[Sox looking at building in South Loop]

13 hours ago, southsider2k5 said:

Yep.  I don't know why we are pretending that this isn't how major projects are done in the US today.  And if Chicago didn't do it, someone else would.

Question for you (or others who know finance).

If the company that owns the 78 plot was generally working on Development, Reinsdorf comes in and says “add a ballpark and we can get this deal done”, everything gets to this point, and then Reinsdorf demands so much public money that they can’t justify it and the government balks, blowing up any deal for the site - does that affect Reinsdorf’s company long term? Like does it ruin his ability to get funding and loans for construction in Nashville? 

It seems to me like it should but I don’t know enough finance to say that for sure. Would it turn out to not matter because he could always get a Saudi loan or something like that?

[Hendriks signs with Red Sox]

2 hours ago, ptatc said:

Of course he had input from others along the way but he was manging it himself in a way he knew worked for him over the years. It wasn't an Oakland or Chicago team prehab program. 

Maybe a better way to say it was he came to the Sox with a prehab program and that's what he continued to follow. He may have tweaked it some based on ideas from new people. This is how it works when a players has any type of chronic injury or conditioning protocol. 

Now answer this part - was he able to fully follow his normal offseason pre-hab routine during chemotherapy?

We are hearing the usual about guys being in the best shape of their life coming into ST. Is that normal for chemotherapy patients, you come out of that immediately in the best shape of your life?

[Sox looking at building in South Loop]

2 hours ago, South Side Hit Men said:

Not proposing new government subsidies to convert. Stabilize taxes, restore adequate public safety. Invest in our neighborhoods. As real estate stabilizes to a proper equilibrium, projects will be viable without the combined $3.5b handouts proposed by Jerry and handed to LY. 

Make Chicago an attractive place to visit and move to, like it was perceived to be the previous four decades before the government lockdowns and significant increase in crime the past four years.

So stabilize taxes while spending untold billions and magically eliminate remote work? Makes sense to me, that’s how math works based on a couple of the exams I just graded.

[Hendriks signs with Red Sox]

1 hour ago, ptatc said:

Can't say that I agree. He was throwing long before the end date here and he really wanted to throw again that year. 

Considering all he went through and the team was out of it, if he really wanted to pitch, let him. He had been managing his own UCL issue for years so let him determine when he returned as the team was realistically out of it. 

You really believe he alone was managing his UCL issue with no other partners? No one else ever had feedback?

[Sox looking at building in South Loop]

3 minutes ago, chitownsportsfan said:

A snowball won't last long in hell, and while I big upped your awesome post outlining exactly what should happen if JR had any shread of common sense left in his noggin -- ain't no way.

The reason I’ve been into this is that on paper it can work, and it should work. Putting together a campaign around developing this site, putting it out in February, seemingly having the developers who own the site on board- these are all smart, seasoned moves. This is how you’d handle this project if you actually wanted it to happen. But the hard part was always going to be the money - Reinsdorf and the developer need to make this a good deal for the city and state as well. We will see if they have.

[Sox looking at building in South Loop]

6 minutes ago, Dick Allen said:

 

I think it looks nice. But I’d only need it for baseball which is more than most Chicagoans and Illinoisan need it for, which clearly would be mediocre if ownership didn’t change.  I don’t know why anyone would give him that money with how little effort he has but into being anything but mediocre for 43 seasons. But we let JR build a state of the art baseball facility, and look what we got? Letting him do it again would be like letting Rick Hahn generally manage a rebuild after he showed you he had no clue how to build a team.

The reason why you’d do this as a taxpayer isn’t baseball, it’s because a state of the art ballpark would be an anchor tenant to develop this site.

Hopefully, with the attitude of the governor and most modern politicians, this is now a case where Reinsdorf telling the government “give me this money or I move my precious team to Nashville” winds up with them quickly saying “You can take I-65 the whole way.”

Furthermore, if he’s negotiated with the developers who own this site, told them he could get this done, and pisses off the state by demanding a big fat payout for his precious team, that won’t sit well with any developers for financing in Nashville either.

If he wants this to happen, then he needs to go to the government and show them honestly how putting $1.5 billion into things returns $3 billion in value to the city over the next 30 years, and with honest, non-Trump style valuations and reasonable occupation estimates. Showing off reasonable renderings of the entire site and making Chicacago look good is a minor step in this process, but it’s one we’ve seen.

