Southside Sully
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Oh my…
Chicago White Sox... The thread.
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Jiggafini19Deux
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I don't disagree. They gave him a contract extension and he rewarded them last year by making 21 starts because he injured his knee and missed the start of the season. He's in his mid 30s. Doesn't hurt to take care of yourself and expand your career longevity. He's gotten even bigger.
Not a real huge fan.
Not a real huge fan.
Southside Sully
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He is a big guy, but the last person to have to say something is the broadcaster for the team.. Its 2004 Cubs all over again. Stone gonna get punched on the plane prob. Lance has been quick to say he isn't pitching well.. If he wasn't owning it I would say ok, but this is kind of a low blow for a guy thats associated with the team to say on radio.
Jiggafini19Deux
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He's owning his performance. He's not owning the fact that he's pushing 3 bills now easily and has gotten bigger each year he's joined the club. Ozzie Guillen once said it (in reference to Bobby Jenks): when you're doing well, you're just big. When you're not doing well, you're a fat slob. Even when Lynn was pitching well in 2021, my thought from the beginning was what would his numbers be like if he took care of himself. He's carrying a lot of bad unnecessary weight that's likely hard on his back, knees, etc. He's 36 years old. Say no when you look at a menu every so often. Find a treadmill.
I agree that the messenger in this case isn't appropriate, but Steve Stone isn't wrong, and maybe he's attempting to get fired so he doesn't have to watch this shit anymore even though he's getting paid for it.
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Go to the 7:53 Mark.. Berto absolutely hits the nail on the head, and speaks for every Sox fan. 24 straight innings without a run, unacceptable. Burn it down.
Jiggafini19Deux
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Suppose Jerry has Kenny ax Hahn. Who steps in to replace him? They'll promote Chris Getz or hire AJ Pierzynski because it's how they've operated for decades. I'd almost rather have them all stay and endure what they've created. At least we can all stay home and not watch, totally ignoring it. As professionals, these guys are going to have to answer for it.
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Hasn't won a playoff series since the 2005 World Series and he should have been fired ten years ago.
Jiggafini19Deux
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Thank you for posting this. I was going to do so as well.
This is why this asshole generally doesn't grant interviews to local media. I really wish he'd give up both teams so they could put someone who gives a damn in charge. It's not like he needs the money, but the White Sox are literally a cash register for him no matter how good or bad they are, no matter how many people show up. The stadium deal is so awesome for him it's almost hard to blame him for turning off the money hose.
This is why this asshole generally doesn't grant interviews to local media. I really wish he'd give up both teams so they could put someone who gives a damn in charge. It's not like he needs the money, but the White Sox are literally a cash register for him no matter how good or bad they are, no matter how many people show up. The stadium deal is so awesome for him it's almost hard to blame him for turning off the money hose.
$700,000 for TV rights per game. That's $113M before a ticket is sold!! His answers were such bullshit.
Southside Sully
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The sad thing is he doesn't give two fucks about the fans. Fans have stopped going to games in the years past, and it doesn't matter to him. Look at the sox attendance in the early/mid 90s, most of the 80s and before that. He has slowly eroded away a fan base and he doesn't care because him and his investors pockets keep getting fatter. This Fn guy.
Jiggafini19Deux
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Jiggafini19Deux
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The Joe Sheehan Newsletter: Dirty Sox
Vol. 15, No. 33
May 5, 2023
Yesterday in Chicago, the White Sox got seven innings of one-run ball from the resurgent Lucas Giolito. Eloy Jimenez blasted a homer as part of a three-hit day, and both Kendall Graveman and Aaron Bummer threw shutout innings. If you were drawing up a Sox win six weeks ago, it would have looked a lot like that.
The Sox lost, 7-3. Reynaldo Lopez gave up a game-tying home run in the eighth, and the Sox squandered a month’s worth of win equity after that. They had Billy Hamilton on third with nobody out in the eighth and couldn’t get the ball out of the infield. A leadoff walk in the ninth was wasted when two of the next four hitters bunted into outs. The Sox had second and third with nobody out -- Hamilton again on third -- in the tenth and struck out three times. Finally, in the top of the 12th, Tim Anderson made a soft error that launched a five-run Twins inning to complete the nightmare.
Games like that are why the Sox are 10-22 and closing out this week’s look at surprising teams. The Sox have five one-run losses and another in extra innings. (I don’t think I’ve explained this construct lately. Extra-innings decisions are games tied after nine, and even if they don’t end as one-run games -- much more likely with the stupid-runner rule -- they should be lumped in with one-run games. I will sometimes use the shorthand 1/x for these games.) The Sox are 4-6 in 1/x games.
It’s the pitching. The White Sox are 29th in ERA, 28th in FIP. Unlike some of the other teams we’ve covered, there’s no one unit to blame. Sox starters, even with Giolito pitching well, have a 5.12 ERA (21st) and a 5.09 FIP (25th). The bullpen is one of three, with the Giants and A’s, to have at least a 6.00 ERA. Sox relievers have a 6.47 ERA and a 5.41 FIP, both better than only the semi-pro team the A’s are running out there. White Sox pitchers have walked one out of every nine men to come to the plate this year, something only a small handful of teams have done over a full season in the last 60 years. This is mid-1980s Rangers territory, when Bobby Witt was walking 140 guys a year and Mitch Williams was pushing 100 walks out of the bullpen.
