caulfield12

It would be interesting to track season ticket movement (assuming they don't sign Harper, lol) from this day forward...how many season ticket renewals we lose after this upcoming season if the Sox continue to flounder and can't come close to competing with the depleted but resilient Indians. We'll be back at that magic 1.3 million in attendance mark where it actually starts hurting ownership (but not nearly as much as before the advent of MLB ADV MEDIA).

He stumbled in the 2014-15 cycle, won back the confidence of management and regrouped. Bottom line, he was able to convince a debt-laden ownership group to go after a legit, comes around as an opportunity once every 5-10 years superstar (where the stars perfectly aligned for the White Sox to strike), something our own GM failed to do, yet again. He has the consensus best farm system in ALL OF BASEBALL. Whereas Keith Law now has the White Sox as, what, 13th? And that's still including Michael Kopech on the lists, in a technicality. What success stories does Rick Hahn? I guess the best example is a catcher we thought so much of we traded four years of control away for a forgettable and overpaid (and superfluous without Machado) reliever who will probably return us yet another forgettable bevy of minor league prospects that will never even see the light of day.

Not, but he was Assistant GM and in charge of Latin America/Scouting. The Chicago White Sox had an eight-year offer worth a guaranteed $240 million and enough incentives to get Machado up to $300 million. "We only feel short by $60 million," a White Sox official quipped.

It's called investing all your resources in scouting and development, just like he did with the Rangers. It was NO coincidence. Compare the Rangers' record of success in this area over the last 15-20 years to what we've seen from the White Sox. It's just embarrassing, and we can't keep blaming something unfortunate (but classic White Sox comedy of errors) that happened nearly a decade ago for the current levels of incompetence/ineptitude. How can the Padres have so many Latin American prospects that they signed and developed (and not traded for) when they should have no clear advantage over a large or at least medium-market club like the White Sox? When's the last time we got a pitcher or position player out of Japan or Korea?

Where are our 5 (more) Luis Roberts? Because if you're going to go the development route, you can't put all your eggs in just a few baskets (the Quintana trade, Luis Robert and counting on high draft picks, but not ever drafting #1/2)... You have to build up so much depth that some of them simply HAVE to make it, like the Padres seemingly have done blowing through all their budgets in a couple of free agent cycles there. Do we have a surefire 3+ fWAR outfielder out of those six, once you get past Eloy Jimenez (who's more ideally suited for DH)? I would imagine every White Sox fan (about right now) would take ONE guaranteed success in Machado (well, nothing's 100% guaranteed) than believe in this front office's ability to identify and develop young players from the ages of 16-18 into their early 20's.

It's kind of amazing when you look at how the Padres and Hoyer set up the Cubs' current run, beginning with Rizzo. Now we're essentially doing the opposite, gifting them Tatis, Jr., losing Machado out of sheer stubbornness, someone was writing about (barely) missing out on Urias as well. It's crazy to imagine with a couple of breaks going the other direction, we'd now be set up like the Padres (certainly, if we hadn't gifted them Tatis for Shields in the first place) and the Cubs WOULDN'T have won the World Series in 2016 and would be in danger of being overrun in the suddenly competitive NL Central.

Signed, Brooks Boyer (he would be better off getting a fresh start somewhere else, it's not really his fault, just the victim of circumstances more than anything) Marco Paddy Buddy Bell (ooops, already gone...) Rick Hahn Kenny Williams Jerry Reinsdorf

Welcome back! (Wish it was under better circumstances, though.)

Sure, but what "difference-making" position players are out there that we can realistically be in on...as it stands, Trout and Arenado look more likely than not to stay with their teams. We're really going to beat out everyone for Rendon or Bogaerts now? C'mon. The Cubs' imploding on their own petard or a series of bad "Sword of Damocles" signings doesn't have anything to do with us...that's the same exact thing that Epstein did to the Red Sox at the end of his tenure, but at least he was responsible for MULTIPLE championships, not just a shot in the dark once in a lifetime thing like 2005 with the White Sox where every planet was aligned and then it was (of course, because it's the fate of the White Sox) impossible to repeat or even put together TWO consecutive playoff seasons.

