JoeC

A Vatican Series to open the 2026 season?

Yeah, maybe a cheap shot, but as someone who is largely agnostic, this is the “best” thing to happen to my team this year. An off-the-field event that didn’t even happen on our continent.

My goodness. This is what my fandom has come to - being happy about religion.

RIP.

https://www.si.com/fannation/mlb/fastball/news/chicago-white-sox-outfielder-oscar-colas-makes-painful-blunder-in-spring-training-game-vs-chicago-cubs-hit-in-head-by-fly-ball-highlights-01jmsm8ere9s Not the top of the head, I suppose, but just this year.

Apparently so. Confirmed his GB% is high on Fangraphs. Yikes.

https://www.rotowire.com/baseball/article/5-unlucky-players-expected-to-breakout-92467 FWIW, the batted ball metrics seem to indicate Vaughn has been unlucky so far. Does that mean he’s worth holding onto to see if he breaks out of it? Or is it a “sell now before even his batted ball stats start to decline?”

If he’d lollygag like the Hall-of-Fame skipper wants him to, it wouldn’t be a problem, now, would it?

No. One or the other. Greatness or total failure. There is no in between. It's the Soxtalk way.

I love that “Bred in Chicago” is a side slogan on this, with the logo being a tube sock.

I can see how you'd see that. Pretty sure those are streamers or whatever that are hung from the light posts.

Yeah, a season of success followed by a season of abject failure. They literally had to re-build him from the ground up. I would argue Montgomery isn't the same, but it's the closest thing I could come up with off the top of my head.

Fair enough. I guess my point is.... baby steps. At least acknowledging failures is the first step to fixing them. I have no faith in their ability to fix things on the scale they need to be fixed, but at least they're not just doing nothing before giving up.

In summary, we may have gone from: To: …but at least it’s trying something different, which is (I guess) progress from where the org has been.

Not sure it counts the same, but the Blue Jays did the same with Roy Halladay way back in the day.

More of a celebration of the recognition that he's broken. Admitting that something is wrong is better than living in denial.

I don't think they've done anything like this for any other prospects in the Sox org before, have they? We've had other prospects struggle / hit ceilings (or not hit anything at all), and the most we've done is drop 'em down a level. I don't like that he's struggling, but this again shows the current regime is willing to try stuff that goes against the grain of what this organization has done previously.

I think it's because we were already so close to the floor in 2024 that it's hard to go much lower. We're reaching asymptotic territory soon, and I wouldn't be surprised if 2026 had a smaller decrease (~5%).

They should renew the sweetheart deal to stay at 35th and Shields, with the caveat / benefit to the state that they can sell off / develop some of the parking lots for development.

...or candy!

Get out of here with that advanced stat shenanigan.

Not wasting a year is paying off already.

“Money will be spent.”

aka the mythical “South Detroit.”

Speaking as someone who lives in the Detroit area, I can say that this is factually incorrect