caulfield12

That all depends on which versions of Jimenez and Robert return... especially Luis.

I hear you. With Iowa, we get Jason Bohannon back and key transfers out to watch his kid play PG (while homegrown DJ Carton went to OSU and Marquette.) Kirk Ferentz boring and predictable offenses, with plenty of jailbreak screens mixed in with athletic department and program wide accusations of racism. If my dad didn’t go to Oklahoma, there would never be a shot at any national championship but wrestling in the major sports. Ever. Then the White Sox. The Dolphins for the last twenty years, pretty much gave up on them and adopted the Chiefs when I moved to KC. Still not the same feeling...more of a feeling happiness for those fans who suffered so long and what it meant to the city. NBA was Dr. J 76ers and then Bulls with Jordan, have hardly watched a full game since he retired. Maybe some of the most important NBA Finals games. I’m sure my friend who loves the Cubs will be trolling me today after how confidently the offseason started...and with the Cubs’ run slowly fading to black without enough pitching.

Minors threads will suddenly get a lot more attention again, that’s for sure. Especially analyzing Cespedes’ transition, although too much is already expected just due to the family name.

The amazing thing is that playing with such a nagging injury his entire professional career hasn’t held him back for more than a 10 game DL stint. So many real doctors were saying he was going to have to get surgery and be out the entire season. That said, it can certainly happen again, not sure if the shoulder harness underneath will 100% prevent it. Also, Robert was our future Mike Trout one month into 2020. Future...potential...sky unlimited. This is even more devastating than Kopech because a speed based player without that explosion loses some of his defensive advantage and baserunning. Then he’s just a classic swing and miss player with 30-40 homer potential, but the hips certainly won’t help his swing, either. Pitchers usually come back from at least one TJS, and you almost expected it with how he was trying to throw harder and harder back then, it was like an obsession. Now he’s a lot more mature and has some clarity on dialing it back to protect his future, but not sacrificing the competitiveness.

He might be up this season at the rate we’re going. Or Sheets. Alas, neither can or should play CF. This is where we needed to target Profar in the offseason, to have a jack of all trades/Swiss army knife you can competently cover any position with for longer term.

Barbaro Garbey? Garbage?

Had to go there, lol...polarization of the message board over the next year, begin. Eventually, we have to figure out as how much insurance money the club is receiving for Jimenez and especially Robert on the shelf most of the season. Usually, it’s 40-60%. There really should be no excuses for not taking on a player like Starling Marte, David Peralta, Gregory Polanco...from cash strapped trams out of contention. Otherwise, we will have “rebuild the rebuild” by dealing assets this year threads popping after every loss to divisional rivals when/if we haven’t done something to address the losses...discussions on Lynn, Hendriks, Rodon, even Abreu.

Or TLR and a front office not aligned with ownership...? Yermin, TA and Hendriks bring plenty of emotion.

Depends on your definition of Leury, Hamilton and/or Engel on the offensive front. Most of the hopes surround Engel, but hitting the ground running offensively after such a long layoff and being forced to contribute as something more than a complementary player will be a huge test.

Jeremy Lamb most definitely is not a solution...

My theory: he spent his offseason focusing on defense. Playing in the outfield at Coors is hard, and for all of Hilliard’s impressive stats in 2019, his defense was terrible. He committed two errors in 18 starts and Fangraphs’ Defensive Runs Above Average (DEF) metric had him at -2.2. Last season he committed zero errors on his way to a -0.1 DEF rating. Being a league average defender while patrolling centerfield in Denver is a major accomplishment. For all his troubles last year, Hilliard’s homers and defense lifted him to a 0.2 fWAR, good for 7th on the team. Hilliard’s drop-off was foreshadowed by a poor offensive showing in last year’s shortened spring training. MLB.com shows that he hit .184 with 14 strikeouts and two walks in 17 games. This year he is hitting .267 through 13 spring games with five walks and nine strikeouts. Interestingly, while his strikeout rate remains high, he is yet to demonstrate his power. Instead, Hilliard appears to be taking a contact-driven approach, with only a single extra-base hit (an RBI double) to his name. This could pay dividends. Last year, Hilliard’s BABIP was .281, a number that should rise drastically if his goal is to get on bases rather than round them all at once. https://www.purplerow.com/2021/3/17/22335131/colorado-rockies-news-sam-hilliard-disastrous-2020-future-desmond-dahl

That team had an unique style and certainly a defined system of success. Core of young or rising talent with veterans mixed in. Lots of high contact hitters who kept the line moving. Willingness to put team over individual numbers. Fundamentally solid. Dominant dominant bullpens and defense up the middle, and Gordon in LF. Then ruling over the last 2-3 innings with Dyson, Cain and Gore nearly unstoppable on the basepaths and three closers for the 7th-9th. What defines this White Sox team but talent/potential? What is their identity?

Leery about Leury...actually, he’s been our recent top clutch hitter, seemingly because he had the most opportunities and the law of averages kicking in.

