caulfield12

Didn't realize Vierling was actually pretty damned fast. More mental errors. Wonder if they're bothering with scouting reports thinking they are more talented than DET.

Tigers much better defensively. Moncada and Sheets being your 3rd/4th best hitters in the lineup en no bueno. A veteran pitcher that anyone could have signed, Julio Teheran, getting his first season start tonight... fyi.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/player/_/id/32170/rougned-odor Was available...29...has had a very solid May after a rough April. Has at least been a positive fWAR player in recent years and has the flexibility to play all over the infield.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/baseball-commissioner-message-wisconsin-fix-140521284.html

https://sports.yahoo.com/looking-white-sox-michael-kopechs-201624545.html

Solid research.

Who’s going to take responsibility when he inevitably gets hurt playing a position outside his range of competency?

They pigeon holed Semien as a utility guy right away with the Sox…never imagined him as a pure SS. He was mostly at second and third with the Sox. The story of how Ron Washington turned him into the overall player he is…that’s quite well known. Part of it was simply skeptics not imaging a later round draft pick can ever become a stud…a similar SS was Jeremy Pena out of Maine. I’ve worked in minor league baseball in the 90s and you can just tell…the sound of the bat and ball contacting with wood vs. aluminum. Infield or RF arms. One obvious tell is RH hitters that struggle with high fastballs. It was the death of Beckham and Viciedo in the majors. It is one of the bigger issues for Sox position player prospects…swings that are either too long or slider speed bats. Especially with so many pitchers now at 95+, it’s one thing to crush fastballs and struggle with offspeed stuff…but you absolutely must have Frank Thomas plate discipline if you're a much better breaking ball than FB hitter because getting behind in the count will kill you, especially if you’re a low contact rate hitter.

But the Christmas in July and/or stock market ticker colors are such a nice touch...

When's the last time we saw this? "I think we’ve got a few selfish players on the team. All they care about is swinging for the fences and being the hero. A great example of a team that plays like a team, is the Braves. If anybody saw the last couple of innings of tonight’s game against the Dodgers, you’ll know what I mean. The Dodgers tied the game at three in the 8th, but every Braves player was on the rail in the bottom half, patting their teammates on the back, even when they made an out. Where it really showed was the bottom of the 9th. After Riley hit a leadoff double, d’Arnaud came to the plate. Instead of swinging for the fences, he was trying to punch the ball to the right (it was obvious), and he ended up hitting a grounder to first, which moved Riley to third. When he got to the dugout, you would have thought he hit a walk-off HR - plenty of high fives from everybody, just for doing what he had to do to advance the runner. That’s what cohesive teams do!! Oh yeah, Riley scored. Braves won." www.gaslampball.com

White Sox one of the organizations with least amount of minor league affiliates, short season squads (used to be Bristol and Helena/Great Falls), AZ, DSL, etc.

Colas, sure, he was a 70-something rated prospect. But expecting a repeat out of Andrus (or Cueto) was always going to be fool's gold, plus moving Andrus to another position entirely. The biggest issue to me was probably KNOWING that Sosa and Romy and Remillard (based partially on 2022 MLB play, partially on career history and Sox history of position player draft/intl. successes or lack thereof other than the very top Cubans) weren't everyday players and just rolling with that was going to be a massive gamble...especially as these guys weren't exactly Top 5-7 guys in the Dodgers' or Rays' system. (All that said, the Padres are running out a roster that's nearly TWICE as expensive as the White Sox and they STILL have massive issues with both rostered catchers (Nola a disaster hitting-wise, #1 backup in Campusano out for two months, so on to catcher #3 Sullivan), Trent Grisham's hitting/K's make him strictly a platoon guy, Ha Seong Kim being a "marginal" everyday player due to his below average offense, Brandon Dixon subbing for Machado, Engel quickly cut and Azocar back, but they also relied on severely AGING Nelson Cruz and Carpenter and that attempt to capture lightning in a bottle has failed too. Miserably. So basically that core of four superstars with Machado out suddenly has become 3 superstars that have largely underachieved and a bottom 3-4-5 players on any given night quite similar to what the White Sox have been running out there on the back end of their starting lineup. Their fourth/fifth best player is Cronenworth, and NONE of the line-up members are hitting with RISP, they're worse than any team in baseball history with an under .200 average. The point is that the White Sox at $180 million have the same number of line-up holes as a team with a $350 million payroll, and I'd even taken the Sox pen with Crochet/Hendriks 100% over SD, too. Maybe even a slight advantage to the Sox rotation, too.) The primary difference HERE is that Soto could/would likely be traded in the next 1 1/2 seasons to restock their farm/pitching and Preller/Melvin both dumped. Or they really double down and go after Ohtani, lol. Currently, they're something like 3-4 games out of 3rd in the WC race. But the expectations are just THAT high...coming off the NL Championship series...in comparison to the fading hopes and dreams of Sox fans entering the 2022 season (after one year of TLR) and trailing 3 teams in the worst division in baseball so far in 2023. The White Sox pretty obviously aren't going to go to those lengths of tearing apart their entire front office and coaching staff again. They might even hold onto their impending FA's until the last two months of the pennant race like Giolito, Grandal, Lopez, and at best get a QO/compensation pick back for Giolito...or maybe nothing at all, like Carlos Rodon.

