Chisoxfn

QUOTE (shipps @ Nov 21, 2016 -> 12:17 PM) I think many expected to see some development and some execution in their plan. As it stands now, Pace and Fox are divided. They appear to never have been on the same page. So many injuries, the appearance that there is no order in the org, no one on the same page, people pointing fingers and blame passing and when pretty much everything that could have gone wrong has gone wrong makes people a bit uneasy. A rebuild is one thing but when you lay the new foundation and start putting the bricks up again only to see things crumble from the get go is a whole different story. Technically that appearance is given from the outside...I don't know what Fox & / or Pace have done to contribute to that appearance. I haven't seen us take players and then the other part of the regime through them under the bus or vice versa. I think a lot of the angst, clearly is due to our performance (that said, I actually think the cup is more full then empty now vs. two years ago and we actually have had a fantastic draft this year...assuming Floyd's injury doesn't impact his career) but another piece has to be tied to the fact that the media flat out doesn't like Fox. They don't like his non-answers and how coy he is and they don't like how they shielded and prevented media axis. By and large the Chicago media has been generally anti-Fox every since he shut them down in the first training camp. Fox isn't perfect and Pace isn't, but right now I've seen enough from Pace that I'm okay letting him run this show. If Pace never wanted Fox and is ready to move on, I give him that chance, because player development wise, outside of the White pick (which who would know he'd get hurt), in general, I like who we have gotten via the draft. Sure, we should have taken a QB, but Howard, Whitehair and Floyd all look like impact players who are coming from this years draft (the first one where him and his entire team were in place...last year we had to leverage the old regime / processes and even then last years draft, outside of our top pick being an injury bust, isn't a bad one (doesn't help that Goldman has the same injury bug). This years is clearly better then last years though and in FA, I like what we did this off-season. Hicks was a nice piece who should be part of a longer term trend and I didn't see any huge / wasteful moves via FA. This process is going to take time, but I think if we did go the route to draft a QB in the 2nd or 3rd round and signed a Romo, we'd find out that we will contend sooner then people expect. If we force the hand and take whomever is best with our 1st pick (whether we believe in that QB or not)...than we shall see, cause if we get a Goff, we could be in much worse shape.

To answer the question, I don't care the style as long as we play winning baseball. All I want to see on the southside is winning baseball, but if we are going to lose in the process, please let it be with young players who we see a future with, vs. because our veterans continue to let us down, etc. Give me losses with some hope vs. losses with little to no hope (which is what the last few years have been).

QUOTE (iamshack @ Nov 19, 2016 -> 08:12 AM) Yeah, I mean I guess the point is that if a significant part of Bregman's value is tied to his ability at SS, then you either need to be willing to move Anderson off SS or else value Bregman as 2B or 3B. You don't want to hurt his value or overpay for him if he doesn't represent that value to you. Or you need to get a 3rd team involved and move Bregman for someone who is a better overall fit for your team (if you do in fact think his value is tied to SS). I also tend to think Anderson is most valuable at SS. That isn't to say it can't work cause obviously you can have one at 2B or do something else. I don't think this is the case for Bregman though (in the sense that he needs to stick at SS).

By the way, amazing what a year brings. Our overall PG play is still sub-par, but our depth is so good. Canaan is really solid off the bench as is MCW and I think Valentine will finish the season as good, if not better then any of them. Plus there is Grant who has flashed, but also struggled at times. Either way, a much better spot then we had been in past years. Too bad it took this long to address it (cause it wasn't like we didn't have a few year run where we had a starting PG who was made of glass). I'm hoping all of the young guards pay a lot of attention to what they can learn from Papa Wade.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Nov 21, 2016 -> 09:17 AM) Loggains has no idea how to call a consistent offensive game. He just abandons the run game in the second half every f***ing time. Howard gets like 70 to 100 yards in the first half of just about every game he starts and then disappears in the second half. Although dude needs to work with the jugs machine They mentioned Howard had an eye injury that could have been impacting his depth perception. Think I saw that in a Haugh piece. Either way, bad use of hands for Howard, who looks like a beast on the field. I do think part of what happened was our entire oline was a wreck and we literally had no one to stretch the field, so it becomes extremely difficult to even run the ball in those circumstances. My stance on who our coach should be long term is changing. If we bring in a veteran QB (say a Romo or even a Jimmy G), then I am okay with Fox. If we are going to go with a young QB that we draft, I want a new head coach and I say that more because I want to ensure whomever we draft is going to be here for a few years and they will be in the same system and get that continuity that is deserving. If we think Fox is the guy, fine, but that means we can't have a turnstyle of offensive coordinators in the future. And I still think Fox should work out, but Loggains is hard to judge. He grew on me as the season went on, but has clearly lost some momentum, that said, when you actually analyze who is on the offensive roster at this point (especially after Miller's injury), you can see why it would be a struggle to do much offensively.

