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Yes, Jerry and Co has been thinking of us the fan base the whole time he was spending less and keeping those profits. This is absolutely laugh reacts only type of stuff right here.

They're not trading Hendriks unless blown away with an offer or they're dogshit again come the trade deadline

Bryson Stott was handed a starting infield position on the world series phillies. Jeremy Pena handed a starting position on the world series astros. Steven Kwan, starting LF for the Cleveland Guardians. Julio Rodriguez, starting CFer for the Seattle Mariners Josh Lowe for Tampa Rays Andrew Vaughn 2021 White Sox Jake Cronenworth won a spot on the 2020 playoff padres as a 26 year old. Chas McCormick, starting in left field for the 2021 houston astros on opening day. Cristian Javier, starts in the rotation for the 2021 Houston Astros Not that novel. Romy and Sosa also were up last year. So they were given time to work into a role. That would make them similar to players like Sean Murphy, who was up for 20 games in 2019 before being handed the starting role on the 2020 contending As. Will Smith with the dodgers. Luis Garcia got a cup of coffee in 2020 before becoming a starter for the Astros in 2021 Then you have the teams that are relying on a player but holding him down to "let him work his way in" like Kris Bryant on the 2015 cubs.

So Jerry...when are you going to spend that money that was hoarded during the lean rebuild years? We were promised.

Jerry you son of a b**** I knew it was you!

" It’s the sure and certain knowledge that not only does the team not care about us like we care about the team if you think differently, you are a dew-eyed romantic...We see the team as a way to transform our hopes, our emotional investment, our literal financial investment," Your perceived financial investment consists of a couple of Polish and a dozen beers or so a year. Transform your hopes? Please. life is so much more than watching a few baseball games each year. If you are indeed older, you would understand that. "Ah, but they know how we conceive the team. It’s where we’ve made friends, where we’ve gone with our families more times than we can count, where on occasion we stand as one with a rising yell in our throats as a ball traces an arc in the night sky, ready to high-five strangers and jump like lunatics. It’s fun. It’s what we care about. It’s part of who we are." Oh come on. "So I don’t know where this anger is going to go. It’s very possible that it starts another cycle of lower attendance, Jerry using that to slash payroll, and so on, on and on, our endless Kali yuga, hoping to stumble into something lucky, waiting for it to all end. " OK, you are angry so just say you will no longer attend because the WSox are "slashing payroll" like extending Luis Robert, Eloy Jiminez, signing FA Liam Hendriks , Grandal, and more recently Bennintendi for 75 Million dollars and assembling one of the best rotations and bullpens in the league. Like maintaining the financial strength of the franchise to make sure that they stay on the South side for the next generations of Sox fans. It's not all about you. Grow the F up and quit whining.

Let me look up every contender of all time for you

I hope Hill pitches forever. As long as he's in the league, there's a guy older than I am and I still have a shot!

Question for the board, but what is it you needed to see from Lenyn Sosa last year to feel comfortable giving him the 2B job? I’ve seen several posters state that he needs more time in the minors, but what more does he need to accomplish there? After a rough start to AAA, he dominated the level and put up numbers consistent with what he did in Birmingham where he was one of the best hitters in the league. Sure, we could ask him to prove it out over a longer sample, but to me it’s quite clear he needs an extended shot in the majors. He 100% could fail and create a black hole at the position, but 22 year old middle infielders putting up numbers like this in the upper minors warrant a serious look. Again, Hahn should go acquire a LH bench piece to hedge this bet, but I really think we should give Lenyn a couple hundred PA’s to show us what he is capable of next year. Level | PA | BB % | K % | ISO | BABIP | OPS | wRC+ AA: 289 | 7.3% | 13.8% | .218 | .340 | .933 | 141 AAA (1/2): 86 | 3.5% | 23.3% | .074 | .323 | .600 | 58 AAA (2/2): 161 | 9.3% | 14.3% | .228 | .336 | .943 | 149 Majors: 36 | 2.8% | 33.3% | .114 | .136 | .367 | -4

Such an excellent article. I agree with everything the guy wrote. I've never been so apathetic about the Sox. As u know I see them going nowhere and it's just disgusting to see that new seating plan. I can honestly say I would love for Jerry to sell the team and the new owner build a new suburban ballpark to a abandon the city like the Bears are doing. I'm getting very close to saying, "Let them move to Vegas." Why do I feel this way? That author of the piece captured my feelings well. The Sox finally have broken me even though I got the WS title in 2005. Hard to belive the goodwill from 05 is lapsed in my mind. Sox have done too many disgusting things for me to love them as I did in the past.

