caulfield12

Maybe we need to saturate the Philadelphia media with stories about the sad saga of JD Drew, Scott Boras and the Phillies...

Shields was the main one for KC, but he was acquired by trade. It was mostly the secondary bullpen pieces with that particular team. Infante, Morales, Chris Young, Madson, Medlen, Vargas, Blanton were all complimentary pieces...Kendrys Morales was probably the key addition offensively. Gurriel, Aoki, Reddick and Beltran for the Astros...traded for Verlander to push them over the top. Morton, Gregerson and McHugh came from outside the organization.

Too bad draft picks weren’t tradable, or we’d have certainly have put together the MLB version of the Herschel Walker trade.

If we’re going to blame Daniels and Fielder there, then the Rangers’ track record (minus the last two years, obviously) over the last decade plus runs rings around the White Sox...two World Series appearances weren’t by accident.

And starting the year with Latos and Rollins and arguing you were legitimately attempting to compete...then not realizing that 23-10 start was just a false positive, that it wasn’t going to turn out like 2000 and 2005 and 2008 but was headed for more of a 2010/12 type of ending, at best. Someone was arguing Preller wasn’t that good. Well, he was certainly good enough to remember the original scouting report on Tatis, even though they hadn’t signed him for a very affordable price in the first place.

Hampton and Zito were two of the worst really immense (at the time) deals for starting pitchers. Of course, Jaime Navarro, on a much smaller scale, or Danks. https://www.thesportster.com/baseball/top-20-worst-contracts-in-mlb-history/ This article has another 20.

Is that also adjusting for Safeco offensively?

And yet some teams somehow manage to get Nolas, Buehlers, Trouts, Benintendis, Tucker’s and Kinslers....and the White Sox get loyalty rewards from management. Players from the Midwest and Northeast just don’t get scouted as well and certainly not as frequently.

Yes, therein lies the point. Sox scouted them together and picked the athlete and ignored the real baseball player...

Once again, the horror of misremembering them as high school vs. university teammates!! I’m 100% sure YOU knew that too, right? I mean none of our broadcasters like Hawk and Melton and DJ and Farmer and Benetti have ever made a single mistake...and they actually get paid for their memories.

I should have been more specific...fWAR with the White Sox after the trade, versus fWAR for Fogg, Wells and Lowe with the Pirates. Which of course led to not having a 5th starter in 2003 because we were too cheap to pay Kenny Rogers, who was of course integral in the Twins winning yet another division title. 8.5 for Wells, 6.1 for Fogg and 1.0 for Ritchie from 2012-14.

You’re really something, you know that... I probably have 500 posts the last three days, and make a couple of mistakes at 5 am. in the morning. Oh my god, I had Kinsler and Brian Anderson as teammates in university instead of high school. The horror of it all!!! Well, KW once traded the wrong Barry/Berry from his system because there was a miscommunication about the spelling of the name. He didn’t even know who Nestor Molina was, either, but that’s an embarrassment now for Marco Paddy to live with.

“He became the White Sox minor league pitching coordinator from 1993 through 2002, aside from serving as pitching coach for the Triple-A Nashville Sounds in 1995 and 1996.” Just because he wasn’t his personal and official big league pitching coach doesn’t mean they didn’t spend a lot of time working together. The fact of the matter is that many in the organization were pushing for Todd Ritchie over Kip Wells and Josh Fogg, and we know how well that worked out in terms of career fWAR.

Anderson is a graduate of the University of Arizona and Canyon del Oro High School in Oro Valley, Arizona, a suburb of Tucson. All-Star second baseman Ian Kinsler of the Texas Rangers was his best friend and teammate in high school,[1]where they played with Scott Hairston and the brothers Chris and Shelley Duncan. Fine, high school teammates...they were scouted together from the time they were 16, and Anderson was originally the one they drooled over, but he wasn’t half the player that Kinsler turned out to be.

