.345/.490 though. Good for an .835 OPS.

But you are 100% confident that Rutherford will be a starting CF in 2021?

Is Luis Robert dead in this scenario?

It's all about a mindset. I like rebuilds because I like to watch players grow. I just adjust my expectations and don't care about wins/losses anymore. Over the years I've also learned to not get emotionally invested in wins/losses. I never really get angry about losses anymore. I have enough patience to wait it out. 99 and 00 were probably my favorite years as a Sox fan... obviously aside from 05.

I wonder if humanity as a whole will ever adjust to the Twitter Era of everyone trying to out shock one another in 160 characters, instant gratification and just constantly complaining about everything all the time.

I'd hate to be in a fox hole with some of you guys.

I see late 2019 to 2020 to be the time of the turn around, but probably not divisional winning. By then you will have Giolito, Lopez, Moncada, Kopech and Jimenez on your 25 roster almost for sure (barring crazy regression or injury), By late 2019 You should also be to the stage where Dylan Cease and Dane Dunning are getting to Chicago (or really close to it), as well as guys like Burdi, Hamilton, and Burr in the back of the pen. So at that point your pitching staff should largely be getting into place with the new faces. Less certain, but very possible is seeing someone like Seby Zavala, Alec Hansen, Tyler Johnson, and or a Jordan Stephens. The position players are going to start hitting in more waves into the 2020 to 2021 range. Currently sitting at Birmingham you have the guys like Basabe and Collins, who could see Chicago at the end of 2019, but more realistically 2020. The guys currently at High A are much heavier in terms of talent, and are probably in the late 2020 to 2021 crowd. That is where you get into Robert, Rutherford, Luis Gonzalez, Micker, and Madrigal currently. I get the feeling that Robert, Gonzalez, and Madrigal could do a quicker move, with the more raw guys taking a bit longer. The Kannapolis team has a crowd of guys behind them that will factor more into the 2021 to 22 crowd. That is a long way of saying that if you actually sketch it out on paper, it is still going to be a while if you have reasonable expectations for players.

I dont really care what you think, but please continue

Our draft head was with the Sox for 3 years, Braves for 3 years, and with the Sox for last 11 years. That he came from the Braves is quite the spin. And he was with Laumann all of those years until Laumann's retirement.

When this shit does or doesn't work. Nobody can tell right now.

I have zero confidence in any sort of scouting they do. Hostetler has been a little better on the Amateur side, but their pro scouting so far(in terms of impact at the MLB level) has been horrendous. Moncada and Giolito look awful, and Lopez looks like a back of the rotation guy. At the current time, I'm concerned they'll be in the same situation in 2021 they were in 2016, without the great contracts to bail them out. A 75-79 win team with a roster of 4 stars and a bunch of crap. I think Madrigal has to be a hell of a hitter(like an Ichiro/Carew/Tony Gwynn Sr. type) or else that pick will look bad. I have this horrible feeling that he's going to end up more like Juan Pierre.

I hate the concept of moving minor leaguers for minor leaguers because you have too many at one position. You've got multiple levels, you've got people hurt, you've got the DH and the ability to try people at other positions to build flexibility for them. I might actively right now avoid trading for an A-ball or AA outfielder, I'll grant that, but trading minor leaguers for minor leaguers just because of positions leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

A+ thread. Would read again.

please, start many threads and list many names.

What does Brent Welder yelling at someone have to do with Bernie Sanders? Your obsession with Bernie Sanders is weird.

JR did open his wallet, they had opening day payrolls north of $120 million on paper both those years (an incident in spring training affected the 2016 payroll) and spent more than $60 million in the offseason between 2014-2015. They had higher payrolls those years than the Astros had coming into the season last year. That's not the problem. The problem is that opening your wallet will not win you a title with a 70 win team. It's a lesson we should have learned years ago, but 2015 should have taught it to everyone. If you actually look at who was available on the free agent market, the White Sox weren't going to make themselves substantially better on the free agent market any of those years, a huge chunk of the money spent on free agents those years went to guys like Chase Headley and Alex Gordon and Jayson Heyward who were either bad at the start or bad within 1-2 years. It happened both years, you go on the free agent market, you've got a 50% chance of a terrible contract. Especially given that they had nothing of value to trade those years beyond the scraps that they did trade, the problem was not money, it was that they were a 70 win team based on the talent they had after 2014 with virtually nothing of use coming up internally, and you can't make a 70 win team into a 90 win team using free agents alone. Even the Yankees don't have the money to do that, the bust rate is too high and there simply aren't enough good free agents.

Ok-these are the tickets. If anyone is near that area, I probably won't be hard to miss. My goofy wife may wear a Pittsburgh Pirates shirt or something. Yea, to a Sox/Indians game. But she's making her "Pittsburgh stand" I guess. I'll be wearing an early 80s style White Sox shirt and Sox hat. Wish the team was better, but it's still baseball, it's still the Sox, and it'd be nice to beat an ace pitcher (though I am just hoping for 4 or 5 hits at this point). Even if they lose, I'd love for it to be a good, competitive game. And CALLUP Eloy!!

Those degrees sure cost a pretty penny. Too bad they haven't been able to buy a winning season on the South Side since Mr. Hahn took over.

If Eloy comes up and has a similar start to his career i might have to leave baseball for a while

If they give 600 AB’s to any of those CFs, then Rick should be fired on the spot. Playing time is an asset during a rebuild. Other than Leury, who is made of glass, none of them has done anything to warrant an extended look next year. Sign a vet that can take some pressure off the kids and potentially be flipped if things go right. I’m all for Machado, but if we miss I have no problem with a vet for a year and try at Arenado the following offseason.

Rick Hahn and Yoan Moncada have a lot in common. Both are paper tigers.

That's 150%

My argument had nothing to do with the draft. My argument is that body type and power are not even close to the two top predictors I would choose for success in a position player. Madrigal has a number of plus skills, including defense, baserunning and a plus plus skill in bat-to-ball skills. I will take players that have multiple plus skills and high baseball IQ even if they have a below average skill and non-ideal body type.

Your trolling is leaving a lot to be desired. Go refine it elsewhere and get back to me once you've improved, champ.