Eminor3rd

There will likely be one or two free agents thrown into the mix, at least one (maybe both) of the Felipe Paulino/Rich Harden ilk. I'd be shocked if we go big this year on FA signings unless the team really finishes exceptionally strong.

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ Aug 5, 2014 -> 06:33 AM) You know Eminor these people we're debating this with are not simpletons they understand the concept that rebuilding takes patience and time. Did I want more spent coming into the season ? I sure did. I wanted Ellsbury ,but when I saw what he signed for I wasn't upset the Sox didn't get him Did Hahn want more? He sure did, he wanted Tanaka. Had they got Tanaka would they have spent a bit more on the bullpen afterwards ? I don't know .We will never know. But Tanaka and Ellbury are both the kind of contracts you're speaking of that screw things up for teams. Unfortunately that's the price you have to pay now in the game. The agents and the deep pockets owners have made sure its the rich who will always get richer and to get a superstar and really even just good players you have to pay for their declining years .Teams that try and do it another way often have long dry spells of failure like you mention. The Cubs ,Astros, Royals . Tampa Bay has had some success with keeping costs down and so has Oakland recently. Marlins won 2 WS (1997 and 2003) then completely and utterly destroyed their teams. Pirates can never get anything accomplished because they just don't have the cash flow coming in. The Sox ? Well attendance could be better, they don't have a huge TV contract bringing in huge amounts of cash like the Yankees, Boston, Seattle or the Dodgers.They don't have an ownership group that will spend irresponsibly like the Phillies and Detroit. There are 2 teams in the city and of the 2 the Sox are the ugly stepchild. The fans just won't show up because we're the lovable losers . Our fans demand a winner , screw fiscal responsibility and the rest of those lame excuses about rebuilding. Screw the fact that bullpen pieces are rarely considered core pieces and their performances fluctuate greatly from year to year. or that sometimes things can blow up in your face like injuries and unexpected bad years . Screw the fact Hahn just got Sale and Q and now Abreu it seems under great to pretty good contracts. Screw his acquisitions of Eaton and getting Gillaspie for practically nothing. Yet ,as evidenced in this thread, they throw tantrums like whiny little brats when they can't have it all every year. Waaa it's all Hahn's fault for trading Addison Reed . My suggestion : go be Red Sox or Yankees, Dodger fans if you expect every last dime to be spent every damn year. Hahn can't say that but I can. I'm not calling them simpletons or anything similar, but when threads like these pop-up, I really DO question whether a lot of people here understand the plan. 10 months ago, at the end of the most excruciating Sox season I've ever experienced, 95% of our posters rightfully (IMO) wanted to clean house. Now halfway through the FIRST season of this, after some frankly incredible strides in the "cleaning house" plan having taken place, we're ripping baseball operations for not having enough bullpen depth to compete? You've got to be kidding me.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Aug 4, 2014 -> 11:28 PM) Some posters are saying the bullpen is the last to be fixed. My point is he did address the bullpen during this rebuild. It's like some are saying you should fix the everyday lineup first, then the bullpen. He did also try to fix the bullpen, but failed miserably. I'm just perplexed some people think he has yet to address the bullpen. He has ... he's just failed at it so far. Right greg, but he COULD have spent a lot more time, money, and trade chips on it to give it a better shot, but doing so would have been completely irresponsible because expensive bullpens are a waste of resources on bad teams. And what we had at the time was a BAD team with some new acquisitions that would hopefully work out. Now that most of those acquisitions have worked out, we have the core of a decent team, we have enough information to start pushing more chips into the middle. Those of you that are advocating a complete hail mary every year need to realize that that very rarely ever works out and that the cost of missing is that you end up like the Phillies, Cubs, or Astros. Hahn's plan is to be patient and do this right, and we're all going to be very happy about it pretty soon.

QUOTE (VAfan @ Aug 4, 2014 -> 07:59 PM) Why is building a solid core of young position players and starting pitchers, AND having a plan for a competent bullpen MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE?? I guarantee that's NOT how Rick Hahn sees it. If he did -- if he had your approach -- he SHOULD be fired. The simple fact is the Sox could have fielded a much better bullpen without spending a lot more money. Rick Hahn made some very bad investments, and took far too much risk hoping that Nate Jones could step into the closing role and everyone else would fall in behind him. For that, he deserves the fair criticism I've raised here. Are you enjoying the Sox 2014 season???? Dude this isn't Playstation. You can't just leave time paused until you complete all your deals. Of course he WISHES he had a great bullpen, too, but it was very rightfully NOT the top priority this offseason. You are being completely unreasonable expecting him to have fixed literally every part of this team. Marvel at the progress that was made, ALL of it theoretically sustainable, and look forward to more of it to come. I swear sometimes it feels like people follow sports JUST so they can have a scapegoat for something.

