WestEddy

I'm all about miracles. The Padres have made the most noise in their current "window", and haven't won much of anything. They no longer have the benefit of the doubt with me.

What's best for the franchise, long term, is figuring out the assets they have on the major league team who could either be long term answers, or trade bait. If you know which year the Sox will win their next Championship, please let us know. If you don't, that qualifier is meaningless.

Well, great. Every game they fail is one game closer to the end of their White Sox careers.

There's totally a plan. They don't play b-squad games during the season. There's only so many ABs and innings during the week. The priorities seem to be: 1) figure out the vets on the 26-man. Give them the ABs/innings to make a determination on trade/extend/DFA. 2) if a rookie catches on, give him playing time 3) if a rookie struggles, get them experience at the major or minor leagues, depending on the problem And really. If I had an employee who clutched onto a single axiom, and couldn't adjust to new wrinkles that came along, he'd be out the door pretty quick. Oh, I also liked roster churn when I managed a department. It worked quite well. As is it for Getz, too.

With Mendick, DeJong and Lopez/Remy at 3B/SS/2B, and Pham in CF, half of your team is average or better. Lee is very good, defensively, when he plays half the games. So I guess 9/16 of the starting 8 are average or better, defensively. Since the win-loss doesn't matter, they're using playing time to figure out Sheets and Vaughn, which seems to be what you're calling for. Benintendi - I guess they want to give him time to get out of his fielding and hitting slumps, either to eat his contract and trade him, get some game value from him, or prove to JR he's a bad signing so they can DFA him.

And really, you're using the very thing you say you want as evidence of Getz messing up. Vaughn and Sheets are still youngish. While neither will be playing on the next Championship team (which is a dumb measure, anyway), they're being allowed the opportunity to play through slumps and defensive adversity to give them a chance to get comfortable. I think it's reasonable to give a former 1st and 2nd rounder a little more leeway to find themselves than Lenyn Sosa, who has shown nothing in 250 PAs in the majors.

The injury in CF forced a move of our RF into CF, where he was more exposed, defensively, and then to play a worse RF in RF. I don't like Sheets in RF, either, but he had a hot bat, and with management wanting to keep Benny, Vaughn and Eloy getting at-bats, probably to break them out of their slumps so they could trade them (or just get offense, in Benny's case), RF is the only option. DeJong and Lopez are above average, defensively. Vaughn, Sheets and Benintendi suck. Pham is average in CF. I don't like the Maldonado signing, either. I suppose they feel his game calling and presence outweigh the other aspects of his game. I would be happy with a Maldonado DFA tomorrow. Lee is catching half of the games, now, so that's something. I don't care if what's happening with the rotation is planned or not. The "plan" was to see if Crochet, Fedde, Flexen and Soroka could be starting pitchers in MLB. That plan was a success. The "plan" also seemed to be to get place-holders eating innings while the prospects progressed. He did that. I'll rely on people who develop prospects for an opinion on the best way to get prospects acclimated to the majors. If you want rookies to get "comfortable" in the majors, it's probably good for their base-running error to not open the top of every hour on CNN the next 24 hours because they're a historically bad team. The major leagues is about guys being able to perform. If they're not executing their pitches, or striking out 1/3 of their PAs, they may not get too much time to get comfortable. Lenyn Sosa isn't the future of this franchise. I'm not worried about him getting yanked after 40 PAs. As far as "dumping as much of the roster they could", they've cut or traded 6 older vets who have been on the parent club. I understand your difficult situation, trying to argue something that is a huge positive (taking non-performing players off the 26-man roster) as grossly negative, in a weird "panic" framing. The roster churning is a good thing. Yes, I think he had to stop the bleeding. I'm not sure why Brad Keller needs to keep pitching on a 14-34 team, just for continuity's sake. One of Nastrini, Cannon or Thorpe may get a start this week. If roster churn makes you queasy, then buckle in, because there's going to be a lot more. And it will all be good.