Thus, the government break even in the short term and gets the major long term benefit of the site developed.

If Reinsdorf can’t demonstrate that, then yeah the state should nicely wave goodbye on moving day. This amount seems high to me, so yeah they better be able to offer a high quality justification better than “baseball is good”.

[Sox looking at building in South Loop]

2 minutes ago, Dick Allen said:

It’s a $1 billion ask on top of the $500 million TIF that covers the site. For more mediocrity. 

Do you really think this ballpark concept and site are mediocre? 

[Sox looking at building in South Loop]

The release of this at 4:00 on a Friday suggests they don’t think this will be terribly popular.

[Sox Sign Mike Moustakas]

17 minutes ago, Quin said:

Days later, this is still incredibly hilarious.

 

 

[Sox Sign Mike Moustakas]

Just now, chitownsportsfan said:

I just looked at Eder's stats. LOL! Dude could not have had a more White Sox like start to his time here.

FWIW, he was coming back from Tommy John surgery as well as another injury to start the year. I'm totally ok with discounting his performance for last year - yeah great success would have been wonderful, but being back out pitching while healthy was still positive.

This year we should expect and hope and demand for a lot better from him.

[Sox Sign Mike Moustakas]

5 minutes ago, TaylorStSox said:

Health is an issue for a couple of them. They have to make sure Montgomery and Eder are healthy before being promoted.

Neither of those guys count as "close to MLB-ready". You would certainly not try to trot them out for a full big league season. 

[Sox Sign Mike Moustakas]

7 minutes ago, hogan873 said:

So, if Moncada has a monster year, do the Sox pick up his option?  Or look to extend?

If Moncada has a monster year, then hopefully he's tradable at the deadline. Get rid of the money and leave that on someone else.

No way on Earth you extend him, not with a team controlled 1 year option.

[Hendriks signs with Red Sox]

15 minutes ago, CaliSoxFanViaSWside said:

He is in charge of his own life. He's got a wife and Doctors who all have say in the matter before anything the Sox do. Fundamentally disagree all you want but no team is in the business of baseball to be magnanimous. Expecting the Sox to have the final say when everyone important to his decision says it's OK is expecting way too much.

No, they're in the business of winning baseball games, and "being smart about keeping your players healthy" is important in that. The fact that the White Sox have been bafflingly stupid about this in the past 2 years has been completely obvious and an illustration of why your version of this - "oh he says he can play therefore he's good" - doesn't work at all.

[Cease To Padres per Passan]

4 minutes ago, shoeless_joe21 said:

Really makes me wonder what Getz wanted that they considered to be asking for the moon.

Getz wanted the type of return people in this thread have wanted. It's not an unreasonable ask, but given Cease's 2023 performance and the weak market, that offer hasn't yet been available.

[Hendriks signs with Red Sox]

6 minutes ago, CaliSoxFanViaSWside said:

Hendriks is a grown man capable of making his own decisions. He was an inspiration to cancer patients all over the world. If he wanted to pitch it's his decision . He's got all kinds of Doctors to tell him not to do it . If he has medical clearance to pitch then I see no fault with Sox brass from going through with it if Hendriks and his doctors are fine with it also.

Fundamentally disagree, given his injury history. If he is super anxious to pitch, somewhere in there you have a professional meeting with him and his doctors and lay out the rehab plan, focusing on making sure his elbow is healthy. Set reasonable milestones like having his fastball back before he's called up. If he doesn't meet those milestones, he's not facing big league hitters no matter how much he wants to. 

What kind of an inspiration is it to make it all the way back then have your body fall apart again a week later?

[Hendriks signs with Red Sox]

10 minutes ago, CaliSoxFanViaSWside said:

Your theory doesn't hold water if Hendriks was the one who wanted to pitch last season. Too much conjecture in your theory unless you have some kind of link to say Hendriks didnt want to pitch and Hahn and Boyer forced it on him. I think a grown man wouldnt have a problem saying no if asked to pitch knowing that he was likely to be a Free Agent.

