WestEddy

Nice SoxMachine piece on Shomon. https://soxmachine.com/2025/11/derek-shomon-wants-to-bring-relentless-energy-to-a-hopefully-relentless-white-sox-offense

I thought Booser was a good pickup, and he turned out to not be. A player not living up to expectations doesn't really change my worldview. I thought Hill would be expendable, turns out, the Sox are keeping him as insurance. Wow, I guess I must turn on Chris Getz and start calling for his firing, huh? LOL. Tauchman - I didn't think he was part of next year's team. The clear reasoning behind not trading him at the deadline has been talked to death. No real mystery there. He had one year of control left. Big deal. I haven't changed any opinions on players, I didn't say the Sox would be a 70 win team next year that Tauchman would be an integral part of. Not sure how my opinions have "eb and weave"ed. Please, make it make sense.

Booser's a bummer. Elko was predictable. I thought Pereira made hill expendable, but now they have 2 guys who can cover CF in a pinch. Tauchman - seems like a great guy, good value, he's probably cooked.

I think he just likes to take a single sentence out of context, and then "disprove" it in some completely unrelated argument. Somehow, me saying that I don't think Vargas is going to be a superstar anchor of the next playoff team turns into "Nothing can ever be good, because there will always be another player in the past who had a better season..."

FanGraphs article elicits and relays some Getz talk about Noah Schultz and Hagen Smith. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/white-sox-gm-chris-getz-on-his-teams-top-pitching-prospects/

Vargas will never get beyond solid starter, IMO. Like, in the next 4 years, if he has a primary position, maybe he has a 3-4 WAR year, or two. The end. I believe the Sox will be pushing the upper 70s in wins this year, and be competing for the last wild card spot in 27, so no, don't trade him. He's a place-holder. But Bonemer, Carlson, 2026 1st rounder will be moving him off of his spot in the coming years. I really don't think the Sox are building for a window. This is the "steady flow" of talent Hahn always dreamed of. If they can draft and develop guys like Bonemer, Vargas will become expendable. I don't think the Sox should trade Vargas. I think he should be a Sox regular (if he earns it) until he's pushed out. I'm just saying that of course he should be getting interest because I think he has one more plateau to reach as a hitter.

Vargas should be drawing interest. He OPSed something like .769 after his famous hand adjustment of 4/23/2025. My expectation would be that he would bulk up a little further, and a breakout would probably look something beyond what @Ozzie for Manager mentioned. But this is the year for him. Only Braden Montgomery and Sam Antonacci will be crashing the gates this season.

I'll give you that.

There's bullpen coach, and assistant pitching coach. I believe those are two different things. I would think the asst. pitching coach works directly with the pitching coach. Diagnosing? Managing the pitching cycles, watching film with the guys? I'm not an expert, but I will certainly go on and on if you let me.

That's what AI tells me a bullpen coach does compared to the pitching coach. Like, maybe he works with some of these guys to keep them "thinking over their left leg" or whatever, but all the mechanics and in game management in under the purview of the pitching coach.

Can you pull it together and stay in one discussion? Who cares if Getz makes it to 2029? How is that where you go to with this? Everything becomes a conspiracy due to Getz' big ego to prove a trade worked, or some BS. He obtained players. When they don't work out, he seems to move on. Vargas is the guy who looks like a good clubhouse guy, and he also talks a good game - went into the off-season saying that if they wanted him to play OF, he'd learn the OF, he'll do whatever the team asks. I'd bet he gets a bit more leeway, and an extra chance. The guy whose agents call the front office every time he moves in the batting order, he probably doesn't get as many chances. That's how life works. The rest of this Bibble-dy-Babble is just that.

Yes, I believe we all agree that Getz probably wanted his own coaching hires, and JR probably told him to slow his roll, they can't pay two staffs. So they hired Venable, he worked with the old guard for a year, picked a couple who he worked well with, the other contracts weren't renewed, the end. Or we can frame it in the world of puppets, and agendas, and besmirching, and all that. There was a pretty stark situation with Thames at the ASB where Venable announced to the press that he wanted a change in focus for hitting. I don't think anybody disputes that. Not that Thames sucked. Not that Venable is a despicable human, just didn't work well together or something, but once Venable got his way, the team broke out. Thames is still recognized as a good hitting coach, nobody spit on his back as he left. I also feel the pitching staff under-performed. Some of the guys pitched to their ceilings, but some others didn't.

So anybody besides Teel or Colson being in the lineup means that Getz is on the phone to the dugout, tearing Venable a new one to put each player in the lineup on a daily basis? Please make it make sense. You seem to be saying that unless Getz is bullying the entire organization into doing his bidding, or unless Getz is a puppet of JR doing just that, Venable would only write up line-ups with two players in them every day? Because the only way players are written into starting lineups is for Getz to go all Cray brothers on the clubhouse?

