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It is with great sadness that I inform our members of the passing of our beloved Alex (ie Heads). Alex was one of my dear friends - and was a friend to all on Soxtalk, around Ames Iowa (where he supported his cyclones) and to his friends and family. For anyone that didn’t know Alex, he had a heart of gold and he always treated people on this forum (and anyone) with the upmost respect and dignity. He loved his family, his friends, his White Sox and especially his Iowa State Cyclones. We will forever miss Alex, but we will always remember him. He was with Soxtalk from its infancy and played such an incredible roll in building out this site, developing our community, driving passionate discussion and ensuring civil dialogue. What I will miss most about Alex is his sense of humor, kind heart, and passion. We would share text over the years and always be joking with each other…whether it was over the Iowa / Iowa State game (My Hawkeyes would always win) or chatting about the Sox (and even the Dodgers - both of our dads favorite teams). I’ll always remember after all the years of texts and IMs when we finally met in person - somehow he was even nicer in person. From all those texts, it was always clear how much he loved his family, friends, the Sox and of course the Cyclones. I know without a doubt what has always made this place special is the connection our members have to each other and Alex was very much the epitome of that and we have all lost a tremendous friend and way way too soon in life. We love you Alex, we will forever miss you, and we send nothing but love and prayers to you, your family, and your friends. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all the family members and friends who were impacted by the tragic accident. https://cyclones.com/news/2025/5/6/isu-athletics-mourns-the-loss-of-alex-ernst

I’m not sure what happened - server company was doing normal maintenance and whatever they did it took all our sites down. Been working on fixing it for a few days - so appreciate the patience and apologies for the outage. It might be a bit choppy while we optimize it. If you run into issues - clear your cookies. If you are running into issues let us know. Apologies for outage. Quite a few nights where I was up until 3 am (after work and after putting kids to bed) trying to figure out what server company did.

I will be honest, it might have gotten him in the door at the beginning, but it is no where near why he is one of the best in the business. I can't think of another person in sportscasting who has the versatility that he does. He sits down in three different sports and sounds like he does any particular one of them all of the time. He's sits down with different partners and sounds like he has been on the air with whoever it is, forever. He has a light touch, and is perfectly willing to get his partner engaged as much as possible. Dude is one of the best in the business.

We know offensively we've been better in the second half. How it has been done has been reassuring to me that we are scouting and have a better young core. Offensively, I'm sure we are aware that post ASB we have been an actual very good offense. That has helped us be a .500 team in the second half despite a very bad pitching staff. But there is one area I appreciate because even if you isolate our no-good offense of April and May showed immediate, genuine progress. Team BB%+: In 2022, our 81-81 team had a BB%+ of 80, which is 20% below league average and also last in the league. In 2023, our team BB%+ was 75, which is both 25% below league average but also last in the league. That was a 100 loss team obviously. In 2024, our team BB%+ was 83, which is 17% below average and amazingly just 29th in the league. While 2022 could be passable because we struck out less, and did so with league average power, by the time that we get to 2024 we are striking out more, walking less, and when we do hit it, it's for grounders. In 2025, our BB%+ is 102, which is 2% above average and 11th in the league. Our K% is 100, so we are just average in strikeouts (17th in league). What makes our offense still relatively tepid is the power. So this is, finally, a real reversal into a trend that was just extremely stuck. Much of that was players, but we had a lot of differentplayers during that 3 year stretch. This year, the MLB vets we got were able to provide actual bases not just generated by hits, but so was our talent from the farm coming up and not being embarrassing in their approach. What makes me genuinely even happier is if you isolate it to just April and May of 2025, when our offense was bad, we had a 107 BB%+ which was good for 11th overall in the league. They struck out MUCH more early, and had zero power. So even if you say we are buoyed by a hot stretch, this pattern has seemed genuinely durable across some different groups of players. A funny part is - hey wait Colson isn't necessarily an amazing part of this - ... Well post July 4th, with our loss of a few vet hitters and rise of Colson and younger bats, our Walk rate does go down to 96 and 20th in league, but our K rate is actually 90 - so we strike out 10% less than the rest of the MLB. We actually have the 5th lowest K%+ since Colson came up. But our power IMPROVED. pre Colson our Power ISO+ was 73, now it is 106 post Colson. So BBs went down, Ks went way down, and power went way up. But most importantly, we stopped this 3 year long trend of being bottom of the league in BB%+. In 2021, when we had good offense, we were second in league in BB%+ at 114 (thanks Grandal). We have more work to do to be the best team in baseball, but this is the kind of real progress I like to see. Shows across the board better execution in scouting, coaching, and players.

He’s not much more expensive than O’Hearn would have been with an incredible amount more of upside and flip potential. There is no downside to this deal, as let’s be honest, they’ve wasted 17 mil a year on 3 veteran signings most offseasons.