I completely dropped the Blackhawks after them protecting a molester. I was following less than ever anyway, but that was a line I couldn't cross. Packed up my gear in a box, quit watching and listening to games, etc. The hire of TLR got me watching and going to fewer games than I had ever gone to in the past.

Couldn't agree more with all of this. Leury is the longest tenured player currently and we should be rooting for him to be on a winner. Forcing him into an everyday role made him wear the hole in the lineup and shoulder the scorn from the fan base. Not fair to him.

Cairo said he wasn't playing because of back soreness. I think of the many things that Tony made worse while here, turning Sox fans against Garcia should be on the list. He's playing at the MLB level because he works hard, stays healthy, and does whatever he's asked without complaining. I'm thinking about a Bulls player Granville Waiters. Fans chanted his name to come in during garbage time and he'd get a standing ovation for scoring. Garcia should never be an everyday player and Tony forcing that on us was a travesty for Leury.

Seriously, just sell the fucking team already Jerry. Everyone hates you, and you will never, and I stress NEVER, win the management vs labor battle. Enough already. Time to cash out, release this team from your miserly penny-pinching clutches, and let the franchise move into the 21st century. For fucks sake.

A replacement level player is by definition 0 WAR per season. Leury has played 10 seasons (wow). That means, on average, he is a 0.3 WAR per season player. He is, effectively, on average, within error of a replacement level player for his career. That's a guy who, overall, you should have a decent chance of replacing with comparable production midseason by picking a guy up on waivers. Overall, no, that is not good enough for a role player. From 2017-2021, a 5 (ok 4.5) year stretch, he put up 5.8 WAR. That...is acceptable for a role player. It's not Chris Taylor who is an excellent utility player, it's not an average starter on a medium team ~(2 WAR per year). But for a backup, playing part time, getting some value out of being able to play at difficult positions, that's a tolerable role player. That isn't a guy who should be batting 2nd or 3rd on anything other than a 55 win team. That isn't a guy who should be batting 3rd while your recent #3 draft pick bats 7th. That isn't a guy who is so important you can't afford to put him on the IL when he's banged up. That isn't a guy who you need to get in the lineup every day because he's so important that he needs at bats to get out of his slump.

Should we sign insurance options/utility players as insurance? Yes absolutely. But what’s the point of having a minor league system and developing players if you aren’t going to actually play them? Colas is 24, a stud top 100 prospect by all accounts, and has proven himself in the upper minors. There’s no logical reason why the Sox should have signed an OF’er to a multi year deal to block him. Obviously Sosa isn’t the type of prospect Colas is, but he clearly has the tool set to be at least an average MLB starting 2B and also proved himself in the upper minors. 2B is also arguably the easiest position to get acceptable production from, especially since Sosa should grade out just fine with the glove. Like it or not the Sox are never going to compete with teams like the Mets, Dodgers, or Yankees in terms of payroll and acquiring players. We should be striving to be more like the Braves or Rays…which heavily involves getting production from home grown young players. Obviously having their front office instead of Hahn and crew would also really help…

Rookies are part of contention windows all the time. The braves season was saved by 3 rookies last year, and now they are turning SS over to one of them.

While I still cannot guess what the White Sox's payroll limit is, I continue to think it's worth pointing out that $5-$6 million for 1 more player puts them pretty much right onto last year's payroll. At some point, there may be an additional reason why they're not getting these done - all of Duvall, Segura, an extra catcher, and an extra swingman pitcher might make sense for this roster, but they may not be able to afford it.

Kemp is not a bad idea. 1.5 fWar last year, 11 out of 12 in SB so LH speed guy gets down the line pretty quickly and should benefit from the shift and pickoff rules. Many here like the idea of Duvall . He's not far removed from that 2021 season in which he hit 38 HR's and 113 RBI . Definitely high K guy and low OBP but as far as defense and power he's ideal unless they want the 4th OF to also be LH. He's 34 now and some have suggested he'd go to a place to get a starting job or more playing time. But I think he'd get plenty of PT here. He has to know what he is at this point of his career and a part time job that he could potentially get 400 PA's should suit him. I think it'll come down to who offers him the most money. Not sure that'll be the White Sox . He's there for the taking right now. Maybe he's hoping to get $10M a year and willing to wait but something under that should get it done quickly unless the Sox are again pretending to be financially strapped. He'd have a crucial role here.

