Chicago White Sox

How are three B tier free agents, one who will miss a chunk of the season, turn a 41 win team into a .500 team? Again, the current talent level is atrocious and we aren’t lucking into anything next regardless of who we sign. I totally agree a $60M payroll is absurd, but spending it on guys who will likely begin regressing on day 1 and will cost on picks and slot dollars on top of it isn’t the right strategy. There are long-term consequences to these type of signings and now is not the time to incur them.

I honestly believe a big driver of it was ethical (not liking the idea of negotiating with kids and their handlers) and Jerry is to blame for that. But the hope is that Getz has somehow convinced Jerry that it’s the price of doing business and we will continue to be at a massive disadvantage if we don’t get serious about the DR. I mean, all Getz would have to do is show him our top prospect list and do an ROI analysis on LatAm signings to prove how much value we’ve left on the table with this Cuban & Venezuela heavy strategy. And so far under Getz, it does seem like we are attempting to make progress there…it’s just going to take a long ass time to confirm and bare any fruit.

To be fair, the PBO, GM, and LatAm Director are all gone and those are the guys who arranged the deals in that signing class. We shouldn’t punish the current regime for something outside of their control. It’s clear that they value the DR more than their predecessors, so hopefully we’ll finally address our shortcomings there. Regardless, you should never make future decisions based on past mistakes. Not using your full slot value is unacceptable and if that trend continues we know who to blame.

Tanking isn’t an overly valuable strategy for us beyond this year. But this year we have a real shot at the top pick and should pursue it as long as we’re also using the bulk of our playing time on evaluating our various young players. After this year, we should hopefully have some core pieces in place, with the next wave of guys (primarily Schultz & Smith) reaching the show, and more intel on our other top prospects. We will be better situated to spend at that time. I am not 100% against giving up picks for free agents, but it’s got to be for a star or a B tier guy that puts you over the top. We are simply not at the point where we should be sacrificing long-term talent accumulation for win now moves.

I’m talking the offseason he added Robertson, Cabrera, LaRoche, and traded for Shark. Dollars may be smaller, but Cabrera & LaRoche basically put up the same level of fWAR in the season prior to signing with us that Santander & Alonso just put up. And Robertson was a pretty high end closer at the time. Hahn received accolades for all these moves and yet ultimately they didn’t move the needle enough to make us truly competitive. To be candid, I like your players more than those guys, but the key risk and point still holds true. Unless you’re buying legit stars (see Soto), it’s damn near impossible to buy you’re way to competitiveness, especially when you have zero foundation in place.

Do you actually want to win a World Series eventually or be stuck the baseball equivalent of NBA hell? Because it seems like you want to make moves that make us a little better next year but won’t push us to competitiveness all while destroying real long term value for the org. And beyond just forfeiting draft picks and international slot in 2025, you are also likely weakening your draft position in the 2026 and eating payroll flexibility on dudes approaching their mid 30’s. All because rebuilding the right way is boring and takes too long.

Are you actually suggesting that we should forfeit a high 2nd round pick and $500k of international slot coming off a historically bad year and with no core pieces in place, just so we can pay Anthony Santander 5/$100M for his age 30 to 34 seasons? That’s really the best path to success in years 2027 to 2029? Isn’t this the type of s%*# Rick Hahn did prior to the last rebuild? Trying to retool on the fly with several B & C tier free agents despite massive holes across the roster? And the big difference there, is that team actually had some really nice core pieces in place in Abreu, Eaton, Sale, Quintana, & Rodon. We literally have NOTHING right now outside of Robert and he won’t be here come 2028. You can make this about Jerry being cheap, but your plan simply doesn’t work when the major league roster is this barren. I get that means another year of awful baseball, but unfortunately that’s the price we must pay for years of ownership and front office neglect. Three B tier free agents won’t change that and is more likely create landmines akin to the Benintendi contract when we do finally have the pieces in place to compete.

So planned interviews so far: Ben Johnson (OC / DET) Aaron Glenn (DC / DET) Anthony Weaver (DC / MIA) Vance Joseph (DC / DEN) Jets not planning to interview Johnson. Glenn apparently a favorite of both the Jets and the Saints. Vrabel makes a lot of sense for the Patriots. The Jaguars keeping their GM Trend Baalke may impact the attractiveness of the HC role. Johnson should be ours for the taking potentially…

This is the right way to approach it, but I still can’t comprehend how they hired Eberflus in the first place and the real concern is does Poles want to hire a guy who might require him ceding some power. We know he’s not happy about Warren taking on some control and there have already been some rumors out there about him not being interested in Johnson due to self preservation. I want to be an optimist here because Caleb, the Chicago market, a bunch of picks, and a boatload of cap space should place us head and shoulders above the Jaguars, Jets, & Saints. But for whatever reason, the Bears never want to make the obvious hire and that usually costs us.

