nrockway

it's going to be hilarious when we score 10 runs on Imanaga, including a 3 run pinch hit shot from The Duke.

Fedde is the only player he signed whose contract is longer than a year. The prospects who weren't acquired in exchange for garbage, Thorpe, Irarte and Zavala, all seem to be fine. DeLoach, Berroa, a draft pick all seem better than Gregory Santos who has yet to pitch this year. "The returns are not so good" is frankly not true unless you're hung up about Cristian Mena (which I am a little bit but I think about the moves in summation). I posted this in a different thread, but what would everyone's favorite GM Stearns have done differently with this roster? I think Getz and Stearns are worthy of comparison, two guys at new jobs who couldn't be perceived more differently. To my eye, Stearns has done a worse job with a lot more to work with. The Mets are almost as big a joke as the White Sox, a bigger joke when you consider they spend over twice the amount for their loser team. Getz didn't hire Grifol, but Stearns did hire Carlos Mendoza who seems like a carbon copy of Grifol, a 'player's coach' whose players don't like him. Seems like he didn't have a plan B after whiffing on Counsell. He signed Manea and Severino instead of Fedde for some reason. For a lot more money. Those two have been OK, but why didn't the wunderkind see what Getz saw? What has Stearns done to rebuild the Mets farm system? His predecessor was able to restock it somewhat by retaining the massive salaries of "star" pitchers, but what has Stearns accomplished with his owner's unlimited resources besides build a really bad, really expensive team? What I mean is, was Getz the right hire? I don't know, but I bet a lot of people thought David Stearns would have been a wonderful hire. So walk me through the moves he might have made differently.

They don't have anything left to trade. Need position players and their only tradeable ones are like 17. no thanks.

This guy rocks and I was called a goof for suggesting he’d be up this season. He’s a better hitter than .600 ops at AA but he’s also not a good hitter. Billy Hamilton is the comp. I bet he only appears to pinch run, get 10 or so ABs, then Robert will take his place.

They don’t care. All the owners will be dead and that much wealthier by the time that baseball is thought of the same way as horse racing.

Cubs games are/were free over the air on WGN, right? That seemed to be a good business decision. The thing I constantly wonder about regarding sports on television is that I haven't had cable or paid for a sports streaming service in probably a decade. Why would I pay for something when the pirated version is just as good? It's a free alternative to an expensive service and the quality is the same. The barrier of entry to understand how to watch these games is also low, even my aged father has figured it out. The leagues could have probably shut this down, but they've done nothing about it. Why not? Some survey was done by a sportsbook a few months ago noting that 35% of respondents pirate NFL games, slightly less than those that use an online streaming service and far more than those who watched on cable. You might assume a similar rate for the NBA, then you see how massive their new TV deal is going to be. What I don't understand is that it seems to me that the money doesn't actually come from people watching the games on cable. One might assume you still look at the same amount of advertisements, but you're watching the League Pass experience so you're not seeing any ads. Will they ever crack down on illegal streams? I doubt it.

he was an interim coach for a season and a half on a tanking team. had basically the same winning percentage as Hoiberg. Donovan has had one .500+ season in his tenure with a roster ostensibly built to win. He mismanaged several players who have gone on to have great careers on different teams. I don't see a difference between Donovan and Boylen except that one is a slick talker and the other is a buffoon.

.900 OPS is about what we were expecting from Ortiz, right?

There's a moral to this story but I'm too dumb to see it. That must be why I'm a Sox and Bulls fan.

I think Boylen gets too much s%*# for what is ultimately Hoiberg's failure. He only became the coach because players were going to him instead of their head coach for in-game adjustments. You look at what "legendary coach" Billy Donovan has done and I'd argue he's just as bad, maybe worse than Boylen. At least Boylen got something out of future all-star Lauri Markkanen by actually letting him touch the ball. Pretty much every player has regressed under Donovan besides DeRozan, and improved when they left the team. I don't think there's an analogy for Grifol, it was just a stupid hire all around. He's supposed to be a player's coach except everyone seems to hates him. Eddie Rodriguez is a specific problem that Pedro should be blamed for. Rodriguez doesn't have any idea when a good time to send a player is. We've seen the multitude of times he's sent the runner in a stupid situation (how about trying to send Maldonado coming from first base when Correa's holding the ball at the grass), what about all the runners he hasn't sent? I can think of at least two, and the Sox don't often have a runner on or rounding third base. This is literally the coaching staff squandering runs, it's about the only things they can actually control are these signs and bullpen decisions. I hate the 'aggressive style of play' on the base paths for this team, it's generally dumb baseball, it's especially so with this collection of unathletic, old players.

"The Process" never really had a chance to come to fruition. Hinkie was forced out and black-balled from the NBA, replaced by crony father and crony son, who would go on to run that team into the ground (relatively speaking). Anyway, to be a successful team in the NBA, you need to have a "superstar", and drafting early in the lottery multiple times increases your odds of finding one. It's really that simple. Having later draft picks is good too, you can find useful players that you don't have to pay much, then you have cap space to spend inefficiently on players who fill a specific need. That's basically the only sustainable team-building strategy in basketball, but step one is to have one of the top 10 players in the game. Clearly it worked for the 76ers anyway, they contend for a title every year because of Embiid. I'd love it if the Bulls had the success of the 76ers. Or, you know, the Warriors who were perpetually bad before drafting a couple superstars. Or pretty much every good team in the league that is now good as a result of previously being bad. You either tank or treadmill in basketball. The Bulls are committed to the treadmill and the team is impossible to watch. My hot take is that the Bulls are more embarrassing than the Sox. The Bulls would've kept Giolito, Lynn, etc because they weren't technically eliminated from the playoffs yet. Dylan Cease would still be on the team. We'd still be god awful, maybe not, ya know, historically bad. But still bad and not making the playoffs. At least the Sox said "yes, this isn't working, let's find a new general manager and get rid of all the players". The Bulls refuse to admit that. If they had admitted it years ago, the team might already be good again. Instead they're gearing up for another 35 win season. They're talking about trading up, more future assets, so they can draft a stiff who will 'contribute now'.