QUOTE (farmteam @ Nov 18, 2016 -> 05:20 PM) I heard something about a couple popular guys from Texas (San Antonio, maybe?) that people were excited about. Can't remember the names though. It'd be a gamechanger if Texas was actually in play during an election. Popovich and Cuban?

I'm jealous. Looks awesome shack. Been back on the court each of the past couple weeks (after a long hiatus) and just seeing that makes me want to go back out and shoot right now.

QUOTE (bmags @ Nov 21, 2016 -> 08:59 AM) Did you see the play on Saturday where Rondo blew right by his man and had a clear lane to the hoop, and then passed it out to Portis at 3 point range, who was immediately guarded? It was infuriating, Bulls needed a bucket then too. Yeah - And quite a few more of those type of plays. At least a few handfuls a day.

I hope everything is alright with Floyd. These injuries are brutal. With all these injuries, especially the fact that 3/5th's of our oline is out and now our top 3 opening day receiving options are all out too (suspension & injuries), it is going to be pretty tough to do much anything offensively. It does mean Meredith and Wilson and other young options (including our young TE) will get some developmental time (not sure I should count Wilson, but I will). Defensively, Its good to know that Floyd is okay, now I just hope the injury isn't serious from the football sense. I'm finally facing the fact that with all these injuries, we are going to have a hard time winning many more games this year. I give the team credit for battling with the Giants on the road all day though.

QUOTE (bmags @ Nov 20, 2016 -> 08:50 PM) Brutal last three minutes of this game Yeah, they almost completely blew it. Thankfully they didn't. Both games were very fun watches though. Yes, Bulls blew the Clippers game, but there was a lot of good basketball played as well on both nights. Clearly we aren't a championship team with Rondo at the point. My big question is whether Hoiberg and his staff can actually develop and get people better, cause I see a lot of the same from young players who have been with him for a full season now. Doug is clearly better (but I think that is more on the fact that he is healthy and allowed to get minutes), but Niko and Portis are kind of the same players they have always been.

QUOTE (bmags @ Nov 19, 2016 -> 09:44 PM) Man. Still don't like Rondo. Not sure Hoiberg does either. Rondo was absolutely brutal on Saturday and Sunday. That said, both of those games were extremely fun to watch. I don't know why we didn't have Butler have the rock more yesterday. He looked like he could score on every single possession. Lakers had no one who could guard him. Valentine is going to be a player. Has a smoothness to his game. Not saying all pro or something, but he's going to be a good pro. Rondo needs to assert himself offensively because right now he's passing up too many good looks and then by doing so, putting our offense in a worse spot (I realize he can't shoot, but these are shots that should be high percentage even for him). Rondo will be gone at the end of the year anyway when we try to lure Chris Paul.

Good win on the road though. They turned it up in the third and a good chunk of the fourth before Utah made its run. There is something about Balentine that I really like. Looks so damn smooth on the court. I think he's going to be a pretty darn solid pro.

QUOTE (fathom @ Nov 17, 2016 -> 03:35 PM) He looked awful with the Dodgers. Looked way skinnier and no bat speed You don't just produce like he did for the first half with Oakland and stink. You have injuries / other things.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Nov 17, 2016 -> 03:16 PM) This pretty much confirms a White Sox rebuild. They have loved McCann and would have topped that return if they were going for it. Excellent point. That whole deal was the type of deal the Sox would have done had they been under their strategy of the past two years, especially given our need at catcher and their overall fondness for McCann.

4yrs and roughly 50M. That seems like a very reasonable deal.

QUOTE (bmags @ Nov 17, 2016 -> 02:30 PM) Totally agree. As for rest, really need sox scouting to come through. In July, had we traded sale for Sanchez + from yankees, we would have thought a weaker return than boston packages. But then he hits 20 hrs in 2 months. Sox need to hit if they go any lower than top guys to get a higher return of quantity. I love that you bolded that post. When I was writing that I almost wanted to bold it because I get so tired of the argument, well, the Cubs had this or that or we don't want to be the Pirates or the Royals for 20 years. All of those things are true and if our scouts and front office miss, they miss. End of the day there is a bit of luck to all of these deals, especially when it comes to prospects, but hey, the last eight years have sucked and we should have a pretty damn good starting point if we do get big packages for a few of these guys.

