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Would have been a poor time to trade him imo.

He’s a 115 wRC+ first baseman. Not exactly the rarest profile out there.

Why are we acting like other teams think Vaughn is super valuable?

I like Abreu but 2014 Konerko was not fun or enjoyable. I wish we were like the Guardians and had a bunch of athletic, young, defensively sound players and getting a corner infielder in helps with the offense. But we’re a team with a bunch of 15 home run hitting DHs. You only have so many resources to go around.

I suppose at this point I shouldn't assume Tom Brady getting injured this year means he doesn't play next year since he is now unleashed.

season long IR. I am also done with musty. I hope Leatherwood gets better from mono soon, or Zach Thomas has improved, because it is seriously hard to believe that the dropoff from patrick at LG is going to be worse than still having Mustipher get bulldozed.

I believe hahn should go after players he thinks should improve the team and pay them money to do so, and manage internal politics effectively like a President position should be able to do. What pre-TLR solutions did Hahn bring in that led you to believe it was TLR sabotage? There was no player he signed that did not fit Hahn's previous patterns of outfielder acquisitions, gleeful spending on bullpen, or "flyer" pitchers to round out the rotation. The only player that has ever surprised me from Hahn was Yasmani Grandal (good signing imo).

No, that's not fair. The biggest impact a new GM would have is bringing someone in who can strive to get us to be a top player development organization and maximize our avenues to cost-controlled talent. That is the first line. The new GM would not do things like ignore getting an easy top 50 pick in the draft because you may be stuck with a top 5 cy young candidate. The new GM would not trade out our international money when we get fewer resources to sign young players than the other teams in the division. The new GM would stop paying for utility players like Bonifacio and Leury Garcia. If Hahn had any idea how to to any of that stuff he wouldn't be bitching about payroll. He's the one who has relied on free agency so much for his team building. He can't trade because he ignored the developing of talent needed to supplement the ML level in both trades and call-ups. He had to buy bullpen because you can just look at our AA and AAA squads right now. And yes, I traded Giolito, who has 1 year left and is going to make $10 million and I get a nice LH outfield prospect and a strong defensive infield prospect who are major league ready. I trade hendriks because we cannot have $500 million in our bullpen and we already have a closer in Graveman. I get back a prove-it second baseman in a contract year with the potential to be a contract year pop-up player that we could get a comp pick back for since he's an offseason trade, and the yankees have been lukewarm on and likely will go after Turner. I sign pitchers that are reasonable to sign under JR because they are older and less likely to sign long term deals. But I have more confidence in Bassitt to be good next year than Giolito so I make the trade-off, especially since I do not like any of the free agent outfielders as a likely fit for JR and as a productive fit for our needs.

I'm assuming a quality GM has an actual ability to use information not available to me. But I don't quibble with the idea the roster largely needs to move forward, I put forward my "eat s%*# and deal with it" roster that I do think gets them to the playoffs because I still cannot imagine Grandal and Moncada being this bad, but it is deeper, and I don't have the benefit of all the salary amounts yet but I figured this was about the same salary range as this year. I appreciate that you acknowledge that Hahn's decisions are of the same level as a fan with only an ability to search fangraphs and baseball savant, but despite me actually being a big Canha fan, I'd have chosen neither. Last offseason I set a number of things the sox needed to balance to compete with the Astros, and acquiring a right-handed hitting LFer just did not fit on the list. I point out that there were a number of outfielders that moved teams last year and he chose among the worst one (he didn't go after Castellanos! Yay). I didn't even bring up a Starling Marte, whom WAS someone he couldn't get with Jerry as an owner.