Getz has been GM since August of 2023. The team was horrible. Are you saying they should have kept and resigned every player Hahn left behind? You would have to make individual arguments on why you think that guys like Seby Zavala, Grandal and Oscar Colas deserved new multi-year contracts to continue the elite baseball playing they were doing under Rick Hahn. Why do you think the White Sox should have resigned Yoan Moncada? Jesse Scholtens?

Do you think that relief pitchers came into games not sufficiently warmed up? Because that's pretty much what the bullpen coach is responsible for. The pitching coach works with them on their pitches and mechanics.

Dude, should a team not get a look at a new acquisition during garbage time? And with the injuries they had, whom was Mead taking playing time from who truly deserved it? You seem to just spew nonsense and pretend it fits your narrative. Do you have money on the Sox making the playoffs in 2026? If not, I wouldn't expect the entire next playoff team to be the opening day lineup just yet. And what about Shane Smith? I thought you were starting multiple threads opining about how he was going to be the next perennial superstar.

I'm not sure what the conspiratorial narrative you're pushing here is. That Getz is a puppet, or that he fired every Hahn person in a rage? Caulfield seems to be saying that EVERY PLAYER and EVERY COACH has been summarily dumped and besmirched on their way out. They weren't. Most were kept for a year. Venable seemed to have to speak up to voice a change in focus on the hitting side, that wasn't happening, and Katz's bullpens can speak for themselves.

This is a unique collection of nonsense musings. Getz doesn't seem to be hung up on forcing guys into the lineup who just aren't producing, even if they're one of his acquisitions. He cut bait pretty quickly on Dominic Fletcher and Zach DeLoach. Flexen, Cannon there's a bunch of guys who got demoted to the bullpen or minors to work on their craft. That doesn't mean we don't think a GM could be non-objective, no GM is completely objective. They're human. But Getz' teams have been pretty quick to pull the plug on his own dudes who drowned. Any former player or coach connected to Hahn? Summarily dumped? What team were you watching? Everybody here complained about how Grifol was kept, along with almost an entire coaching staff. Katz and Thames made two years. Vaughn and Robert got every chance to produce. Robert still is. Some unnamed person dishing to Liptak isn't "the organization bad-mouthing them" on the way out. Vaughn bad-played. Nobody needed to bad-mouth him. But you keep making up these little conspiracy theories. Are you actually saying the Sox org is seeding bad thoughts into SoxTalk about Lenyn Sosa? That is 2 funny. I don't recall anybody calling Robert "low IQ" beyond his swing decisions.

Two teams took pitchers recovering from TJS last offseason. I think one is still with the selecting team. It's a calculated risk a team would take to bring on a real dude. Selecting a player, they take up a 40-man spot for 2 months. Once spring training opens, they can stow them on the 60-day IL. They have a period of time to rehab them in the minors before they have to put them on the 26-man roster, and if they make 90 days on that, they belong to the new team, no strings attached. A team like the White Sox (I stress "like") could certainly spare a 40-man spot for a rehabbing pitcher. We already have 3.

Oh, this is Scott Merkin taking fan questions, and weighing the pros and cons. Of course they have to listen. I'd assume that Teel, the two Montys and Shane Smith are the only untouchables at the moment. But for the way Vargas gets talked about as a clubhouse leader, and unrealized potential, I'd think they'd have to be blown away by a package to move him.

I don't know if Hahn specifically targeted post-hype guys like Getz is doing. They'd grab up guys like Charlie Tilson or Ryan Cordell, talk them up, then park them on the bench. Invariably they'd be caught in between with an injury, then Cordell would be horribly exposed, starting for weeks. And there was really no infrastructure or focus to bring these guys along or fix them. Don Cooper had that ability, but I can't remember a hitter they brought in and even turned around any. They did have a thing about picking through first rounders who they liked, but missed, and working with them. Rutherford and Humber were guys like that. You could almost pick a draft year, and guess the guys they would be targeting.

No way the Sox will claim their own player in the Rule 5? You're replying to something I didn't write. I was explaining Rule 5 restrictions regarding Mason Adams. The White Sox declined to add Adams to the 40-man. Period. Adams had a clear shot in the spring of 2025 until he got injured. He may have even beaten out Cannon, who was still trying to find his pitches late in ST, and never really recovered his 2023-2024 form. I have no idea where Adams fits in the hierarchy with Bush and Thorpe. You keep attributing some huge ego problem to Getz where he's going to force roster moves that there's really no evidence of. Thorpe was a top prospect. He was also showing well against middling opposition until he hurt himself.