They definitely should do that.

Just playing, my friend. That blood sausage quote is from one of my favorite movies Groundhog Day and I enjoy throwing it out occasionally. In all honesty, singing the jingle might have been amusing at some point but after a few years it is like a Saturday Night Live skit where they just don't know when to quit. And I do mute the thing every time the remote is close enough. But as long suffering Sox fans, we all know there are worse problems with this team. And for anyone here offended by my disdain for the jingle.....

Move on from Madrigal man. He's not a fit on this roster.

Of all of the positions we could try to fill internally, I think 2B is the one we have the most quality options. If they had done a bit more shopping in the OF and the pitching, I wouldn't even feel bad about them going internal here. But as it is, we have a lot of question marks. You can get by with a failure or two if everything else is solid. But the more questions you have, the more that can go wrong.

Marlins are one of the few franchises that are even worse than the Sox, and yet have a few WS over 25 years. I'm not entirely sure what their thought process has been over the last few years ... they've stock piled pitching talent, some that has panned out, others that have not and continue to tread water. Whats the real difference between Brian Anderson at 3B and Jean Segura with the latter costing more. By the way, I've said that name like 12 times this offseason .... Brian Anderson makes so much sense in my own opinion as a RF/3B until Colas comes up. He's also done LF, 1B, SS, and 2B for short, short time frames. He's not amazing but can give you .255/.340obp with some pop and a nice amount of doubles. In short, he's got a strong arm, can barrel and nice exit velocity plus take walks. 1 year and 4mm might get it done. Gives you a nice option at a few positions. Probably comparable to sheets honestly, so probably don't see a deal get done, but always thought he was a nice fit.

When your main value proposition as a player is your positional versatility, it is expected to be able to position shuffle.

Now I'm convinced Harold is just fucking with us every time he stans for Kelenic, the king of inconsistent hard contact.

Sure would be nice if as part of fans spending on the shitty milb package they could get the trackman data for AAA games (not single game feeds, like the aggregate stats)

When he was making contact, he was in fact hitting the ball hard. Your first sentence is stupid, we aren’t comparing 4A players to the general population. Compared to other ball players in the big leagues, Romy hit the ball hard. If he truly can’t stop swinging at everything and has a 2% walk rate that he had for 100 at bats, then nothing matters. But I guess we’ll just have to add him to the list of Sox players who need an improved approach at the plate, which is a list that includes every player in the team. Or we could sign Josh Harrison, that’ll put us over the top.

The endless bitterness here could drive me away. Whatever news comes out, some people are always extremely critical. Baseball is my main interest but I am spending more time following Bills football, who believe it or not still upset a lot of their fans but are 12-3 #1 AFC seed so far.

Could all this be a scheme to move the Sox to another city when the lease is up on GRF. Piss off the fans and watch attendance plummet to Oakland A's and Tampa Bay levels, and JR's heirs and partners sell to someone in another city, they would probably get more money from another city and buyers than they would if someone that bought the team while keeping them in Chicago. Nothing surprises me with the track record of Reinsdorf, I trust him as far as I can throw him. I'm sure some will say that the AL wouldn't allow the Sox to leave Chicago, well there is no AL anymore, it's MLB where money talks and BS walks. Let's face it, the Sox are not a premier franchise, a mediocre record down through the years with 3 WS Championships, very sad. The fans aren't exactly tearing down the walls to watch the team, the Sox drew 2 million last year for the first time since 2011, again sad. The Sox are one of the few MLB franchises that have never drawn 3 million fans in a season, pretty sad for the 3rd largest market in the country. Chicago is a Cub town and probably has 60-65 % of the Chicago market and at least half of the Illinois market who they share with the Cardinals, there are very few Sox fans in Illinois outside the Chicago metro area, the Sox market share is probably comparable to Cincinatti and Pittsburgh. All that and Chicago will probably be passed by Houston and Dallas by 2030 as 3rd largest metro area in the country while Chicago loses population. Other cities in the sun belt continue to grow, places like Charlotte, San Antonio and Nashville will be ripe for a MLB franchise. All that being said, it would pain me to see the Sox leave Chicago, I've been a fan since 1952 with many great memories but just think of the memories that Yankee, Dodger, Red Sox and Cardinal fans have. BTW This new seating plan is the most insane configuration I've ever seen, who was the genius behind that.