Maybe it was bad timing or he wasn’t ready yet, but hiring a guy like this is not worth the risk for us. Either it’s got to be a swing for the fences, high ceiling offensive mind like Ben Johnson or a proven leader like Vrabel or Carroll. No franchise has been the victim of bad HC’ing as much as we have since Lovie’s exit. And I think we could be in the playoff mix as soon as next year if we hire the right guy…but we got to stop hiring C & D tier candidates.

I did not recall him being a HC, but the point still applies. If you go defensive minded HC, it’s got to be proven successful one like Vrabel or Carroll and they need to have a clear plan in place for OC / Caleb.

If the Bears go with a first time, defensive oriented HC I may just have to call it a wrap on my fandom.

Fulmer, Collins, Burdi, Burger, Madrigal, Vaughn…that stretch of picks is a key reason the rebuild failed along with poor resource allocation and the hiring of La Russa as manager.

I think he’s shooting for 5/$100M

Yeah, Pete works too. I didn’t realize he was highly interested in coaching again at his age, but he’d be right below Vrabel for me.

I am obviously very high on Ben Johnson and would prefer an offensive minded HC, but Vrabel would be an acceptable fall back option. If we don’t end up with either of them then that’s a clear fail in my mind. I personally don’t see how Jacksonville would be more attractive than Chicago, but the Bears always find a way to f*** this s%*# up.

Patriots just fired Mayo. Boston + Maye has to be attractive to HC candidates, especially someone like Vrabel who has ties to the franchise.

Just need to acquire 4 1/2 Bobby Witts and we’re there

Bad luck is related to the new lottery process. When you set the all time loss record and can’t pick above 10th that really sucks. And that’s because the year before we didn’t win the lottery, but also didn’t move backwards enough to keep our lottery status this year. Meanwhile, the Guardians won the lottery this past year and the Twins jumped up to 5th overall in 2023 and were able to get Walker Jenkings. If you don’t consider that bad luck, I don’t know what to tell you.

When does Kim come back? And where is the competitive pitching staff? No doubt we’d be a better, more entertaining team, but we still aren’t going to be good enough to compete next year. If you laid this out next offseason, I could get potentially get behind something like this. But again, we need some semblance of a core before we make these type of signings. We’re simply a year too early IMO.

For most teams there is a salary cap…it’s called their Operating Profit before player expenses. Sounds like your expectation is that owners should make bad financial decisions to keep fans mildly entertained during a rebuild because they can theoretically course correct down the road by taking on losses when they’re finally good and eat into their own personal wealth. Unfortunately, baseball is a business and most owners are going to let a franchise operate on its own financial merits. I too wish we had Steve Cohen as our owner, but that’s the exception and not the rule.

So you want to give Santander say 5/$100M for his age 30 to 34 seasons? The general rule of thumb is that dudes start losing about 0.5 fWAR per season upon reaching 30 years of age. Obviously the fall-off isn’t always linear, but theoretically this would be what you’re getting in terms of fWAR each year: 2025: 2.8 2026: 2.3 2027: 1.8 2028: 1.3 2029: 0.8 So if all goes right, maybe we are competitive by 2027. During our competitive window, we’d be getting a 1.3 win OF on average for a total outlay of $100M. That is simply bad resource allocation and long-term roster building. These type of moves just don’t make sense when you are at least three years out of competing, especially for free agents already in their 30’s. And don’t get me wrong, a $60M payroll is a joke. We should be spending some money on flip candidates that come without long-term commitments. But now is not the time to pay market prices (and realistically a premium to pick us) for B tier free agents. We simply need more building blocks in place before making these type of outlays.

And this is where I have to disagree. I think the Sox have been operating at a loss every year since 2020 or essentially our entire competitive window and into last year. Do I think they reinvested every single dollar from the previous rebuilding seasons back into the team? Probably not, but I don’t think it’s as egregious as you’re making it out to be. I’m guessing there are small dividends made out to the various owners on a semi regular basis, but I truly believe they put the vast majority of their earnings back into the team. And don’t get me wrong, I think they should have spent more. If Jerry would have invested more into the team at the front end of the competitive window, maybe we make deeper October runs and we get more playoff revenue that untimely pays for those investments. Unfortunately he doesn’t operate that way because he wants to avoid the risk of big losses in a given season. And no doubt, Covid gave Jerry another excuse to tread lightly with spending early on. Ultimately, I can say with certainty the bigger issue was how we allocated our dollars. $200M in payroll should be more than enough to be highly competitive in the AL Central on a yearly basis. But when so much of that money is going towards, role players, over the hill veterans, and Dallas fucking Keuchel instead of actual impact talent you aren’t going to get much bang for your buck. It was a poor allocation strategy partially driven by Jerry’s complete risk aversion and partly driven by Hahn’s failure to develop a second wave of cheap young talent.

I’m saying we’ve been royally fucked from both poor process and bad luck. Not all fanbases have to deal with both like us.

I literally ripped their selections when they had high picks. Not sure what you’re looking for here.