It's okay, Getzie can develop 'em all. Marco Paddy also has to be about the most overrated "front office" signing in the history of the game...all we end up with are Nestor Molina's while giving away for free the Fernando Tatises of the world. The ONE Latin American free agent that we correctly identified, and even then we got out-scouted and out-worked by the Padres, because Preller knows 10X as much about Latin America as our own front office and understaffed scouts do. PATHETIC, yet ENTIRELY, PREDICTABLY PATHETIC.

See all their terrible acquisitions in the 2014-15 cycle (of course, including Big Game James Shields)... They still are PAYING $24.5 million to other teams THIS year for those players NOT to play on the Padres. They still are paying another 5% on field/stadium improvements, monies the White Sox don't have to allocate because JR signed such a sweetheart deal with the Illinois Sports Stadium Authority or whatever that entity's called.

We were #6 on the latest ESPN Sports Misery Index that encompasses all 4 leagues. Missing on Harper, that should be good to move us up to 3-5 territory.The Mariners are the only baseball team (now that the Padres have passed us psychologically) that could even be considered in the running for futility with the White Sox, but they're still a generally more successful franchise in recent years and ACTUALLY tried to go for it with Cano and Cruz, it was just too late because of Felix Hernandez wearing down and the young pitchers couldn't stay healthy.

Padres=debt load of 10%, including stadium improvements they have to pay for Hosmer and Myers already on the books $25 million in BAD/TERRIBLE contracts sitting on the books from the 2014-15 cycle Yet they STILL COULDN'T GET IT DONE, with EVERYTHING in their freaking favor. PATHETIC. If only Hahn would resign, but then we'd still have JR as owner until.....sigh.

They better hope Narvaez has already peaked, because that move will look increasingly dumb as well. Basically, they spent $45 million on garbage in the last two months only to come up $20 million short? That's ridiculously shortsighted. Realistically, they never wanted to offer over $250 million for Machado, and yet they knew all along the Phillies were out there just waiting to spend $320-340 million on Bryce Harper after Machado signed. What a colossal waste of time, energy and resources. We said ALL ALONG THIS ENTIRE OFFSEASON that Machado would get around $300 million and Harper should be in the neighborhood of $350 million (looks like it could now end up in the middle somewhere.) If we all can GET IT, why can't this front office? Just feel sorry for Jay/Alonso...they're going to be bearing the brunt of it, when it should be JR/HAHN/Williams for having STILL misread this market so badly to think NOBODY out of about 20 other teams could possible see the value in signing a franchise cornerstone 3B at age 26 (even with a few warts on Machado from last year, but not performance-wise.)

That was the case before we added $45 million of crap nobody will even remember 5 years from now...assuming the franchise is still in Chicago.

The same way we lucked into Abreu, when none of those large market teams needed a 1B. We beat the Rockies, I guess. So yay to them?

See Hosmer, Myers and the future Tatis, Jr., extension. They couldn’t even keep their NFL franchise, and they already have three deals bigger than a supposed large market club. Our second biggest of all time is John More Famous Now for His Wife Danks.

There should be no smiles from this front office today. But maybe if you didn’t buy a Starbucks every day there would have been enough money left over for Machado...

And always finishes in a close second...great rallying cry, there. We were almost good enough, darn it.

“The White Sox are also said to be considering including starter Erik Johnson (4.50 ERA in 98 career innings) in a potential deal along with lower level prospects. Logically, the higher quality the prospects, the larger chunk of Shields salary will be paid by the Padres in any deal. One thing the White Sox would be getting is a very durable pitcher.” Completely had forgotten about Turner until now... This whole day is LOL.

That will surely boost morale at the ghost town formerly known as US Cellular.

We have been blown out of the water now by the Machado and Hosmer deals, and Myers is probably pretty close, too. Then there’s Tatis coming, lol. Might be 4 before all is said and done....we can never call the White Sox a large market organization again. Let’s not forget our second biggest deal in history is JohnFreaking Danks, lol. I’m pretty sure Buehrle, Konerko or Magglio are in a close battle for third.

Yeah, the ones who were in their primes about 5-7 years earlier...

With the $20 million saved on Alonso, Jay and Castillo...we would have had enough to get it done. Complete buffoons.

It’s actually around average, but not high impact guys (except one). Semien, Devenski, Tatis, Eduardo Escobar, Jose Martinez, Flowers, Phegley, Frankie Montas, (well, close enough), we can get some credit for Narvaez I suppose.