caulfield12

Taylor hasn’t been picked off yet at least.

Here comes Robert again…

NCAA CWS softball is much better than this crap…

Well, we did transform Castro and $500k in intl. signing pool money plus his IL salary into a more expensive Altavilla…

Ofc Bruce Chen pitched quite a bit for the O's before KC...

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/45383544/braves-chris-sale-fastest-reach-2500-career-strikeouts Sale back on HoF track?

So much of this is the Venable is not Worst Manager in the History of Baseball like Pedro Grifol "fresh air" bounce as well... Then we had that Grade Sizemore bump as well down the stretch. Meidroth Teel-Quero Braden Vargas comprise four spots. Still have 2-3 more left to go to be a legit big league lineup. Progress from ground zero, sure. Any worse was impossible to fathom.

And we have to keep reminding ourselves that JR won't have Benintendi off the books until after 2027...when he will have the labor impasse as a spending excuse to maintain a bottom 2-3 payroll. Which means we could still be January 2028 before the next significant Sox FA deal. That's a full 2 1/2 years away. Even the most optimistic fans would agree that five plus years is an incredible amount of time for a dormant franchise to be sleeping on their fanbase after everything totally falling apart in 2022-2023.

No thanks. He's not the starting CF on a real contenders. On one of the five worst teams in baseball...but he doesn't come close to ONeil Cruz or Brenton Doyle. Maybe in Miami.

He wasn't playing enough to get into any kind of offensive rhythm. Making him one of the lowest fWAR guys other than Vaughn and Amaya.

Back used to at least mean close to a .500 record. Meidroth and Vargas look good...Sosa somewhere in the middle...while Baldwin and recently Quero have stumbled offensively at the big league level. Q has at least more or less seemed to hold his own on D. The biggest concern is Schultz/Smith/Taylor are closer to 1 1/2 pitchers than 3...and now we have Caglianone and Witt Jr. to deal with for the next 6-7 years. Maybe Minnesota and Cleveland can't spend...but will the White Sox have their next FA over $5 million before 2026-27? And there's zero movement on the ballpark and ownership fronts recently. Of course, Braden Teel and Bonemer look good...but still not sure other than Braden who's the 30+ homer 100+ RBI guy to stick in the 3-4-5 spots?

https://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/breaking-news/article/dodgers-trade-for-struggling-reds-reliever-alexis-diaz-to-help-ailing-bullpen-213900582.html "The Dodgers bullpen was supposed to be one of the best in baseball after they signed Tanner Scott, Blake Treinen and Kirby Yates to more than $100 million in contracts, with Michael Kopech, Brusdar Graterol and Evan Phillips still on the roster, but all of those relievers are on the IL right now save for Scott, who is having his own issues."

https://www.purplerow.com/2025/4/24/24415204/comparing-the-rockies-to-other-struggling-franchises-robert-alcantara

But if the White Sox continue to view him purely as a utility guy, and that was the common perception entering the season...it's hard to imagine how dramatically he could transform himself at CF LF RF 3B SS 2B in order to provide enough value to offset all the errors and fundamentals mistakes that he makes on a nearly daily basis.

Some are so blinded by their own hate that they are cheating themselves out of enjoying the games. What's the difference between hate and "pragmatic realism" based on 45 years of JR ownership? In theory, the first time JR will actually be expected to spend $50-100 million of new money in FA is during the 2027-28 off-season, yes? So we still have 2 1/2 or 3 years left to go before we can make any determination about the success of the rebuild...which is great if you're Chris Getz or Venable. Personally, I enjoy EXCITING players, if they're not capable of winning anything. The closest we have to that now is 2023 Robert and Shane Smith when he's on and not walking the world or hitting every 5-10 batters.

All the spotlight on Colorado simply means there's LESS pressure on Getz and JR to provide a winning product...same thing holds true for Pittsburgh, Miami, etc.

2024 vs. 2025 attendance through 27 home dates 2024 441,841=16,434 per game 2025 440,845=16,329 page game 0.2% decrease 27th in MLB attendance (2025) 27th in MLB attendance (2024) 24th in MLB attendance (2023) 19th in MLB attendance (2022) 14th in MLB attendance (2021)

Which requires being at least a 725-750 OPS hitter at the major league level to make up for the negative defense. It's the same with Sosa, although at least Baldwin brings more to the running game.

