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That last paragraph is pure opinion posing as fact. How do you plan on proving it? Rodon might have been the best $3M ever spent on a scrap heap purchase and the Sox did it. You torpedoed your own lie.

For some reason misinformed, ignorant fans who don't watch or read enough about the ongoing changes in many articles and podcasts now require that we prove it to them that these things have happened because they are having a hard time finding it on Google without us actually knowing how they are wording their search.Maybe it's just a difficult thing to word properly. You can find all the new hires pretty easily and probably find White Sox and Trajeckt Machine ( if I even spelled it right) in a few articles. Plenty of articles about the new academy in the DR. We did get one of the Dodgers Int'l.signings when the Dodgers spent on Sasaki instead. Saw some tweets in ultra slomo so I reckon we got at least one of them thar contraptions. I hope this helps those less fortunate.

I'm assuming I last a little longer than JR and a competitive budget is realized along with a stronger structure under a new owner. But you never know, JR could outlast me . 😂

Max it's never been easy to be a Sox fan.But if it ever turns out that the Sox can become a consistently good team on par with teams that do good work with big data and players development I'd be thrilled about it. It's not like there's been Sox lifers among the players recently. That era came and went along with the arrival of Free Agency many years ago. Most fans following the team now were born in the era of Free Agents. If with a new owner they operate more like Tampa Bay and less like the Sox typified by the Reinsdorf Disinformation Era , I ,for one , would be happy to root for anyone who plays hard on winning teams.

https://www.mlb.com/news/noah-schultz-brian-bannister-spring-training-advice Schultz calls Bannister magic. "Glad he's on our side."

Common sense prevails once again. Crochet admitted to being a 1 pitch pitcher last year headed into camp . You can do that sometimes as a reliever but not as a starter. It's amazing to me that any Sox fan who is always in here should know so little about a player he's taking a stance on. Players constantly are working to improve there game and the smart one take advantage of their coaches. Noah Schultz just said things about Bannister that were extremely complimentary yet that poster would have us believe he's being disingenuous or a liar.

When the player himself credits his coaches it is a crazy argument.There's a fine line between success and failure at the top level of any sport. Body and mind must blend perfectly and can only do so in the right atmosphere of coach and player cooperation. I don't see you being so understanding of Getz failures or the Sox inability to draft and develop so it would only follow that since they have a bad history that the present has to be equally ineffectual. More false equivalencies.

We're just going to have wait on the great Thorpe debate but I don't even know what you are postulating here. This is true of any pitcher who might pitching with a sore body part in his arm. It's hard enough to be consistently good to MLB hitters early in your career and then add injury. Why we act like he should be considered a finished product already is kind of strange.He was a phenomally good pitcher in the minors before the Sox got him and after and in his 1st 3 starts. We act like he was a mystery until there was a book on him .It's 2025 not 1945 there's plenty of video and scouting reports on pitch mix and location to lefties and righties that can be easily obtained and coaches to game plan with the hitters . Yes movement and velocity matter but movement, deception and command of a decent number of pitches matters just as much. No one who is injured can do anything as well in any field that requires motion. You cannot effectively fake your way through pain especially at the top of your chosen sport that requires accuracy .

I specially try not to read body language or level of commitment to excellence. Caring too much and not being as good as you want to be can lead to bad body language. Also let's not forget that hitting a baseball well is 70 % failure and there are a lot of good fielders catching a lot of your good contact . It's incredibly frustrating.

Don't you know Crochet getting good was 100 % all Crochet ? That's what I've been told. I've had this discussion many times.

I meant unfortunate in that it likely relegates Meidroth to the minors when he should most likely start the season with the Sox.

The Sox are so bad offensively I think you're just looking for anyone who can put up a .750 OPS . It doesn't mean they are there forever . It's just finding a place for a hitter who might not ever be a good defensive 2nd baseman ,SS or 3rd baseman to play just to get his bat in the lineup cheaper than Vaughn. At this point you're looking for whoever can hit. You're just putting him at 1st because there's no logjam there.

I just got done saying Meidroth was their most MLB ready prospect based on AAA seasons . Unfortunately Sosa is likely to get 1st shot at 2nd base. And If Vargas or he produces offensively one of them is likely the new 1st baseman to replace Vaughn.

