caulfield12

Another Hahn special, Emilio Bonifacio...not officially retired yet but don’t see him connected to a team. Will probably end up in an international league.

You can argue just as easily that if Renteria didn’t experiment with the pen (Rodon) and Robert didn’t fall off a cliff...that 2-8 against the Indians, etc., we’d just put away the Twins and were running away then suddenly let up on the gas.

“Meanwhile, I'm guessing most of the fans who remain highly critical of the team have continued living through those painful years, and feel that team ownership and management owes them something for them having to endure those years. Is there something to that? For me, returning to the team as I did last year, all I see are good things and growth. Here are a few things that I really like (whether or not other Sox fans do)...” I can just imagine every loss bring blamed on TLR, just like previously with Renteria...but it’s going to be even more polarized. Because lots of fans who have been dormant for the better part of a decade are going to come back to the fold. Expectations are high...the most interest/excitement in fifteen years now since the 2006 team. That’s half a lifetime for quite a few posters here, or at least covering high school through mid to late 30’s. Many posters have left the bachelor lifestyle behind and now rank the Sox in their list of priorities well behind family, friends, work and Covid concerns. Personally, I tried to find other reasons to follow baseball (see Puig or Tatis)..but still followed most of the games on a daily basis until that mid 2016 collapse up to the Moncada debut and then Kopech in 2018 and in and out through 2019. What doesn’t sit too well with me is judging other Sox fans when you deliberately avoided following them for so long. You can argue or assert you’re not judging or preaching or carrying JR’s water or seeing everything White Sox through rose-colored glasses...but you can’t suddenly reappear and suddenly anoint Mr. Collins as a potential everyday player without having watched his at-bats the last three seasons. That will not be well received, certainly. So this relentless, new thread each day or even multiple threads cajoling everyone into being more optimistic are just going to start a war after every loss. If the White Sox were running a $140-150 million payroll out there for Opening Day, I might be convinced they actually were aiming to win a World Series, or at least advance in the playoffs or even to the ALCS. The Royals went from 20th to 17th to 9th in MLB Opening Day payroll from 2014-2016, but they at least set a new franchise high every year from 2013 through 2017, increasing for five consecutive years. The Cubs went from 19th to 13th all the way up to $184.5 million at the start of the 2016 World Series with the Indians around $95 million. The odds of teams not in the Top 12 payrolls advancing in the playoffs over the last four seasons is basically limited to the Rays and A’s over the White Sox. 90% of the frustration is that unwillingness even in the second year of the competitive window to spend at least in that $140-150 million range....it’s even harder to take when you see the Padres spending $162 million with the best team with the deepest pockets the team in front. It feels like if we were in the NL West we would simply aspire to 3rd place and maybe a wild card, but that would be the extent of it. And that self-satisfaction without having really accomplished anything yet is pretty galling. We had the division and coughed it all away the last two weeks...and the main reason we were there was beating up on the worst teams in baseball, particularly the Royals, Tigers...we only went 10-10 versus the relatively weak NL Central, too. We were 7-13 against Cleve and Minnesota, but 18-2 against Detroit and KC. 17-23 is closer to where we really were against the majority of MLB, but the unbalanced schedule and 16 team playoff field saved us.

Go Sox?

Injuries/lack of playing time/issues off the field. Nobody in baseball knows exactly what to expect, and how/if he will respond to such an extended layoff. You could even argue for the vision of Crochet as Randy Johnson over Kopech's long term future as a starter. We just don't have a clue how he will react.

SD Padres, #2-3 team in baseball coming from the 29th media market and opening 2021 at $162 million in payroll in a state with noteworthy Covid issues. We are only around what, $130 million in one of the Top 3~5 media markets in the entire country. It's roughly split 60/40 with Cubs, but that still is a significant market to exploit if only the organization could creatively use their collective imagination...in terms of at least reaching parity with the "greedy/evil" Cubs' collapsing empire.

Madrigal and Moncada will never have an easy road to the ASG. If we do extend Lynn, it won't be easily done, as a strong season from him has to roll down and impact money earmarked for Lucas, Vaughn, Madrigal, Kopech/Cease/Crochet, etc. Personally, would be pretty surprised to see it happen with Keuchel on books. Another obvious weakness besides 4/5 is going to be Grandal's health as he ages. And Zack Collins isn't being counted on for much at all by the majority of the fan base. That said, we could still get lucky with Micker, Sheets or Burger... not to mention Cespedes or Colas.

Meanwhile, JR has signed a deal with the City of Chicago to limit in-person attendance so he has a. legitimate excuse not to invest any more money in the on-field product.

He needs to spend less time on social media and more time exhaustively assessing all options for DH beyond internal ones if Vaughn is deemed to be at least a half-season away.

