Leaderboard

Gotta love Soxtalk. A post about two minor leaguers colliding in the outfield is seen as some dramatic grand big picture indictment of the organization and somehow related to the Detroit Pistons and Charlotte Hornets.

Convincing people he didn’t fail terribly in his previous role

Sox and KC now tied at 5-8, both ahead of Detroit at 4-9. Road record is 2-5 for the season. Sox for the second time this year end a skid at 3. By this time last year, they had already had an 8 game loss streak (they had a 4L and 5L at this point in 2024). Win #5 comes on April 9th this year (April 20th in 2025, April 27th in 2024). The date to beat for #6 is April 24th. Team ERA over the last 7 games is 2.25 (18 total runs allowed). Second shutout in that stretch. Probably should get more than a 4-3 record out of that if they could start hitting some HRs again.

Shirley’s team identified Crochet as a future starter and drafted him. Had nothing to do with possibility of being quick moving reliever. The drafting has been pretty solid overall. They’d benefit from more picks. The system is basically all draft picks because they get so little out of international market. In regards to Cholowsky, he’s been basically the same player as last year and nobody has overtaken him. Would be stunning if Sox took anyone else. As of now.

Started reading through this thread and rolled my eyes so many times. Caufield posting nonsense and ownership blaming.

This is laughable. Sox fans pissed because the team sucks. More like Cubs fans? You're just like Cubs fans. Results don't matter to you. 3 100 loss seasons in a row when we were promised being in a multiple championship window. How dare White Sox fans be upset.

Getz's biggest accomplishment was convincing JR he was the person for the job.

Here is the thing. We all root for the Chicago White Sox. In most cases, your fandom is passed down from a parent, family member or friend. OP references his son, following in his footsteps. When you root for a team, you aren’t rooting for the owner. Jerry Reinsdorf isn’t the White Sox. When he dies, the White Sox don’t go with him. Now, that man has caused an incredible amount of frustration for us and deserves every ounce of vitriol thrown his way. He is a stain on Chicago sports and should be embarrassed of his ownership run. But he isn’t why I root for the White Sox, nor will it ever be. I root for them because I had White Sox wallpaper as a 4 year old, and I’ve got about 400 ticket stubs in a box from 1999-2020, and I’d guess a little more than half of those games, I was with my dad. Things suck right now. They are going to continue to suck until Jerry dies. Giving a second thought about a Brooks Baldwin injury or where Andrew Benintendi is batting in the lineup is a waste of time, because none of it matters right now. All we can do is hope that new ownership actually has even the faintest interest in actually winning, and things will be feel a lot better as a Sox fan. Until then…spend your time doing literally anything else.

Sox fans are obsessed with service time manipulation. Play your best 25, period.

Who was playing out of position? It's the minors. He is learning a new position.

You misspelled "predictable."

You can ignore a user’s posts, but you can’t ignore them resurrecting threads from 8 months ago for some reason. What a world.

Drinking seems to be the best way to tolerate this team.

hopefully Ishbia will be sitting in the front row with a sell the team sign

Would love to know just how bad it has to get for him to lose his job. If they threaten the loss record again, you have to make a change. He’s shown no ability to scout professional talent.

Couldn't this just go in the pre-existing Getz bashing thread?

Early returns, but you have to love seeing Fauske and Carlson being successful in Kanny.

Definitely promoting the director of player development of that team!

