nrockway

What in the fuckin world? I woke up at like 3am and looked at my phone and saw this business. Absolutely nasty. What? Why? I'm not going back to sleep. This is absurd. I need to talk s%*# on the internet. At least it's Sunday. Nothing about this deal makes sense for the Mavs...you trade a young superstar under contract for an old, injury prone guy? I really like AD. He's a Chicago guy that I think should've been a Bull. Mavs didn't even get picks. AD is a stud but injury-prone and over 30. Luka is a star, 25-years-old, he's gonna be great for a long time. It's BS man.

Boy that draft really was terrible. Bohm probably was the best player selected in the first round. It would be McClanahan but are we considering comp picks as first rounders?

Tim is always a thoughtful guy. I appreciate the quotes you shared, I’ll read the full article later on. But I’m really rooting for him. I’m skeptical of the profile, babip merchant that can’t play d, but I’m always rooting for him.

He's not 30% of the cap good is the problem. Fortunately, I don't think he's a negative value contract anymore like he has been since he signed the extension. Zach with two years left on his deal, and after having this nice season (if it continues and he remains healthy), I think is pretty easy to trade even if he's owed $100mil. They have to trade him, they can't roll with him. They screwed up too much everywhere else on the roster. Now you're almost wondering about what you need to add to get rid of Pat Williams's contract. Or the absurd extension they'll almost certainly give Giddey. Everything said about Getz is true of Karnisovas. This is the biggest idiot in professional sports.

I think even if he's a 2.5 WAR, .700 OPS, good defense up the middle kinda player, I would've thought he's getting a better deal than Benintendi got. Kim could be our shortstop for the next 5 years and I'd be pretty happy about it. Maybe teams saw what you say about the injury.

That’s a steal of a deal. I can’t believe he didn’t get paid more. He should be a White Sox for that price.

It’s now an “own” but it’s a good point. I would only push back on his point to say that the existential misery of the Chicago sport fan is part of what makes the fandom fun. And Cubs fans are idiots.

I think it was plausible that the team last year could’ve been better than the previous season. It was one possible outcome. I guess it was predicated on Robert, moncada, Benintendi, Eloy, etc. staying healthy and playing to their potential. And Vaughn, Ramos, Sosa, whoever taking a step forward. Which obviously didn’t happen. But it wouldn’t have necessarily been wild if Eloy/Moncada were 3WAR players. I mean I admittedly expected better and was bamboozled. But also not surprised or particularly disappointed.

Good observation. I do think ichiro is overrated though. The fact that him and Mariano are the two top vote getters is telling. I’m not sure what it tells, but it doesn’t have to do with baseball ability.

Daytime Emmy kinda post. I think it’s a good one. But you sure committed to the theoretical quote.

The formatting is indeed challenging. Speaking of repeating things we just saw on tv, apparently they arrested some teens for killing a coyote in mt greenwood. I’m not sure what to make of this story.

Supposedly minor leaguers joined MLBPA in 2022 rather than forming their own. They ratified their own CBA a year later and I assumed they were under some weird umbrella like UAW. I don’t have any idea how the inclusion of minor leaguers impacts collective bargaining at the major league level. I imagine it might.

I was laughing at O's fans for being optimistic about this guy. you can go down to Hyde Park and see the role this dunce has played in 'overhauling' the neighborhood. Fewer bizarre bookstores and sex shops, more chipotles and capital one cafes (this is a real thing). more weird, post-modern architecture. more security guards running stop signs and playing loud music outside my house at 2am. The baseball team is an investment for him and nothing more. Well it's a little more, it's an ego-stroking venture as well. Check the bobblehead. This is an interesting 'labor' dispute because the players could theoretically get a lot more out of arbitration in exchange. Or reach free agency sooner. Reaching free agency sooner seems like something a majority of players would like and would earn more money from. I believe MILB and MLB players have different unions otherwise I think this is a much easier negotiation. Minor league wages, even after the raise they got, are pretty pathetic. Minor League baseball is the lifeblood of Major League baseball, baseball is a wholly different sport without the minor leagues, they should pay the guys a little more. Especially the guys who will never sniff the majors, they're playing an important role for the sport. I reckon Dominican 15-year-olds don't have a union because they'd probably have some things to ask for too.

if I was a degenerate, I would bet all the money I have (about 200 bucks) on Colson being the opening day SS. He just will be. It isn't for baseball reasons.