Also depends on what the Royals and Twins try to do... Both teams have obvious starting pitching needs. The Twins also are dealing with back end bullpen problems as well. And both teams have pretty attractive (and deeper) minor league talent pools. The Twins have no choice but to get back in this with so many veterans like Cruz and Donaldson...and limited shelf life to trade Buxton/Berrios (for massive hauls) or simply get comp picks back. The Royals can sit back and bide their time, not really expected to compete this year. Their big additions will be from the minors. The White Sox have to approach this as a “playoffs are a necessity” season, an easy conclusion to reach.

So no team qualifies by this definition...perhaps the Red Sox come closest, but not quite.

Note that the Rays also have basically zero margin for error. Primary player (or two) goes down? Done. Manager makes a bad move to the bullpen in the playoffs? Done. Bad free agent signing? Done. The White Sox want to operate with the same margin for error with no demonstrated capacity for avoiding said errors. Posted by Trooper Galactus on Feb 26, 2021 | 3:46 PM Now the only counter-argument here is that the White Sox have a much larger margin for error because the Twins are spending even less (and likely losing Buxton and Berrios), the Indians now have the lowest payroll in baseball and will have to trade Jose Ramirez and Bieber, logically...the Tigers are the worst team in baseball and that just leaves the small-market Royals and Twins to fight it out with (and the possibility of a Wild Card beating up on Detroit.)

https://www.southsidesox.com/2021/2/26/22303207/white-sox-gm-rick-hahn-steps-in-it-again In an hour-long chat (one winces to imagine what was left on the cutting-room floor), Hahn essentially pulled a Reggie’s, defensively calling out White Sox fans (and their Twitter “hot takes”) for criticizing the terrible offseason the team has had. Hahn spoke specifically of attacks on the team’s (lack of) spending, listing several extremely inappropriate, and frankly tedious, future memes the GM will one day regret: The Tampa example (the Rays being two wins from a title as the tiniest of small-market teams means exactly ... what to the White Sox, who are richer, bigger-market — and more terrible at scouting, signing and trading — than Tampa?) “We’ve made a number of high-dollar commitments” (true, on the scale of, yes, the White Sox spent more than I did ... and you, too) If the White Sox had signed, say, Manny Machado, the money might not have been there to extend Luis Robert or Eloy Jiménez. (Seriously? The premise of this teardown on the cheap was locking up All-Star talent for pennies on the dollar, but, OK.) Yasmani Grandal — YASMANI GRANDAL, and his team record-setting four-year, $73 million deal, is cited as more proof of spending. The CHICAGO White Sox have never laid out more than $73 million in a single deal, and it’s being cited as reasons for critics to shut up. (You may recall our coverage of the Grandal signing was otherworldly-positive ... now just another thing Rick crapped on with this Athletic sitdown.) and, OF COURSE, the pandemic What really bothers me as a fan, and as writer, is Hahn’s assertion that “criticisms not based in reality bother me.” This is gaslighting, pure and simple. ..... Not even two years ago, during that odd circle-jerk with the NBC head-bobbers that was his “Reggie’s debacle,” Hahn inferred that a certain (presumably large) segment of White Sox fans wanted the rebuild to fail.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded 182,874 wasted doses as of late March, three months into the country's effort to vaccinate the masses against the coronavirus. CVS was responsible for nearly half, and Walgreens was responsible for 21 percent, or nearly 128,500 wasted shots combined. CDC data suggest that the companies have wasted more doses than states, U.S. territories and federal agencies combined. Pfizer's vaccine, which in December was the first to be deployed and initially required storage at ultracold temperatures, made up nearly 60 percent of the tossed doses. https://www.yahoo.com/news/national-pharmacy-chains-wasted-hundreds-083110241.html

What AL team is going to help the White Sox? Needs to be an NL team, like us assuming Polanco’s deal with the Pirates, David Peralta, etc. Starling Marte would be another obvious one. https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2020/11/2021-22-mlb-free-agents.html Good luck with this list...! Won’t be easy. At all.

Nearly 1.3 billion adults globally in 2020 said they would not get a Covid-19 vaccine if one were offered to them at no cost, according to a new Gallup poll released on Monday. The poll, which surveyed more than 300,000 people across 117 countries last year, showed that 68% of adults worldwide would get a vaccine if one were offered to them for free. Some 29% of those polled said they would opt out of vaccination, and another 3% said they did not know. That global average falls below the range required for a herd immunity to the novel coronavirus, which experts have estimated as falling between 70% and 85%. www.cnn.com

Not if it continues to flame across the world and the West hides behind patent rights over saving lives and stopping the pandemic cold.

Do we really have to bump the Eaton thread up now...or his decline a result of an injury? Or does injury align with conventional wisdom he couldn’t consistently stay in the lineup all season long?

Hard to tell, we keep shifting on a dime around here recently...depending on the daily results.

I think you mean Colome, Giolito and duct tape vs. Lynn/Rodon/Kopech and the best bullpen ever assembled in the history of the game.