Balta1701

Around the league, there are only a handful of teams that actually look elite right now. The Bears sure don't look like a 4-13 team, and they don't look like a 13-4 team. While you hope things trend positively soon, right now they're in that giant middle of the pack. The Texans, in my eyes, are one of the teams that look elite right now. They are winning close games rather than blowouts so far, this is true, but they play really tough defensive football and have a lot at the skill positions. Injuries could change things and they could always "Eagles" the 2nd half or something like that, but I think the Bears just gave a tough game to a 12+ win team with a QB in his 2nd game, didn't look the best, but still held their own. Question is, do you change systems if the coach wins 7-8 games?

While the O line wasn’t good, give some credit to the Texans too. That D line is legit. The personnel are strong and Ryans seems excellent at pushing an offenses weaknesses. It felt like watching a young team with a stout defense and a rookie QB last night, up against a team with a more experienced QB. Both sides did damage but Stroud limited the silly plays (the long Int, the blind side sack by Hunter on a play that should have been a screen come to mind) and Stroud did a better job of nailing the “how the hell did he find that guy open” throws, mostly to Collins. I thought the difference in the game was not the O line as much as it was Williams played like a rookie. Did not hit his receivers when they had space and did not know how to find a weakness in that defense. Showed promise but still early on a learning curve. The one thing that is different is that his opponent, Stroud, was a long ways ahead of this point last year after game 2. Also, that was way too many false starts for a pro offense, did the coaches not work with anything on volume this week? And that second half wasted timeout-challenge was awful, that could easily have been a difference maker at the end.

Holy s%*# Jacob DeGrom is actually pitching in the big leagues again?

I always used to do this for Hahn so I might as well do it for the “Bruised girls are best” GM. The correct answer to that question is “Look we know the results of this season aren’t acceptable to our fans or to us. We know it takes time to fix these things. But we owe it to our fans and to the city to take a big step in the right direction next year and some of that will come from Free agency. I can promise you we will sign anyone specific but there are players on the market this offseason who will make us a lot better next year and we expect to compete to sign them.” Even if it’s bullshit, the only reason you declare you’re out on FA in September with a 35 win team and $50 million on the books is to collude with other teams to keep prices down, so that no one uses you as a possible mystery team that you have to bid against. Even the worse than us in ‘23 Royals made a serious move this year helped by some strong signings, with a similar payroll going into the offseason as the White Sox today.

Focus on guys who have TWTW. Who hit the ball on the ground and who have leadership.

Which is weird because the last time he talked, he said his number 1 priority this offseason was to fix the bullpen.

I count 3 innings in their last 36 where they've scored.

115. 9-5 ties the Mets in the L column. 5-9 for lowest winning percentage in the modern era.

“I know, we’ll bring in veteran leadership, that’ll solve it.”

No 4 games per month since July would be 9-10 wins. You're exaggerating, it's not nearly that high.

"Per month"? You're also exaggerating.

The Angels being 27 games better than the White Sox is like a 92 win team playing a 65 win team. In that case, the better team is probably going to win most of the games, but they'd be happy going 4-2 and winning both series, it's still not a blowout, and sometimes the worse team might still win 3 or 4 games.

No one would notice action on…a low level minor league game?

The White Sox kept horn through the spring and sent him to Charlotte after trading for him IIRC.

Did everyone see that article in the Sun Times a couple weeks ago on how the White Sox had bullpen pieces on their roster in ST that they let go and those guys have had pretty consistent success this year with other teams?

Lee was a young guy brought in to see if they could get something out of him while he had cheap control. He was not brought in by Domestic Violence Enthusiast Getz as one of his veterans for leadership program.

I tend to not quite count Fedde in that total since that signing seemed smart and very distinct from bringing in Martin Maldonado and expecting leadership to make a difference. Fedde was a gamble that could have trade value. Maldonado was to bring TWTW and make them winners.

I 100% believe that they thought adding veteran leadership would get them going in the right direction. They spent what $20 million+ on the concept? They probably realized they had a ways to go but no way they spend that much money if they think they’ll be worse. I am not sure if it was “domestic abuse enthusiast” Getz’s idea that he sold to Reinsdorf, or Reinsdorf wanted that and Getz told him it was a great idea.

I've heard a bunch of times in the last year how new techniques were supposed to cut the recovery time from this down from 16-18 months and I haven't seen it happen once yet.

Why? What will the White Sox be changing that the Dodgers couldn't or wouldn't change? What is wrong with him now?

While maybe not the Orioles specifically, as you can see above, there's plenty of so-called garbage "Insider proof" that there were offers available for Fedde better than the 0 players they got back for him if you want to believe that. But, if your whole story relies on "I believe that everything which is leaked has 0 underlying motive and is 100% accurate and I will call you out if you disagree with this so it must be the case", then I have some cats you can eat.

Trevor Rogers has a 7.33 ERA with the orioles and was sent to AAA after a couple starts so yes Fedde would have been significantly better for them and Chris “smack my b**** up” Getz got substantially less for Fedde than the Marlins got and both the Os and White Sox are worse for it.

If you replaced the Angels with the Twins and Royals I’d buy that, but the Angels are just bad. Normal baseball bad not White Sox bad, but they’re not sweeping 6 games.

I think Lip is right and Jimmy also said on the naxi filled site, they are getting a lot of press inquiries for comments including from national media and had to give them something printable as they got close to the record.