Tony

I agree with almost everything here. @caulfield12 that's when you know you're REALLY on the wrong side of things.

But that's the point. No one wanted to offer him a long term deal. And it would stand to reason that if you told executives that on May 5th of the 2026 season, Murakami would be leading the league in HR's, there would have been some much larger commitments on the table for him, just like we're talking about now with our team. Aside from Belle, The Sox have never won a bidding war for a top tier free agent. And Jerry's spending habits have gotten worse over the years, not better. And maybe I'm misremembering things, but it didn't seem like the Sox were in on Murakami right from the start...it started to pick up steam quickly once it seemed like the big dogs weren't going to be players, and his reps started to pivot to secondary options. That's when the Sox came into play, and when apparently Brooks had to convince Jerry to make the investment. Again, I think it's fair to say the Sox had a lot of things bounce their way, things that weren't totally in their control, for Murakami to end up on the Sox. All good, but now they have him, ideally they need to find a way to keep him. And that doesn't have to happen tomorrow. But if this is the real Murakami, letting him walk at age 28 would be a crime.

I don't think it's that crazy at all. It's clear a lot of people were wrong on Murakami. The Sox aren't signing Murakami if the Padres, Mets, Angles decide to go 4/100 last offseason on Murakami. No one wanted to make a serious commitment, and the Sox came in and (in theory) offered the best deal. And credit to the Sox for making the move. But they aren't in the discussion if other teams had better scouting departments. "Stumbled into" seems pretty accurate.

Really nice run these guys are on. First “fun” stretch in far too long.

So the worst outcome possible. It does sound very White Sox, so can't really argue there.

You didn't answer the question I asked to you. If Murakami continues on his current pace, and the Sox as a unit are showing signs of improvement, given his two year contract, do you expect the White Sox to try and resign him to a longer extension? Or are they trading a 27 year old power hitting LH bat to another team because they don't have any interest in giving him over $100 million dollars? What do you believe is the most likely outcome?

Wait, let me see if I got this straight. You asked, word for word "who are all these players we've developed and then traded right away because we didn't want to pay them?" As @Look at Ray Ray Run pointed out, the list is full of talented players that were traded in their prime because the Sox didn't want to pay them. If they traded them because they were in a rebuild...who's choice was that? Was the rebuild forced upon them? It was 100% the choice of the White Sox organization not to extend them. There is no "pass" given because the organization decided to do ANOTHER gut job. But then, you turn around and say "It's beyond stupid to pretend that the Sox are going to build a competitive team, then start trading away the stars because "tee-hee, moar prospects" Why is that beyond stupid? What history do you have that the Sox will keep good players around for a long term competitive window? By your logic, that means you assume the Sox will be keeping Murakami long term, outside of his two year contract? (with the assumption he continues to play at this level and is a 'star' level player under your definition)

I'm not endorsing they sign him to an extension tomorrow. Think the sample size is too small, I'd like to work with some more historical evidence before making a long term investment. I'm not debating about the "when" but instead the overall intent with the player, and overall direction of the team. He's 26. We're going on Year 4 of abysmal seasons. At what point does this team enter the "competitive window" so to speak? Lockout aside, when the Sox embarked on this full tear down in the 2023 offseason, I would have hoped by 2028, they were coming out the other side of it and ready to start trying to win. If Murakami is still doing this in July, signing him to a 4 year extension gets him to age 30/31, covering 2027-2028-2029-2030. Having a big LH power bat in the middle of the lineup is something every contending team would love to have. My hope is the Sox are one of those teams, not looking to trade it to a team actually trying to win. Lets be one of those teams for a change.

At 26, given his hitting profile and position, he should have another 5-6 years of production at his current level. Not saying this HR pace will continue, we need to see more data, but given what we know at this point, I'm not comfortable taking the position of trading being the only logical solution. I get it, I've made the argument plenty of times that guys like Sale and Crochet probably should have been kept long term, but we knew ownership wouldn't sign them to a big deal, so because of that the only option to get any value for the player is to trade them. I guess I'm just tired of rooting for an organization like that. We should hold them to a higher standard. You potentially have a 26 year old star, a guy that picked your franchise, a guy that most scouts seemingly were wrong about, and the Sox deserve credit for making an investment in him. But turning around and trading him for another couple of lottery tickets isn't where this franchise should be right now, especially as we are in Year 4 of the worst stretch of White Sox baseball in history. When they signed him, the best case scenerio should have been "We were right, everyone else was wrong, we just found a middle of the order power hitter in his prime that can anchor our lineup for the next 5-6 years." Not "We were right, everyone else was wrong, we just found a middle of the order power hitter in his prime that we can trade to the highest bidder in a year"

It's a great show. After Sorkin left with the conclusion of Season 4, the show goes down in quality in Season 5 and 6, but the race between Santos and Vinick in Season 7 is a nice change of pace and ends the series well. I've re-watched it all the way through probably 4 or 5 times, all timer for me as well.

Just a god awful Day 2 for them, yikes

A TE?!? In the third? I swear Poles is doing this out of spite. Draft a fucking DE

Shouldn't Schwarber be used as the example for Mune? IMO, they are incredibly similar.

Unqualified man gets leadership position and fails….