WestEddy

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.

You know, Caulfield, this whole, "tee-hee, I'm lying about what you just wrote" shtick gets old.

I'll root for wins, not payroll.

I don't actually feel like I predicted anything. I just didn't buy into the narrative that Getz sucked because he ran the organization as director of development. I'm happy to see the team find success, I hope they continue on an upward trajectory. 103 wins would be a nice 19-win progression for 3 straight seasons.

Bannister never worked for the Royals. Jirschele has nothing to do with the Royals org. He was drafted by the White Sox, retired, and started coaching for the White Sox. I suppose everyone in the White Sox front office acknowledge the existence of the Kansas City Royals, so you can put everyone on your list.

I don't really follow the Padres, so why would I have an insightful treatise on their recent history? You seem to be distracted by me naming the Padres in an example - from the greater point that I'm only doing the same analysis that everyone would give any team I decided to mock for their World Series Championship failures. If I brought up the Mariners (who have made the playoffs less than the White Sox in the last 7 years), there would be a resounding chorus of "Yeah, but..."s.

As far as how front offices conduct themselves, it's probably an entirely different game from 10-15 years ago. Nothing that happened in the late 1970s matters when discussing how a 3-year-old front office is operating today. Just looking at the last 36, Himes had 4 great #1 picks in a row. Schueller took over, and about half of his seasons were successful with that core of Thomas, Durham, Robin, Karko, Black Jack, A-Fern, Alvarez, Roberto Hernandez. KW rolled it over to Lee, Maggs, Valentin, and remnants of the White Flag trade. He kept the team mostly competitive in a period when a single wild card was in play. I don't know what "rebuilding the same mistakes" means. Do you mean that the team rebuilds, grows old, then crashes in cycles? Himes, Schueller, KW, Hahn and Getz all seem to be different styles of building a team. If you're just being cynical and saying everything's going to fail because White Sox, then you go on, then. They certainly seem to be aware of previous international failures, drafting and developmental shortcomings, an inability or neglect in supporting prospects once they hit the bigs and needed adjustments - and they seem to be addressing them. Again, if you feel that Reinsdorf is going to sabatoge everything so that it fails because he's cheap and wants to finish in 2nd place, you would have to give me some evidence that's happening right now beyond "but hey, White Sox, you know?"

I'm seeing people throw it out there on Twitter that the salary cap may just be a ploy to wear out the MLBPA for a few months, then offer up a floor for a tighter luxury tax. In that case, Castillo for 1 year may be a better risk than a FA for 4-5 years.

I understand. It's scary to play a thought experiment that steps outside your comfort zone of blaming, name-calling, moving the goalposts and making excuses. Really. Think about it. Maybe I'm not "making excuses". Maybe I just have the ability to put it all in perspective.

Or, you could just state your arguments without doing this questioning thing to make me type what you want to put out there, then scold me that "I'm not answering your question". Brian Cashman worked with the Yankees for 8 years before they promoted him to GM. He was hired because George Steinbrenner knew Cashman's dad. That seems pretty unwilling to mix it up and bring in differing opinions. Getz has just staffed the organization with multiple outside hires. So is that your crafty way of asking me if I think the Yankees' way of nepo-hiring from within is preferable to the White Sox way of hiring from outside? The Yankees' success shows that there was value in promoting from within. I feel that when an owner fires the exec-VP and GM on the same day during a 100-loss season, that says very loudly that he wants change. If Getz got in JR's ear and convinced him he could take over and not make any changes, the joke's on Reinsdorf, because this organization and team look a lot different from the 2023 version.

I would ask you which past administration they were blaming? Cashman has been GM for about 26 years. So, nice hypothetical, but that one's irrelevant. Maybe Yankee fans don't "make excuses", but I could probably count up the excuses made for the Guardians and Yankees here for not winning it all in the last decade(s) because "at least they've been there". Y'all kneel down before that string of not winning the big prize and worship it. I could mock the Dodgers for being on the verge of elimination, and a dozen posters would barrel in with their excuses. If I called for Cashman to be fired, y'all would excoriate me. It's amazing how many apologists the Astros, Guardians, Yankees, Padres all have here when I make fun of those teams. I'd guess you would call that perspective. You're not an avid fan of the Yanks, so you can see how they try to win, and how the playoffs is a crapshoot based on a single starting pitcher getting hot for two games, or a hitter going on a heater for a week. Now pretend I have perspective and can understand what Getz took over and how far this organization has come in 3 years.