He was great when he filled in with the Bulls. Way better than Amin. My criticism of him is consistent: he wasn't a big enough homer. He did too many national games. I think the conflict of interest in his two jobs didn't allow for him to the do the Sox job its full justice. I like Schriffen's shtick; the hubris, the homerism. Imagine Bob Uecker saying, "just a bit outside", I think that character is what the local broadcaster should aspire to be. Schriffen is in that mold but needs to figure out how to not sound like a complete asshole. There are a lot of other things that he could potentially do better too. I hope he gets better. It's funny, he did actually sound way better with Beckham...at least, it wasn't adversarial. Maybe Stone is a major impediment. Just please don't replace him with Beckham.

They both sound like brats. On the Perkins catch in deep center field: "that would've been a home run" "Nuh uh it wouldn't have been a home run." "yes so it would have been times a million." *commercial break later* "see I told you it would've been a home run". I tend to like Stone but he's been insufferable to me this season. Part of it is bad attitude that he can control, the rest is that he and his partner have no common ground and the broadcasts are just awkward and uncomfortable. I've enjoyed listening to the Brew crew otherwise, they even brought Len Kasper in the booth. I really didn't think I'd miss Benetti but Tigers broadcasts are actually pretty good, Monroe and Benetti sound a lot better together than Stone and him.

I think the point is that both of these guys involved were the sort of guys you might expect to get into it...but Schriffen just came off like an oddball. He needs to pick his spots better. These outbursts seem fixable and I think he errs on the correct side of homerism unlike that last guy. Fixable for sure. His issue is that he just doesn't know baseball, he doesn't know any of the players, doesn't understand strategy, etc. Guys can get away with that doing a national game once in a while, just talk about whatever the f*** you want; you can't do that for 162 games, especially not for this team. I'm thinking of that 23 hit game the other night, there's clearly nothing to talk about and John is just like "hey, isn't it cool that they're playing a game in London?" Stone couldn't even be bothered to give a f*** with an answer.

The thing is, the team could come away with 3 more Benintendis and would we be happy that they "spent money"? Adames and Alonso both feel like they'd be 'marquee' targets, I'm not sure either one is someone you want to give a 5-6 year contract to. Bregman, Torres, Santander, a couple other guys factor in too. Santander and Torres could be nice pieces if they came relatively cheap. Nothing that really moves the needle all that much though. Is there salary Sox could take on trade? Not sure that's an appealing strategy either unless its dead salary attached to prospects.

what a catch! Fletcher making up for that home run he created.

he looks like a fat nerd. he looks like the kid you pick last. it doesn't even have to be a sport, you just pick him last because he's weird and you don't like him in addition to being bad at sports. at least now he looks like how he plays.

hey we're winning, there might finally be something on tv later.

Somewhere in Ohio, there’s a “Gay Hitler Road”. Apparently Gaylord Hitler was a doctor and titan of his community in the 19th century. We should all be more like Gay Hitler.

reminded of this meme:

That's Jorge Lopez and I bet some team will pick him up. For the Sox, I don't see a point in acquiring another just ok over 30 reliever. Pablo Lopez is one of my favorite pitchers though, unfortunately he's signed with the Twins through 2027.

It's interesting that the Padres and Marlins both took a look at him and said "no thanks" but I was sorta interested in him this offseason, he's young and has MLB quality stuff, I personally see no reason not to take a flyer on him over any one of the old bums in the bullpen. I think he has plenty of options left, right, do the Marlins have a 40 man crunch or is he just really bad? Or does the new team lose the options when it trades for the player? This seems weird, frankly, why even include him in the deal for Arraez?

Some follow-up news is that his kid is apparently in and out of the hospital receiving transplants for a rare genetic disorder and it was the kid's birthday yesterday. I feel for the guy, frankly, it was dumb to throw his glove and be like "I don't care" afterward, but the Mets organization might also be understanding the context, particularly when he's a pretty good pitcher and their staff makes ours look like the 1998 Braves. Getz me thinking about David Stearns and Chris Getz, two guys at new jobs who are perceived very differently by baseball fans. Stearns is apparently a genius while Getz is unqualified and a crony. Seems to me that Stearns hasn't had a very good first year on the job, struck out on Counsell with no backup plan and has put together one of the worst teams in the sport at the low, low cost of 2.5 times the White Sox payroll. Most of his free agent signings have been a bust. Manaea and Severino have been pretty good, but it's amusing that Stearns thought it wise to pay them a combined $41mil and didn't seem to consider Fedde at 15 million. Stearns has many more tools to work with (unlimited money), but is he really doing a better job than Getz? Because the Metz seem like a disaster.

He definitely didn't say that and it's asinine that all these journalists are just repeating it like it's a fact. anyone with ears heard him say in his second language "I'm the worst teammate in the MLB". Oh but they 'confirmed it' because a report mumbled a follow-up question "did you say team or teammate?" "probably". Lesson to Bryan Ramos that the Anglophone media is going to use your English-language skills against you. I'd just keep speaking in Spanish through a translator, personally. Thanks a lot, journalism.