That was the game Ozuna was going to be next pitcher in? Or the Blum walk off one?

The bigger question is if they're in that borderline competing non-competing zone... will JR authorize additional payroll for 2-3 months with pretty abysmal attendance? You will need to address 2B RF and perhaps a veteran starting pitcher for back filling the rotation or covering further injuries or non performance. Min price tag will be $10-15 million if they legitimately want to compete.

You're going to have to rely on Lynn at one year older and a quite exorbitant price tag for a retooling team... and then still backfill with our #6 starter out for the season and probably not ready until midseason 2024. Well let's just say you don't want to rely on someone who was ranked in the 20s for Sox prospects before last year to save the day. So that still means replacing the equivalent of Giolito in the rotation via FA outside the first tier, which actually looks like the second and third tier in past seasons for FA. Relying on Clevinger coming back...or replacing him, too, with another $12-13 million deal just to tread water. And Lynn's body holding up one more season. Then obviously Cease andvKopech have to stay healthy and pitching as projected. Lots of big if's.

Alex Call will be at 0.3 fWAR after tonight, 641 ops Benintendi, 0.5 fWAR and 680 ops Difference in salary, significant.

Then offer Giolito a QO? Obviously they won't risk that with Grandal...or Lopez. Then Lynn and Clevinger are shrugging face emojis for 2024.

Like Max Muncy, fine at first base, third and DH. And that's enough. 2B is a terrible idea. They already learned what he couldn't do at that position in the minors and spring training.

Turner with that tying homer reminiscent of the WBC…was already getting booed at home, lol. Phillies had trailed 5-0. Were down to final out in bottom of the 9th. Then Ruiz pitched the 10th and got crushed even further.

Kimbrel with 30 k’s in 18 innings but somehow a 6ish ERA. Scoreless top of 9th against AZ.

Don’t tell Benetti that…he loves to rave about the free concessions food everywhere. Except for dinners on the road that are usually on him and not Stone Pony.

Watch the home games closely. Other than the weekends, it’s depressing…although the small crowds do their best to be small and supportive. As noted many times, the attendance is heading towards a historical low…prices in numerous areas were actually increased coming off that disaster of a season, and the team now has the biggest YoY decrease in attendance in the majors compared to 2022 base years. What does that tell you? The fans are not buying it…which leads to payroll decreasing and decreasing. But when the fans bought tickets in 2022 based on the 2020-21 seasons and multiple championships and unprecedented financial flexibility, we got NONE of those things. No stars…just solid, overpaid veterans, and spending in all the wrong places. I still watch or follow most of the games, but it’s now largely for Robert and Burger…with the rest of the once promising core just a year or two remaining with the Sox. There’s nothing anyone can do to change things, but we’re also not going to trick ourselves into believing we are a legit threat to advance past any first round playoff opponent with the current roster composition. I mean…look at the Bulls for a similar comparison, they will tear down their Big 3 again coming off another playoff disappointment. That’s the reward to fans for having the best home attendance in the NBA. So if one of the most profitable franchises in sports doesn’t care about its fans, why would we expect the White Sox to? JR simply thinks of them as a headache and hardly profitable and is more concerned with extra gambling revenues than reinforcing the sinking rebuild. Period.

Jay Cuda probably has a number like the entire Sox team from 2019-2023 has a lower fWAR compared to Semien, Bassitt and Tatis. 2) Marcus Semien, Rangers Best finish: 3rd place, 2019, '21 "Did you realize that Semien has finished in third place twice (MVP voting)? Two of the last five seasons no less? Semien is always going to be a little bit underappreciated, a quiet guy who plays every game but is still a little bit streaky. His 2021 season, his only year in Toronto, was incredible (he had 45 homers!), and last year, his first year in Texas, was seen as somewhat of a disappointment, even though he still put up 4.2 fWAR. He has been the best version of himself again this year, hitting .301, leading the AL in runs and putting up a career-high .377 OBP. With the injuries to Corey Seager and Jacob deGrom, Semien could end up being the face of this surprising Rangers team: If they end up winning the AL West, Semien will widely be seen as one of the primary reasons why. With no real MVP frontrunner in the AL right now, he is someone to keep an eye on." MLB.com

Whatever drug you are on...I would love to try some. Not even sure Baghdad Bob and the Russian war ministry could put such a positive skin on every single thing that has gone wrong with this organization. Maybe you can get ghost writing credit for the potentially best-selling Rick Hahn biography. I guess Scholtens is also on his way now with a potential RoY campaign, too. I mean, this is an owner who gave up on winning in the late 90s when the team was only 2 1/2 or 3 1/2 games behind the Indians at the time, basically in order to save a ton of money.

Click?