Garrett Whitlock probably out for season. https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2024/05/garrett-whitlock-diagnosed-with-ligament-tear-in-elbow.html

defense DeJong and Lopez lead the team in defense, last time I checked. Win. Robert and Moncada could have been expected to extend their good defense. Meh. Vaughn and Benintendi are not good. Vaughn - they probably are going to give him the entire season to show if he's a piece because of his 1st round status. Benny - they're paying him, so they're going to play him. Fletcher seemed exposed in CF. They're just filling holes in the outfield, right now. Maybe Fletcher will start getting a shot again. Maybe since DeLoach is starting to hit, he's next. rotation They had a plan, and they seem to be sticking to it, making adjustments on the fly, either of plugging in long men after Flexen/Soroka, or parking them in the bullpen for a rest or rework. Every team brings up prospects, sees them get overmatched, then sends them back. Jackson Holliday is the main one you keep ignoring. The gap is so huge that you can't "know" if a player is ready for that jump. injury They had 3 huge injuries. I'm using the injuries and slumps to explain the heightened concern for a record setting environment of futility for which that they had to find some balance, not the roster churn, which I don't even care about, and don't see that as any cause of concern. I've even stated that I like the attitude of grabbing guys off of waivers, checking them out in game settings, and moving on if they don't look like something that would work. The more you bring up churn, the more I agree with you that he does a lot of that, and I say it's a positive. prospects The great unknown is the jump between AAA and the majors. Clocks will be starting for a bunch of guys this year. All that matters is that they retain the extra year, and in the case of Monty, keep him from super-2 status. I can argue a quick trip to the majors and back is good for a prospect to see how fast the pro game is, what they need to work on, and an incentive to get back. They had to stop the bleeding on the "historical bad start" story. Sosa wasn't going to do that. I'm guessing they do have a glimmer of hope for Colas, and really want him to be best equipped when they promote him next time. maldonado I didn't like the signing, either. I think they should DFA him and activate anybody. Chuckie Robinson works for me. You know I love the roster churn.

We have 3 Shortstops at AA and AAA. Two of them have 1st round pedigree. We have a 3B getting an extended audition this year. 2 catchers who look like they can field and hit. We have at least 3 OFs at AA, one of whom just hits, and the other two who look, at least, like 4th OFs. They'll get a good return for Robert. They might get a return of projectable guys who will be in a Rule 5 roster crunch this December (or something that makes them less than top 100 prospects not on a 40-man, yet, for a couple of years) for Fedde, Flexen, Pham and others. Maybe I'm just not considering what other people are talking about. I think we'll have a competitive club in 3-4 seasons. They're looking for the dominant, sure-fire, 3 world series championship core.

First of all, we're starting from a point where neither of us know anything about the inner workings of the Sox' FO, or Getz's thoughts. With that in mind, I say that they wanted to send Fletcher down to keep him getting reps and more importantly, away from the record setting parent club. They don't think Colas is ready for a full time audition, yet (the very type of decision making you're calling for), so they activated Ortega. The fact that they let Horn go means, to me, that they were done with Thompson, and took a flyer on Horn for their troubles. Yes, they knew about Horn. Maybe they tried to sneak him through waivers, or Bannister (who didn't have deep, previous knowledge of Horn) cut bait on him. This is all a lot of thought, already, for a couple of guys who will get an MLB.com write-up in about 5 years about how they persevered through 5 organizations, and now, they're finally having some success as a long man for a last place club. I don't see how having a plan, seeing the disastrous consequences of that plan playing out, then trying to adjust on the fly is panicking, or dumping one's plan. Seeing as they had zero (0) rotation pieces entering this season, and imagining the restraints on payroll Getz was dealt, he and Bannister worked out a plan to identify guys who are rehabbing, or trying to rediscover recent success, put a more competent defense behind them, give them a good game-calling catcher, and run with that, giving the prospects more time to develop. They're still running with Crochet, Fedde, and Flexen. Soroka got the Flexen treatment. Clevinger and Keller are innings. They tried Nastrini and Cannon, maybe even to discover what non-prospect hitters at AAA couldn't expose, and now they're working on their games. I don't see this as some huge divergence. If they traded Nastrini and Cannon for guys who could cover 5+ innings, that would be panic. Add to that, 3 starters went down with injury, and another 5 started out in extended catastrophic slump. I think if Chris Getz could predict batting slumps and injuries, he wouldn't be a GM. He'd be sitting on a mountain in Tibet, giving life advice to those who could reach him.

