WestEddy

No. It changed because the VP telling him they didn't need all that was fired, and the new GM told him they did. I'm not sure how that registers as "far fetched" for you.

And this seems to imply that Jerry Reinsdorf spared no expense to modernize player development under Getz, bringing in state-of-the-art everything, Paddy and Hostetler bringing in the best prospects in the game, and Getz just sat on his thumb.

How is it a failure when they didn't get a regular stream of top talent to develop? It's kind of telling that Hahn/KW moved Hostetler out of his position, and Paddy allegedly sat in limbo for a year before his firing. Again, either Getz is a master at passing blame and getting others fired, or he didn't have what he needed to do his job. One requires a big leap to pretend, the other is pretty logical.

Dunn's signing elicited an ejaculation of happiness in Sox fandom. He was the obvious trade acquisition that should have happened in 2010, but didn't. He was the stat-head darling, the 3 true outcomes dream. He was going to save the franchise until he didn't. LaRoche and Encarnacion were reactions to missing out on all the big pieces of that off-season.

It's normal to fire the person in charge and promote from within. The massive failure in development stems from being behind the rest of the league in infrastructure, analytics, tech and current methods. The appearance of Getz fixing these areas as soon as he was in charge either outs Getz as a truly Machiavellian character, failing in order to blame his bosses and get them fired, or somebody who tried to update these things, but regularly turned down. Getz was not a "good" hire. But you're grasping when you try to blame every failure of the last 2 decades on him just because he was part of the front office.

It did. He kept his job for a full year. I'd guess Reinsdorf said to let his contract run out, but I couldn't imagine Getz not giving him any guidelines to see if he could be refocused. Hostetler worked under Hahn, and Hahn replaced him. Getz inherited Shirley, and kept him. This seems to not align with your argument. It feels like you're being purposefully obtuse to pretend to not understand that it's normal in an organization for the head of an area to be fired, a person under them to get promoted, and for that person to reevaluate all of their peers.

You don't know that, yet. And "the best GM in the sport" seems to have missed the part about acquiring top rotational starters. Getz could very well go down the same path, hugging prospects, and trying to stock every position from within. But he's not there, yet.

Especially since any outside takes I read say that Getz is doing the hard work, and will be fine.

In retrospect, we were missing one half of the acquisition engine on the international side. Paddy is out. We may not do better, but I think it would be hard to do worse than zero. Shirley seems to be better at the draft than Hostetler was. Also, a big factor in bad 1st round drafts seems to have left with Haber, KW and Hahn leaving, not barging into the war room to hijack the 1st round pick. KW also seems to have been a major factor in the dysfunction of the organization, what with clubhouse spies, friction with the managers and GM, getting into media feuds with players, etc. There also used to be a hesitance to invest in development. KW would trade guys before they got too old to be a bust. At least now, Getz is trying to get the people in place to develop the players we draft. So, the entire organization may not be in a better place, but it is in a different place. Previous rebuilds failing have no influence on this current rebuild.

Okay, so no rebuild will ever work again. Conversely, your plan of signing 5 middling free agents won't work, either, because free agents have always failed upon coming to the Sox. Therefore, the Sox will continue to set the record for losses until they hit 162 sometime in the early 2030s, then never win another game again. Cannon and Thorpe can throw strikes, and have had limited success at the ML level. There's also a good chance they're still both pitching in 5 years.

Dude looks like one of those people being freed from a Syrian prison.

For a fleeting second, I pictured two guys sitting in a golf cart together, texting each other.

In addition to a rollback on sanctions of Cristian Mena mentions, I'm willing to concede and ratchet down my description of the Fedde trade as a "debacle" in exchange for the recognition of Riley Gowens as a legitimate starting pitching prospect.

I think a lot of last spring training's moves (and the first few months) can be chalked up to "in over his head" and/or hubris. But I also think they are somewhat linked to the subsequent house-cleaning of scouting. Getz inherited a horrible team, then got his budget cut. Getz scrambled, and regardless of how he was hired, I want to see how he builds this team. He's learning on the job. He slowed the Crochet talks down nicely to get what he wanted. That's a clear step up from the Fedde/Kopech debacle. Colas - I just remember TA7 or Elvis catching a throw from Colas, and just standing at 2B, glaring into the OF at an obviously wrong choice. Colas did that a lot, and then gets into it with other OFs over coverage, or whatnot. Sure, I'd like to see a good 3 months of the guy, but he seems relatively uncoachable, and would make a nice pairing with Benintendi as the "prospect to cover a year's salary" in a salary dump. I'll wait and see how pro-scouting 2.0 does with his next round of perifferal trades.

If I'm a "rah-rah" type, I generally accept that the Cease trade was a bit short, and the rest of his trades range from inconsequential to good. Your portrayal is that everything before the Crochet trade proved that Getz is a horrible GM, which you need to post multiple times a day, across the entire site. I believe the jury's out on Getz, and he's growing in his job. I don't care about a single trade of Matt Thompson for Bailey Horn. I do care that Getz is redoing scouting, development, stats analysis, ML coaching, hitting and pitching coordination. I think that's way more important than if he waived Jake Cousins too soon.

I understand you're commenting on the tweet. I don't think Hostetler was very good at his job, even when the higher ups weren't bum rushing the war room to make his picks for him. They wouldn't commit to investing in development, so all avenues were doomed to failure beyond the rare guy who just willed himself into being a slightly better than average utility guy. I can only assume (and hope) that the guy who was smack in the middle of that, and fought those battles is updating the organization appropriately. The fact the the last rebuild conducted by a different regime - failed - doesn't mean that this one is doomed to fail. I like watching a rebuild progress. It's all we have right now.

More like 12 minutes. I agree that KW probably didn't see the value in a full investment in development, so he never went to bat with JR for it. If you're an accountant, and the boss won't let you use computers, or even calculators, it's unfair to say all the failures of that company are because of the new accountant. I'm pretty sure Getz didn't get the job, and forbid the use of statistical data or even iPads. Seeing how he's conducted his rebuild of the infrastructure, he's probably been banging his head against the wall for years trying to get these things done.

I actually don't consider you a detractor. Nobody's asking for detractors to be "rah-rah...". Lazy arguments are exhausting. I guess they're meant to be.

Old friend alert

No. Disagreeing with a path doesn't make it illogical.

I was just throwing names against the wall in suggesting a trade of Cannon. But If Cannon, Thorpe, Martin and Burke click, now you're starting to get a glut of pitching. That's the situation the Mariners find themselves in. The market for pitching is crazy, so they might deal from their surplus to restock the minors.

I think I've seen that asked in various chats. The answer always seems to be that if MLB got whiff of a prior deal, they would void it and probably issue penalties on the team. If Sasaki pitched one full year, won the ROY, CY and MVP awards, and the team then decided to issue him a deal that looked like a normal deal that hiked him up from the league minimum, following an arb path, then maybe a payoff for a couple of years after scheduled free agency, that would fly. If he did okay, then they dropped a 10/300 on him, that probably wouldn't.

Okay, I'm mixed up. Here's an article at MLB.com that explains the PPI draft picks. https://www.mlb.com/news/prospect-performance-incentive-ppi-eligible-players