Flash Tizzle

I’ll screenshot this when the sentiment in 2021 becomes, “Well guys it’s going to take a few years for everything to come together. 2022 is the time you can start evaluating the rebuild”

Do we have another source aside from Nightengale about the White Sox offer? I’ve read a lot of comments mentioning we beat out Philadelphia with a higher bid, but I’m wondering if that’s Sox Math where its more like $100 mil guaranteed and the $120 is reached through team friendly options and unobtainable performance incentives.

Exactly, and that’s why I’d rather extend Wheeler a sixth season and suffer through it in 2026 (likely at the end of our competitive window) than sit here and wait for......who exactky? There are no good options

He doesn’t sound very confident. Honestly, I dont either. The White Sox don’t win bidding wars. They have a set price Jerry feels comfortable with, and will not go beyond it. We all know how this goes. White Sox lose out, news is released that their offer had some goofy deferred payment or performance related stipulation that didn’t guarantee as much money. Honestly, don’t even fool the fanbase with Cole and Strasburg if you miss out on Wheeler.

Jimenez not so much. I cant wait for the day a highly touted white sox prospect succeeds immediately. Ive heard it does happen all across baseball every year

That’s my fear too. Everything suggests Eloy will be an impact player, but this is the White Sox. Every plan we have moving forward is assuming he succeeds. The rebuild is dead otherwise.

This rebuild has to have those type of prospects, rare around the southside, who immediately succeed. And then (this is even rarer....) maintain that success! I know such an idea is unheard of among Sox fans but it does happen across the league every year. We can’t just expect every prospect to follow a Moncada/Giolitto timeline or else they’ll never be competing for anything

True. There literally does seem like there’s no tomorrow with FA. No one else the fans should be excited about, atleast

Yeah we better start getting some great production from the minors

I’ll be more willing to believe the Nationals (or any other team for that matter) will meet his demands before us. Arenado was often thrown around as someone who we could pursue next year. Well, forget about that. The rarity of players like Machado and Harper hitting FA becomes more apparent.

Nope thats what I expect him to be slugging....... 😉

If he is even half decent with 275/.330/.750+ type of production I’m sure overall we’ll be happy with how he’s starting. However, many are going to be justifiably upset watching him struggle. Eventually, SOMEONE in this rebuild is going to have to succeed immediately. It’d be nice to exceed expectations once in awhile too. We can’t have Giolitto, Moncada, Jimenez.....then later Cease, Madrigal etc all on three-four year timelines. It may be unfair, but oh well. We’re tired of watching the failures of this organization

Yeah this offseason completely deflated the fanbase. How different it would have been with Machado....

I understand he’s going to spin everything, but my god; the only thing good about this offseason is that he didn’t throw any long term committments (2+ years) to scrub players to burn through the payroll

I’m scratching my head at how Hahn and friends are planning on building this championship calibur team that he intended to assemble during the rebuild. Where are thet good players coming from? Cease, Moncada, Eloy all are cant miss players for this plan to succeed

There goes the last bit of optimism left with this offseason. May as well not sign anyone at this point. Just go out there and lose 110+ With the Charlotte Knights filling out the roster. Maybe we’ll pick #1 overall and select a Boras client, who wont sign any team friendly extensions before FA anyway

We’re proud of our trying, and especially proud of Reinsdorf - who opened the change purse and tried to try but couldn’t quite convince Machado our deal was better.

So then you are holding off making an opinion about losing out on Machado......until we lose out on Harper? I have a feeling your judgement will be fairly light against the White Sox when that moment arrives if you are reserving an opinion after yesterdays disaster

They unfortunately learned they were wrong. If they signed Harper, a lot of that would go towards an understanding of going outside their comfort zone re: opt outs, AAV, years

Exactly, they were a mystery team until they took a step forward and met him. Sox may be a mystery team unti they put in an offer; then it will likewise be released in a few days.

I would forgive them even through that obvious lie because an even more important lesson is they learned very quickly that the fucked up negotiations and wanted to make it right at all costs

That’s unreasonable to expect their spot at the negotiating table for Harper to be a secret. It’s going to leak out eventually because it benefits Boras’ client for more teams to know

That would be assuming they threw out an inferior offer (esp when contacted by Lozano two nights ago) brought aboard Machados pals, and suggested they were unwilling to go over 300million for Machado.....all for some level of negotiating genius to be unraveled with Harper. One that goes against everything that we just witnessed Id be more willing to believe all resources were placed with Machado, as the recruiting effort with Jay and Alonso suggested. Now with their failures, Plan C will be formed involving Harper. Plan B was assembling a collection of tier 2 players and calling it the next step

What is the smarter path then? If you’re answer is to heavily rely upon international signings and the draft, well, let’s start seeing the results. Also lets start raising our expectations. Our next pick in the draft? I’ll just assume he’ll be a perennial 6 WAR player. They are selecting third, and I don’t care about the crapshoot of the draft; it’s what has to be done. What other path leads to a championship? We are not signing top tier FAs so forget about that. We are probably not making any more trades for prospects, so no more pipeline from outside the organization. If we’re expecting to strike gold with a few reclamation projects or rule 5 signings, good luck. We both desperately need our current crop of players to succeed, and have a steady supply of talent to supplement and sustain our (hopeful) playoff run. It was even more necessary after losing out on Machado. He could have made up for our lack of depth at the position.

You can only imagine the smile on JR’s face thinking they’re signing Machado on their terms and suppressing the market.