And there it is…never a fucking doubt

@Chicago White Sox

He had a 10 ERA in Charlotte and was topping out at like 91. No one screwed him over.

see a lot of these, and I think they are supposed to create this feeling of “wow we are so much better than last year!” But it hits different when last year we were one of the worst offenses in the 150 year history of baseball and has 41 wins. We could have rolled the exact same team back and struggled to hit marks that bad. This team is 100% more enjoyable, and I’m happy for our young hitters, but we’ll be clawing to hit 61 wins. 61 wins for any other franchise is horrific, and for us it’s being repackaged as incredible just because of our record setting ineptitude.

This is EXACTLY why you sell high on Houser, Civale, Altavilla, Tauchman, and anyone else who gets a bite after a resurgance. I have no idea if there are still teams interested in them all, but SELL SELL SELL MORTIMER!

Terrible day. I heard Ishbia runs a private equity firm.

The replies here are insane to me. Given all the evidence that has been presented to us over the last decade plus, and quite frankly what we’ve had to endure as fans, I have ZERO issues with a former player speaking out his experience, good or bad. And his comments track with multiple other comments that have been made by other players over the last few years. This organization has not shown any interest in keeping up with where the sport and their competition, and IMO Lynn and others have zero obligation to “cover” for this organization. He was asked a question and answered it. Good for him.

Reminds me of when we lost Eloy for 6 months trying to rob a homer in the WBC final for the Dominican Republic... oh wait that was in ST. What about every other ST injury that happens all the time??? I'm bummed about this too but what are we doing here? Players get injured in any setting. We just had a prospect get drilled in the head in a backfield game today. Should we stop the minor league backfield games????

The bidets are starting to pay dividends.

Some weirdo was harassing Harold on here, constantly making comments about Jeep Wranglers. Then some other psycho poster (probably an alt account for the other guy) basically confronted Harold and accused him of being the White Sox’s assistant scouting director who also happens to own a Jeep dealership. Unclear the truth of that, but doesn’t seem crazy given the inside info Harold had shared on this site. Also, based on what the psycho guy was saying in his accusations, he was either Haber himself or had a close relationship with Haber and held some sort of grudge against Harold, although I can’t recall if it was simply because he didn’t like him leaking White Sox business or something deeper & more personal. And shortly after the more direct accusations, Harold was gone forever and now we rely on the Times for India for our scoops.

The adrenaline of pitching in front of sold out crowds at the Rate will offset all of that.

As someone who watches unreasonable amounts of Sox MiLB and has seen Colson play at every level including AFL, I think this is the right move. The spot where they rushed him was from AA to Charlotte. I think playing on that first half Barons team last year for even a month or two would have been better for him, and I'm pretty convinced that he would have been up before now if he did. Championship aside, there was a group of prospects clearly developing winning ways together with no one shouldering the task of needing to be "the guy" every night. When he went to Charlotte instead, it was a team much more (forgive the pun) barren of that "next core" feeling which I think made him internalize a sense that he needed to hurry up and come be the franchise savior by himself. You're the top bat on the farm, you're bubbling up national lists, things in Chicago are miserable, they need you ASAP. Hitting in Charlotte is easy so this should basically be perfunctory, just rack up some numbers and we'll see you in September! Then you get a guy who had been breaking records for consecutive games on base swinging like he needed to hit the baseball from Charlotte into Lake Michigan to justify where he was at. Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if he finishes the season with an MLB slash better than his Charlotte one. Also wouldn't surprise me if he doesn't. Cags has a 14 WRC+ ~100 ABs in to his first taste of the bigs; PCA (hate him, but he's good) was slashing .188/.238/.271 coming into July last season. Would I like to see another couple weeks of great AAA production? Sure, obviously wouldn't hurt. But I think there's something to be gained from getting him up here while he's hot, getting him away from the sense that the next 1-10 stretch puts him another month away with not many months to go, with the ASB not far away if he does need a breather ten days in, and with the post-deadline freedom of a rebuilding team right on the horizon after that. If he struggles in the bigs, it's a new struggle and one that is basically expected. He'll be one of several rookies up here that can relate to that struggle, compared to on an island in Charlotte as a top prospect slumping in AAA. Even being sent down again with an MLB to do list would have a sense of progress to it (shouldn't happen really, they should have no shortage of ABs to give after the deadline). There's just less pressure for his first 100 ABs up here with the other young guys than there would be for his next 100 ABs in Charlotte in a way that I think lets him get back to himself mentally. Sorry for rambling, but I'm still high on the kid. Hope he crushes it.

I do not think this is good for him, and it’s based on a very small sample size of good ball

Spending their Cash Considerations on Ass Considerations

This reads like the kind of careful answer you give when you need to pretend he's not already your guy

Wait I thought "something" was better than "nothing" and now people are complaining about it?

