nrockway

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.

It seemed like they were scraping the bottom of the barrel but I wasn’t expecting they’d sign a 90-year-old pharmacist. Or whatever that book was about.

It’s an overpay but mediocre first basemen are being paid double

Bobcats is objectively hilarious.

I dunno, it seems like a pretty good lineup. Who actually wants Ozzie? He might spit on me.

≈ in fairness to the Sox, I'm not sure that Jerry has ever made himself into a bobblehead. laughing at O's fans who thought Boobenstein would be a step up.

Lux sux. Would've rather gotten India...two offseasons ago. Kopech would've gotten it done.

Maybe they're gonna let him hit

I’m not super impressed by “clever” people who find loopholes and make a mockery of whatever system they’re involved in; in this case, professional sports. The MLB’s biggest fault IMO is how laissez-unfaire the financial system is, the deferrals just shines another light on how dumb and unregulated it is. Friedman seemed to do better work in Tampa Bay and they’re also in great shape after he left. That’s a good organization. They mention the Lightning too, an organization that made Yzerman look like a genius; now he looks like a fool being in charge of a historically excellent team. The organizations themselves are solid irrespective of the boss. I don’t think that’s true of the Dodgers as of late, they win because all the good players want to play there and LAD has an unlimited budget. None of this is to say the White Sox are competent or any Chicago team, I just question the methodology of the article. One time we used an analytic hierarchy process model to turn “professional” opinion into something quantifiable and the results were pretty good. New Dork Times should know how to conduct a survey, those con artists at the Athletic told me their publication was gonna be intellectual, what happened.

A 23-year-old 8th round, right-handed reliever that can’t throw strikes. I wonder why you’d select a guy like that to begin with. Who cares. This is only annoying because there are already 1000 pitchers on the team.

Most of these guys suck at baseball. You can do this for every team. It's not the second best front office in professional sports, that's absurd.

What does the current front office have to do with any of these players? I'm pretty sure Clayton Kershaw is old enough to be Friedman's daddy. Will Smith is the only player Friedman actually picked. He's the only one who was actually a useful player this season. Are the Dodgers ranked this way if they don't sign Betts, Freeman, Ohtani? Of course not and you can thank the city of Los Angeles for that, not a front office. Most of their recent prospects have busted or are in the process of busting. The Rays are more competent than the Dodgers, for example. This rating system is dumb and just some guys' "what have you done for me lately" opinions.

That #1 front office on that list traded James Harden entering his prime on a reasonable contract and couldn't win a championship with two future Hall of Famers also in their prime. In other words, lol, Presti is the most overrated GM in the NBA The Dodgers, the #2 (💩) team, are also not a particularly well-managed team, their impact players are free agents who like being paid a lot of money to live in the Hollywood Hills and be Hollywood as Hell. Is their GM "the angel", the namesake of LA? Don't think so, I think it's some guy that loves trading for White Sox pitchers because they can't develop any. When was the last time LAD developed a player that was any good? The only correct answer is the Green Bay Packers, don't need to use some pseudo-statistical method to reach that conclusion. Speaking of pseudo-statistical methods in journalism, I keep waiting for an article like this to be based on a survey created using some sort of multi-criteria decision analysis, it might actually be meaningful to ask these GMs (or whoever they're surveying) questions in a structured and rigorous way. PS didn't anyone tell you guys we're boycotting the NYT?

I think Fletcher can only be useful if he's an every day center fielder. Which I don't think he is. Low range, too short and too slow and I'm never going to forget him "oops"ing that easy out into a three-run home run. His bat is definitely not good enough to play in right field. Why have two non-sluggers in the corners? 80 grade TWTW I guess, can't teach that. Agree about Colas, he at least has the profile of a right fielder. Realistically Fletcher is probably a semi-useful bench player. Mena had a pretty good season but I think this trade is pretty much a wash. I bet Cannon could net an actually useful outfielder.

I can do that at the Lucky Horseshoe Lounge on Halsted and it's free and the drinks might be free. The Sox and Bananas could never. I might recommend a baseball theme night. Likely Cubs fans, unfortunately.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy watching umpires twerk to Mariah Carey as much as the next guy, it just gets a little old after the 10th time.

I feel like the bit is getting tired and they've run out of ideas. They can only milk the celebrity appearances and homoeroticism for so long. Don't have the staying power of the Globetrotters. Can't even dance. I think they're going to start a Barstool-esque network pretty soon.

is 'over 9000' an option? I vote "over 9000".