Rocky Marciano played for the Sox?

I wonder how much scouts are influenced by the hoopla. The dodgers have all these prospects and then what happens to them? I thought Diego Cartaya was “can’t miss”. I suspect Ferris will be a good pitcher no matter what but I think the Dodgers org is better at marketing than it is at player development.

I don't think it's the greatest story. I'm dubious that Ichiro even belongs in the Hall of Fame. He sure isn't a First Ballot kind of guy. He enters the Hall alongside the likes of David Ortiz, media darlings with better personalities than baseball ability. I'm not even sure Ichiro has a personality, he just seems like a regular guy. Certainly "the idea of Ichiro" lives strong in the minds of baseball fans and apparently within the writers who have projected all sorts of attributes onto Ichiro. The writers watched him play when they were kids and wanted to emulate him because he didn't hit for power and neither could they. He couldn't speak English and neither could the Baseball Writers' Association of America. He had a lasting MLB career without hitting a bunch of bombs, so maybe Joe Takahashi in Plainfield could too. The people's champ in this way. I feel this way and I loved Ichiro. But was he ever actually that good? A right fielder with a career .760 OPS is in on the first ballot? He's on the cusp to me. Like, in terms of baseball ability, he's probably similar to, perhaps a little better than, Magglio Ordonez. I think Magz should be in, I think Ichiro should be too, but he got in way too easily. Ichiro had a big impact on the social component of the game, which is wonderful and should be considered, but I think he might be the most overrated baseball player of all time.

This is a fun fact. He wasn't "Jonathan the Baptist" ya know. David's best bud wasn't John. Speaking of the Bible, David's love interest was Jonathan but he named his son Nathan. 'יְהוֹנָתָן'‎ (ye-hon-a-ton) vs 'נתן' (na-tan). I assume Jonathan and John are alike with via 'YHWH' and Jonathan and Nathan are alike through that last syllable meaning 'to give'. So if Jonathan was given by God, John is an embodiment of God's grace, meanwhile Nathan was just 'given' -- presumably still by God.

that's exactly what I had in mind! Boomers keep saying things like "well gen Z needs a guy that can speak their language" but gen z just needs a competent coach that isn't a total goofball who knows a thing or two about his profession.

yup, well said. I bolded the part I particularly agree with. I don't think he's 'officially' been moved off CF, I just don't think he's a CF. It's like Colson with SS, I just don't see it. And those are pretty good numbers for a right fielder with an arm. personal, dummy opinion. I think they're the positions where you put 'glove-first, fast' guys. I was sad to lose Duke Ellis for that reason, he's fast and has range...but is raw. The Yanks see something with him. Brewers have a guy like this, Blake Perkins, produced a good amount of WAR despite a mediocre NL bat. As far as Colson, he looks like a prototypical 3b; huge arm, little range, big bat. He just looks like an elite 3b and maybe a guy who can 'hold down' SS but not very well and not for a winning team. Maybe with good pitching. I don't know why Ramos never got a shot at SS, he looks like the best SS in the organization. Dunno why Moncada never got reps at SS. Of course he wants to stay at short, they all do, but let him focus on the bat and get a proper defender to play short. Maybe that's Gonzalez...but doubtful. He looks like a good enough defensive SS but like his bat won't carry him to MLB.

I still think Zavala is going to be OK, he wasn't ever really a center fielder, he was the key piece of the trade to me. I don't know a thing about 'hitting mechanics' but he seems to be reigning in the thing that scouts were critiquing, the leg kick, and he walks at a rate that is worth considering. I think he can be a stud right fielder, I bet he starts at A+ and quickly moves on to AA. Personally I'm more upset that there isn't a true shortstop or center field prospect in the system. I don't think they can trade Luis if there isn't somebody to replace him. He's a superstar player when his offense is on, he's still arguably the best defensive CF regardless...who can still, at the very worst, sort of swing a bat. Defense is pretty important at CF/SS and I don't see anybody in the system that excels at it, has ++ speed...specifically in the outfield. I think Justin Crawford is a player like that, I'm still hopeful he can be pried from Philly like Caba was. Maybe the basis for a trade involving Luis and a pitcher. Wish Caba could've been part of it.