Then he's traded at that deadline for a package.

That Kinks song only reached #33 on the Canadian charts. Why would they be commemorating that?

The only question marks on Crochet are durability and whether the extra pitches stick. He looks like, at least, a mid rotation starter. We can have an idea of what Korey Lee can be going forward. No, we can't project WAR totals, but he looks like better than replacement level right now. He's also a pretty good defensive catcher.

I think vertigo is a big result of an acute ear infection.

Lee and Crochet aren't "unknowns". Neither is Ramos, at this point. If you're going to dismiss the entire White Sox minor league system, then no team can truly have any faith in rebuilding. All prospects are "unknowns". Yet, some work out.

2016 had 3 tradable assets, no development system, and little in the farm. While we had Semien and Bassett, nobody considered them to be much beyond utility and bullpen. The Giolito, Lynn, Burger, Graveman, Middleton and Bummer trades set us up far better than we sat in 2013.

Who said there was no point to having Ortega on the roster? Everybody here screams there must be accountability. So they drop Fletcher down to AAA for a few weeks for whatever reasons, and now that's bad. You keep connecting moves like, "if they were going to do this, why not that?" Again every acquisition isn't about learning. They took a flier on Horn, looked at him for a couple of weeks, and decided resources were better spent elsewhere. Same with Matt Thompson. I could also imagine that politics plays into it, too. Thompson was a Hostetler draftee, Horn was a Shirley draftee. Maybe the Shirley people had a better plan for Horn's development than Hostetler had for Thompson, and they moved on. From both. Like Jared Kelley. Pillar wasn't working for them, for whatever reason. That reason could be that Grifol wants to play the platoon splits, and there was no room for Pillar. Great. Maybe that's just another "we gave you what you wanted and you didn't make it work" tally. I'm not sure what the problem is with the roster churn. It would have been nice if Pillar had his hot streak in Chicago rather than Anaheim. I don't think the up and down will hurt prospects as much as staying up, and getting shelled every game in the national spotlight. You have 5+ starting pitching prospects at AA, A+ and A ball. Complex league has a few interesting arms. They're starting to get promoted. There's a draft in about 8 weeks. They have to make room for the better prospects who are coming along quicker rather than spend time and resources trying to figure out a new way to beg Matt Thompson to throw strikes.

For the most part, I agree with your whole post. Except this line. Depending on how a Robert trade works out, next year should already look more stabile, be more entertaining, and at the very least, on our way towards a .500 record. The AA team will be hitting no later than 2nd half of 2025. It would take 5 years to rebuild from nothing, and Getz already had 3 good drafts banked when he took over.

Nobody wanted to audition Ortega. He was a veteran OF who could cover CF in spurts. He's a 4th OF by definition. They have a major league team where they have to roster 26 players. Not every single roster move is going to be about learning or teaching. It's also unfair to saddle the front office with having to "know" whether a player will succeed or not upon promotion. Jackson Holliday didn't take off in his ML playing time, and the Orioles dropped him back to AAA. Is that a failure? Shouldn't they have known he wouldn't have succeeded? The gap is so large between AAA and the majors, short of the truly gifted and the guys like Remillard who are "fundamentals" guys, there's really no telling. I keep saying that they don't want to drop rookies into a situation where they're "learning", failing, and being splayed across the national news for knocking a fly ball over the wall, or screwing up a run down. Now that they're not the lead story for their historic futility, these guys can get lit up and not be THE REASON the Sox suck this season. I would also imagine Fletcher's riding the bench next to the OF coach, and learning that way.