Rick Hahn built the most expensive bullpen in baseball and it ended up 20th in ERA. His committed money is still $50 million in the bullpen for next year. Schwarber signed for 4 years, $79 million, not $100 million. That's $7 million more than Yasmani Grandal 3 years ago. He couldn't afford it because Rick started the offseason at $180 million with a $16 million closer he needed to unload. I don't just b**** and moan about the players he doesn't get, I b**** and moan about the players he does get. They are both bad. Rick held on to a $16 million contract so he could trade it for a 2 year $30 million outfielder who ranked 40th out of 49 outfielders in fWAR. The Mets paid Mark Canha 2 years $26 million and got 2.5 WAR and a 126 wRC+. That's not $100 million. That's just deciding to not pick up the option on Kimbrel and going after Mark Canha. What's that? But Mark Canha's a LFer...oh no. The Royals got Benintendi and cash for a RFer for Franchy Cordero whom they acquired for a middle reliever. No prospects needed. Benintendi finished 18th out of 49 qualified outfielders and was paid $4.5 million. The Phillies took on Schwarber for $20 million, that would have cost the white sox not getting AJ Pollock AND Josh Harrison, but they would have gotten 20 more HRs from the left side. Tony Kemp, soxtalk soup de jour in the offseason to replace our 2b, was only barely outhit by pollock and his superior defense actually put him ahead of Pollock by 1 WAR. He made $10 million less. The fun thing about baseball is we have 29 other orgs that we can look at with similar circumstances and info and say, hey how are they doing compared to our org. The answer, unless you are the Rockies or Tigers...is better.

Counterpoint - You can't get fired - One of the easier divisions to play in - Clear regression upside and one playoff series leads you to super double protective status

I don't buy this at all. Regression is bound to happen, but what are we regressing to? A world series champion? Hahn has shown the only pieces he is capable of putting money behind is an atrociously overpriced bullpen and 35 year old veterans. Another GM may be able to reconfigure the roster for better cohesion between offensive power and defensive production, without even bursting through 200 million. I know you will say the phillies new GM just spent through it and we can't, but they took over an operation that Dombrowski could have spent through as well. They hired the best hitting instructor in baseball, brought in big bats, and moved from 16th to 9th in wRC+ this year despite missing Harper for half of it and not getting 2nd half harper from last year. Some was regression, some wasn't. There are plenty of people that could have taken Hahns constraints and still thrived. We've said it before, but if you would have told us in 2019 we'd have a 180 million budget in 2022 we'd have been through the moon. And then if you'd have showed us what that roster looked like we would have looked bewildered. This roster just needs some tweaks but the only playbook hahn has will be more bullpen and sub $10 million flyers in RF/2b/SP

It's actually astounding how bad that WR class is. But FA WRs are always a bit of fools gold. You basically have to slot a first round WR in, which...good. At this rate it's the new edge rusher. But my dream available WRs keep getting more and more far fetched. Now it's basically that Brady gets hurt, the Bucs realize they aren't near a contender without him and need to start over for the following year, so they trade Evans with a year left. ...yeah... But Other than that maybe Michael thomas is available? But saints always seem like they'll have to make hard decisions and never seem to.

Do you think the most talented players tend to be committed to teams prior to January or in the showcases throughout the rest of the year? Because that's where that 20 is coming from. Paddy's classes can be defined as Cubans and Leftovers.

I don't want to make anything a hard and fast rule, I just want them to take a balanced view of things. We had a top heavy system thanks to Hostetler drafting 0 high schoolers. Then Shirley takes over and gets 35 less draft picks in his first year. They go Crochet and Kelly and basically punt the last 3 picks. Crochet is obviously a good pick, he made the bigs. But you basically added 1 guy all year. The next year they go big on Kath and Macdougal with big bonuses that brings them only 4 BA300 guys (Montgomery, Kath, Burke, Macdougal) During the same time, our INTL group brings in classes headlined by Vera and Cespedes (2020) and Colas and Hernandez. Some really nice talent there that also is more developed and contributes. But they were also pretty small. 2020-21 badler writeup for the sox has 7 names. That compared to the other teams in the signing tracker put them 27th out of 30th in total signings reported. 2021-22 badler writeup for sox has 6 names. Compared to the signing tracker that put them (in quantity) at 28th out of 30th. They do sign more than that amount, but they are so low profile they are tough to know what to make of it as they sign throughout the year. Now, either of these would be fine if sox should an ability to turn B-/C+ free agents and get more out of them to build out their roster. But they don't do that. Given the constraints, either we keep telling Paddy to keep big game hunting, or we tell Shirley to spread his resources more evenly.

There is more to scouting than just the draft, but also, Laumann drafted a handful of stars behind questionable depth. That's kinda what Shirley aimed for in 2020/1.