White Sox: Grant Taylor, RHP (No. 7) Since the White Sox moved Taylor to the bullpen in mid-May, Double-A hitters have gone 1-for-14 with nine strikeouts against him. He has a 1.38 ERA with a 15/2 K/BB ratio in 13 innings over the last month and an overall 1.27 ERA with 28 whiffs in 21 1/3 frames. A 2023 second-rounder from Louisiana State, he features some of the best stuff in the system with a fastball that sits in the upper 90s and touches 101, a low-90s cutter and an upper-80s slider. mlb.com

Luis Rodriguez off to a hot start Last year, the Astros acquired pitcher Luis Rodriguez in a trade that sent Corey Julks to Chicago. Since the trade, Rodriguez has been nearly unhittable. In six outings this season, the right-hander has a 1.33 ERA with 31 strikeouts in 27 innings. Rodriguez, who made his full-season debut last year at 18-years-old, turned in his best professional outing on Thursday. The right-hander tossed 5 no-hit innings while racking up 8 strikeouts. He also generated 15 swings and misses in that outing. The Houston Astros have signed another international prospect, inking infielder Sami Manzueta for a bonus of $850,000. Manzueta is an 16-year-old infielder from Venezuela with Dominican roots. (This was announced on May 7th, nine days before the Miguel Castro trade of $500,000 in international pool money.)

Except it's actually Coffey.

Montgomery still cooling off...he's going to need at least another month at High A before they consider moving him to BIRM. Also, W-S 16-31. Braden was just hit by a pitch and pulled from the game...anyone watching? Precautionary? .277/.878 OPS

https://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/article/heres-why-rockies-free-fall-is-worse-than-historically-bad-2024-white-sox-191542801.html&ved=2ahUKEwjJirXyuMeNAxW-JkQIHZldL0AQvOMEKAB6BAgWEAE&usg=AOvVaw2Zi4kl8_DBuOG0yNAGangy Grifol was a dark cloud over the White Sox. Even before the losing, there was a disconnect between him, his players and the media. His firing last August after going 28-89 that season was addition by subtraction. It also opened up the path for the hiring of new manager Will Venable, considered around baseball to be one of the bright young minds in the sport. General manager Chris Getz is the running mate to help steer the ship of the rebuild. ..... The White Sox were openly in a rebuild last season. After inheriting the reins of a beaten-down organization, Getz began a long, grueling process to turn the team's roster over and inject talent back into an organization that needed more of it. On a team with several strong veterans, Getz moved them for prospect capital. The traded players included Tommy Pham, Tanner Banks, Michael Kopech, Erick Fedde, Eloy Jiménez and Paul DeJong. The trading continued in the offseason as the White Sox dealt All-Star Garrett Crochet to the Boston Red Sox for a huge prospect haul.

So you agree or disagree with Ptac about making Taylor the annointed closer of the future?

Well let's all fucking pick on Kimbrel Graveman Kelly and Bummer instead. Because nobody in the entire SoxTalk world will defend them, right? I mean we've already dragged 60-75% of the 2000-2003 roster through the mud for the past three years...as if they just magically appeared on the Sox roster out of thin air and absolutely nobody was responsible for bringing on board such players of poor or flawed character. Might as well give Hahn another executive of the year award for signing Robertson while we're at it. That wasn't such a bad move compared to Melky and LaRoche after all. Plus I didn't fucking change the point. I wrote Tommy John cancer health in the first post...sure the White Sox probably even took out an insurance policy so they recovered 60% of the value for the last year anyway. I didn't write that Liam Hendriks performed poorly at any point. He was exactly what an elite closer was in that generation of pitchers...87.5-90% or something like that save conversion success rate who blew up spectacularly from time to time. The point is that the overall return on investment for spending all that money on the bullpen didn't turn out so great. I didn't think that was even a controversial opinion that was debatable. Instead of talking about our current bullpen problems...you want to make emotional/sentimental arguments when major league GM's can't ever afford to think in those terms.