bmags

I don't see how it isn't Grandal. The grandal of last year provided huge power. He had 23 home runs in 60% of games played. That would lead the team this year. Instead it has nearly all been replaced by ground balls. This team desperately needed his power bat and he couldn't have been more the opposite. He had a .280 iso last year, this year it's .050 Sucks so much we have power only bench guys like gavin sheets providing 10 homers in 300 PAs and he legitimately is one of our best power bats. In 2001 Jeff Liefer provided 18 homers in 270 PAs as our key LH power off the bench. And he got to just play 1B. It is the worst power outage I've ever seen and it's for a team that on its face is not designed to be single heavy. But the sox have a bunch of people telling them all to be single-heavy and contact contact contact. But that shouldn't have been Yaz. He just sucks. He should have said no and just been shut down. Perez is better anyway.

I’ll listen in the car and if something interesting happened on Audacy.

I'm actually pretty excited for Montgomery after that preseason game. The running game was so stupid under Nagy, and so often had huge tells that it was a run, that I think i underappreciated what Montgomery can do with just a wee bit more space to charge into guys. And he can pass catch and block. I think he's really a tier 2 guy, better than solid, just had bad lines and bad offenses for RBs. Just looking back at Jordan Howard, a guy that was not a pass threat and was on an offense that had worse playmakers but was outside zone (I'd def say likely a better oline) and he was at 5 ypc with a Jay Cutler season and then 4.1 still in that situation with a lot of volume production. Montgomery can do pass downs well, and a better run scheme here where it's not so obvious that we are running may really get him some good productivity.

the league is more likely to just expand. Oakland/Tampas situation more likely to get resolved as leverage. It's just not a thing that the white sox will move.

One of the problems with Reinsdorf is he is a long time owner. I'm not sure of any other current hands-on owners have been around for 40 years. In the 80s, major league baseball was still fresh with the memory of an actual franchise bankruptcy in the seattle pilots. League health was a real concern, and even worse in his other franchise the NBA. Your location was everything. Jerry bought into the white sox as a baseball franchise, but was also buying into the MLB. And 40 years later I'm sure a lot of the ridiculous work he did to shore up the MLB leads to today's game. Your location is not near as important as it once was. National revenues, MLBAM at one point, and revenue sharing give every franchise an easy floor. Basic new owners are buying fun toys that may lose them some cash in any given year but have a steady appreciating asset that makes it no high-stakes purchase that will dent their wealth. Look no further than the LA dodgers sale earlier this decade, used and abused by a ridiculous owner in dire financial straights and divorce, forced to sell, somehow breaks all records and sells for 4 billion. Smart new owners are realizing they can use the power of the local popularity of sports teams to add layers of commerce and retail around their stadium like LIberty Media has done. But Jerry's focus has, since the mid-80s, prioritized "league health" (/sarcasm) over his own franchises competitive edge. He'll collude with other owners to keep salaries down. He'll go hard against the union and destroy one of his teams best chance at a world series and cancel a season. He'll refuse to let his org set markets on player contracts. He'll dictate to his org that they must not go over the recommended slot bonuses for the mlb draft. He won't let his team go big on international market until the new system was set, while, for instance, today's Rays were built on an incredible haul in 2014. And an owner whose teeth were cut seeing franchises actually get in trouble by overpaying for unproductive talent knows you don't overpay for 16 year olds. Stay out of that game. Millions for a high schooler? Remember Kris Honel? No, no, the game is won by ignoring the trends and just focusing on getting those tried and true productive players at your price. It's possible the league enters a different place at some point. That sports is no longer the holy grail of live viewing and gets split to death like all other content. And maybe then the current owners will turn to the wisdom of a JR. But instead it's just sox fans paying the price for an extremely outdated owner who is extremely arrogant about how excess can lead to pain for a franchise. Whose pain? Well the owners pain. Not really the fans.

Many people are saying Jerry is best sales boy ever and it would be a shame if we didn’t get to see him work his magic selling a multi billion dollar franchise

Many people are saying it.

This is the relief I needed. Pettis may have been better thought of than we realized. I’d bet his returning may have put him as WR5

I really like duke ellis.

To be clear not saying Mieses sucks, just that I don’t find it likely he would be lost in a rule 5 draft. His hit tool has improved every year and he’s young enough to stay invested. If he was a dynamite CF it’s a different calc.

I would not. There are a lot of guys like him in orgs but I do think he's gonna be interesting next year if he can convert more doubles into hrs.

Jahns latest has bears heavily in trade market for more lineman/watching waivers. So I don't think they are particularly happy with Schofield.

Schofield has looked really bad though. I'm also kinda bummed that Borom won just because he has not looked very impressive to me and it's kinda sad that he's better than Reiff. But we'll see soon enough. Really hope they were right on Patrick, because the interior could be much improved if Jenkins turns into a good guard.

I think their M.O. is they like to be very arrogant about how they don't go too hard in one trend where the art of what they are moving from may be "lost". But to me they end up getting the worst of both worlds. Don't get first mover advantage, move far enough to new things to not get the benefit of a hedge. But I've also written this before, what you saw in 2015-19 to me was just complete capitulation that old school orgs lost. Massive overhauling in virtually every org to catch up. Hahn gets credit for not deciding to be a completely backwards org, but every org "modernized" in the last 5-8 years. He doesn't get extra credit.

This is all correct to me, with big issue being we will always let other clubs set the standards we need to catch up to.

Because people hate him there and he may be fired.

Baltimore is a competitive balance team.

2/3 teams get extra team building resources than the Sox do, and then congrats you named a team the Sox have been more successful than as a team to emulate.

I think Chaim Bloom will be available! Personally I'd go after a Braves FO. I think most of this board was a fan of Anthropolous in TOR, but then he learns in LA and takes over in ATL has pushed all the right buttons. Granted, he didn't build ATL up from scratch. But ATL is the one other org you can look at and see a successful version of what the sox can be. The Rays can't be recreated exactly with the sox, as they get additional top 40 draft picks and an extra million in INTL money every year. The dodgers have a front office probably 3x the white sox, and an easy $300 mil. But the sox can look at the braves and be like "why the hell are they so much better than us so often" and should be embarrassed. We have similar revenue (or did before battery park), similar competitive rules, and have been way less competitive for the last 40 years.

I would rather Jenkins at RG than Leatherwood at RG where we know he sucks. Jenkins looked better coming out of college anyway. Leatherwood rated worse at RG than Mustipher did at center. Almost unbelievable.

it doesn't? I thought it stuck around with the intl draft fallout?

Burke

KC did this with its 14/15 core.

man i didn't realize even Renfroe signed an extension as well. You essentially have to hope one of the 2024 class WRs throws a fit and can actually get traded. There really is no hope for the 2023 WR class except if DJ Chark becomes a star this year. Otherwise it's pray Dallas has to make some hard choices and looks to deal out gallup or ceedee lamb. Ugh, really wish the bears could have gotten Cooper. His this year salary made a bunch of stuff harder to do, but now that we are sitting with roughly 20 mill open it's a huge bummer. Boy would Mooney/Cooper/Pringle/ESB/VJJ look so much better.