ChiSox59

The White Sox have won more games that the Padres both the last 2 and 3 seasons combined. Preller is mad man. I certainly admire his style from a distance. But to this point, the Padres have had limited success, just like the Sox. They did make the NLCS las season, but otherwise look remarkably similar to the White Sox production wise over the last 3 seasons with just 2022 and 2021 seasons flip flopped.

FIFY. What are we even doing here?

I think its purely to avoid the handful of marathon games each season that obviously the players hate, the staff hates, and it ruins pens for weeks. But its rare, and it stupid to ruin all extra inning games for that. Start the rule in the 12th. I could live with that. I guess I "get it", but still hate it.

HATE IT. Absolutely hate that baseball continues to cater to people that don't like baseball.

I don't even think he really needs to rebound. Every team in baseball could use a rock solid #4 type that eats innings and gives your team a chance to win most nights for his 2023 AAV. With the expanded playoffs, more teams involved in races means more teams will be interested, means more teams bidding, increasing the price. If he rebounds, he becomes a very valuable short term asset if the Sox are sellers (I truly hope they are not). That said, I think Lucas is a safe bet to be really good in 2023. Dude is a student of the game, and very determined player that has shown time and time again that he cares deeply about his performance and his next contract. I think we see that squint in his eye again this season.

The line of suitors for Giolito come July if Sox are sellers will be long. Even if he doesn't really improve on his 2022.

Let’s see where we stand in mid June and go from there. Impossible to answer right now. If Sox are in contention, they aren’t trading TA. If I had to guess, TA plays out his current contract as a Sox, and he signs elsewhere for 2025 season. And that is just fine with me assuming Sox are playing good ball next two seasons.

I think they were pretty confident he'd clear. But yah, Sox definitely need to bring in a couple more milb deal SPs for Charlotte. Current rotation is likely Davis Martin, Jonathon Stiever, AJ Alexy, Sean Burke and.....? Likely was Bilous. If Clevinger gets suspended/released/put on leave, Davis Martin is in Chicago making that depth even more thin.

Also….this dude has to be Connor Gillaspies long lost non tobacco chewing brother.

Oh yay, now we get to hear this board complain about the Guardians turning Bilous into something like we did with Pilkington all season.

And Luis Robert played 68 games. And Eloy played 55. And TA missed 40 games. And AV wasn't good. Colas > then old Adam Eaton. OF defense still sucked. It goes both ways, but yah, if you only want to focus on the negatives, things are awful! I have said it before and I will say it again. The Sox need Robert, Eloy, and TA on the field. If you want to assume those players will miss 250 games, then yes, the Sox aren't winning 90 games. If those players play 130+ games, I really like the Sox chances of being a pretty good team in 2023.

Plus a Cy Young level Dylan Cease (Cease had a 6.36 FIP in 2020, he wasn't good), two solid left handed bats that have been sorely needed for yearss, and most likely a much much much improved Andrew Vaughn from the 2020 version. I also wouldn't quite write off Hendriks for the season just yet. edit: brain fart. Obviously two years ago was 2021, not 2020. So disregard the cease comment. But yeah...I hear ya. I probably won't convince you to be more optimistic on the season, so lets just sit back and strap it down and see how she shakes out. I do hope you get to enjoy the season, tho!

Do we know how delayed Crochet is going to be? Is he expected to be a participant in ST, and the Sox just slow play him or is still a couple months from game action?

I....don't agree. Largely the same roster won 93 games 2 years ago with Tony punting the 2nd half of the season. Lots of things will need to go right for this team to win 90 games, but that certainly isn't the ceiling.

I don't see how Grifol couldn't be anything but a huge improvement. Just his excitement and energy alone will be such a breath of fresh air.

"We'll earn your trust"

I love how some posters want so bad to be mad about this. Lol. German was BoSox minor league pitcher of the year in 22.

Gary Sanchez sucks. I'd much rather roll with a Yaz/Seby timeshare.

Cueto was great for the Sox after they got him for basiscally nothing because no one wanted to sign him. SP wins don't matter that much. Its not a SP fault if he goes 7 strong and hte team doesn't score any runs for him or the pen blows it. But teams wins certainly matter. Sox went 11-14 in the games Cueto started. That is a fact. Yes he gave them a chance to win more often than not, but the reality is the team didn't win more often than not in the games he start. I do believe that Mike Clevinger (if he pitches for Sox) or Davis Martin or AJ Alexy or some combination thereof could probably rival a .440 winning percentage across 25 starts. No, its not mostly Cueto's fault the team didn't perform well in his starts, but replacing a pitcher who a .500 team won less than 50% of his starts should not be that hard. I wish Johnny Cueto well, but I look forward to him being terrible in 2023 like he was for the lionshare of the last half decade so he stops getting brought up here 25x a day.

Another very valid point I wish I had included on my list. All the air was out of the balloon after that crushing loss in the 1st game of the Cleveland series. The boys mailed the rest of that week in.

Elvis isn't very good at baseball any more and has never played 2B in his life. Pretty sure you and I discussed Elvis like yesterday. I said I'd take him for $2M at this point. But Elvis playing out of his ass for 4 weeks with the Sox last August doesn't just render the Sox "basically the same team as if they were the healthiest team in the league", which is what Balta said and is an insane take. Not to mention the stat that the Sox went 11-14 in Cueto's starts last season. How in the world will they ever survive not having him when the team put up a .444 record in his starts. Unfathomable, I know.

Perhaps. In the scenario where Colas breaks camp with the big club, I feel like the Sox would rather get Sheets at bats then let him rot on the bench. I mean - if everyone is healthy - which is always a giant if - where's he gonna play? Not 1B over AV. Not RF over Colas. Not LF over Beintenidi. Not DH over Eloy. Sheets is going to be very needed at some point in the season, and I feel they'd rather keep his bat ready for when that time arrives than giving him a handful of PA a week. But definitely see the concern about the Alberto's skill set not meshing with with either Romy or Sosa. But like....that's what we got. It would have made a ton of sense to bring in a left handed vet 2B, even one on an milb deal. Alas... I think you need to have another option on the MLB roster to play 2B besides Romy or Leury, or we're going to end up with a lot of Leury. And putting both Sosa and Romy on the roster doesn't make a ton of sense, IMO. I think the Sox still add another guy before OD that ends up filling that role.

I think that's how this team was intended to be built. You look up and down the lineup, pretty much all of the regulars except TA and Benintendi are capable of 25+ home runs. Even TA has hit 20, 18, 18, 17, so he's not too far off. The previous regime - Menechino specifically - had a lot to do with their profiles changing. Health too, of course.

Lol, what a take that is. Cueto and Elvis were great. No doubt about that. But I will take immensely talented players in their prime (like TA, Robert, Eloy, Moncada) being healthy and playing up to their potential than over the hill players doing well in SSS. I will gladly take health of the Sox core in 2023 over betting Cueto and Elvis could recreate their 2022 magic, or in the case of Elvis, like 1 month of magic. Without looking, I seem to recall him being pretty terrible last couple weeks of the season (i think he had like an 0-25 stretched)....it really was just a really hot couple weeks for him after coming over. In any event, I guess we'll see what happens.

Quick, someone tell Jerry to look as his brokerage account.