Balta1701

It's not just the cheapness. The entire offseason was dripping with disrespect to the fanbase. They could have spent the whole offseason commenting like Renteria and saying they were happy to just have a seat at the table, instead you had Rick Hahn cutting people off at Soxfest and saying "we're going to be adding a middle of the order bat". The org was screaming and leaking top to bottom "We are going to get this done" so that fans would go buy tickets. They did all that while knowing they weren;t serious, even after Boras had told them they weren't being serious. And then, just like Stone here, when anyone dared call them on it, you had KW yelling at the fans about "how do you expect us to do this and keep our next core together". Well a**hole i don't know, you're the franchise who said you were going to add a middle of the order bat, you tell me.

So you make excuses. You're ok with losers like Jose Abreu if he hits a few home runs because that's more important to you.

But you said "Just win baby" then you spend all this time justifying why you're ok with a loser. The argument you just gave is that of a mid-90s cubs fan. Sure the team is terrible but Sammy hit one into the seats, so you're content with the 9-2 loss. At least you've made it clear that winning isn't important to you.

Over the last 6 years, Encarnacion has 46 more home runs than Abreu, 61 more RBIs. He's been better than or equal to Abreu every season of Abreu's career.

Why do you hate Abreu so much? The guy's been on losing teams every single year of his career, I never expected you to come down so blatantly hard on him.

One thing I have yet to see brought up is that the White Sox have experience within recent memory of limiting a pitcher's throwing days/out of game work in order to help extend their usefulness in games...that was how both Quintana and Sale were managed in 2012. Quintana threw 38 innings in 2010, 102 innings in 2011, and with the White Sox jumped from A-ball to the big leagues and threw 185 total innings in 2012. Chris Sale threw 71 innings out of the bullpen in 2011 and then jumped to 192 innings in 2012. Both of them wore down in September, so some depth is useful, but conveniently Rodon should come back midseason so there's already an obvious plan for that setup. Given that experience, for Kopech my setup is - if he shows he's ready in Spring Training he breaks camp with the big league team in the rotation. Last year he struggled with his control for a couple months of the year before snapping things together in late June - if he is struggling with his control in spring training, he heads to Charlotte and someone else (Lopez?) Gets a rotation shot until Kopech earns the callup. From there, He's on the 2012 innings management plan - extra time off where possible, maybe 1 or 2 starts skipped, limiting offday throwing, but if he's healthy and effective you feel free to throw him 150+ innings, and figure out down the stretch whether he needs extra days off with Rodon swapped in.

The Mets have had 2 of their pitchers go down for TJS. Matt Harvey and Jacob DeGrom (ok DeGrom was while he was in the minors but run with the point). Their careers have completely diverged since the surgery - DeGrom has been an Ace, Harvey fell apart. How confident are you in signing a guy who you not only haven't seen put up great big league numbers, but who hasn't pitched in nearly 12 months?

You know what I really want to see? The White Sox bring Cole and Boras in at the winter meetings, they make their usual presentation, run him through their team goals, the meetings with the manager, etc. Boras then says "ok, make us a contract offer". The White Sox hand Cole an offer sheet for 5/$75 million. Boras immediately turns around and hands the White Sox an already-prepared bill for the time he spent sitting in the room, and tells them they owe him for the time they just wasted as he walks out, leaving them dumbfounded.

I know it's not the same since the tracking numbers aren't the same, but his 2005 UZR would right now make him the 3rd best defensive LF in baseball.

Scott Podsednik was a really good defensive LF during his peak years. He was iffy in CF but did not play there full time with us.

I'm not able to watch this game but am really happy for a good looking pitching line.

What I'd rather the White Sox do with every penny does not matter. The White Sox aren't going to put extra money into development just because it would be a smart thing to do. I have to either accept that they will do stupid things in development or stop being a fan of the team, and I've accepted all the other stupid development decisions they did that dumped us into this decade long mess. A couple extra million on Abreu doesn't bother me as long as we're not giving up talent from the system to bring the guy in. If the guy just remains decent with RISP then he'll still be better than almost every dollar RH has ever spent.

