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That's true, im sure they could still give him away if they wanted to if they pick up the option.

From purely a fan perspective, it would be ridiculous to not pick up the option but I am not sure its a slam dunk with all things considered. They were obviously ready to move on by trying to deal him at the deadline, he would probably need to finish the season scorching hot to change his value over the winter otherwise they probably are looking at the same type of offers.

Respectfully, back on July 31st you still believed he would be traded and said you had no faith they would pick up that option. I would say its a little more complicated than you are leading on. You really don't see any scenario at all where JR decides not to pick up the option?

You don’t need to try and convince me, all I asked for was to hear your opinion on it. I’ll think what I think regardless of what you say.

That's easy to say when its not your money. The issue will be convincing the owner to pay the $20M for a player that's not earning that salary. Especially when you consider they can just get out of it for $2M. The best financial decision is obviously to decline the option, you just have to hope that they can convince JR otherwise.

Yes, I said if everything goes perfect they could get to 70 wins. Everything is not going to go perfect, you know this, I know this. It's just how it works.

I have a hard time believing that this team is winning 70+ games. C - Teel/Quero 1B - Vargas/Mead 2B - Meidroth SS - Montgomery 3B - Vargas/Mead LF - Benintendi CF - Robert RF - Tauchman DH - Sosa Starting Pitching - Shane Smith, Davis Martin, Sean Burke, Jonathan Cannon, Insert 5th Guy Here Bullpen - 🤢 Can we at least get to 60 wins first? They will need to go 13-19 the rest of the way to hit 60, which means they need to start winning slightly more than they have been recently to do so. While possible, im not sure its likely.

I actually would love for you to show your work here, because this team probably doesn't even get to 60 wins this year so I am interested to hear the WestEddy plan that has them make a substantial jump next season with what will largely be the same roster. Ill go first. You can make the argument that the offense is completely returning. Benintendi isn't going anywhere, they love Tauchman apparently, and you would assume Robert will get his option picked up and at least start the year here. The rest of Teel/Quero, Vargas/Mead, Sosa/Meidroth, Montgomery, and Baldwin all return. We know they wont be signing a big fish, and there really isn't any room to add a Benintendi tier signing. So lets operate under the assumption that the whole lineup is back and only veteran bench depth gets added. Are you ready to assume every single young guy takes another step forward? Odds say probably not. Benintendi is worth 0. and Tauchman is likely to step back. These guys desperately need Robert to get back to where he was in 2023 to either cash in on his value or build around him. The pitching needs a lot of work. They have an entire rotation of back end pitchers. The bullpen is not good. There are some returning players who are interesting, however, they will all be coming off major injuries and pitching for the first time in a while. Here's my if. If Robert bounces back and is either traded for usable pcs or kept, if every one of Teel/Quero, Vargas, Sosa/Meidroth, Montgomery, Baldwin all take another step forward and Braden Montgomery arrives mid season and is as advertised, if Smith takes a step forward and is more of a front end starter and Martin, Burke, and Thorpe all improve while Schultz and Smith show up mid to late season and pitch like they think they will you can squint and see them winning somewhere in the 70's next season. That's a lot of ifs for an organization not well known for its development.

You're trying to set a baseline that this current roster is just bad instead of historically bad? That was the point of this thread, bad is getting passed as acceptable because at least its not historically bad anymore.

Getz has been here since 2017, was promoted to assistant GM in 2021, and was only promoted to GM because he was supposed to already be familiar with the entire organization and that would make this go much faster than hiring from outside. That strategy turned into the worst team in MLB history, so there's that. I will never understand how someone who was responsible for player development and then assistant GM didn't deserve to be fired for the disaster that happened here. And if he had all these different views and ideas that the old regime was doing wrong, that speaks volumes to just how dysfunctional this organization is if their own inner workings aren't even aligned.

