As we prepare to tell 2022 to go pack a f&%$ing lunch, let’s look back at this year in White Sox baseball and Soxtalk for any random thoughts about the year.

I am not a great prognosticator by any stretch, but I remember speaking with my brother and nephews rather early in the season and saying “I think this year’s team is just a .500 ballclub.  I could be wrong but it seems like that is all they are.”  I hoped for them to turn it around and they seemed to for a short amount of time when Cairo took over but then they fell flat on their collective faces again.

As for Soxtalk, I want to thank everyone here for helping me get through this lot in life that is being a White Sox fan.  I am never going to stop being one, so it is great to have a place to commiserate, learn from some very knowledgeable fans, and just to laugh. 

Any general 2022 thoughts from y’all??

Happy New Year.  I hope for everyone here, and their families, that it a very healthy and prosperous 2023.

I remember going to the first TB series in April after a Sox win (think they were 6-3 at the time) and thinking to myself, "Ok, maybe this actually is a good team", promptly followed by that losing streak and the excuses of "it's cold/it's early/injuries/etc ". Thankfully the minors kept me distracted from the clown show that was the ML club. Seeing the individual progress down there and making my first trip to the affiliates was memorable in an otherwise trainwreck of a baseball season. 

This was the year that I felt my perception of the team shift significantly, from "exciting championship window/this is our time/rebuild is over/can they get it done" to "oh, this is just KW-era White Sox business as usual now/pre-rebuild constant shuffling and retooling and hoping that everything breaks right every year."

I've been a really negative poster the past couple years, and I apologize for that, but they way this "contention window" has been handled, to me, is the most damning evidence I've seen in my life that this ownership/management group is simply not capable of competing in the current MLB metagame. It isn't about Reinsdorf being "cheap" -- it's totally reasonable to flex into and out of the upper third in spending for a team of the Sox market power -- it's about him (and/or his invincible hand-picked braintrust) being utterly incompetent in evaluating the types of investments to make. Time and time again, they've chosen to allocate their resources into the most risky, short-term, and low-upside types of talent acquisitions that are available (veteran relievers, high floor/no-upside corner players/stars with polarizing evaluations around the league, pitching-heavy prospect pools) while seemingly every other team has figured out a better playbook (prioritizing depth, developing average payers while paying for stars, bat-heavy drafting strategy, diversified international spending). The type of strategic knowledge that they lack has been obviously and readily available for many years at this point, and even the most rudimentary competitive analysis would reveal it. It's almost unbelievable that they are continuing to invest actual money in this type of strategy.

I was a strident supporter of "the rebuild," because it gave the team chance for a sorely needed clean slate. They filled that clean slate with the same dumb s%*# it had before. I will always root for this laundry/these players to pull it together and give me another 2005, but I will not be fooled again that real change will occur as long as this group remains in charge.

Eminor nails it.  
 

I’ve been one of the biggest apologists/supporters forever.  They finally broke me this year and I think it’s like you say:

The choices made are just sooo bad the only conclusion I can come to is maybe these guys really don’t have what it takes to compete with other front offices.  
 

There’s time to fix it but a few years has been lost.  I’ve gone from excited to skeptical about this window that should have been a home run.  

Lots of low points last season.  Engel dropping the flyball with two outs in the 9th was the worst.  However, I can sense optimism returning here.

2022 Soxtalk

Some of you'ns is aight.

Some of you'ns seriously needs to get looked at.

The rest of y'all bears watchin'.

Not mentioning names. You know who you are.

13 minutes ago, Jerksticks said:

Eminor nails it.  
 

I’ve been one of the biggest apologists/supporters forever.  They finally broke me this year and I think it’s like you say:

The choices made are just sooo bad the only conclusion I can come to is maybe these guys really don’t have what it takes to compete with other front offices.  
 

There’s time to fix it but a few years has been lost.  I’ve gone from excited to skeptical about this window that should have been a home run.  

Yes Eminor nailed it. I've been super critical of the Reinsdorf regime . I temper that with optimism each spring because "hope springs eternal" and all that good stuff to prevent myself from being  angry or sad about the Sox. I never felt like I was broken but rather just accepted that this is what being a Sox fan under Reindorf  is. It wasn't any better under any previous owners in my life .