No one anticipated 121 losses but you traded Cease .You also signed Fedde who apparently no on wanted to give a better offer to and you had Crochet who no one thought could stay healthy or pitch as long and as effectively as he did. They were both big question marks. Everything was in shambles after an 101 loss season and trading away most of your assets. Your bullpen was gone, your prospects weren't ready. 110 losses seemed pretty likely even with Crochet and Fedde pitching well because the rest of the starting pitching and bullpen, offense and defense was garbage once Robert, Moncada and Eloy all took the year off torpedoing any trade value you were hoping to regain. But Robert should've been traded .He was the one guy you were sure was worth a good return, not a great return because of injuries. That isn't hindsight or revisionist history. As I've said Tampa Bay in the same situation trades him. You get the money off the books and you get good prospects perhaps at least 1 really good one and a 2nd pretty good one near MLB ready and some lower level 45 level players too. Money gone and good new blood helps the rebuild tremendously. Then you still have Cease and Crochet to trade.

You think if that was going on with Robert then they definitely should have traded him after the 2023 season unless they thought he had conquered those demons . However even if you were model citizen there were still those injuries and now add the 2024 injury to that long list.

I've also said they should hold him and I'm not sure Getz or the team feels differently. I do think that they like Taylor's defensive and base running skill set and acquiring him is more of an insurance policy in case they get a better than expected trade offer before he opens the season in the OF. Taylor's defense will give Robert a day off once every 15 days or so especially if they can give him 2 days off in a row with an off day in the schedule with Taylor in CF on the preceding day or day after the open day on the schedule. Taylor's not likely to be facing any soft tossing RHP . He'll get the much tougher RHP that Robert likely wouldn't want to face.

No I'm not ok if Montgomery is the OD starter but defense at SS is going to be iffy no matter who they put there unless it's longshot Amaya and I think I'd rather have Baldwin get a shot as SS because while they are trying to get offense out of Vargas and Sosa I'm not looking forward to their defense when one of them DHs or plays 1st base or w/e they have in store for them. The infield is a lot more crowded with potential MLB players than the OF is. Fletcher got over 230 PA with the Sox .He failed miserably and it's not like he or Deloach lit up the Minors either. Again you're dealing with marginal types. Failure of all turds is kind of normal. But you can't give up on trying to trade turds into a few minor leaguers in lost seasons. Nor should you play prospects who are some of the turds. They are still here. Let them knock down the door to beat out the trade candidate vets.

Sometimes you need to explain it all out. There was nothing in what the Sox were doing at the time or Roberts career trajectory that said Luis Robert is going to stay healthy and be productive for 2 years in a row or that this wasn't a near rock bottom path the Sox were on. It was all wishful thinking and delusions of a mind-blowing trade based on outlandish fair value by fans.

They didn't even need that great of a deal to be much better off than they are today. He wasn't nor was he ever worth all that based on one season and 4 years $70 million left on his contract. He was only worth that if he had 2 or more seasons like that in a row. All his injuries always prevented him from being worth as much as all that. Unfortunately that was proven in 2024. Even a return like the Crochet trade and they would've still been much better off. Sure fans would've bitched about it but then realized if he got injured with his new team in 2024 how lucky we would've been to have made that trade.

It's hindsight to plenty of fans who overvalued him. It never was about his contract.Trading him after a great season with his injury history would've been done by an organization like the Rays .Selling high is paramount in baseball . Look what Crochet got after his lone good season eason as a starting pitcher. I think if you pulled up the thread in the 2023 off-season you see a lot thinking calling him a superstar and overvaluing him . I'm on record as saying he wasn't a superstar back then so it's not hindsight to me. Also the Sox were selling everything in sight. What was it about Roberts career path and the Sox 2023 season that makes you think 2024 didn't have a good chance of being a train wreck for both the Sox and Robert ? I seem to remember @WestEddy arguing that Robert, Moncada and Eloy getting hurt was a deciding factor in 2024 being historically bad and Soxtalkers mocking him like expecting them to stay healthy was stupid since they were always injured. I'm sure plenty of them were the same people telling us that Robert was a superstar and it was impossible to get fair value for him back in the 2023 off-season.

Fletcher has shown no signs whatsoever since his arrival in the minors or major last year of being capable of providing value. I have more faith in Colas providing value and we all know how deep Colas is buried on the depth chart.

I think it makes sense just for the possibility Robert may get traded before the season . The longer you wait the less chance you have that Taylor is not there to replace Robert . As far as roster construction goes it's a bit odd but Rojas can play the jack of all trades roll along with Baldwin playing SS if Colson Montgomery isn't just handed SS. I'm rather interested in seeing how Catcher plays out during the preseason with McKinven. Him and Fuller have a lot of work to do.