I just want to put my vote that I really like listening to both Jason and Steve. I think they do a great job together. Jason just seems completely the professional, and I think you have to be impressed with Stone's insights, especially how he can predict, from time to time, what is going to happen in an at bat. A player is up and whatever the count and Stone will say something like, "The pitcher will waste this pitch and then come back with a fastball high and inside and strike him out." and damn if not two pitches later that's what happens. Or the other way, Stone will say something like, "If that pitcher throws that pitch again, it's gonna be hit hard into left field, and that happens one or two pitches later. I know some will say that's what Stone does is obvious, but I haven't seen other announcers doing that. On the topic of the "Nationwide" song. I can't believe others hate it so much; it's a commercial, like other commercials. I see the Nationwide song like sweet potatoes with marshmallows at the Thanksgiving meal. Not at all my thing, but it's part of the tradition, and I would be a little disappointed if they were not there.

NO!!!!

Take the stick out of your asshole

Einhorn : Finkel Tray : Reinsdorf

I’d prefer we get a guy that can swing 2B and OF if we go after depth, or straight up outfield. RF concerns me much more, mainly because I could still see them putting sheets out there

I think Sox machine is one of the best sites around covering the Sox around today and this latest story hits home: https://soxmachine.com/2022/12/the-white-sox-have-stopped-trying-to-sell-themselves/

Dont hesitate call the 8's

Of course not. Leury Garcia has a career .644 OPS. Luis Robert has a career .808 OPS. Your utility guy needs to be "good enough that he doesn't cost you the game".

Much better fit than the crapola being mentioned here.

1. Note that you said yourself that the Sox needed a bench piece here as a backup plan. They have poor backup plans at basically every spot in their org right now - Infield, Outfield, Starting pitching. When people are looking at guys like Segura, they are looking for backup plans and rotation players. Even if you acquired a guy like that, there are almost certainly several hundred ABs for a guy like Sosa. 2. You have to admit this isn’t a long track record. He has 1 solid season at AA and above. That is absolutely moving him fast. He could have success doing so, but I couldn’t find myself outraged at all if someone said they wanted him to at least spend a couple more months at AAA before coming up. 247 decent AAA plate appearances is a solid start but you can’t tell me that there’s no possible benefit to him having more time there. 3. There’s little leeway here. This is a team that struggled offensively and defensively last year and lost its best offensive producer to FA. On defense, his spot was held last year by a guy who was pretty good defensively, which gave him some value even if his offense wasn’t good. None of what you have shown me establishes that this guy is going to immediately be an offensive force in the big leagues. If he isn’t, there’s little margin for error, production from 2b has already been assumed by people expecting this team to be above .500. If he is a really good hitter 2 years from now, that doesn’t help a team that is basically all in for this year.

Most of the unhappy Sox fans wanted this cheap ass dysfunctional organization to sign premier free agents, not trade anything of value we had.

That’s disingenuous. I opposed getting Segura for Kimbrel (had no idea they were looking at Pollock) and I was not in favor of signing him, but Segura missed over a third of the season after getting hurt on a bunt. He’s better than Harrison.

I have no doubt if the Sox are contenders they'll trade for a Segura equivalent in July. But then you're giving up prospects, taking on money, and willingly opting into what's likely to be 3 months of replacement level production at 2nd. All of this could be avoided just by giving Segura the Joe Kelly contract. It took (literally) like 5 PA's of watching Sosa swing over sliders for people to want him demoted. Expecting Romy to even be a functional big league hitter is a huge leap of faith. Adding 1 high floor player to the mix would make such a difference, but quality depth & solid but unexciting players to round out rosters has never been something the Sox valued at all.

Murphy gets $72m/6 years from ATL. Am I wrong, or does that make the Grandal deal seem bloated AF?

The Sox aren’t serious World Series contenders. It doesn't matter if they back into the playoffs in a weak division, they’re coming off a massively disappointing campaign with many of the same holes remaining that did last year. like I said earlier, as currently constructed they aren’t a threat to beat teams like Houston, New York, LA, etc. in a few 7 game series.

Agreed, its ridiculous. Every other fanbase clamors about Stone/Benetti but the Sox fans of course whine and complain like always. It makes you wonder if they have ever watched another teams broadcast because there are some AWFUL tandems out there. I am in both the Royals and Cardinals broadcasting regions and the announcing makes you understand how young people cant get into the sport. When Stone and Jason are gone and we have to endure Generic PBP/Beckham on a nightly basis maybe then Sox fans will understand what we had.

Amazing

All time loser post. You're saying fans are cry babies for wanting to win.