But regardless of what you think the chances are of it happening, is it a waste to use Taylor in a game that another pitcher subsequently loses? What if using Taylor as an opener reduces the chances of your starter getting bombed? And what if that in turn reduces strain on the remaining pen arms in a way that improves their performance? A scoreless first inning in a game is worth ~5% win probability for the home team. A scoreless 7th with a one run lead is worth ~9%. So sure, the latter leverage inning is "better" in a vacuum... But the first situation is guaranteed and the second is not. The first also comes against a known set of batters, while the second does not. The impact of the extra WPA from the later leverage situation becomes more marginal the less reliably you are able to get to it. So how likely are the Sox to be in late innings with a lead, and does opening with Taylor improve those odds? How much more valuable is going from 69% to 78% win probability once in a series compared to going from 50% to 55% twice in a series? I think those are interesting questions to consider for this particular roster at this particular time, so I kind of dig the experiment. I already gave most of my thoughts on this in the other thread, but think it's at least feasible that Taylor as opener both 1. decreases the odds of your starter getting lit up and 2. simplifies later bullpen deployment, both in ways that are potentially more impactful to winning than waiting for the team to already be in a late lead situation to begin with. Also, if they want to increase his workload, he'll be pitching some "waste" innings either way. This isn't exactly a team with 70+ save opportunities up for grabs right now. Having him open a game certainly seems like less of a "waste" than him coming in down 4 because "he just needs work" while team is in a skid.

I have to imagine when Ishbia takes over he's going to clean house with people like Boyer.

If you ran a business as poorly as JR has run this one, you'd probably have closed a long time ago. I hope he's losing money. He's earned it.

This isn’t sad, my friend, this is awesome!!!

You could have a low payroll with way more talent than what he’s acquired

Having an extra year of team control would have been meaningful for... 1 prospect the Sox have promoted in the last decade? Cease definitely fetches more in a trade had that been true for him. It wouldn't have mattered for anyone else and I'm on high Antonacci but he's not exactly Konnor Griffin. Even for *this* organization manipulating Sam Antonacci's service time is embarrassing.

You know how the longer a discussion goes on, the probability increases that it will inevitably turn into a discussion about Hitler? Soxtalk is kinda like that except Getz is Hitler and it doesn’t take very long.

The original title was also Berongtolla, so we have it all.

Heard Ishbia was about to cancel the buy right after reading soxtalk but thankfully a white knight rode in and saved the day!

The Royals aren’t doing so well but Kay must’ve put up the best start of the season thus far.

Mets: Did you ever consider not swinging at pitches out of the zone? Luis Robert: YOU CAN DO THAT?!?!?

Mmmm sacrelicious

I'm a little unclear on what Will was supposed to do today. His starter went 3.2 innings. Hicks is a converted starter who looked utterly dominant in his first inning of work. Pretty clear we weren't going to let him pitch to Gunnar, who is instead faced by Murphy who is IMO the more trustworthy of the two lefties left in the pen. Gunnar is a hall of fame talent and hit a screamer that snuck out of the stadium. s%*# happens, should have hit more earlier today.

He didn’t call you back?

I hope you keep the honor for a long...long time.

Here's the problem; we have been talked in to the idea that THIS is how you attract companies (not just sports franchises) as a community. Every city of a reasonable size, and every county and state have Economic Development teams whose entire existence is to hand out incentive packages in the form of tax incentives, and other cash prizes, to businesses to "attract" them to move into a community. Companies use this communities against each other to improve these dollar amounts and awards. Even the trillion dollar plus market companies like Amazon engage in these games to get themselves more subsidies. Look the myth of the welfare queen is out in popular culture, but there is no bigger welfare queen in America than the billionaire. Sports team owners are no different than Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, or any of the other CEOs out there getting paid by taxpayers to make their billions somewhere else.

For once we weren't the team acting the fool. Some pretty good baseball even if the bats still need to get going overall.

Actually feels nice.

Fun is winning and winning is fun.

I like when Sox "first time since..." trivia is positive rather than negative

Wow, a sweep of the AL Champs, keep it going against the O’s.

You don't mess with the Pope's team on Easter Sunday !

WE ARE SO BACK!

Sox: best team in the AL?

He's got plus zone contact rates and max EVs to pair with the foot and bat speed. I think he's a small tweak and a hot streak away from surprising people.

Part of the Pereira trade. Utility guy who had a huge spring and start to AAA. Rays named him the best defensive player in their system a couple years ago and he has a little bit of pop (18 HRs last year, 2 in spring, 2 for Charlotte already). One of the more intriguing fringe guys, def worth a look.