Except everything from last year we didn’t see... We heard Madrigal wasn’t close to ready after similar struggles his draft year. Why would Vaughn, arguably a more polished hitter, not be capable of following the same timeline of 1 1/2 seasons before recall?

Sheets should also be ahead of Collins at 1B...

Any team in baseball could have tried to spend $60 million on Latin American prospects alone in 2016, with half the money going to taxes and penalties. Was that smart? Well, it certainly boosted their minor league system into the upper tier, and in a hurry that bottoming out and drafting like the Royals or mid to late 80s White Sox would require hitting on nearly every first first rounder before the competitive window pushed picks down. We can criticize the Hosmer and Myers deals...or even Pomeranz before last year, but it’s certainly more fun to follow a team willing to dream big dreams rather than one getting by by exploiting market inefficiencies or niches like the Rays or A’s. Look at what’s happening in Atlanta, or with the Blue Jays. It’s not rocket science. Even the Marlins are getting up off the deck. I mean, honestly, that sounds exactly like a complaint of White Sox fans against the Cubs the last 20-30 years...calling them yuppies, that they’re only there to skip work, party/drink, play on their cell phones, aren’t as knowledgeable as Sox or Cardinals’ fans, pee everywhere, frat nerds ogling babes in bikinis, it’s all the same currency being spent, whether it’s a grandma from Des Moines or Pete from Peoria at the park.

https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/padres-have-tossed-aside-small-market-stigma-to-act-like-a-model-franchise-heres-why-its-great-for-mlb/ Speaking of which, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic in response to the Tatis extension voiced a concern that wasn't hard to find among some corners of the baseball cognoscenti. He wrote: "Fans in Pittsburgh, Baltimore and some larger major-league cities would love their clubs to operate as aggressively the Padres, who are locking up their 22-year-old superstar rather than starting their countdown to trading him. And yet, there's a danger here, and it can't be dismissed, even in the giddy elation of Fernando Tatis Jr.'s 14-year, $340 million extension. How the heck are the Padres going to sustain this?" That question gets it precisely wrong. A better way to frame the Padres' boldness would be to use it as a cudgel against the vast majority of other teams. That is: "If the Padres, denizens of one of the smallest markets in MLB, have achieved all this, then what the hell have you been doing?" For all the diversionary oxygen being devoted to pacing concerns and the dearth of balls in play and the like, the gravest current crisis in MLB is the overabundance of team owners who have no interest in winning as many baseball games as possible. Not only does treating cherished civic institutions like portfolio holdings disaffect fans (i.e., customers), but it also makes ongoing labor peace between players and owners much less likely. It's the hometown nine, not a tranche of debt instruments. When a team like the Padres gives primacy to the goal of winning -- as they darn well should -- it puts the lie to all those risible claims of financial woe emanating from most other C suites around the league. Seidler, who rose to the top of the Padres' org chart late last year, is not deluded about such matters. He knows MLB is a wildly profitable industry. He knows the claims of financial hardships resulting from the COVID-compromised 2020 season are temporary and almost certainly overstated. He knows that owning an MLB team yields investment growth that can be duplicated almost nowhere else. He knows the best way to get fans to care is to improve the product. So that's what he's doing even if few other owners have the fortitude to behave similarly. That kind of behavioral pressure from within is exactly what the current guild of MLB owners badly needs. Promising $340 million and a wire-to-wire no-trade clause to Tatis isn't a sign that the Padres are doing too much. Rather, it's a sign that many of the more well-heeled MLB teams aren't doing enough. The next time your team's owner costumes "I choose not to" as "I can't," cite for them the wee-market Padres and Tatis. After all the lies and self-defeating avarice on the part of MLB owners, we need to deprogram ourselves and stop thinking of signing a deliriously popular and deliriously excellent young franchise shortstop as something to wring hands over. Again, they're doing what they should be doing. With their fine and many-splendored ballpark, near-perfect weather, and re-imagined uniforms that evoke the strong franchise identity that was there in the beginning, the Padres have the trappings and settings of a model franchise. That they've lately been acting like a model franchise is an unqualified good thing and should serve as an example for the rest of baseball. Nice to see someone calling out the Pirates, Orioles, Royals, Tigers, Indians, Rays (understandable enough), A’s, Mariners, Cubs, Brewers, Rockies, Reds...although this could just as easily be aimed at White Sox and Twins’ ownership as well.

