Chicago White Sox

One day to go…let’s pray that Hahn can actually get some s%*# done.

Where is Steele Walker for Nomar Mazara?

Lower minors are going to be loaded with fun SP prospects. Theoretically it could shake out something like this: Vera | Pallette Mena | Schutlz Simas | McDougal Kelley | Schweitzer Cannon | Nolasco

Good article from Fegan on Tosar, who will definitely will be involved with the hitting but will be more of a jacks of all trade type of guy. Sounds like his focus will be ensuring the guys are prepared to play on a daily basis. I know many of us have accused our players are not being ready and not doing their homework and it sounds like that will change under this coaching staff. Very excited to see what Grifol and staff can do next year.

He was the guy in the dugout supposed to be coordinating with the actual analytics function on how to use them for in-game decision-making. He was not the guy crunching the numbers or saying how we should use them for roster decisions is my point.

Fully agree. This DeGrom deal has a chance to be epically bad, just jealous the Rangers ownership group is willing to spend some big dollars.

Here is me saying we should sign him to a 5/$138M contract, which is what MLBTR was projecting for him at the time. He literally got 80% of that. No idea how others felt, but I was pretty pissed we missed out and this isn’t a case of revisionist thinking.

Where did he mention this?

What do you mean?

That Gausman deal remains the ultimate steal, still can’t believe didn’t actually pursue him.

Yes

One thing that Rosenthal or Bowden mentioned is no company will provide insurance on this contract, so there is a non-zero chance of this blowing up in epic fashion

Rangers now have signed three players to +$185M contracts in the last ~12 months whereas the Sox have sign zero $75+ contracts in franchise history.

Of course there is, but he also was a productive pitcher afterwards in 2021. His issues in 2022 go well beyond spider tack.

Why did you post this?

Why don’t we give the new coaching staff a chance to hold players accountable before acquiring a player with a bad contract to do so? I get our spending has been bad and I’m not overly optimistic it will get much better anytime soon, but eating up 10% or more of our payroll space for the next three years on Perez seems like a crazy thing to do.

Fully agree. I think Burger makes more sense to move just because I think he will command more trade value and Sheets’ LH bat has more value to us in the event of a Eloy or Vaughn injury. But neither guy should be given away.

I will say that if Jerry was serious about winning a World Series before he leaves this world, he’d go out and sign Aaron Judge. I agree that would be the move to instantly make us World Series threats. It would also rejuvenate the fan-base and create a new generation of lifelong Sox fans. I can’t stress how game-changing such a move would be. And zero reason we couldn’t afford him. The Disney money would cover the bulk of his salary this year and we have plenty of payroll coming off the books starting 2024. Any competent organization could make this work, but it would require taking on some risk and that ain’t happening. Safe & steady is how Uncle Jerry prefers to play it, so we’ll be stocking up on reclamation projects and trading from both the major league roster & farm to fill our needs. I dream of the day George Lucas and his wife buy the Sox and we finally act the like the big market behemoth we always should have been.

They made an ok offer to Machado if they were the only team in the mix. They basically pretended to be interested in Harper and just handed him over to the Phillies despite his star power and desire to play in Chicago.

A $180M payroll would have ranked 10th last year…

I don’t understand what you don’t get here. Jerry refuses to make the long-term commitments it takes to sign true impact talent. Whether he sports a large payroll or not is meaningless when he’s so god damn risk adverse. So even if the $180M payroll estimate is wrong, we won’t be signing someone like Aaron Judge to a record setting contract. Jerry had his chance to prove us all wrong when Machado & Harper were free agents and the typical big threats weren’t in the game. Instead, he lost out to the Padres & Phillies because he was afraid of having some bad payroll nine years in the future when he might not even be alive. That should tell you everything you need to know about Jerry. As for non-stopping bitching, I just posted my off-season plan that assumes a $185M and no star additions. And guess, I projected a 93 win season from that team. Just because we have one of the worst owners in sports and a GM who has yet to prove himself competent in nine years on the job doesn’t mean there isn’t talent on this roster. I want to believe in this group of players, but it’s very hard when you watch the GM make so many baffling moves and the owner insert his out-of-touch, lifeless BFF as manager. We were promised parades and instead have watched this organization quickly botch this window. So yeah, I think it’s pretty fair for Sox fans to be a pessimistic mood right now.

Notice something about all your examples? Maybe it’s not an arbitrary number when your most recent example of a “big contract” is Jerry absorbing Thome’s $45.5M salary in 2006 coming off a bad season. Also, people aren’t being negative about the payroll for no reason. Instead of insulting the entire board, maybe understand the basis of our concerns, which is James Fegan citing from a source ~$180M payroll and Hahn explicitly stating money will be tight. Could it all be bullshit? Sure, but everything during Jerry’s tenure as owner suggests it’s not.

Because the Dodgers have other pieces that could help us