Well, here’s something positive. Nearly every former Sox player comes back (like Brian Anderson) when their career is beyond saving...Beckham will undoubtedly be next. Not only that, Wells isn't exactly Pettitte, a borderline Hall of Famer. Wells has a career 67-99 record, 4.71 ERA and 1.51 WHIP. But Wells, 35 later this month, was throwing 93-94 mph in tryouts for teams (he had one for the Mets, as well), so it may not be quite the long shot folks might assume. White Sox pitching coach Don Cooper said he was throwing "good'' and the team needed veteran depth at the Triple-A level. It's a low-risk deal for the White Sox since he'll be in the minors at the start, and he's going to need several weeks to get into pitching shape, but he is serious about it. Wells had stints with the Pirates, Rockies, Cardinals, Rangers, Reds and Royals and Nationals in his first 11-year big-league career. Another team or two showed interest, but Wells wanted to do it for the White Sox because he has fond memories of pitching for them a decade ago (he was a White Sox from 1999-2001), and like a lot of players who played on Chicago's South Side, he has especially fond memories of working for White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf.

Where did I say that, in those exact words? Kip Wells was a good pick, lots of talent, but Cooper couldn’t get it out of him under the bright lights of Chicago...heck, Joe Borchard might have even become something if he wasn’t immediately placed under extreme pressure to produce, maybe even Brian Anderson (50% character issues, which other teams noticed, zeroing in on his college teammate Ian Kinsler instead.) We draft physical talent...but not well-rounded baseball players. Madrigal was the first I can remember that won’t need a ton of coaching.

Dan Hudson...no patience, 3 big league starts, Cooper didn’t like him. Pretty much the same with Brandon McCarthy. Same with Marcus Semien, even Eduardo Escobar to a lesser extent...trade players before they realize their potential when short term production isn’t immediately gratifying. We all remember Beckham moved all over the field, Viciedo, Mark Teahen, Josh Fields, the list goes on and on...it’s pretty incredible to me we’ve never even had defensive specialist (maybe it will have to be Omar Vizquel.) Meanwhile, the Royals can turn Alex Gordon, through sheer hard work and persistence, into a perennial Gold Glover (yes, I realize he’s fallen off a sheer cliff offensively in his early 30’s.)

So they can basically live off Sale, Eaton and Q for another decade or so...right? All the other busted draft picks, trades and FA acquisitions, just bad luck, not bad judgment. “They all looked good or defensible at the time!” And we were also deprived of another player going into the Hall of Fame with a White Sox cap on...thanks to our own ineptitude. Not exactly the type of spellbinding story you want to tell your kids at night, about Sale cutting up jerseys or Drake LaRoche Gate.

Then doubled up by spending another $15+ million on declining veteran placeholders...

http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/26041755/manny-machado-jerseys-briefly-sale-padres-team-store

New SoxTalk banner idea? Guess we have to wait for Harper to officially sign with the Phillies first.

The probably wouldn’t have gotten Jimenez and Cease though...the timing on that couldn’t have been any more perfect, even though most of us were worried it was too late to extract maximum value on Q.

Isn’t that the GM’s job to articulate for such changes? Preller was pushed to rebuild on the fly, it flopped...they went huge into Latin American signings and the GM was able to successfully convince a much poorer ownership group to extend themselves. If it wasn’t just now...when is a similar situation where the stars are perfectly in alignment ever going to arise again? Plausible Answer: When the next George RR Martin Game of Thrones Book comes out.

https://www.sportingnews.com/au/mlb/news/tim-anderson-manny-machado-might-have-missed-the-boat-by-signing-with-padres-over-white-sox/u9xrqw96v9fa1aad4aqiwh6oi Tim Anderson showing the expected leadership and cockiness we’ve come to expect... Anderson was asked if four-time All-Star Machado "missed the boat" by signing with San Diego over Chicago. Th 25-year-old told reporters: "He might have. But we're going to keep rolling. "You know, you can ride with us or don't. ... We couldn't care less who's on the boat with us. We know who all is on the boat with us and we know which way we're going to sail."

They went 8 years without a playoff appearance (2006-13) before Preller even came on board...whereas Hahn’s been around with KW in the same organization for even longer together.