WestEddy

Get your own joke!!

He's my main man!!

He watched the TikTok video, just didn't subscribe to the substack.

Step one of a thousand-mile journey is saying you're sorry. Step two is being asked why you're sorry. Good luck.

"Deflection"

Looking forward to WS Twitter all claiming we should take a flier on this guy.

Okay, then you're saying no team should ever trade a player. If they do, they're money-grubbing skinflints. Got it.

Okay, well, I answered about three of your questions from that post, but you only consider one of them as "the" question. I expect the Sox to make a good faith effort at extending Murakami. They're one game away from clocking in with their first .500 month in years, so I would expect them to be sporadically competitive this season, considering their division, and more competitive next season. I don't know what Murakami's goals are, either setting salary records, or being in a comfortable environment. If he cranks 50 HRs and wants to stay, I've seen no statements from the White Sox saying they absolutely will not sign a contract over $100M. I believe the likely outcome is the Sox will be competitive next year, they'll keep Murakami all season, and he will get an insane offer the Sox won't match.

If somebody is tired of rooting for a player and then seeing them traded because the team failed to build around them, that's quite a different thing than, "JR will never pay a player because he's cheap". I guess what's hilarious about changing the argument to "who made the team non-competitive?" is that it's a pure deflection and runs away from the point being made. Nobody is arguing that the Sox didn't participate in their own multiple demises. If you want to make the argument that JR/KW/Hahn very deliberately declined to invest in prospect development with the goal of extending the few players who emerged from the minors, not adding to them, then trading them to not have to pay them, I challenge you to make that argument. But you don't. You just throw up that non-sequitur to derail a comment.

A narrative has taken hold of "I'm so pissed that I can imagine the White Sox trading Murakami next week, then trading Colson, and when we draft Roch, promote him, then trade him too!!!" This is nonsense. The Sox are building for a competitive window. It's silly to pretend that's not happening. "But they never extend or keep their players because JR is so cheap!!!" I've given examples of windows where they've extended key players or resigned them to keep a winning team together. "But the White Sox once made a trade, so you're wrong!!" The stars that the Sox have traded came at a time where they were looking into the void of a rebuild. Because the Sox had no international presence, sucked at drafting and could only develop the most advanced talent, they had periods of amassing 5-9 prospects, then riding a wave of talent for a few years. They thought they could do this around 2015, and again around 2020. They didn't maintain a minor league system that could supplement those teams when injury and premature aging gutted the big league club. Watching this team, we all understand what the front office had attempted at different times. It's insincere to pretend that JR is rubbing his hands together, waiting for the next prospect to break out so he can trade him and save money. Nobody's accusing JR of playing 3 dimensional chess with the moves his front office has made over the last 3 decades. They've been very short-sighted. But it's insulting to make up comic book villain reasons, and demand that everybody buy into that. I do understand that Getz has referred to the models employed by Tampa and Milwaukee. Again, I'll worry about the Sox trading Colson and Roch Cholowsky when they do it.

Do they subtract 9 years off his stated age as a penalty, now?

LOL. No, it doesn't count in the minds of people who understand the premise. Sale would have pitched on 3 bad teams, then would have missed their entire "window" with injuries. But I suppose you're just going to ignore the fact they kept the WS team together as long as possible and loaded up with players who they extended for a competitive run at the beginning of this decade. I'll worry about the Sox trading stars at the beginning of a competitive window when it actually starts happening.

They say he's running catching drills and doing batting practice.

The premise is that JR sets the agenda for this team, and the GM's follow. If that is the case, then we can look at players like Konerko, Dye, Pierzynski and Buehrle - they were all extended or resigned. Sale, Quintana and Eaton were all signed to contracts that bought out their arbitration years and a couple of free agency. Jose Abreu was extended. Tim Anderson, Yoan, Robert, Eloy - they were all signed to contracts that bought out their arbitration years and a couple free agent years. During a rebuild, they cashed in their good players for prospects. There is no history of developing players, getting to a competitive window, then trading away players "because they don't want to pay them". This is a false narrative. If you want to have the argument of who's choice was it to rebuild, great. Start that discussion. But that's merely a deflection, here. You pose the question: What history do you have that the Sox will keep good players around for a long term competitive window? I give you the evidence that during their last, true, competitive window, they kept good players around for the duration of that window. To argue that they didn't denies the very fact that they did from 2005 through 2012. It looked like they were doing that in the runup to 2016, but that team fell apart, and they chose to rebuild again. And the team certainly looked like they were trying to assemble a core they would keep together for the 2020 window. Individual players all fell off the table, and most of that team became untradeable. It's beyond stupid to pretend the only goal of this team is to develop prospects then trade them at the precipice of a competitive window because this team has never done that. I'm pretty sure that nobody is going to argue that in November of 2016, or November of 2023, this team was looking at a 5 year run of playoff success.