I was reading into that remark too but I thought it was about Preller and Thorpe. Vargas makes more sense. Either one of those GMs seem like snakes. I liked hearing this about Getz, at least what he says to the press, that honesty pays out in the end. The "process" talk is reasonable and I think truer of baseball than most other sports. Jerry Krause [in]famously said, "players and coaches don't win championships; organizations win championships" which I don't think is totally true -- but it's kind of true, and I think it's truer of baseball than it is basketball [(particularly when Michael Jordan plays for you, though CLE couldn't win with LeBron). Although "the process" worked well for the 76ers until their GM was forced out for non-basketball related reasons. Old school, dummy general management turned the Sixers from a potential dynasty into a treadmill team. I digress]. There's maybe a less famous discussion on "process and thing", I don't think it's a corporate thing like a poster alluded to, I learned about it in terms of historiography, that maybe it's easier to think of "things" as the summation of a "process" and so you're not going to get the desirable "thing" (winning games) without an appropriate process to facilitate it. Maybe you can analyze the historical process based on the "thing" that is left. I appreciate that a baseball GM is thinking like that without having some bozo MBA education like Rick Hahn had. Getz seems like an intelligent dude, but like he has some wisdom and specific pro baseball experience too, not some contracts class at northwestern. Good baseball teams, CLE and TBR being great examples, churn out these hitters that nobody has ever heard of, they perform in the MLB, meanwhile Sox fans are waiting around (hoping?) for that highly-touted Cuban or Venezuelan (not Dominican for various reasons) 16-year-old to finally turn into something as a 24-year-old. This speaks to the process. We have some random, no name pitchers to look forward to, like 13th rounder Mason Adams, because the pitching side of things is semi-competent. I guess there's 12th round position player Brooks Baldwin, but ultimately the Sox can't field position players because...well I don't know why...but you hope that some of the recent hires are targeted as fixing specific problems. Let's hope Fuller is that guy. Thought it was interesting/thoughtful that Getz didn't blame it all on the new hire MLB hitting coach (who said some stuff that rubbed me the wrong way), but I'm skeptical this staff has figured anything out in terms of hitting...or if Fuller is 'that guy' to take the team somewhere. I'm "pro-Getz" in terms of Sox fans, but the pitching development was already pretty good and we've yet to see evidence of developing hitters. My glass is half full always, but we'll see, I think Braden Montgomery will be the first test on the 'development' front. Everything points to him being an excellent right-fielder for a long time, but the org has to pull it out of him. I keep hoping we trade for some younger, less-MLB ready talent because it might indicate the team knows more than we do about the players and that they're confident in developing them. Maybe Meidroth (Gilgamesh, Saruman, somebody give this guy a proper nickname) is that guy, a sleeper, but he's going to be on the major league roster after spring training. Maybe a Luis trade returns a 19-year-old or two. Actually, I was extra-reading into the remark about the GMs that have such a bad reputation that teams won't do trades with them. I think of Cincy and Pittsburgh as not making many trades, but the Reds are active lately. The Reds have seemed like a logical trading partner the past couple years. Jonathan India should've played 2b for the Sox last year. I wonder who he's talking about.

Good listen. He sounds competent certainly. a lot of talk about a “plan” and “core pillars” or whatever, which sounds nice, but what are the “core pillars” of a baseball organization and why? Wish the interviewer would’ve asked but that guy seemed tongue twisted the whole time, couldn’t get a word out! hiring competent people and tasking them to figure out what’s wrong organizationally is definitely a good thing and was likely missing from the previous regime. But how do we know if the people being hired are competent? Bannister certainly is. Will Ryan Fuller truly be a “Bannister of hitting” or is that marketing speak? What about that guy we “poached” from AZ? That seems to have resulted in a dumb trade and I think a pointless hire to the coaching staff. More importantly, why didn’t the AZ guy tell Getz to select Deyvison de los Santos in the R5 draft last year? He was obviously a stud in AZ’s system, now he’s a top 100 prospect.

"hey fam (Caleb Williams), no cap, you can't hold onto the ball that long, fr fr 😭🤌" - Shane Waldron probably I'm still saying that Kyle Shanahan is going to be the next Bears coach. He'll be out of a job in a week.

Thinking of Olive Kitteridge. Frances McDormand plays the titular character in the hbo miniseries. Worth reading and/or watching.