JoeC

I love these kinds of acquisitions. Low-risk, high-upside (albeit low probability) ...that said, I hate that this type of acquisition is the best we can hope for.

Yeah, seems like we're more of a dropout... like we've just given up entirely.

I think he's talking about having 20k people at the game. Currently there are 0 people making the commute to Soldier Field ("Downtown").

One-way traffic only on the concourse. No exceptions.

Promotion: "Bat Night" (note: this used to be real. Not sure if it is now.) Between-innings-entertainment: "Bat Flip Cam"

Bartering-based concessions where fans can obtain food in exchange for "trading down" to less-expensive seating. Taste-of-Chicago-style tickets for all concession items. As a cashless venue, force all fans to purchase paper tickets, which will be the only way to acquire any food, drinks, or merchandise. To reduce operating costs, keep no more than three ticket vending stations open at any time. To minimize localized crowding, periodically and randomly close each ticket vending station without warning to provide fans with the ability to explore all parts of the stadium prior to being able to buy something from a vendor while in their seats

Emphasis on pitchers' fielding practice in the FUNdamentals area.

Free MLB.TV trial subscription while in the stadium, so you can at least watch one meaningful game while you're there. "Speed Catch" machine where, instead of clocking your fastest pitch, you get to try to catch a 99-mph fastball.

I read his post more as a “Clevinger may be a bad dude, but he’s no worse than the other despicable characters if philandering is your standard of ‘bad dude.’” But yeah - otherwise I agree. That “locker room” culture is frankly the cause of some of the worst excuse for human behavior I have seen.

In the end, nobody comes out of this a winner. The accuser will surely be harassed for making these accusations, regardless of whether she is ultimately proven right (note: I'm inclined to believe accusers in these cases). Clevinger will forever have this held over him even if the accusations end up being false. That said, I believe MLB actually has a framework in place to make sure due diligence is completed before "firing" a player in cases like this. The only way to redeem his image is IF Clevinger is innocent + IF MLB finds him innocent + IF MLB is transparent with its findings and process. Do I think he's guilty? Yes. Do I think the Sox should be done with him? Fork yes. Do I want the process to play out before giving him the boot? Yes. Of course, if the MLB process is actually a joke, then I will change my mind about this all....

For Lopez's sake I hope not....

Really going out on a limb there, eh?

Well, hopefully the underlying peripherals show that Kelly did just get hit by bad luck: https://www.fangraphs.com/players/joe-kelly/9761/stats?position=P The eye test still tells me his command sucked, but it'd be interesting with this new analytics-friendly regime, what sort of usage Kelly will get.

...you do realize that minor league contracts are basically zero risk, right? I've never understood the gripe with minor league signings / spring training NRI's. Super low risk. Even this org isn't stupid enough to sign non-prospects to block the development of actual prospects.

Well, hopefully this works. Can't say he's not trying at least. ? I do notice a difference in his landing from 2020 to 2022, and the 2022 landing seems to have carried over to the above video.

Analytics should impact both player acquisition as well as in-game strategy. One of our major gripes as a fan base last year was the horrible decision making by the coaching staff. Analytics hires like this, to me, show that we’re going to change that.

Don't make me answer that.

Not if we do a salary dump swap for an overpaid reliever in return.

To me, the owner's responsibilities are: 1. Hire the right staff (executives) who will make the right baseball decisions. Get the right leadership in place. 2. Give the baseball staff the resources ($$, namely) and autonomy to make the right decisions. Let the leadership do their jobs. To me JR has failed in these regards. The constant "promote within the family" mentality undercuts objective #1. Objective #2 you can make maybe make an argument for, but the fact is: This team is being out-contract-spent by the Twins The Twins have now committed 9-figure deals to 3 players I think of off the top of my head (Mauer, Buxton, and now Correa), whereas the Sox's largest contract is $75MM JR has shown to insert himself into lower-level decisions to undercut his own executive staff Hiring of a manager Refusing to pay top dollar for pitching after shelling out for Jaime Navarro The results are that, in 41 years of owning the team, he's brought home 1 World Series championship. He's brought home 1 AL pennant. If it weren't for literally lucking into the greatest basketball player who ever played, he'd have 1 championship in 78 combined years of sports ownership.

Or sprinting??

No. That said, there's a difference between accepting a less-than-a-starter's-production-level performance (in favor of positional versatility) and the absolute trainwreckingshitshow production level that Leury provided. He had a .500 OPS (OPS+ of 42... or 58% less productive than MLB average). For context, Neifi Perez's worst season with at least 100 PA's was an OPS+ of 44 (.564 OPS in 2002). I will agree with you that Garcia was put in a crap position and was set up to fail. I don't blame Leury for that - I blame TLR. TLR kept putting Leury in a position to fail... over and over again, including the asinine decision to hit him #3.

When your main value proposition as a player is your positional versatility, it is expected to be able to position shuffle.

To celebrate, I'm gonna pick seat 10D in Premium Economy on my next flight. Middle seat be damned!

Seems like he needs to get into the confectionary business.