GreenSox

Nothing that Salvador Perez can't solve.

The Sox should be the overwhelming favorites to finish last in the Central next season. The Tigers have been better all year, and the Royals are starting to show some juice: when young players come together, improvement happens quickly.

The problem was lack of command. That pitch was a puppy dog right down the middle.

Santos may not have thrown many pitches last night, but he was facing 2 of the three same guys. And he faced what would’ve been the next guy up last night as well.

"Following the 2014 season, “We were coming off a tough year but also sitting there realizing that we have the prime of Chris Sale's career ahead of us, the prime of Jose Abreu's career ahead of us and we wanted to make sure we were in a position to capitalize and win within that window,” says Hahn." https://www.si.com/mlb/2015/01/30/white-sox-offseason-rick-hahn-jeff-samardzija-david-robertson From the annals of Hahn, just crowing about his great work in the winter of 2014. Fire him then. Fire him today.

First 28 games: 7-21, .250, 41 win pace. Last 91 games: 40-51, .441, 71 win pace That's a 76%, 30 win improvement!

...... and then there is the Rick Hahn approach when buried in August of losing and not developing young players

Yea, we hit a double. Pretty cool, man

What a puppy-dog pitch that was from Shaw. He needs to be added to the "do not allow to pitch with runners on base" list. Or better yet, the DFA list.

So my optimism is telling me that Charlotte blows because that's where the Hostetler draftees reside (as well as a weak cast of AAAA players, the best of which are now with the big club). Birmingham was terrible for the same reason, but is getting better because the Shirley draftees are moving in. And the Shirley drafts are really showing in A and A+ ball.

I'm cool with Lambert. Yea, he's not that good of a pitcher, but he's a long-time farmhand and it's good that he gets some ML pay during this lost season. Probably not the guy for extra innings though.

Unfortunately, the Knights remain a complete basket-case; 6-20 in the 2nd half, did I read?

Diekman had a negative fWAR in Boston when Hahn traded for him. But yes he was more negative in Chicago than in Boston. Katz may be a problem, I don't know. But I do know that Tampa and the Dodgers (and probably most of the league) have a much stronger supporting analytics staff that can provide their pitching coaches with state of the art information on which to make adjustments and decision. And I would think that situational lefties and older pitchers who have lost a couple of ticks, can really benefit from analytics. It seems to me that the Sox pitchers waste too many pitches. That's probably on the coach to at least some extent; but also something that analytics might be able to help clean up.

Well, Ozzie managed players well for many years. So this "culture problem", whatever that is, probably wouldn't have happened. The WS was won with pitching, defense, and homers. But once Ozzie got more say into personnel decisions, the team started to decline. Ozzie wanted to transform the team into slap hitters who could run and bunt, with defense secondary. And he didn't really care about OBP from his slappers either. Pierre, Erstad, and, of course, Jerry Owens over Quentin. He loved Wise - sub .300 OBP = leadoff hitter. 08? Sox won the division that year despite Ozzie.

Seems like they are doing more of these types of deals in the dawn of the 3rd Hahn rebuild than they did in the 2nd. Should at least get some relievers out of it.

Pedro racking up another seasonal series W.

OK, they announce that they have no official plans to announce SoxFest. Do they have official plans to have SoxFest?

This for keeping the team amply supplied with Trayce, Grandal, Elvis, Shaw, etc. so that the Pedro isn’t distracted with the burden of player development.

Yep. Same thing he said on MLB radio.

My only reservation about dispatching Katz is that he uses analytics to some extent. That's an island in this org. But the Walks from our pitchers. Yikes!

I seem to remember most people realized the obvious: that a starting pitcher coming off of a 4.9 fwar season had more value to the team or for trade than a 33 year old reliever. But whether posters did or didn't, how in the world could a baseball GM believe that the reliever had more value?

How would Hahn know whether or not someone napped in the bullpen?

And Hahn is right there with him in terms of general managers.

It was a strange interview. Steve Phillips was asking him basically what went wrong considering the Sox were able to trade 6or 7 players and teams had interest in several others. Grifol gave the standard “I’m not making excuses, but” and then blamed injuries and the difficult schedule; and then not responding well to the poor start. Phillips then asked if he would use the last 2 months to develop young players and he said that he was trying to win games, not develop players; they develop in the minors.

Why not let TA play some OF - a change of scenery; it could put his mind on other things and help him get his head squared away He's so athletic that he'd probably be darn good one.