Im tired of those posts HERE by fans, I can at least understand Garfein because its his job and he can't just tweet out "The Sox still suck, but at least they aren't historically bad anymore". I can't get behind some other fan trying to tell me "They've been playing .400 ball since June" like that's supposed to instill optimism, that flat out sucks. We all understand this is a 100 loss team, and probably will be a 100 loss team again next season without any meaningful additions. The young offensive players have shown very well this year, I would say I expect them all to improve next year as well but we've already seen one core all bottom out together so I don't want to get too ahead of myself.

It’s still a problem, let’s just say they love Quero and Teel and want to keep both. You either commit to carrying 3 catchers or they only play like 50% of the games. Both are suboptimal options to me. For the remainder of 2025 though, whatever.

Right, but as you alluded to that would just be ridiculous. But even then, if Jacob Gonzalez goes thermonuclear he’s probably way better than Sosa. Basically what I’m trying to say is I don’t like Lenyn Sosa lol.

I’m not suggesting to trade Quero because he’s not good, I’m suggesting trading him with Sosa to get an OF upgrade (with the potential loss of Robert and the inevitable Benintendi DFA) so you also don’t have to keep splitting time between the two of them. It’s a tough decision but that’s part of the job. 1B/3B is covered between Mead and Vargas, Colson at SS, Meidroth at 2B and you still have Baldwin to work in (Who I also prefer to Sosa) as well as guys like Bonemer and Carlson for the future. This was merely a what if scenario trying to improve the roster, I’m not trying to say to get rid of anyone who is slumping or whatever.

I said I don’t think he’s a valuable player, albeit based on WAR and his lapses in the field. I would imagine most other teams probably lean that way as well, that’s why I said package him. You also risk hampering development by having them play together sparingly while rotating them game to game at catcher. I think Teel has the higher ceiling, so hitch your wagon there and go. I’m not following the Gonzalez reference, he’s never been good or touted why would that scenario ever play out?

He has no position and I much prefer Meidroth's skillset as a 2B over Sosa. If you can package Quero and Sosa and get a good OFer I think that helps this team way more in the future. People keep saying Sosa is this teams best hitter, yet Meidroth has almost doubled him in bWAR already as a rookie with room to grow. I just don't think he's a valuable player.

Yeah that was my only gripe about it, but as 2k5 said its not like they really needing something else right now anyways so I guess its whatever. Me personally, I would package Quero and Sosa in the offseason for an OFer and just hand over catching duties to Teel. Neither one of them have the bat for fulltime DH and seems like a waste to split them at catcher.

Oh, no argument here for ditching Rojas. That was long overdue.

While I "get" that somewhat, its basically the same situation as now but were wasting a roster spot in case one of them gets hurt which would only cause a problem for the remainder of the one game they are currently playing in.

The White Sox have been around for 125 years and have 3 Championships and 11 playoff appearances. How that is even possible, ill never know.

What exactly is the purpose of this? I don't see how this helps with getting both Teel and Quero in the lineup everyday as one needs to DH and one needs to Catch, unless they are going to go full White Sox and start playing them out of position to get it done.

I think the main thing is, Andrew Vaughn was pretty bad for 4+ seasons here. In 150 plate appearances with Milwaukee, he has produced 1.2 bWAR when he produced a total of -0.5 bWAR in his Sox career. Something got changed with him from some form of instruction from the Brewers. The K rate is drastically cut, the walk rate has drastically risen, these are all clear signs of a change in approach at the plate. Vaughn could bottom out, but that will never undo what's going on with him right now. The Sox have a terrible reputation with player development and this is an example of someone else being able to get SOMETHING out of Vaughn the Sox never could even if its only for 200 or so PA's if that's even how it ends up shaking out.

The organization was doomed and ruined all good feelings they were building when they handed the keys over to Tony LaRussa.

The Sox absolutely failed Vaughn, regardless of what he does in Milwaukee. He got very little minor league development time and then was thrown into the outfield immediately upon his major league arrival. Never played OF in college, never played OF in his brief minor league stop. Im not sure how that's even up for debate.

Buddy we both want the same thing here, the White Sox to be good. I don't understand why you are on this crusade to scorn everyone who has issues with how terrible this organization has been run in recent memory. Your constant defense of everything everyone has a problem with is what is nonsense here.