WestEddy

Yes, Turner Field. I remember little. The parking lot was on the old stadium's footprint. They left the outfield wall. Was not digging the tomahawk chop.

IF they acquired a better starting pitcher who brought them an extra win to take first place, they miss the first round against Houston to gear up for Cleveland. If they take first place, they open the ALDS at home against Cleveland or Houston, and maybe they're completely overwhelmed by that crowd, as they were in reality. Again, I'm not even sure what you're arguing against, as I agree with you that they could have done better in acquiring a starting pitcher. But of course, in this discourse, we can always imagine somebody dropping their no-trade clause because they know Sox fans are so great to play for. Or Mason Adams and Boston Smith could be turned into a top notch SP and a closer. Unless they're trading for a starting pitcher who is also the best hitting coach in the game, you keep ignoring that when it came to crunch time, this team twice set the strikeout record in clinching games. But hey, acknowledging that this team had more problems than just one starting pitcher makes me one who idolizes Chris Getz. LOL.

yankee stadium (ruth's) fenway camden jacob's field (cleveland) rate & comiskey metrodome (minn) both tiger stadiums kaufman (royals) Big A (recent reno) Oakland Coliseum Previous Arlington Safeco (Seattle) Olympic Stadium (Atlanta) RFK (DC) Shea (previous) Both Milwaukees Wrigley Old Busch Riverfront (Cincinnati) Dodger Coors Field (Colorado) Whatever San Francisco's called Milwaukee's old park had a great vibe to it. I believe you couldn't see the field from either Arlington or Cleveland's concourses. Dodger Stadium and Kaufman were both cool in that I always saw them on TV as a kid and visiting was a life's dream. Safeco is cool walking by the bullpens. RFK sucked in that from the middle tier, you couldn't see popups for the upper deck overhang. Riverfront and RFK both sucked in that they were old, worn down, the astroturf in Cincinnati had patches and was fluorescent. The RollerDome sucked, too. Magglio Ordonez left our group comp tickets, as we kept running into the White Sox at the hotel we stayed. That didn't suck. I mostly just remember the seated game experience for most of these. There's often drinking involved, which limits the note-taking. San Fran and Fenway have great neighborhood experiences, as does Seattle, Wrigley. I never got to the Bowling HOFs across from Busch stadium. Riverfront was one of the cooler fan experiences, everybody dressed in red crossing the Ohio River bridge. Sat near Joe Crede's aunt and cousin at the Sox game in St. Loo. Great food in Seattle, one real option in Dodger stadium (King Tacos?). If you walk from the Embarcadero in SF, Red's Java Hut was a must stop. My wife and I drank beers in their parking lot during their first modern World Series run, and we fell in love with that team. Rooted for them that year. Saw Curt Schilling no-hit the As into the 9th until Shannon Stewert broke it up with 2 outs. Milwaukee can heat the stadium to about 30 degrees warmer than the outside temperature. Whenever I joke that I bet they can get it up to about 120 in the summer, whoever I tell that to corrects me that they probably don't have the heat on in the summer.

This is funny. I agree with you that had they acquired a SP who did better, maybe they make up that one game. I doubt one starting pitcher gets them further in the playoffs. So there's not really an argument to "win" or "lose". You keep on obsessing over a single trade, like that made the difference. It didn't. They had a great defensive OF in the playoffs thanks to the Doyle trade. Brazoban and Bart were good pickups. One got injured, and the other regressed. That's always the risk with deadline trades. You're not picking up a guy who threw in 3 games that season. He's had an entire season's workload by the time he gets to the Sox. You're also obsessed with declaring a single trade a failure. A GM amasses players. They don't try to "win" every trade. I get it. You hate Chris Getz, and need to frame everything as an utter failure, over and over and over and over, just to make sure everybody gets exposed to that very niche opinion that is very under-represented here. LOL. Most pitchers traded at the deadline did worse on their new teams. It's a crap shoot. The Sox really had one prospect at peak value and that was Bonemer. Anybody else would have been selling low. And please tell me which starting pitcher they could have acquired for Mason Adams and Boston Smith. I'd imagine if teams were clamoring for those guys, Adams/B. Smith for Skubal would have been the first trade off the board.

Somebody just said this somewhere... The offense collapsed in the last 2 months. Once they got to a clinching game in Chicago, they started setting strikeout records. You seem to be ignoring everything besides Luis Castillo. Maybe if they would have taken the offer on the table for Luke Keaschall...

Yeah, maybe a competent starting pitcher gets them into first place, and they still lose games 3 & 4 in Cleveland, and game 5 in Chicago because the offense shut down. Or they lose their s%*# and can't perform before an insane home crowd in games 1 & 2, and they're 3 and done. No, it's not a stretch to say they needed another SP and didn't get one. It is a stretch to pretend that another SP would have revitalized the team, kept half the offense from slumping after the TDL, and becoming overwhelmed when they got to a clinching game. They went 5-4 in Castillo's 9 starts.

I'm really not making up people saying that Getz got "lucky" with particular players working out, having little to nothing to do with this season's success, or predicting quick regression back to 100-loss seasons. That's all a regular feature of the comments here.

Had Getz only make the right trade, they would be in the World Series, but they would only have gotten there by luck, and none of it would be because of anything they did.

The real awards don't get announced until after the World Series.

There's only 30 of these jobs. The least attractive situations are entry level GM. The most attractive are chasing Dombrowski or Theo.

Miguel Vargas ranked 13th in offensive fWAR on Fangraphs. Did the Sox DFA him right before the article?

I don't know. I'm not married to the team. I root for them. I got tired of being mad all year, so I stopped paying attention to the Bears. I don't hang around on Bears' chat boards telling everyone how disappointed I am in the McCaskeys or whatnot.

I suppose we both have different psychological motivations in forming an outlook.