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Mariners aren’t dead yet. They just took Kelenic out, they mean business now

This is terrible and Reddit. I got some good laughs tho.

Some of this I can buy, but some is clearly BS. They supposedly don't want to sign a RF, buy then mentions Conforto and Nimmo. The alleged offer for Ohtani is ridiculous. Wouldn't a manager have a say in the coaching staff? If RH was going to quit, it would be done. Herm isn't coming back. And it isnt the trainer that is causing the hammys. The other stuff? It's plausible.

Sure hope baby mama isn't on the payroll. Her defense is atrocious.

I can believe most of that. The Ohtani offer is not one of them.

Disagree here, It's essentially a 2/29 deal for one of the best closers in baseball. That's a bargain.

This is from Reddit, take it with a grain of salt

If any season should ever have taught white Sox fans about how bad the assumption is that no one will be good enough to challenge them for the division and they will walk away with it easily, it’s this year. No one talked a bigger game without backing it up than the White Sox.

Good work, M's! Now take out the trash.

Moncada, Tim, & Robert combined for for 5 fWAR this year. They combined for 13 fWAR in 2021 where Robert only put up 3.3. Do you really think a combined 14 wins out of them next year is really that far-fetched? If so, explain why. I think you confuse the words “easily could happen” to “will happen”. That being said, I don’t expect a bunch of uber athletes in their 20’s to suddenly lose their ability. I fully expect them to be better next year and if Robert is ever healthy I think he’s a 5 to 6 win player. Moncada is the only one that worried me a bit and even there he has nowhere but up in 2023.

Well it depends what your definition of interested is. There's plenty of guys interested in Gisele since she's left Tom.

Cleveland has officially won more playoff series than the White Sox have in our WS “window”…..amazing

This is so fake it hurt. Although I do believe "Rick Hahn apparently actually does unironically spend hours a day reading fan emails/mail." Rick Hahn perpetually being online to do PR work for himself definitely checks out.

Nah bro, f*** the Guardians lol

This is really what it comes down to. We need improvement from TA, Robert and Moncada. And big improvement. I mean, we got 2 RBI from Robert in the second half. He was essentially worthless and he’s got 6-8 WAR upside. Those guys bouncing back, coupled with getting AV out of the OF and signing someone like Nimmo or even Conforto, and contributions from Colas….this team can eat up that 13 games win difference from 21 to 22 in a hurry.

I mean, it’s clearly made up even if there may be a couple things that happen to be true.

Phillies continue to ride Castellanos towards the World Series

Phillies went from 7 games under, firing their manager, to making the playoffs and beating a pretty good Cardinals team in the first round. If only another team with a bad manager did something similar.

Not many Sox fans are watching in this photo.

I don’t think I can take a full season of Gordo in the booth.

That’s fine but that also illustrates the problem. If those guys go from 5 to 13 fWAR, they have only made up for what has been lost to free agency through Abreu, Cueto, and Harrison. That still leaves them with a ton of work to do, that has left them 10 games behind Cleveland. And when you start adding up your extra 10 wins from signing Nimmo, Vaughn going to 1b, the pitchers all being healthier, breakout years from Colas and someone at 2b, no injuries from anyone important, I bet some of those things we need to happen won’t work out. And even if it all did…Cleveland and others can still be tougher also. But apparently any acknowledgment of that is so threatening in this thread that saying so is tantamount to saying that the organization should fold.

Much like Eloy, Robert has proven to be injury prone in both the minor and major leagues. Moncada should improve, but in hindsight Machado should be our 3B if we were really serious about a rebuild. When the Sox were rumored for Machado and Harper I signed up for a 20 game package and watched the rebuild up close. TA, IMO is not an elite SS, he's a good hitter to the opposite field but needs to improve his defense. Overall the Sox are slow and have multiple players playing out of position. It should be interesting to see what JR does about Jose, my guess is he's back which will delay the development of others, mainly Vaughn and Sheets. Our pitching staff needs a stud like Wheeler, oops we lost him too and in hindsight we should have offered Rodon 20-25 mil a year for 2 years. Overall there's holes in the rotation after Cueto leaves and we're not sure what Sio will bring next year. We don't develop pitcher's, and we overused Crochet before he was ready. We go out and buy expensive relievers instead of left handed hitters that can also play outfield defense. Our whole front office and some of our coaches have job security for life. If someone see's anything positive about this organization, fill me in please.

Thank god the Sox aren't stuck with that Harper contract, huh?

I've been told details on this situation and am trying to get more confirmation. What I can say is that the Sox have an "option" on Jason for the 2023 and 2024 seasons but as of right now there is no signed contract. His deal with Fox is causing some issues with some members of the front office because of the number of days he needs to be "off" working for them instead of doing Sox games. Jason tried to avoid this situation by wanting to work out his White Sox deal first but was told to go ahead and get his other deals done, then get back to the Sox and they'd work out something. It sounds like Jason isn't at fault here if what I'm being told is accurate. And the individuals I've spoken with (and will speak with more this coming week) really don't know what Stone's status will be either since his deal is up.

History in MLB is full of young teams that won more games than expected but instead of continuing to move up in the win column took a step or two back before figuring things out. Perfect example the 1990-1993 White Sox.

Ramirez made a similar play on Engel in that game we blew a 6 run lead.