This is one of the things I don't fully grasp about WAR. How did Alex Avila put up a 1 WAR in 57 games vs. McCann's .9 WAR in 130 games? All while Mccann posted a slightly higher (albeit miniscule) OPS. Presume park factor played some effect in it (since NY's stadium is a haven to left handed hitters). It isn't like one is a gold glove defender and the other is the worse defensive catcher in baseball either, so I just don't get it (especially given how WAR is a counting stat).

I'd be ecstatic, because I think it would be the Sox front office taking us in the direction we need to be. That said, I will miss Chris Sale the pitcher and will think back and wonder how we weren't able to put a competitive team around a core of guys that are really fantastic. Not a lot of teams have the type of high production, low contract talent that we have. Just happens to be the areas where we don't have talent, we really don't have talent. Combination of an all star team and a AA/AAA team.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Nov 17, 2016 -> 02:11 PM) Yeah, I hope they are both light too, but I'm trying to respect what some of the analytics folks are saying in regards to the value of the top tier prospects. The struggle I have is, if we move Sale and Q, that is two elite players we are moving and you have to know that the probability of an elite prospect being anywhere near as good as Q / Sale is just impossible. That means to pull a deal and have a decent probability of success, you need to get quite a bit of quality and quantity in the equation. Obviously for Sale we should get higher quality, but if we don't get enough quantity, then the opportunity for a deal to really make the club better (since it isn't like trading Sale / Q gives us a ton of additional payroll space to work with) becomes a lot less likely. Realistically we have three guys who can bring a kings ransom of talent, with Sale being the most likely to actually get teams to garner up what it takes. Eaton and Q get undervalued to some extent, although Q's track record is so strong that I think his undervalue is still something that ultimately makes sense for the Sox long-term strategy. I don't know that anyone will give up enough to make moving Eaton make sense (and quite frankly, I don't see the Sox front office moving this far, as they could always see where they were and deal Eaton later). Then you have more of your Frazier / Robertson / Melky types who don't fit long-term, but won't bring anything super good, although I would say we should be able to get a top 100 guy plus some solid pieces for Frazier / Robertson. All three of these guys aren't necessarily bad guys to keep around (as they provide good veteran presences for a rebuilding team) who you can then flip closer to the deadline for probably similar value as what you would get today, barring injury (especially Robertson, who I think we'd be selling "low" on now). Frazier, I have no problem moving him and think we can get a package relatively similar (albeit slightly less valuable) then what we gave up. Again, none of those are going to be elite type prospects, although you never know who you might hit on, but we most certainly could get a piece or two that becomes a long term positive contributor to the team. Nate Jones is a wildcard because he has value and a nice contract, but given his health concerns, you could look at moving him and he could again bring in some real talent. The thing that makes us interesting is, despite being so bad, we have some players who can command quite the haul and really quickly stock our cupboards to the point that if we executed some good trades, on paper, we'd have the best farm system in baseball...of course you don't win on paper, but we'd at least have a different type of team to watch and a longer term view of being able to add payroll to get the right parts (and leverage existing talent to potentially fill organizational holes). I truly believe Hahn and Kenny have an opportunity to do things right. People think of the Cubs "tanking", well the Cubs didn't have pieces like Sale / Q / Eaton (plus to a lesser extent Jones / Frazier / Robertson / Abreu / Melky) when they started the tanking whom they could move to significantly boost their farm system. Shark was really the only guy that they had and they clearly took advantage of that (and of course they did get lucky with Arrieta). So for those who say, well they spent more internationally or via free agency, well us having a better starting point to potentially inject the roster with talent is a major plus in the White Sox favor. Not many teams get the advantage of starting a rebuild (if we go down that path) by leveraging the type of youngish, dynamic talent we already have to give you so many young, talented prospects. It is also why it is so darn unfortunate that we screwed up so badly in having enough of a system / smart enough FA moves to actually build a competitive team around them. Unfortunately, we half-assed it for too long to the point that it was impossible to have enough depth as an organization to surround our upper echelon talent with enough "quality" major league players.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Nov 17, 2016 -> 10:41 AM) Yup. And who knows, Jimmy could possibly be the real deal but it's not a risk I'm taking, especially with that asking price. Two 1st, absolutely not.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 17, 2016 -> 10:16 AM) I could see them getting a late first round pick plus a future second round pick. I don't see them getting two first rounders. I don't know if they would get the late second and a future first either, but definitely possible.