While I am privately optimistic my posts are hyper critical because we've seen so many examples of how JR operates and we conveniently forget most of it when things are looking up.

Now is an example of a temporary up time. Clevinger, Benintendi, new coaches all saying the right things. Hoping for best seasons from a lot of guys and Grifol the miracle worker all in the name of continuing to dangle the carrot but hoping our hunger will make us forget how bad they truly are again.

Hell I'm still holding out hope that they do something about 4th OFer and figure out a way to find more power while not sacrificing defense. These little slap hitting types and waiting for Robert, Eloy and Vaughn's best seasons and pumping the hype on the new coaches  is a huge fucking carrot if I ever saw one.

The White Sox fan motto should be: "Hope for the best...expect the worst."

1 hour ago, oldsox said:

Lots of low points last season.  Engel dropping the flyball with two outs in the 9th was the worst.  However, I can sense optimism returning here.

The Engel drop and the 6 run collapse against Cleveland are two of the worst losses of the last decade. 

F*ck 2022.  Everything that could go wrong did go wrong, and I’m optimistic about our chances in 2023.

Cheers, fellas. 

f*** Rick Hahn and the 2022 horse he rode in on.

23 hours ago, Eminor3rd said:

This was the year that I felt my perception of the team shift significantly, from "exciting championship window/this is our time/rebuild is over/can they get it done" to "oh, this is just KW-era White Sox business as usual now/pre-rebuild constant shuffling and retooling and hoping that everything breaks right every year."

I've been a really negative poster the past couple years, and I apologize for that, but they way this "contention window" has been handled, to me, is the most damning evidence I've seen in my life that this ownership/management group is simply not capable of competing in the current MLB metagame. It isn't about Reinsdorf being "cheap" -- it's totally reasonable to flex into and out of the upper third in spending for a team of the Sox market power -- it's about him (and/or his invincible hand-picked braintrust) being utterly incompetent in evaluating the types of investments to make. Time and time again, they've chosen to allocate their resources into the most risky, short-term, and low-upside types of talent acquisitions that are available (veteran relievers, high floor/no-upside corner players/stars with polarizing evaluations around the league, pitching-heavy prospect pools) while seemingly every other team has figured out a better playbook (prioritizing depth, developing average payers while paying for stars, bat-heavy drafting strategy, diversified international spending). The type of strategic knowledge that they lack has been obviously and readily available for many years at this point, and even the most rudimentary competitive analysis would reveal it. It's almost unbelievable that they are continuing to invest actual money in this type of strategy.

I was a strident supporter of "the rebuild," because it gave the team chance for a sorely needed clean slate. They filled that clean slate with the same dumb s%*# it had before. I will always root for this laundry/these players to pull it together and give me another 2005, but I will not be fooled again that real change will occur as long as this group remains in charge.

Spot on.  Outstanding accurate post. 

23 hours ago, Sleepy Harold said:

I remember going to the first TB series in April after a Sox win (think they were 6-3 at the time) and thinking to myself, "Ok, maybe this actually is a good team", promptly followed by that losing streak and the excuses of "it's cold/it's early/injuries/etc ". Thankfully the minors kept me distracted from the clown show that was the ML club. Seeing the individual progress down there and making my first trip to the affiliates was memorable in an otherwise trainwreck of a baseball season. 

After that 6-3 start I was feeling optimistic after their playoff ass-kicking and do-nothing offseason, but it quickly came crashing down.  2022 was an absolute train wreck of a season and no one had any answers.  What was worse is that they didn’t try anything different to fix it.  There were numerous times firing TLR as an attempt to salvage the season would have been appropriate, but they stayed the course doing the same wrong and broken things.  They doubled down on bad and dumb, as is their way.  Whatever malaise set in with this crew around the 2021 ASB seemed to infect every aspect of this team in 2022.  It is January 1st and sadly I can’t point to anything that suggests 2023 will be drastically better.  New coaching was necessary and welcome, but is it enough?  Another paltry off-season with no depth for an injury prone core certainly doesn’t inspire hope nor wash the bad taste of 2022 away.