I am gonna say this. On this page of this thread we've gotten "I could easily see an 8 win improvement out of this group" and "We could make up that 15 wins in a hurry", and that has been paired with "We're doomed and have little chance of making the wild card." I think both of those are too extreme. There is absolutely enough talent here to compete, especially with the expanded wild card. It is definitely true that Tony LaRussa sabotaged this team in obnoxious ways this year, we could see that on the field on a regular basis. With an average coach, at the very least they are several games better just from getting rid of the stupidest stuff. But with that said, using the terms "Easy" or "In a Hurry" to describe overcoming Cleveland is failing to capture how far they have to go. For this team to lose its 2nd and 3rd best performers to free agency, spend less money than they did last offseason, get a year older, play a tougher schedule, and have the team suddenly be one of the healthiest teams in the league and have no one struggle such that they can make up that much ground, in a division that is loaded with talented youth? This is climbing a gigantic mountain. This is the kind of recovery that a guy will win coach of the year for if they pull it off. You aren't supposed to get everything going right to that degree. There is a very high chance that they could do literally everything people imagine they want them to do this offseason and wind up missing the division by 10 games again. One of those is too pessimistic, the other side is just as unlikely on the optimistic side.

If club didn’t want to pay anyone else because Colas would be ready by 2023, there would be no reason for Colas to do any “blocking”

this is true just because is has to be the most Kenny Williams thing ever.

They musta borrowed the Sox pen.

One example I was told was that JR wasn't given all the needed information on the Guaranteed Rate stadium deal from a financial standpoint. Wintrust actually made a better offer. Was told there are certain members of the front office that are angling for the presidency of the franchise. Also given specifics of issues with broadcasters being told certain things were agreed to in contracts then later those agreements were changed. Resulted in things like Ed Farmer getting into a screaming match with Sox front office people at the stadium. Got to the point where broadcasters were going to JR to explain what was happening and he said he doesn't want to hear/deal with this anymore. I'm continuing to speak with people next week trying to sort out truth from fiction.

He’s also supposed to be the leader of this team and while it’s not completely his fault by any means, this team was a rudderless ship. That coupled with the drop in power and sketchy defense at times gets a B- from me.

You’re also assuming that no one improves on this scenario. The Sox are fucked if TA, Yoan, Robert and Eloy don’t play more games and are better than they were in 22. I think we all can agree on that.

The “it’s not baseball people” is meaningless to me. Look around the league, that ship left the barn with Theo Epstein. It’s run by finance and consulting backgrounds, and in the case of Friedman, ideally they played baseball. The problem is just a silver spoon boy that is just cosplaying as the progressive business-minded intruder into the org. He learned fro Jr the best thing to do isn’t hire the best people, but the ones that will play the game of not rocking the boat and will batten down the hatches against outside criticism.

If the front office is filled with a bunch of hacks, then Hahn should be held accountable for that. Can you elaborate more on the lying and back-stabbing?

Sox have the worst living conditions for minor leaguers Sox have the worst pay and benefits for stadium workers I'm sensing a pattern, and it's embarrassing.

Not to be a downer, but it’s just awful that Sarah Langs has ALS. I saw her about a month ago really speaking slowly, and thought she had a stroke I didn’t hear about. Hopefully she will stay happy for as long as possible. Such an unfair thing.

Fartlington Heights more like it

Careful, Leyland is still around and also felt slighted when he left the Sox the first time!

I see Quintana is still cursed by the no-decision stat

Nor is he an analytics guy....

At the same time, if Chanel is hiring a model, that means they're a good model. Your struggling brand needs model star power, which in this case would be baseball acumen I guess. Like the company that spray painted a dress on Bella Hadid this week - they don't get half the name recognition with a lesser model.

F for f*** them all

This "core" is way too volatile to win. You need consistent players to win and this team has way too many inconsistent players in performance and health. Everything needs to go right and we've seen time and time again with this group that's simply not going to happen. Then factor in they're likely to lose the only consistent player they have because he doesn't "fit" a poorly constructed roster. They have to move a couple of the "core" guys no matter what it takes because they're not winning s%*# with this group.

One guy I would think about trading is Hendriks. He's been great. Love him as a person and player but................the Sox would have won the divison without him in 2021 and would have been bad, like they were, without him in 2022. He's clearly in pain pitching now. The pitch clock next year may really bother him, as he will have less recovery time. And he should be worth something.

Which is why the Sox don’t have a lot of flexibility or options this offseason. This is the core. The entire rebuild, like any rebuild, only works if you bet on the right players. Every rebuild has a core it’s built around. In any rebuild, certain pieces will always fail that you pegged for greatness, having a 100% hit rate is nearly impossible. But Moncada-Eloy-Robert-Anderson-Abreu-Giolito-Cease was always going to be the “core” that determined if this works or not. They went all-in on their younger players with extensions and right now it looks like they made more bad bets than good ones. They’ve still got a seat at the table, but the chip stack is getting low. The point is, if they want to “compete” the next two years it’s going to happen because the guys listed above produce at the level they expected them to to when they signed their long-term deals. You’re pot committed to these guys. And because of some really bad money in a lot of different areas, it would take WAY more money than Jerry is willing to spend to truly fix this thing for 2023 and beyond. Knowing this, they have to a very strategic off-season and hit on 2-3 important moves, and mostly rely on Moncada-Anderson-Eloy-Robert-Giolito playing at their career bests. I’m not holding my breath