Robert already showed us how low his lows can go last September, forfeiting what seemed like an easy claim to AL Rookie of the Year honors by hitting .136 (11 for 81) with a .409 OPS. It's not fair to assess a player by his worst month, of course, but when that month is basically half his season (not to mention his career), it weighs heavily. Only one of the seven qualifying batters who struck out as often as Robert did in 2020 (32.2 percent) had higher than his .233 batting average (Willy Adames at .259), and while we've seen players like Aaron Judge and Joey Gallo thrive with that sort of strikeout rate in years past, it required them to be some of the hardest hitters in the game. Robert's average exit velocity (87.9 mph) was actually in the bottom half of the league. His expected batting average, according to Statcast, was .226. His expected slugging percentage was .466. No matter how scarce stolen bases are, Robert won't live up to his ADP without taking a leap as a hitter, and while such a leap is possible, I'm not willing to project it onto him at the expense of another ace or a Corey Seager-type hitter. There will be chances for those sorts of gambles later. https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/news/fantasy-baseball-rankings-2021-sleepers-from-advanced-model-that-called-will-smiths-strong-season/

This idea of Sheets as a possible DH or corner outfielder getting more than a handful of at-bats seems even more implausible...except for the fact he’s probably going to have a better big league career somewhere than Zack Collins or Yermin.

This idea of Sheets as a possible DH or corner outfielder getting more than a handful of at-bats seems even more implausible...except for the fact he’s probably going to have a better big league career somewhere than Zack Collins or Yermin.

He’s quite fortunate that he is now going to be able to get out of his original $750k investment in AMC at around $8 with a 30-40% profit in just a few weeks. Claimed to already have lost the same roughly on GME. https://twitter.com/RazerSliced/status/1364746958049533957/photo/1 BlackBoxStocks

Robert at 5, Jimenez at 8 and Vaughn at 21. Moncada 25 years old already. Madrigal (23) and Kopech (24) not mentioned. https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-best-players-under-25?partnerId=zh-20210225-156906-MLB&qid=1026&bt_ee=fCmeGMRvCaJnHXI9fXyGVuRvlHCMzP6Ut8PVgiwhUALVNnB4NOwQgudsK9nRO%2Fk2&bt_ts=1614256686777 https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/mlb-spring-training-four-young-players-including-gavin-lux-and-jo-adell-with-something-to-prove-in-2021/ Adell, C.Kieboom, Lux, Mize

Don’t forget LuGon.

Ultimately, you can argue that Hendriks will be hard-pressed to repeat or better Colome's success, that Grandal/Keuchel/Abreu/Dunning are definitely regression along the aging curve candidates, Eaton/Rodon/Moncada's health...Kopech being away from the game for so long and then the psychological adjustment side (he's going to want to go out right away and throw 100 again.) Plus, you lost McCann's leadership and rapport with Giolito. Finally, Crochet's being able to remain healthy in a year where he will certainly be over-utilized by match-ups master TLR is a definite concern. We should certainly expect to get more production out of Eaton, Moncada, Robert and whoever is at DH, but there's a lingering question mark to go along with nearly every positive point. And better defense and base running from Nick Madrigal. Which is why the White Sox are perceived as being neck and neck with the Twins, and perhaps slightly behind since they're defending the division title and made a ton of moves in the last 4-6 weeks to improve themselves. Yay, 15 names!!!

Not beating up on the Tigers and Royals alone will definitely test the White Sox this year. They have to prove they can somehow vanquish the Indians first, before they worry about the Twins. With a more balanced schedule, most reasonable Sox fans would expect 88-94 wins this upcoming season (not knowing about injuries, obviously, how much money they have to spend at the deadline, when fans will return and in what percentages of capacity, even whether Vaughn will be held back or not to gain another year of control contractually.)

We shall see. But can you imagine "old school" Tony LaRussa being force-fed an inexperienced rookie at DH in a year he's expected to compete for the AL pennant? I can't. Now maybe if it's just the Cardinals' history, where they seemingly come up with a rookie impact (many not highly touted) player nearly every season, but that hasn't historically been the case with the White Sox farm system. You have to go from two decades ago in Rowand/Crede to Gordon Beckham/Viciedo and then all the way to TA and then the last 3-4 seasons of acquisitions and high draft picks to get any significantly impactful players in a given year. Heck, somehow Carlos Martinez's son became a near All-Star level hitter with them for a season or two after starting out with the White Sox.

Craig Biggio

No way. They'll pick up someone like a Smoak/Pearce/Moreland just to hold the position down...not those names, of course, but a veteran cut lose in the last couple of roster cutdowns before Opening Day, most likely a player they're actively already watching in Arizona.

Not to mention Erik Johnson was the "well-known" part of that deal on the day it was made, surrendering TWO players to save money on Shields' deal instead of keeping their own talent in-house...when Fowler was desperate (this was put into the press quite openly, not an industry secret) to get Shields off the team as quickly as possible during that time span.