chw42

I mostly agree with you. I don't think anyone really hated that trade on this forum. Nobody expected Pollock to suck as much as he has. But we kind of only liked the deal because a) we really wanted to get rid of Kimbrel and his option should have never been picked up and b) it was so late in the off-season that Pollock was probably the best Hahn could do. Hahn fucked up by picking up Kimbrel's option and not acting earlier in the FA window.

Part of this is true. Pollock was coming off a career year and didn't really show many signs of decline. But the guy is 34 and the fact the Dodgers were willing to let him go despite him putting up a .900 OPS last year tells you that they clearly didn't think that highly of him. It's clear no team won the trade this year, but the fact the Sox are gonna be saddled paying a 35 year old Pollock $13 million next year probably means we'll lose it.

If they really liked him they should have traded for him from Boston. The Royals didn't give up very much for him.

I just saw that Judge gets special baseballs during his ABs...there's no doubt those are ultra juiced right? lol

That was this year...and then everybody the team counted on and acquired face-planted. We wouldn't be having existential doubts about this team had Moncada just gave us what he produced in 2021. Same with Grandal. Those 2 guys boned this offense. We went from middle of the pack in walks to last cause those guys a) sucked b) didn't play enough c) didn't walk as much as they used to. The team had a lot of issues with the way it was built, but just about everyone thought they would win enough to win the terrible AL Central.

I felt like he mostly made the right reads when he did throw the ball on Sunday, he just overthrew guys. Which is something he didn't struggle with as much before. He seems super hesitant to throw the ball and is holding on for way too long. You can't do that in the NFL. He's taken huge steps backwards.

? pls

Don't forget Vernon Wells.

I still don't think we're at Angels levels of spending or ineptitude. It's close, but we didn't have a Mike Trout or Shohei Ohtani fall in our laps. We also don't go for big-time FAs like the Angels do. They just f*** up their big signings every time. Whereas we f*** up 3-4 mid-level signings.

Tony can go stand in LaRussa's Lounge during games.

I probably won't watch next year just out of protest.

Machado since 2019: 14.9 fWAR, $89 million. $6.14 million/WAR. He's also about to be half-way done with his deal. Harper since 2019: 14.9 fWAR, $78 million. $5.23 million/WAR. He's got 9 years left on his deal.

What's sad is that Escobar would lead this team in homers right now. He's had a hot streak lately, but he was actually worse than Harrison about a month ago.

Yeah, the payroll looks good in terms of total value, but JR also limits what kind of long-term money the FO can spend. Which in turn limits the types of players they can go after. We know JR won't give any mega-deals out, so now we're left with a hand-full of big deals to mid-level free agent types and almost every one of them has blown up in their face. Keuchel and Grandal's deals are now disastrous contracts. Keuchel might be off the books, but we wasted $36 million on him these last 2 years to get below replacement level innings. Grandal, unless he miraculously gets healthy again, is a replacement level catcher who can't even catch every day. Hendriks also got a similar level contract, but he's also trending downwards with potential elbow issues down the line. I don't know how Jerry or the FO can sit there with a straight face and tell any of us those investments were better than spending the $300+ million needed to land either Harper or Machado. The 3 aforementioned contracts with Kelly and Graveman added already sits at a total commitment of $222 million over about a 5 year span. Please tell me how that's better than getting 5+ years of prime production from Harper or Machado.

That's probably Naylor screaming that s%*# in the background lmao Personally, I blame the Sox fans for constantly calling Naylor fat and hyping him up in that 6 run blow-up.

It probably looks worse in bWAR cause Joe Kelly would be a huge negative WAR value with his 6+ ERA. 0.4 fWAR isn't really representative of his actual results this year. Edit: Kelly is worth -0.6 bWAR and Graveman is worth 0.7 bWAR. Those 2 combined got paid $16.5 million this year and produced an awesome 0.1 bWAR. We still owe them a combined $24.5 million for the rest of their contracts too....amazing. If it wasn't for Lynn getting hurt and signing Cueto, this would probably be one of the worst off-seasons in White Sox history. Imagine just lighting $40 million on fire. That's basically what Hahn did.

Diekman and Graveman folded like lawn chairs this past week.

It was Tony in ST right before Hahn acquired Haseley and Pollock lol

Also Tony's burner account.

Yeah I'm definitely hoping Cleveland gets swept in the first round now.

I don't see the team winning another game this season if they couldn't win today with Cease starting.

They were mentally done when Diekman gave up 5 runs on Tuesday.

Getting swept by the Tigers at home lol

Have we ever seen a team go from still being in the race on Monday and then eliminated by Sunday with 10+ games to go in the season? This was the week from hell for the Sox.

It'll be like a 15 inning gap between he and Verlander. That being said, Cease is about 1 bWAR ahead of Verlander and Cease is about 0.8 fWAR behind Verlander. The difference being the White Sox defense being god awful and the Astros defense being really good. I think Verlander will win over the writers with him coming back from TJS at 39. But in reality, it's really close between them and it really could go either way.