Yohan Ramirez is another one. White Sox had him last year, selected off waivers from the Pirates. They DFAed him in the flurry of traded Braves guys and Erick Fedde's signing. The Mets grabbed him. Baltimore grabbed him in the roster crunch that hits everyone at the end of ST. For some reason, Baltimore DFAed him May 2, and the Mets grabbed him up again. The Mets cut him May 15 among a flurry of moves, and now, he's been traded to the Dodgers. And Getz only seems to be doing this with OFs. He's not cycling through the same IF guys who are making their way from team to team. We seem set with Remy, Mendick, Sosa, Ramos, Shewmake and Lopez, Lord help us. But hey, if somebody clearly better LH-hitting 2B than Shewmake or Lopez hit the wire, I wouldn't put it past Getz to try to upgrade.

Okay, well, you've been criticizing Ortega having been called up to the parent club, and here, you're saying to play him, not Colas (if it's just one game). Somebody here explained the situation pretty well, and everybody calmed down. They didn't know the extent of Moncada's injury, needed an OF on the 26-man, so they called up the only high level OF on the 40 man for a game while they evaluated their needs. They didn't bring Colas up to evaluate him. He was a body, then he went back. I think that's understandable. Nastrini and Cannon had nice first starts, then started looking progressively worse in their subsequent starts. I've said repeatedly that I can get on board with sending these guys back to work on some issues that revealed themselves with pro hitters - out of the spotlight, and not as part of a historic bad start. We all talk about "rushing kids" and "prospects not being ready". Those are all really subjective. I think the Sox have stabilized into just a bad team, and that's enough cover for a guy like Ramos to get a longer audition without national news outlets opening with that night's White Sox loss. I truly think that Brad Keller was more about getting Flexen and Soroka figured out. That is a plan Getz made early on, and is still holding to. Shuster's advancement makes an exposed Keller superflous. But the whole point is if somebody's angry and wants Getz to fail, none of these moves make sense. If you're along for the ride, trying to see what happens, there's sense in it.

Speas and Burdick have gone through the cycle multiple times. Smith Njigba. Teams claim guys they think might help. Then either they have a roster crunch, or realize what 5 other teams realized. If Getz is panicking, then half the league is panicking.

Why are you assuming that placeholder vets and struggling kids are two different plans? If you bring up a prospect, and you see he's struggling mightily, why are we married to "that struggling prospect must start every game the rest of the year"? That's not "how they learn", as everybody keeps claiming. I can certainly buy into Getz seeing the first three weeks, and realizing he had to do something to avoid the record books. He adjusted. Churned in more vets to see who clicked, cycled in Nastrini, League, Cannon, Ramos, Sosa, Fletcher, Shuster, and got the guys out who needed to work on something that would be catastrophic at the ML level.

I'm not disowning it. Okay, I was wrong to say the White Sox were right on par with all other teams. They haven't had the most transactions, and there's a good half dozen within 3-4 transactions. I would have expected them to have twice the amount of transactions as the next most team, the way everybody's screaming. I get it. You don't like Getz, so you call the churning through pitching projects "panic". I don't mind Getz, and I don't mind him picking up a bunch of players, throwing them out there to see if they're fixable, then launching them if they're not. I don't find myself embarrassed by it, I'm not angered by it. Any sports talk bro could go on a rant about Max Stassi not being on the parent club, and a bunch of meat-head listeners would think the guy's makin' sense. Or why Pham hasn't been traded. Or why this or that prospect isn't in the majors. But again, you have people spewing nonsense all day, every day. Actual false info about pitchers gaining 5 mph on their fastball upon leaving, and you don't chase them down to back up what they're saying. I know I have an argumentative tone, and I am trying to tone it down.