Basically this, by the time the official period "begins" the reality is most teams have already signed 95% of their classes. But recently it has felt like when january goes around we'll see the sox with about 2 guys signed around 60% of their budget and 1-2 other small signings. Some get announced later, but throughout the year maybe some guy expatriates and we are the only team with budget, but other years we just see a bunch of guys show up in DSL that were signed throughout the year that snuck under the cracks. Now Jose Rodriguez was one of those guys. I think Paddy's moves would be fine if Shirley wasn't at the same time having drafts like 20 and 21 that blew their budgets on the first two picks and then grabbed a bunch of 10k college seniors. Our depth is too thin for both to operate similarly.

I don't really care if we are in the top ten signings here, I just want bigger classes. This holding back 1/3rd of your budget to sign during the season is too conservative. We need more out of Paddy who has brought in some nice talent. Because he was successful...he needs to scale it up and deliver more. We have too shallow a base in draft picks and inept scouting to source enough talent to be top tier. Need Paddy to deliver more than the rest.

I have maybe become more Emo...but I still mostly like what I did here but also would like to do a bigger shakeup and trade away Tim Anderson and sign Dansby Swanson. Dansby is a bad free agent to target because his 6 war value is driven by an Adam Eaton like defensive year, and he's no offensive star. So you pay a ton for a 3 WAR player...and yet so much of this team has this "My faults are okay and I can play however I want" attitude. Tim Anderson is a better player than Swanson and cheaper, but his defensive warts have never improved and his lack of power just seems like it won't age well into his 30s. If we ran out an infield of Moncada, Swanson, Torres, Vaughn it feels like a much more cohesive one. Torres was okay at 2b, and fully on board with if Romy/Sosa can play defense you play them.

"You guys are coasting in your jobs and it needs to stop" Says Rick Hahn, 10 year GM with 2 winning seasons under his belt

Yes I'm fine with Beltran being punished, I think it's silly the rest weren't. And I think people mad the rest weren't kind of want Beltran to be extra super punished just to re-enforce how bad it was. If anything the episode makes John Coppolella's ban for life just so insane to me. Granted he was likely caught red handed in a way Luhnow wasn't, but it seems excessive given some of the extremely gross cheating things that have happened recently to ban for life a practice that was you know, bad but also...not that out of operating procedure for quite a few teams.

I know I'm insane for saying this but I actually felt a little better yesterday despite it being horrendous to look at. These games will happen with teams that have bad talent, but I actually thought Fields looked better but the team was just completely deficient. And as optimistic as I was about this team, it really would be better served with as high a pick as possible. Do you guys think the Giants rebuild was helped at all this year by having two top ten picks while the Bears had to treat two picks in the 40s as franchise saviors to will Fields to success? If Fields can look like a guy that is doing the right things but has s%*# talent, then you can really load up next year with a top ten pick and $100 mill. The unfortunate thing is how screwed WR looks. You pretty much have to earmark round 1 as a WR. And I like most of those guys, obviously Njigba but I like Boutte and Addison too. And if you do still like fields, there are 3 QBs in the top ten and can get an Eagles like boost to your rebuild by trading down to 12. It all just goes to the Bears took Fields at an extremely weird point of a franchise trajectory. You don't really see QBs taken like that at the clear end of an era, where you really can't even take advantage of the contract because you already spent it all on past their prime talent. It's not like Poles couldn't have chosen to build around fields, getting hard not to wish instead of our DBs we just had chosen Pickens/Pierce and Jurgens and gone after a Mike McDaniels or Kevin O'Connell. But at some point, it really will be nice to have a clean slate of resources, which we have been throwing to the future for 5 years now.

Yeah, sure would be nice if leatherwood could swing to LG soon, but I think he had mono so that may be tough. Other side of that, if he was a competent RT, because I still think Borom could be a really good guard and i'm not impressed with him as tackle.

I don't know if anyone else emailed Brooks Boyer back in 2020 about the TLR hire, but boy are they fun to look back on a day like today.

This is so embarrassing. Never forget when Nightengale went on white sox talk and dismissed TLR potentially not being able to start 2021 Spring Training on time due to legal issues around his DWI arrest and compared it to David Ross not being able to start spring training the previous year due to the flu. It was exactly the same thing.