bmags

I honestly think your criticism is sort of like hearing "run the touchdown play" though. What did we say all offseason? Get fields comfortable, give him roll outs, on the move. Not the "our passing game is our run game" timing throws as the key part of the offense. Despite giving fields plenty of favorable throwing situations he keeps failing in those. I don't see the solution being quick timing plays which has been his biggest struggle prior to that. It really is on him at this point. Cooper Rush looked 100x more competent.

I will say the reason we can’t just emulate the guardians is they get an extra 1st rounder and extra million on intl to spend than the Sox every year. Thats why I think people circling the braves have the right idea.

I don't think there is a team in baseball that would have had a bigger win improvement if you stuck a 40 HR hitter on it than the white sox.

I guess I'm just nervous at the idea that like a manager is going to walk in and fix it all. I think we probably make the playoffs if Cairo was manager from the start, but by the thinnest of margins. I think we see with the phillies, padres, that disappointing teams can become happy success stories. But they kept pushing forward and feels like Sox are going to have an off season of mostly stepping back and then saying "look new manager".

at least KWs reclamation projects worked every once in a while. What's Hahn's excuse?

The Broncos had 330 yards just passing on the seahawks, over 430 yards of offense in that game. They were bad vs. houston and bad vs. 49ers, who have a very good defense. Their run defense looks bad but their pass defense so far looks pretty good. The colts actually had receivers in that game.

This isn’t excusing anything but nothing from the past three weeks would lead me to believe the Texans defense is actually bad. From the first three weeks it looks like the bears have faced three good defenses.

wow sorry. that was too long.

I get all this and it's all true, but let's focus just on the stuff Hahn should reasonably control in his position - the scouting, player dev and analytics part of the org. By the end of 2016, the sox decided for a rebuild. Probably would have been a good time to retool the organization in that end. To 'modernize' (Rick Hahn decided to start modernizing 3 years into his tenure apparently), he entrusted Nick Hostetler to run the amateur scouting. He entrusted Chris Getz to run Player Dev. Analytics he just decided to use vendors basically. Those guys were already in their position. Getz took over in the midst of a revolution of player development technologies and techniques. He has done admirably imo in trying to keep up with it. But, I don't know, if I was serious about winning I may have tried to go after some of those who had natively ushered in this revolution, not a guy who spent a year in player dev in the famously old school Dayton Moore org. We've certainly been better in player dev - considering hahn set-up this rebuild with a bunch of high variance guys, Getz did get them to the big leagues and got big performances out of Giolito and Cease. He was an improvement over the white sox, but is he running a top ten unit in baseball? I say no. I think, in contrast to Hahn, that the sox should try to be the best at things. Hostetler took over for Laumann, who run the draft during a more difficult era for sox drafting, and did struggle to create depth. Laumann (2007-2015) during his tenure drafted one of the best pitchers of the decade (sale), a cy young candidate (rodon), a multiple time all star shortstop (TA), a top 5 mvp finisher and multi-time all star (Semien). His failure was drafting players that sometimes washed out before the majors. Hostetlers expert plan was to get more players that would wash out in the majors. Despite always having a full set of picks, and some of the highest draft positions the sox have ever consistently had, we are leaving his draft years of 2016-2019 with a sub-20 home run hitting first baseman possible starter. But that's not fair since he also got us some fringe serviceable relievers. But we have heard he also "modernized" the unit so that's cool. Last we heard hostetler moved to the mlb scouting side to help us with free agency. We've been as good there. And in international, Paddy has certainly found us some talent, finally seeing some depth accumulate on the position player side, highlighted by Jose Rodriguez, Lenyn Sosa, Oscar Colas and more. However, for some reason we have been signing incredibly small classes, led by the single most infuriating class, 2019 group. This was the group we thought would be huge since for 3 years we were under penalty, so what other class would we work on? Well, we signed Yolbert Sanchez, a slap hitting 22 year old for $2.5 million. For that amount, you can get slap hitting defensive players in the big leagues, but we got em for that sweet deal. He's currently slap hitting up a storm in AAA. His defense does look pretty sweet though. So all of the above is just horrible. Contrast it with how a very similar GM in DiPoto pivoted Seattle to be very tech forward in player dev, and revamped scouting. They arrived as a competitive team still harboring a top 5 farm, which allowed them to get a Luis Castillo. By the time sox arrived, the cupboard was bare. We had to trade mlb assets to get a closer, then a pitcher. Subsequently, the pitching we had in AAA and AA was worse then you'd find in the SEC on a friday.

Jerry would be so upset he had to spend more on the draft.

Tua looked different though, more like a Davis Mills type before this. He was often throwing 30+ times. And it's just hard to see Fields throw 30 times if they tried, because in his pass heavy drives it's something like 2 passes and 1 run because he'll have been sacked once, one incomplete and one run. To me tua was just "uninspiring", a guy who was a bit more like mitch in that he wouldn't punch it deep. To go back and elaborate on the me not being that mad at the run heavy approach. To me it's more damning on what we're learning from Fields, because the bears are largely keeping in him favorable passing situations and he looks like this. Like yeah when it's 3rd and 16 and he's trying to force it, bad. When it's 2nd and 6 and he immediately drops his eyes and tries to run around... His numbers are still more like rookie Lamar Jackson except he is not rushing for 100 yards a game.

I’d vote them owners

Yep. Being held hostage as fans.

There is such a huge gap of trust between Sox fans and this team now. It would definitely take a house cleaning to bridge this gap. Too inept, dumb, lazy, and arrogant.