I chose the position player, but it hurt to do it. Bottom line is that Sale is a pitcher and because he is a pitcher he could blow up at literally any minute. That's the only reason to choose Abreu.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Aug 4, 2014 -> 02:07 PM) When should the Sox get the go ahead to build a good bullpen? Maybe as soon as next year. Last year, he rightfully spent the whole offseason upgrading the offense first, and did a goddamn good job of it. If he hadn't, we wouldn't be in pseudo-contention in the first place and this would be a moot point. You guys are taking a season that went WAY better than expected and turning it into a BAD thing somehow. I'm not going to pissed at Hahn because he managed to turn the team around so quickly but fell short of a damn world championship, lol.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Aug 4, 2014 -> 01:55 PM) Hahn knew there was trouble in spring training, when he started claiming waived guys and signing released guys to minor league deals. There has been so much crap in the White Sox bullpen this season we won't remember half of their names in a couple of years. Again, 63-99 doesn't get fixed in one fell swoop. Relief pitchers are notoriously volatile from year to year; it's stupid to build a bullpen that you hope to stay together for several years. This was simply not the year to invest in the bullpen, and it shouldn't have been.

If anyone expected our front office to invest substantial resources in assuring that we had a contender-level bullpen, you haven't been paying much attention to this team over the past 12 months. Sometimes when you take a bunch of shots in the dark, they all miss. This shouldn't be surprising anyone. I don't like it any more than anyone else does, but they FO had a plan that made sense, ownership approved it, and they're following through. You can choose to feel bad about the fact that the offense was better than expected, but I choose to see it as a good thing. This team has stepped up to the point where we may be able to consider ourselves in contention as early as next season. That's fantastic news for a team that went 63-99 just last year.

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ Aug 4, 2014 -> 07:36 AM) Plan on what exactly ? I'm only saying he has the tools to be great like a lot of guys do but so few actually ever realize. I know he has more upside at this point than either De Aza or Tank but isn't getting the same chance . Get the guy some AB's . He's more important to the future of the Sox at this point than is De Aza . I know Robin want's to win games and put what he thinks is the best lineup out there nearly every day but the guy can run, throw, defend, hit and potentially hit for power. That's more potential and tools than either De Aza or Tank has and his AB's should reflect that because I fear when Avi comes back he will be riding the pine even more than he does now. And De Aza will be gone next year, and he'll get his shot. EDIT: Hopefully Viciedo is gone too.

QUOTE (sin city sox fan @ Aug 3, 2014 -> 04:14 PM) This man has got to go. He's absolutely destroyed the confidence of every member of our bullpen. lol what?

I don't think we should plan on it. Regardless, he could be a good 4th OF piece for us for the next couple years, and that's not insignificant.

QUOTE (hi8is @ Jul 31, 2014 -> 10:55 PM) Today, Rodon took a massive poop. Word is that it included white corn kernels. BUST

From the standpoint of roster construction: when you acquire players, you are acquiring probabilities. That is, each player comes with a range of potential outcomes for each appearance and, by extension, each season. A GM has to make an assessment about what the most likely outcome is for each player he has, weigh the chances of a substantially better or worse outcome, and decide whether or not he is comfortable with said probability holding down the role he has in mind. What we're witnessing is close to the worst possible outcome of this bullpen. Just one pitcher is pitching near what was probably projected as an expected performance. The top two pieces were injured for nearly the entire season, two more pieces pitching close to as poorly as they could realistically be expected to pitch, and the rest pitching below expectations to the point that should have been realistically expected. To me, it doesn't look like there were any surefire signs that these guys were to going to pitch worse than normally (injury, decline), so I chalk this up to bad luck from Hahn's point of view. I don't think there's anything wrong with the process, I think it was just a rough year. I'd expect him to approach building next year's bullpen in a similar fashion, and I'd be pretty happy with him doing so. I certainly wouldn't want him to panic and start paying steeply for Proven Closers™ who have shown to be, at best, BARELY more reliable than a random live arm in terms of sustained effectiveness over several years.

