Eminor3rd

On on hand: 1. It IS a bad stadium. It had the unfortunate timing of being designed and built just a few years before the entire paradigm for ballparks shifted. I'm not sure how much blame I'm willing to lay on them for not being the visionaries that actually made the paradigm shift. Pre-1994 was very different than post-1994, as far as how the game was marketed to and consumed by fans. Given the precedents we observe around the league since it was built, I think you can make a compelling objective case that the White Sox are due for a new facility. However: 2. The fact that it is a bad stadium has next to NOTHING to do with how "competitive" the Sox have been or can be, both on the field or as a business in general. It is easily accessible for the overwhelming majority of anyone who would want to get to it. Every time the Sox have randomly stumbled into being successful, even for the fleetingly brief amounts of time they've managed it, their attendance and media coverage have grown quickly to the levels you would expect. If the honeymoon period after the 2005 Series didn't last as long as it should have, it was pretty clearly correlated with the swift slide back into their typical cycle failure, defined not just by a lack of direction but the stupefyingly frustrating process of shooting themselves in the foot in ways so obvious that every fan can see it coming like a slow-motion car accident. Jerry Reinsdorf and his all-time crew of clowns have reaped precisely what they have sown, and that is a record of incompetence so reliably consistent that it is not an exaggeration to suggest that a random number generator would have led to more success. It is both true that (1) any new ownership group would consider a new facility to be a crucial part of its strategy upon purchasing the team and that (2) the reason that a new facility would be so "necessary" has way more to do with the Reinsdorf's bumbling mismanagement of the franchise than it has to do with any of the stadium's weaknesses. In the counterfactual world where the White Sox were as successful as even an average team since 1992, GRF would probably not be named GRF, would have been renovated substantially more than it has to date, and could 30 years down the road to building a reputation as a beloved community landmark like, I don't know, Wrigley Field.

Why does everyone seem to be pronouncing 'Caglianone' as if the first 'n' isn't there? Is that correct?

...with about 46 RBI

I think drafting properly is part of it.

Yes, and perhaps it will suddenly seem obvious why no other teams are doing this. The thing is, I do still believe it all to be a ruse. Getz knows he needs a full rebuild, but his assets weren’t in a position to be moved, so he has to stall. And I actually think that, if you’re in a lost year anyway, it might just be a pretty good excuse to jettison as much as possible from a deeply troubled culture and put in some fresh faces to help those aforementioned assets rebound and the prospects develop. What I’m afraid of is that it may turn out that he’s underestimated the counter-acting negative effect of consistent losing. The feeling that you have no way of influencing a change in that can do dark things to the psyche.

This is going to be one of the most supremely brutal offenses I've ever seen in my life. But, since I already knew the window was closed during ST of 2023, I'm kind of over it -- and I'm legitimately curious just to see what a defense-only team looks like. How much will the pitching staff actually benefit? Will the dread I feel every time I watch them fail to convert a single baserunner be offset by the confidence I'll learn to feel about how they'll get out of jams? They're going to lose a lot of games, but they'll be clean ones. It's a sort of interesting experiment. At least on paper. In my head. Kind of.

Come on

Nor I. Like I said, you can do a few a year (and they do), but I don't see any way to make it feel like a year-round thing as currently constructed.

The conversion of the field from baseball to concert is a tremendous, expensive ordeal that requires the calendar to line up perfectly to give the requisite run up and teardown time. And even if it's done properly, the field isn't going to be 100% for a while. Even just the booking and management of that type of event is substantial, and it's difficult to justify the staff for that if you're only doing a few events a year. There is, of course, the offseason, but who wants to go to an outdoor concert in the winter in Chicago? The gold standard for mixed-use event venues is Little Caesars Arena in Detroit (well, actually probably Madison Square Garden but obviously that's a different situation), and it works because of how much cooperation exists on the back-end, enabling scale. The Red Wings and Pistons share the arena for their respective seasons, and the concert lineup fills in the gaps the rest of the year. I don't know how many events it is, but I believe it's the busiest arena in the country overall. This is achieved because of the entity 313 Presents, which is a joint venture between Ilitch Sports & Entertainment (Red Wings/Tigers) and the Pistons. 313 Presents owns and/or operates close to a dozen venues in the area, of which Little Caesars Arena is just the flagship, giving them a fairly unprecedented level of control of nearly the entire mainstream entertainment business in the metro. This enables it to carry a huge full-time staff and to benefit from very little competition in terms of other entities that can attract talent. This is the same entity that books concerts at Comerica Park, and, despite all of the scale and advantage, Comerica Park hosts between 1 and 5 concerts a year. Outdoor fields in cold places are just tough to use like that. A new Sox field would need to be a dome or retractable, and it would have to compete with so many other venues in the city.

whoosh. Sorry, missed that haha

It might just be Always Trade Relievers(tm)

TBH, just the fact that it seems someone in the org has strong opinions is kind of refreshing. When Getz was hired, I think we all expected nothing would change, and in the worst possible way. I don't have any evidence that any of these random fringe moves make sense, but I'm willing to at least try to give them the benefit of the doubt simply because of how monumental it is that someone is actually DOING them. Somebody sees SOMETHING in these random players.

Reshuffling every player

It's just like Kenny, except instead of has-been hitters, they're all has-been defenders. This team is going to have like a 58 wRC+ next year.

Lmao Colas.Theres now a full useless journeyman platoon in his way. Wtf did this guy DO to this org? He must have pissed Jerry off somehow. EDIT: Wait I take it back. I somehow didn’t immediately see that this is the end of Sheets in RF. This move is brilliant.

I think it depends how the rough first half occurred. Is it an elevated ERA or BABIP with solid peripherals? Possibly hold. Is it reduced velocity, increased hard hit rate? I'd take the Burnes-ish return.

If the going rate for Burnes is an old, low-ceiling IF prospect, a high-variance project arm, and a (n essentially) second round pick, then it's reasonable to hold Cease for the deadline. Deadline markets tend to increase the value for pending free agents, but there's always a premium for the second year of control. Yes, there's risk, but the Sox have to try to do better than what's on the table now -- and if Cease is healthy and effective, they likely will.

Phenomenal move for the orioles. If this was available for Burnes, there was no argument for either side on making a Cease deal.

You could say “put the ball on the air” or “never try to put the ball on the air,” and as long as you’re speaking in generalities, you’d be wrong both ways. The reason there’s a burgeoning private industry for high-end skills development and coaching is because the actual solution to optimizing your performance is taking a customized approach to your game. Some hitters can benefit phenomenally from a narrow approach, others would be destroyed by it. It would be absolutely foolish to listen to advice from anyone who isn’t considering YOUR skill set when giving it.

Yes paywall? Not blaming the messenger, just sayin

I think the lack of defense/position probably limits his earning cap a bit more than the typical case.

You can’t pick one dude who has a handful of similar characteristics and expect it to be a meaningful comp. Whether it’s comping Mayo to Bryant or it’s comping every right handed hitting 1B to Andrew Vaughn.

1 to 1 anecdotal prospect comps are completely useless, no matter which direction you're arguing in.

He better never get happy OR mad. And enough with the jokes, we don’t need that. But hopefully he’s really funny. The most important thing is he needs to clearly support the team on the broadcast, so he can relate with the fans. But definitely don’t want him to be a homer. He needs to be bold and progressive, but always stay in his lane and never rock the boat.

I was hoping for a little more shove on Grant Taylor