It is real, was from a few weeks ago

Also kmet had a “breakout” game today…but every catch it seemed like he was near dropping it. That’s with him being wide open. They win the game in a fashion that sucks…since it’s impossible to believe Fields is gonna be a good qb. Hiwever, I agree with Tony. Damn am I glad the new regime didn’t stake everything on assuming fields was legit.

I get the anger at the runs…I do. But fields is clearly not playing even below average

We’ll it looks like I’ll be waiting a few more years for a franchise qb

Not really but I keep bringing up James Outman because in theory he shouldn’t cost much and he’s mostly blocked.

I like the Dana Brown pick. Braves are the org with the most similar set up to the Sox, but 100,0000000x the success

I know Cashman will be somewhat of a popular name, and I can see the benefit of a guy who knows a lot of people and what to do...but it also sorta feels like a john fox hire. I have no idea whether he was constrained by the constant push to build via top free agents, or if he was buoyed by their constant ability to buy top free agents. I think a lot of their stuff is good but he had uber resources and built a lot of weird rosters. But when it seemed like he really took the reigns he had that incredible 2016 shift on the fly.

To be quite honest, I think I make the team diet this offseason. It's not fun. but if I was new GM I'd go at the margins and tell the vets to prove it while bringing up hungrier, less lazy players. Nov 2022, soxtalk.com turns out to have some sugardaddy poster who secretly bought out all the other investors and gets us a seat at the table with JR. he doesn't want to sell for tax reasons, but he is fine giving more power to more interested, less fat and lazy people. Soxtalk hivemind elects their favorite admin as President of baseball ops. The one who made that spreadsheet. I focus this year on building out a betters scouting and development. I annoint ptatc as head trainer. @Quin leads media and marketing. @flavum gets chief meteorologist. Bye to everyone in front office except Thome, he's too excellent. Bossard stays. Bossards son gets promoted to AAA because he's nice. Bye to Abreu. C - Grandal, Zavala vs. Carlos Perez 1b - Vaughn v. Sheets 2b - Romy v. Sosa 3b - Moncada SS - TA v. Mendick LF - Eloy v. Pollock CF - Robert v. Cespedes RF - Colas v. Cespedes DH - Eloy v. Sheets SP - Cease, Lynn, Kopech, Fights - Davis Martin, Reynaldo Lopez Trade - Lucas Giolito for salary relief to LA Dodgers for James Outman and Jacob Amaya Bullpen - Graveman, Crochet, Bummer, Kelly, Diekman, Lambert, Ruiz Trade - Liam Hendriks to New York yankees for Gleybar Torres, Will Warren Pre-cuts estimated budget (153 million) Cleared ~$16 million in budget with Giolito, Hendriks FA targets: Chris Bassett, Jose Quintana (~$30MM) So it ends up: C - Grandal, Zavala vs. Carlos Perez 1b - Vaughn v. Sheets 2b - Romy v. Sosa v. Torres 3b - Moncada v. Torres SS - TA v. Mendick v. Amaya LF - Eloy v. Pollock v. Outman CF - Robert v. Cespedes RF - Colas v. Cespedes v. Outman DH - Eloy v. Sheets SP - Cease, Lynn, Kopech, Bassitt, Quintana Fights - Davis Martin, Reynaldo Lopez, Stiever, Burke BP - Graveman, Crochet, Bummer, Kelly, Lopez, Diekman, Lambert Also Rule 5 will be good huge fun.

maybe this will be like the 07 chicago bulls and we get the 1st overall pick and our D-rose. Perfect analogy.

I feel like it's even worse than that, it's when fans were losing their minds, they'd turn on the fans for being irrationally angry and not capable of seeing it objectively.

One thing I think is interesting seeing the Guardians v White Sox square off is to me it is the perfect example of the dangers of a front office that isn't natively progressive. You can see where the sox try to catch up, and catch trends, but it's always half assed. Out of the rebuild it seemed the sox started to focus on on getting more contact and cutting down on the strikeouts. The Astros had the quick post-16 pivot of moving from a high K team to a low K team. So you have the White Sox and the Guardians, both low power, high contact teams. I think they both have great pitching, my personal opinion, because the sox only rate as good pitching. My take is that defense is making an outsized issue there (but that is somewhat controlled in stats, and this is my opinion at that point) And its true the sox are slightly more productive than the Guardians offensively (but i'd say not commensurate to the talent). So anyway. My point is how they make contact is different. Sox just swing at everything and make a bunch of poor contact. The Guardians, while not great at walking, are much more selective at pitches. The Guardians have the lowest percentage of swinging strikes. The White sox are 11th highest. The guardians are second in called strike %. Meaning they actually take a lot of strikes. The sox are 24th. But cleveland is the top at Zone contact % and Chase contact %. They don't swing a lot, but when they swing, they make contact. They are swinging at stuff they like. The sox just swing a lot. They swing the second most at pitches outside the zone. 11th most at pitches inside the zone. They just swing at a lot. Cleveland has the lowest K-rate in the majors, and the best contact rate. The sox are the 7th lowest k-rate, and the 15th best contact rate. So, yeah, a lot of weak contact. A lot of not good contact. But then you add that the Guardians move makes sense when it's paired with good baserunning and defense. Cleveland has positive base running scores. The sox are not the worst actually, but are negative. They don't get additional value from just being on base. Cleveland is 4th best in defensive WAR. Sox 25th. So it all adds up to the contact approach works better with the team makeup of the Guardians. It's still not ideal. You'd prefer to be the Dodgers/Cardinals. But the sox this approach is what you get when you think "playoff teams went after more contact". They aren't smart enough to discern good contact. And worse, this team makeup with poor defense and baserunning would be best with a team that BLUDGEONS. Basically hahn is only capable of trying his best to implement trends of other, better orgs, and has to hope to get lucky that they work.