I can't believe they didn't fold the tarp in the accordion style. You don't have to run back at all when you do it right.

TBH, it might as well be any of these guys. Hahn will take a flyer on the ones the staff likes the best and hopefully they'll work out better than they did this year.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Aug 2, 2014 -> 02:07 PM) Some of their high-quality former staffers have been pilfered by MLB teams...another reason. I think Callis has also gotten a little bit distracted by all of his TV work, and the majority of his questions are from fans of teams like the Cubs, Red Sox and Yankees...and then, finally, the White Sox system has been down for so long it's taking time for it to be taken seriously again. Until someone like Ravelo ends up producing (similar to a Gillaspie) at the major league level, there's still going to be that natural skepticism about our hitting prospects. Right, but as other have pointed out, there's just not a single argument that Ravelo is below Barnum. It really seems like he just doesn't even know about Ravelo, not that he's skeptical about him. I know it's hard to keep up on these guys, but if you're MLBAM's official "prospect guy," you gotta find a way.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Aug 2, 2014 -> 04:03 PM) Yeah, i have never understood that. If Q and Danks started the first 2 games of a series, do people really believe that give a team a better shot of getting to Sale if he is pitching game 3? These guys have different stuff, different release points. If you have 5 solid starters and the all are lefty or all are righty, you are ahead of most. I can see how it might be theoretically "nice to have," but I can't imagine any legitimate component of the roster that wouldn't be a higher priority.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Aug 2, 2014 -> 01:05 PM) Butler is done. Age hit him and he has no HR power and like you said is very slow. And if he's only 6-8 million, he'll stay in KC for that.

QUOTE (Lillian @ Aug 2, 2014 -> 01:45 PM) Today at 1:31 PM The two biggest needs for the Sox next year are: 1) A middle of the order, left handed power bat, to protect Abreu. Without that protection, opposing teams would simply neutralize Jose's bat, by going around him. 2) A right handed starting pitcher, to balance the rotation, which is dominated by southpaws. It still seems unlikely that the Sox would keep a rotation consisting of the top 4 starters all being left handed. They will need at least a #2, or #3 to balance Sale, Quintana and Rodon. Even if Danks is not gone, a RHP has to be in front of his spot in the rotation. There's absolutely no way that making the rotation less left-handed is the second biggest need for this team.

Mayo is consistently terrible

QUOTE (Feeky Magee @ Aug 1, 2014 -> 04:58 PM) That's just flat-out wrong. I've said earlier that Saladino is cromulent at SS and probably above average elsewhere. He can also pinch-run. The point is that his bat is so much better than Leury that even if you think Leury edges him on defence (probably) and speed (definitely), the bat more than makes up for it. There's just no way to hit with a 20 wRC+ at the majors and provide positive value. Sure there is! You just have to be a pitcher. Hey, wait.... Leury pitched once!

He's definitely worth a claim, IMO.

QUOTE (Jake @ Aug 1, 2014 -> 02:57 PM) Eminor3d, when you say SS is the position our system is most likely to be able to replace...are you intentionally leaving out 2B? Because it's 2B Yeah, you're right. I guess I mean "middle infield." I'd rather replace Beckham than Alexei, but Alexei is the subject because he can actually be traded.

Two reasons: 1. Your team sucks and you cannot create talent out of thin air. You need to trade assets to get assets back. 2. There is no other position on the team where we have a better chance of someone working in our system as soon as next year So are you going to pretend that guys don't tend to get worse as they approach their mid-30's? What are you even talking about here? I said the team isn't good enough to make the playoffs with him now, meaning they need to think about the future.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Aug 1, 2014 -> 12:58 PM) Go back to your posts 2 years ago and last year. There is no way you thought he would be anywhere near as valuable this year. He doesn't have to go. There aren't a ton of guys the White Sox have ready to try the position. Face it, if the Sox thought Semien was a SS, he'd be playing SS everyday. If they thought Sanchez was a SS, he wouldn't have been playing 2B the past few years. Odds are very long either is an everyday calibur major league SS. The White Sox have basically conceded that. I mean I'm not going to go try to find posts from two years ago, but I know how I've always felt about him, and if I was advocating moving him, it was for the same reason as now, which is (1) guys that are 32 tend to begin getting worse and (2) our team is not good enough to get to the playoffs even with his contribution now. It's very simple, and really hardly personal to Alexei at all.