You might want to re read the press release. JR has ceded no power and won’t per the release for at least 5 years.

.328/.414/.541 with 7 XBH (3 HR) and more walks (9) than Ks (7)

Wow the Pope is not fucking around.

As someone that basically never gets into it with other posters, I’m so tired of every thread ending up with the same cast of characters bickering. I’m not saying anyone is particularly wrong, but I speak for myself when I say I don’t even read what is posted by these posters when I see it’s become a personal argument.

There really are some anonymous shitbags on this website. Just a completely derailed thread full of utter nonsense.

It would have to be

I have lots of thoughts on this. I know who Harold was and they don't work for the team. He/She obviously knows people who do. Harold's info was always very, very solid. The stuff that was shared publicly and the stuff that wasn't was even more accurate. He was an asset to this board. Garrett Guest isn't posting on this board but if he's one of the ties, I wouldn't be totally surprised obviously based on some of the info that Harold shared at times. The whole thing was weird. On Jeremy Haber, he was running the draft at the end. The Sox were focused on Blake Mitchell who went #8 overall to Kansas City. Regardless of that, I'd heard all day that they wanted to take a prep hitter in the first round. In hindsight, they would've taken Teel had he fallen. From what I understand, Haber overruled the room to take Jacob Gonzalez at 15 and save $$ money for later. The Sox did turn around and draft Wolkow, Oppor, Lacombe etc but there were obviously better ideas at 15. The other thing that is hilarious about keyboard warriors defending Haber's honor is that his existence is what spawned the White Sox burner food accounts. Not Cishek always had pretty good info because the person running that account got information from someone very close to Haber from what I understand. Then the burner accounts would all share info with each other etc. Basically, I have some wild DM's but I'd need to go digging.

This is nothing but a huge positive for the Sox and their fans. I don't care to hear about anything negative related to this. This signing combined with getting the No1 pick has been more than welcome positive news and no fan base deserves this more than White Sox nation.

How does every thread turn into the same tired Chris Getz fight? We’re on the verge of signing the Japanese Babe Ruth and half the board can’t stop bickering with each other over a bunch of non-sense. Let’s get fucking amped and stop with all the damn in-fighting.

Only posting this because Bruce misspelled both his first and last name.

I keep reading that the Sox are rebuilding so their record doesn't matter. The White Sox are not rebuilding, they're simply bad. Baseball has changed dramatically, and while people keep pointing to the Astros as a case of a team who was very bad and got good, they share nothing in common with the current White Sox. During the Astros "rebuild" years, they were able to draft at the top of the draft every one - unlike today. During the Astros rebuild, they had a top 10 farm system in baseball from 2012 to 2019! Seven straight years, with 4 being in the top 5. The White Sox, who have the 2nd worst record in baseball, don't even have a top 15 system today. Plenty of teams are just bad, and the majority of teams who are really bad don't become very good with those group of players. The White Sox are one of the laughing stocks of baseball, yet some fans believe their used car salesman GM that he's turning the organization around. Lastly, people claiming the Sox stopped spending on players so they could reallocate resources crack me up. The cost of the things the Sox have invested in are likely less than 5 million dollars total. Not even the cost of one player. The White Sox organization and fan base is dying, but some here love the direction the team is heading. It's is absolutely fascinating. To all the rebuild claimers, what are the White Sox rebuilding around? What is their edge in the market? What advantage do they have? The answer to anyone who is being honest is nothing.

https://www.mlb.com/prospects/stats/affiliates?teamId=145&date=09/24/2025 https://www.mlb.com/milb/scores/all/all/whitesox?affiliateId=mlbcom-milb Barons evened up the series yesterday. No starting pitcher announced though sets up for Hagen Smith. Tampa throwing their #20 prospect who is 14-3 on the year and 4-0 in AA with a 0.97 ERA. Secondly, thanks to everyone who helped/participated throughout the year. Appreciate the civility as well.

Nice call, dumb ass. I get 'em wrong plenty, but this was an all-time miss. Houser has looked really good, and not smoke and mirrors either.

Crap, bring back Clev!

It's not that big of a deal honestly. A storm moved in quickly and dropped a deluge in a matter of seconds. It could have happened to anyone, just mindless clickbait and more doomposting for Sox fans. Who cares