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ Nov 17, 2016 -> 01:15 PM) I would expect that most of the established regulars in the union are opposed to it, might be an issue of division within the union. Are players on the 40 man considered part of the MLB union or not? If they are, they probably like the status quo. If they aren't, (well they don't get a vote so not really up to them) but they would prefer a 26th spot to get more guys into the union and more MLB paying full time gigs. Why would the union be against it? This is ultimately another player who gets paid? This also means more likely for an older veteran with a unique role to stay (so it can just as much help a veteran then a young player, imo).

QUOTE (iamshack @ Nov 17, 2016 -> 01:23 PM) I think this is basically the wet dream of the majority of us. Let's assume though that it simply isn't possible. Let's say you had to choose between these deals for Sale to the Red Sox and Q to the Dodgers: Sale to the Red Sox: 1) Benintendi/Devers or 2) Benintendi/Kopech/Groome/Swihart Q to the Doders: 1) DeLeon/Bellinger or 2) DeLeon/Barnes/Lux/Puig Which would you choose? I probably chose 2 in both scenarios, however, I don't think I make either of those deals. In scenario two with Boston, I'd want another prospect and in scenario two, given what they are giving, I want to swap Puig with Joc.

I like the added roster spot.

QUOTE (bmags @ Nov 17, 2016 -> 12:46 PM) Right, and this is where I see the LAD/BOS players being essential, because I like their 1b players a lot as future all stars. It's hard for me to see a trade with Nationals and not get Turner back, but I can't see them trading turner. If Braves truly would give us both of their middle infield prospects +, that's a deal. if it's just one, it's not enough. But you need those "not enough" teams to offer their best prospect to put pressure on BOS/LAD to offer 1(b) prospect + package. I would obviously take Trea Turner or (would never happen) Seager, but it does create questions of how the hell we build depth. I like the Red Sox top prospects better then the Dodgers top prospects (in terms of elite, more because I like the fact that Bos are position players). On the flipside, I like the Dodgers depth better, in the sense that we could deal Q without getting Urias (obviously Seager is not on the board), yet the rest of their top prospects could still be in play and they have a ton of depth, that I think would be a great fit after pulling a high quality package (maybe a little less quantity) from a team like Boston. In general, I don't trade Sale without getting two elite prospects plus quantity. Q I could trade without getting an elite prospect (top 5-10 in all of baseball), but a ton of very good prospects (lots of top 100 guys, including one or two top 50). So when I think of the various teams, Braves / Nats / Red Sox are better fit when it comes to having two "elite" prospects. Dodgers have elite and Urias might be the best of all of them, but I view the secondary elite guy from each of the other teams as stronger and in a Sale trade, I want two elite (or one already existing good ML player) and then still another couple very good prospects. So for example, if Boston goes Moncada / Benitendi, you get Swihart (I think he is a given in any deal with Boston as the final piece) plus one of there other good prospects and then maybe a flier or something. Dream would be Devers / Kopech / plus the two elites from Boston, I just don't see that going that far (but If I'm Kenny / Rick, that is what I'm trying to swing and it is why in the whole form of discussion you are also mentioning names like JBJ and Betts as it is always a negotiation). With Dodgers, I see Puig or Pederson as well as Austin Barnes as guys that I want to have to go with top prospects. For example, if I got Q, I'd be pushing for a package built around non Urias top pitching prospects plus Pederson (priority over Puig, but you might give there and get an Austin Barnes). Again, this are what I'd ideally be looking to get...reality is everything is fluid. But if in two deals you could get Benitendi / Moncada / A couple top pitching prospects (Bos / LAD) / Pederson / Catching Prospect (Barnes or Swihart)....you are talking about a lot of guys who have ceilings and can immediately fill out your roster with long term potential improvements. There will certainly be growing pains, but that is a heck of a lot of talent infused to the everyday lineup. Rotation will obviously be a lot more raw, but you have new prospects coming in plus Rodon / Fulmer / Alec Hansen. Collins as another position prospect in the nearer term as well as Burdi.