Look at Ray Ray Run

We have a dramatically different definition of competently. The Sox payroll scales because they waste so much money on these little trash moves. They have spent 13 million dollars on Harrison/Leury/Velasquez. That's basically what it costs to get a guy like Jean Segura; an actual competent second baseman. Who would you rather have, Romy and Segura or that package of trash they have now?

It's the White Sox MO. They try and nickle and dime star players, to the point that they usually lose them to other teams in FA. Meanwhile, they overpay for scrubs and don't care about the nickles and dimes for them. It's just backwards logic. Guys like Leury and Josh Harrison are a dime a dozen, in a lot of cases they can be had with minor league invites! The Sox feel the lock those guys in by overpaying whatever market they even have, and then they go cheap for actual impact players.

The guy was signed to be the starter. I'm not sure what you've missed. It's not a depth piece. The Sox don't have a second baseman. They let go of one who was cheaper and better than the guy they signed. There's no rational for the move. The Sox gave 5.5 million to a guy who was almost out of baseball two years ago.

Where was this phantom speculation. The irony of this post is that for as bad as Cesar was since his acquistion by the Sox, Josh Harrison was about as bad after he was acquired by Oakland. What winning pedigree does Josh Harrison have? A's fans loved a guy who had a .637 OPS and a .296 OBP. What in the world?

OK, let's go back to 2015. Josh Harrison since 2015 has one season over 2 fWAR. He's accumulated 6.5 fWAR total in 677 games. Even with going back to his prime years, he has averaged a whopping 1.5 fWAR per 162 games. He is now about to be 35 and his game has regressed, he apparently had an injury problem for three years in a row lol, and he's projected to be a 1 WAR player by pretty much every metric. The guy he was signed to REPLACE as the starter, who I have dogged on endlessly as having no business starting for a championship calibar team, has averaged 1.7 fWAR since 2017, is 5 years younger, and was better last year (Leury) I have no idea how anyone in their right mind could defend signing Josh Harrison to START!

Elite production? How about someone who isn't worse than the guy they let go, Cesar, and who signed for cheaper than Harrison???! The Sox signed Harrison for more than Cesar signed for. The last three years there's literally nothing about Harrison's game that is better than Cesars and Cesar is a good bit younger. The incompetence of the Harrison signing deserves all the ridicule it can get.

He's 35 years old and in 2018, 2019 and 2020 he put up a total of zero fWAR combined. A team with championship aspirations shouldn't have Josh f'ing Harrison as their starting 2nd baseman. He was RELEASED by the fucking Tigers two years ago.

Harrison isn't a competent starter by any means.

The 11 million on Harrison and leury honestly makes my head spin.

I wouldn't even want montas.

I'm not going to go into this again, as I've already gone through this during the trade and I actually think people are being a little too hard on kimbrel right now (crazy), but there were underlying concerns about his stuff declining, command beginning to waver and fastball losing effectiveness.

You keep using this spring training excuse, but Kimbrel has been declining since his last year and a half in Boston.

No, you're just playing way more games versus the NL.

You're still playing in your division 14 times versus 6 out of division.

When Jerry bumped the payroll above 160 million he demanded they cut the Asian scout to save some money?

Yes Jack, really.

Harold also told us to "just wait...." two days ago as if a move was about to be announced.

Exactly, the Sox gave up their leverage by picking up an option and basically broadcasting to the world they picked it up to move it. Everyone in the world knows Jerry isn't going into the tax, and everyone knows the Sox can't make a signficant move without getting out from under Kimbrel's contract. Wait out the trade if you're another team and the Sox run out of time to use that transaction as a starting point to make other moves.

For me it's a timing issue. Kimbrel feels like a late off-season (right before the season starts) move because he'll be waiting for other relievers to sign like Jansen. By then, the good RF'ers could very well be off the market. Maybe the Sox decide Kimbrel is being moved no matter what and they spend before the trade, but that doesn't strike me as a very White Sox thing to do. So if they miscalculated anything, it's the timing the move would happen which could hamper them making any other signficant moves. It wouldn't be the first time they misread a market and cost themselves either. Also, I just don't think keeping him makes much sense if they trade him for a non-asset, or trade him for another overpaid asset that fills a hole. I just think the idea that they're going to be able to trade Kimbrel for some package that improves the club this year, opens up dollars to be spent, and allows them to spend them before the guys that would help them sign is a heck of a difficult scenario to achieve.

Greinke is washed; looked like Keuchel down the stretch.

It's honestly as if Hahn had to tear down the Sale/Q team that was stars and scrubs and decided that the way to avoid having stars and scrubs is to sign a ton of scrubs instead of a single star. I guess he figures if you acquire 10 scrubs maybe one will surprise you.

The Reds aren't tanking. There's no end goal here for them. They're just... not spending regardless of their draft pick lol.

I'm not starting Niko Goodrum. He's my utility guy. Good baserunner. Can play every position on the diamond. Maybe he gets lucky and has a mediocre offensive year. Honestly I'd probably sign Cesar to be my starting 2B if I knew this was where we were at, and I'd be 4 million over Hahn's budget.

Who knew Keuchel and Grandal would encompass the entirity of "supplementing this core financially" from Hahn in Free-Agency three years ago. If you would have told me when the rebuild started that the Sox weren't going to break the 100 million dollar threshold on any player in FA to support the rebuild I would have thought you were crazy. Now I know I was probably the crazy one.

Given that Rick will give these same BS contracts out next off-season and the one after that, the point will continue to be accurate.