Happy Easter everyone 🐇 Go you White Sox !

Do they win a few more games by saving Taylor for leverage spots? Maybe (assuming they want to prioritize that over whatever development path for him)....Though honestly I'd argue maybe they don't, if the starter variance forces Will to scramble with the pen anyway. We've seen those scrambles have a lot of negative domino effects already. Obviously it's impossible to truly know how the counterfactuals play out, but was Taylor going in the 6th or 7th vs. MIL really more impactful than having him in the 1st inning of these two games vs. Toronto? (Not by WPA, for what it's worth) Like if Taylor put up a 0 ahead of Burke's first outing vs MIL, that's probably a more winnable game. Potentially tied in the 6th? Even if not, does Burke simply going deeper mean they have a fresher pen to avoid the collapse in the finale? In that game, Kay was pulled in the 5th to dodge a 3rd AB for the cleanup hitter (who had already homered against him) with runners on. That created an extra leverage spot trying to even make it to Taylor, who was saved for the top of the order in the 7th. Sure, Taylor puts up a 0 there...but the 8th is now in Murphy's hands because they had to spend a better arm on that earlier fire from Kay's third time through. Murphy doesn't have his best stuff/luck in a back to back outing after covering for Burke's short start in the prior game, and now they have to rush Dominguez in...Yelich, who got a free look at Dominguez when he also had to cover an extra inning the night before, takes him deep and wins the game. Yesterday could have played out similarly. Vlad Jr just missed a HR in his first AB vs. Kay, then found the extra distance in the second attempt on a very similar pitch in his next one. But Taylor getting him out in the 1st meant the second look at Kay came all the way in the 6th inning, and another look wasn't even a factor. Venable got to pick his spot to pull Kay (with a lefty up for Murphy, bases empty) instead of the game situation forcing it, because Taylor's scoreless first removed both the pressure for more length from Kay and the looming threat of a third time through. Finding a pathway to the end of the game is a bit easier with this staff when it starts in the 6th or later, and all of the bullpen usage/matchups/leverage stuff becomes more projectable. The pen deployment yesterday felt relatively smooth despite using 6 arms, because there was no emergency need for length or leverage from the starter's exit causing unexpected ripple effects or forcing tough choices. Only one guy came in with runners on (Hicks). Same for the series opener (Dominguez). In Kay's first start, it was 4/6 arms coming in with inherited runners...which made that 4.2IP/2ER vs. MIL feel so much less effective than the 4.1IP/2ER vs. TOR. TLDR: The ability to append any quality inning onto a possibly less than quality start is pretty useful, Taylor as opener just locks it in at the start where Taylor as setup guy requires you to actually make it to that setup scenario first. It seems feasible to me that "How can we get to the 7th WITH Taylor?" is an easier puzzle to solve than "How can we get to the 7th FOR Taylor?" and smoothing out some of that variance could help a lot of other pieces fall into place more consistently. I think Vasil as swiss army pitcher had a similar effect at times last year. But despite all of my yapping, I'm not necessarily saying Taylor will/should exclusively open games from here on out. For this back to back specifically, I think a lot of stars just aligned once he was so efficient in Game 1. I do think being willing to do it at least situationally does have multiple benefits for this roster right now though: Guaranteed innings for Taylor, instead of waiting for leverage chances that may be harder to come by/bridge to Insulating a rotation of mostly unproven arms from third time through penalties Having more projectable/consistent bullpen deployment for later innings (even when that doesn't include Taylor himself) Providing a more natural path to eventual longer outings than trying to force multi-inning holds/saves Potentially helping with "momentum" in games, given an offense that often scores more early than late It's also just kind of cool that they just won back to back games with the same two pitchers recording the first 3 outs and last 3 outs of both games. Has to be a rarity.

Huh? Gavin Williams is a first rounder who throws really hard and has missed time with arm problems. You do have to spend some draft capital on pitching.

Sweeping the AL World Series representative at home would be pretty nice after that road trip