Of course Hendriks wanted to pitch as soon as he could. He's as competitive of a person as we've had in years, that's just his personality. That doesn't mean he should have been allowed to. His body had just been through a major shock, there's no possible way he could have had a normal offseason training program even if he had tried to, he had already missed a month last year due to his elbow, he had a long-running elbow issue that had to be managed, and when he first came back his velocity was noticeably down already. 29 teams would have at least said "We're taking this slow, we're going to build your arm up gradually, and we want to see your velocity come back to your normal level before we start putting you against big leaguers". Rick Hahn said "I need you to save my competitive bullpen good luck kid."

[ST Thread]

7 hours ago, ChiSox59 said:

I was perusing the Sox roster resource page and I saw they signed former top prospect Lucius Fox to an milb deal last week. Maybe I missed it but hadn’t seen that mentioned on here. 

[Crochet on starting...]

1 hour ago, ptatc said:

Like I said it's a valid point. But the key is to get up to the innings. He can get the regular work whether it's starting or as a reliever. In the minors it would be easier to do but he has shown he can get MLB hitters out so he may learn more about being a pitcher and not a thrower against the better competition. 

There are positive and negative about each situation. The innings are the most important in any scenario. 

He hasn’t shown he can get big leaguers out since 2021, he darn well couldn’t get them out last year after Hahn raced him back to save his bullpen, and he hasn’t shown that he can get outs if guys have time to see him on the mound a second time through. At the very least, start him in Charlotte so you can see that he can get AAA hitters out.

[Cease To Padres per Passan]

[Sox Sign Mike Moustakas]

50 minutes ago, Dick Allen said:

That's been my point. How is Korey Lee going to get much from Stassi and Maldonado if he's hundreds of miles away in Charlotte. Hows the new catching coach going to help him?

Korey Lee would have never gotten the opportunity to learn from someone like Maldonado while last year though, right? Think of the upgrade over whoever the veteran catcher was in Lee's last organization of being around someone like Martin Maldonado. Being around Maldonado should fix everything with him, only a smart organization would think to bring in Maldonado to give Lee that opportunity.

[Hendriks signs with Red Sox]

Just now, South Side Hit Men said:

I agree on that front, but also feel if he is throwing with a significant drop in velocity during his rehabilitation assignment, and only has five competitive rehabilitation innings with a 10.80 ERA), a responsible team is not activating Liam until he is ready.

Whereas the Sox (looking at Boyer and Hahn) seemed more interested in promoting his return from a marketing perspective than properly managing the rehabilitation process.

Oh yeah the White Sox were drunk off their asses last year with that decision and the Crochet one.

[Hendriks signs with Red Sox]

12 hours ago, South Side Hit Men said:

Smart teams won’t.

For Brooks Boyer, Liam was the lone player / story besides Robert fans could get excited for in 2023. They were tweeting Liam all season meeting with cancer patients.

It was both medical and baseball malpractice to promote him to the roster after where he was at in the rehab process. They did this a lot under Hahn. It needs to change under Getz.

I think, given where Hendriks is in his career, wherever he signs there's a good chance a team will push him to be ready in September. That's still pretty aggressive, but it gives him a shot at throwing 5-10 meaningful innings before the end of the year, and although there's still a risk of additional injury, that's more manageable - particularly with extra off days in the playoffs followed immediately by a long break. This is similar to what the Rays did with Glasnow, he got 2 short playoff outings before their season ended. He still started on the IL the next season, but he performed well enough that he became tradable.

[Update: 3 (2) fans injured by bullet in Guaranteed Rate field (split from game thread, police investigation underway)]

3 hours ago, Dick Allen said:

JR is popping the champagne today. Not only can he say, see it wasn't my crack staff. Now he's got a we have to get out of this dangerous neighborhood argument.

They issued a report saying it came from outside the park? why wasn't that linked?

[Cease To Padres per Passan]

1 minute ago, caulfield12 said:

How many times has a pitcher gutted his way through a UCL tear with platelet injections and no TJ?

For how long? Tanaka did that for years and I'm not sure he ever had TJS. Guys like Sale, Hendriks had those issues, did some treatment, and then lasted many years before they needed TJS. The White Sox just successfully traded Santos after a strain like that.

[Cease To Padres per Passan]

If you're smart and you see this happening to your team now, you go and grab a Johnny Cueto and a Julio Teheran or something like that for depth. It is very "Rick Hahn" like that they didn't seem to do that earlier in the offseason.