I still have no problem putting him down for 2/$25 or so. Even if it's a slight overpay. What do I care if they overpay Abreu by a couple million? With a payroll this low, it fills a role and it's like they're paying him to be a manager anyway.

At the big league level...this team has not had an unusual number of injuries in 2019. The Yankees have had guys spend more than twice as much time on the IL as us, and somehow they're in first place. The White Sox are right in the middle of the pack for IL usage this year. If the number of injuries the White Sox have had in 2019 sabotages you...you were this bad in the first place. Assuming they sign a few pitchers and fix little Ricky's bullpen debacle, there will be 10+ new players on this roster by next May. That means some of the guys currently on the roster will shift back to being backups, creating depth. That's how it should work. We don't have that depth this year because 2018 at the minor league level was so bad that it demolished any potential plans we could have had. So now we have Tilson as a starter and Cordell and Tilson and Engel all on the roster because of a couple injuries, when one or two of them could be adequate backups. That's what 2018 did to us - the roster isn't there yet. Next year...the excuses run out.

Yes. And now it's time to see progress. When they made their trades, I said based on the talent they got, in 2019 they should be in the wild card discussion, maybe even winning it. 2018 was such a complete debacle organization-wide that it was a full year setback. Injuries to 1/2 of our top prospects, other guys just falling apart, lack of progress. This year we've seen the progress we were supposed to see in 2018, but at least we're seeing it. In 2020 we need to take the next step and at least be in the wild card discussion. They have all the talent ready they could ask for and their payroll is so low they could go buy anything they want. We're out of excuses next year. This team has been noncompetitive for 7 full seasons, they haven't played a post-trade-deadline game that mattered since 2012 (even if RH's fantasies said they were). There are 2 possible end results of this - either the White Sox fanbase is going to be frustrated or the White Sox fanbase is going to give up and stop caring. They should consider themselves lucky that anyone cares any more after this - especially after they spent the offseason repeatedly lying to, insulting, and disrespecting the people who pay their bills. So fine, I'm a white sox fan and I've been patient. I'm not mad about a 7 game losing streak and the team being about 10 games below .500 because that's where I expected them to be this year, and there has been some progress. But I've been more patient than any Astros fan or Cubs fan had to be. In 2020 I want watchable, competitive games in September. Injury, guys being young - no longer an excuse.

And Dallas Keuchel wanted a multi year deal and Craig Kimbrel wanted $100 million and settled for $33 million.

While this is only year 3 of the "Official rebuild", this is year 7 of being below .500 and year 11 missing the playoffs. The Astros were under .500 for 6 consecutive years and had a 9 year playoff drought during their rebuild. The Cubs were only below .500 for 5 years, and their playoff drought was only 6.

? To receive a comp pick, the White Sox would have to be willing to give him a qualifying offer, which is a likely a 1 year, $18.5 million or so deal. There's a good chance he would accept that if offered to him as no team signing him would want to lose a draft pick for him, and that's likely substantially more money than he'll get in 2020 under any other contract.

Can he cook?

So like $150 million over 10 years.

How on Earth do you guarantee 8-10 years financially without a dramatically large guarantee?

After seeing what Miller and Chapman brought to the Yankees, the Pirates should not move Vazquez without someone in the top 20 coming back + other pieces. He's under team control for longer than Andrew Miller was, he's younger, and he's paid less per year. The Pirates can wait 2 years with him and if he keeps pitching like this he'd still be worth a top 20 prospect.

Not one of them has signed an "unprecedented" contract of the sort you're talking. Eloy's deal was right in line with Anderson and with that guy from the Phillies who was signed before he came up. You're talking for Robert about having to do a dramatically large guarantee in order to get him to sign - you said so yourself that the guarantee given to Eloy was "Insulting". Reinsdorf is not going to establish the precedent that he'll guarantee a guy his entire arbitration salary in order to buy out 1 year.

Simple question in reply. Do you think that Jerry Reinsdorf is willing to break brand new ground on a contract format for this player?

Dude, you literally just called the contract that Eloy Jiminez signed to come up from the minor leagues "Borderline insulting" and you're wondering why I'm saying Robert wouldn't sign the kind of extension that would bring him up from the minor leagues early?