Jimmy I always respect your opinion but you can't call it 4 years. In reality you're talking a minimum of 2 years and a maximum of 4 years if by after 2025 the trading team deems his options worth picking up. His injury history alone was reason to get whatever you could for him. No GM should care whether he's crucified by the fan base as long as your getting a good deal. Based on the fact that his injury history vs his output in 2023 still favors him getting hurt again over putting up another good season in 2024 a trade seemed immediately prudent. Also 1 5.0 War season does not justify calling him a superstar. This has always been when fan bases get overzealous about value. The same thing happened in the long Cease thread with the Orioles fans even though he had a down year in 2023 and Getz traded him which further indicated it was a rebuild. You don't hold onto Robert praying for him to buck the odds of getting injured again.Maybe those extra 2 years of options gets you slightly more but his injury history needed to be taken into major consideration. Plus the Sox were and still are in desperate need of position player prospects especially in CF or SS. Trading Robert shouldve taken precedent over trading Cease. If you were going to hold one of them to try to get a better deal , the much healthier Cease coming off a bad year was the better bet to stay healthy and improve his value. Then you have Crochet,Cease and Fedde in this alternate universe since trading Robert but keeping Cease still freed up money to afford Fedde.

Because he can field CF defensively way better than anyone else available for that little cost . He can also put Benintendi on the bench in the late innings or against LH starting pitchers . He leads all MLB OFs in DRS with 54 runs saved since 2020. He's also likely their best Pinch runner and despite his inability to hit he usually generates positive WAR overall. Incrementally he'll do things to help them win and avoid another season like 2024. Why are you so opposed to it ? Can you name one OF who truly was available or currently on the Sox for equal or less money who can provide what Taylor can defensively and on the basepaths ? Certainly not Fletcher. Getz didn't even trust him to handle RF where he contributed decently defensively but he doesn't have the wheels to be as good defensively in CF , on the bases or as a late inning defensive replacement for Benintendi or occasional starter against LHP. If Fletcher was the best you could do to replace Robert in CF that's pretty bad. He couldn't even earn RF and you're going to hand him CF ? If you're thinking Slater in CF you're going to have to convince me that taking him out of the RF platoon roll against LHP and sticking him in CF full time in the event of a Robert trade helps OF depth ,RF weak side Platoon , late inning defense in LF pinchrunning and defense in CF and contributes more to wins than just adding Taylor. What if Robert and Tauchman are traded ? Then won't you need a left handed RF ( presumably Fletcher or Colas) to hold down the fort in RF unless you prefer Joey Gallo out there ? If the goal is to win more than 41 games again but still have the best chance at the Top pick in every round of the draft you're going to have to come up with better reasons than it saves JR $2M dollars or blocks the 5'6", -.8 fWar Dominic Fletcher from playing CF.

While everyone knows that I generally defend Getz for the onslaught of over the top criticism , the whole reason we're talking about this is because I said not trading Robert was Getz' biggest mistake. One of Getz' harshest critics who calls him Captain Panic picked that up and ran with it because, oops , now he didn't panic and held onto him and in doing so was either stupid or a liar. One thing is certain even without knowing the offers, the return would have been far better than what he's likely to get if he's traded before the season starts . There was zero reasons to hold onto him. 101 loss season, everyone traded at the deadline, budget and payroll cut drastically. There were no high quality assets besides him at the time which was before Crochet's unexpected ascension. Soxtalk reader Liam Hendriks contract was over but was cancer free . Eloy Jimenez just had his healthiest season by playing 120 games , most since his rookie year in 2019 but he was clearly not the same player. Nor was Yoan Moncada for that matter who had a 1.1 fWar in 2023. In hindsight both of them should be been moved also. All 3 of them had extensive injury history and still had value but moving Robert should have been a priority given his injury history and big statistical year. He would've saved Jerry $30M and got about $30M worth of prospects back . They probably would've had to pay off a large portion of Moncada $25M remaining contract but they ended up paying off all of it. Eloy's final salary in 2024 was around $13M . The Sox probably would've ended up paying off most of that too if they had traded him after the 2023 season but might have got a better younger prospect than Trey McGough. The Os only ended up responsible for $1.5 million of his $3M buyout and the Sox essentially paid off all of his remaining contract.