The White Sox offseason grade and Getz’s offseason grade are two different things. Once you consider the ownerships budget constraints I think it has been better than a C. Dominguez is a solid choice for a leverage reliever. Not all relievers want to go to a non-contending team. There’s always a chance you’ll have to move at the deadline which is a downside so you pretty much have to outbid everyone else. Domínguez is an interesting pitcher. A wild stat is that he tied for first in the MLB in wild pitches despite throwing 79+ less innings than the guys he tied with. He has pitched well in two World Series though and it’s hard to touch him let alone square up on him. If you’re going to take a chance on a guy why not a guy with serious upside. Murakami was just an A+ move any way you look at it. He has a TON of swing and miss in his game but even the projections that have him with a disgusting 37% K rate (Adam Dunn maxed out at 35.7%) still have him as an above average hitter (117 OPS+). The power is very real so it’s a hell of a lottery ticket if the swing and miss is just regular bad. The contract was solid. If things go well this year you have an opportunity to try and extend him. If he’s set on free agency, he’d be a great trade chip. Zero risk move and one of my favorite of any team this offseason. Hayes is a fine pickup. Nothing special, but this class didn’t have much to offer. Bader doesn’t move the needle for me Conforto would’ve been disgusting. Hayes is a solid weak side platoon player without a ton of upside for more, but it was a short and cheap deal so why not. The Robert deal was not my favorite, but not really for reasons under Getz’s control. I would’ve preferred eating money for an addition prospect or a higher tier one, but maybe that wasn’t even on the table. I also think there wasn’t much downside to seeing if Robert could pick up where he left off last year and put together a good start before you traded him. Ultimately it depends on how you feel about Acuna. If Getz loves Acuna then you don’t pass up the opportunity. Acuna has a realistic path to being a multi-win player. He’s fast, he’s got a glove, and he can swing hard. If the arm plays in center then he’ll be a plus out there. I don’t know if the power will ever develop but if he can ways to get on base (bunting against bad matchups could help) his offensive value will be fine. The Hicks trade I’m also fine with. I think the clear A offseason would’ve involved going above and beyond for Imai but it takes two to tango and who knows if that was possible. Hicks was another guy near the top of the wild pitch leaderboard. He has solid stuff and had good not great results in his first year starting. Last year was a disaster but that’s why you’re playing him 2 yrs/16M. Thats pretty much the going rate for a 5th starter/swingman at this point and Hicks has more upside than that. You also came out on seemingly the right end of the prospect swap as Sandlin seems to have some juice. The Anthony Kay move is fun. Kay has been starting in Japan the past two years and has already gotten the innings under his belt to give the Sox a full workload this year. He had a 1.74ERA which is great even by NPB standards where no one scores runs. The contract was cheap and even came with a club option for a third year which I love. I’m not sure he has star potential but his command is better and getting 150 solid innings from him doesn’t seem out of the question. Wade, Kelenic, and the other moves couldn’t interest me less. But I’d rather the young guys get the at bats anyway. We’ll see if Paez is able to stick with the team. Rule V has already been solid for the Sox so give it another shot I guess. Given the budget Getz had that’s not a C offseason. Kay and Hicks are cheap inning eaters with some upside. The Club option on Kay is very Hahn like and really gives that deal some major upside for helping the team once the core is ready. Murakami was an A+ move. I’m not in love with Acuna but I see the vision. Domínguez is a good upside pickup. If he gets his control to just sort of bad instead of 1st percentile you have a solid closer/trade piece. Im at about an A-/B+ for Getz and a B-/C+ for the Sox. My main critique of Getz is on the Robert deal but there is so much I don’t know that it’s hard to really ding him. Imai would’ve been a fun upside play if that was on the table and would have been worth missing out on Domínguez or Hayes. Seeing Getz with a budget would be fun because I think he’s a solid GM. The Sox as a whole get dinged because of Reinsdorf is cheap and doesn’t care about winning or the fans.

Y2Jimmy0 had this dialed in by the way if anybody on here doubts him. 100% credit to him he had all the players.

Luis Robert won't be on the next good White Sox team. Acuna and Pauley might be. It's basically that simple. The league just told you what Robert is worth. Holding him into the season would be insane. He'll be hurt again. He's unreliable and I'm glad it's over.

You could have just stopped there.

Jerry’s reputation precedes him

@Chicago White Sox Work your magic! Go!

This is exactly what I feel when people talk about the Ishbia's bad spending in Phoenix. GIve me failed effort over no effort all day, every day.

The White Sox and baseball in general were probably THE stabilizing force in my life since I was a child, the one consistent activity I had was watching and talking about white Sox baseball, hence why I joined this site 21 years ago and became a regular. After 35 years of constant disappointment with zero hope in sight I decided to relinquish my fandom and cut the team out of my life. Instead on being jaded and synical, constantly bitching about Sox minutea that will not improve anytime soon I decided to just stop following them one day and you know what? I'm a lot better off for having done so, I'm infinitly happier in my life doing things that I enjoy. My removing the one thing from my life that I held most dear was 100% in response to JR's dreadful fucking ownership, I have zero positive feelings towards that man and the way he chooses to run his sports franchises. Its just further proof that you can find tremendous success in the business world and still be an enormous fucking loser.

Reconvert him to a free agent.

I find the White Sox record of 105-232 in their last 337 games much more disrespectful, but to each their own.

Doesn't mean he's wrong.