A long time ago, obsessed with plate discipline, I diddled with a stat called the “walk gap,” which was simply the difference between a team’s walks allowed and walks drawn. It turned out to be more noise than signal and I haven’t pulled it out in some time. Just for fun on a Friday...
Walk Gap (BB drawn - BB allowed, 2023)
HBB PBB WG
Athletics 102 163 -61
White Sox 89 143 -54
Diamondbacks 79 117 -38
Royals 79 115 -36
Marlins 82 114 -32
HBB: batter walks
PBB: pitcher walks
We have a whole season of crazy 2023 A’s stats to cover, including them being on pace for the highest walk rate allowed since MLB first expanded in 1961. You do not, under any circumstances, want to be listed in a table with them.
The White Sox are 10-22 in no small part because they are in the bottom five in both drawing and allowing walks. They don’t control the strike zone, so they lose.
When Sox pitchers do find the plate, they’re getting hammered. They’ve allowed the second-most barrels in baseball; only the Royals have allowed more. Close to half the batted balls they have allowed have been hard-hit. The White Sox have allowed the second-most homers and third-highest slugging average in baseball. Remember, Pedro Grifol retained Ethan Katz as pitching coach, so continuity shouldn’t be the issue here.
It’s tempting to blame the manager. This same group of players, more or less, was a .500 team last year and a playoff team two years ago. Pedro Grifol has had to run a bullpen without his pricey ninth-inning guy and with the pitcher who was going to replace him, Lopez, allowing six homers to 53 batters faced. None of his starting pitchers, save perhaps Giolito, has pitched to expectations. The lineup...man, watching that game yesterday, it really seemed like a non-hitter came to bat in extra innings more than was reasonable.
The Sox are once again seeing their lack of depth, and in particular their lack of internal development, bite them again. White Sox second basemen are the worst position group in the game -- a .129/.164/.181 line. Lenyn Sosa completely failed when called on after the Tim Anderson injury. Their right fielders, with Oscar Colas unable to launch, are 13th-worst at .200/.244/.270. Remember, most of the White Sox core, the players we’ve been talking about for four years, were acquired in trade or, in Luis Robert Jr.’s case, signed out of Cuba.
Conventional player development has been a challenge. They do have three first-round picks in the mix, but none of the depth pieces that good teams produce all the time. The other 10-22 team we covered this week, the Cardinals, has far more good MLB players than these Sox do. The lack of internal options was a big reason why the Sox struggled last year when they had injury issues, and it’s biting them again this year. Anderson and Jimenez have spent time on the IL, and Yoan Moncada has been there most of the season. Moncada’s replacement, Jake Burger, quickly got injured. Liam Hendriks, of course, has been battling non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
The White Sox didn’t spend enough money in the offseason, and the money they spent has produced nothing. Elvis Andrus is one of the worst players in baseball and Andrew Benintendi one of the least-productive left fielders in the game. Mike Clevinger has been a generic back-end starter. I didn’t notice this until recently, but the team’s Opening Day payroll in 2023 is somehow lower than it was in 2022. They’re going backwards at a moment they should be pressing the gas pedal. Never change, Jerry.
As with the Cardinals, the best thing the Sox have going for them is their competition. The Tigers and Royals are zeroes, the Guardians can’t hit and the Twins are kind of the AL’s Brewers, always competitive, yet lacking depth. This division can be won with 86 or 87 wins. It’s just not clear these Sox can get there without everything going right. I projected they’d be 100 runs better this year, with improvement on both sides of the ball, in part because I thought they’d be more healthy. That hasn’t happened, and a bullpen that enabled them to close out wins last year has undercut them in 2023.
For the second year in a row, I just overrated the Sox coming into the season. The Pirates, the Cardinals, the Orioles...I look at their starts and still think I’ll be right about them, more or less, come September. The Sox, though, I just missed. I keep failing to weigh their lack of player development, lack of depth, in projecting them. It’s a blind spot; I usually consider a team’s #27-#35 guys more than most analysts do. This team, if it could keep its top 15 players upright, would win 90 games. The second anyone pulls a hammy or tweaks their back, though, the whole thing falls apart like an off-brand Jenga set you got stuck with in an office Secret Santa.
The Sox will bounce back, of course. They’re not really a .300 team, even in their current state. Maybe they’ll even get everyone back for a couple of months at a time and look like the division favorites. In the future, though, they either have to get better at producing players or better at buying them.
Vol. 15, No. 33
May 5, 2023
Yesterday in Chicago, the White Sox got seven innings of one-run ball from the resurgent Lucas Giolito. Eloy Jimenez blasted a homer as part of a three-hit day, and both Kendall Graveman and Aaron Bummer threw shutout innings. If you were drawing up a Sox win six weeks ago, it would have looked a lot like that.
The Sox lost, 7-3. Reynaldo Lopez gave up a game-tying home run in the eighth, and the Sox squandered a month’s worth of win equity after that. They had Billy Hamilton on third with nobody out in the eighth and couldn’t get the ball out of the infield. A leadoff walk in the ninth was wasted when two of the next four hitters bunted into outs. The Sox had second and third with nobody out -- Hamilton again on third -- in the tenth and struck out three times. Finally, in the top of the 12th, Tim Anderson made a soft error that launched a five-run Twins inning to complete the nightmare.
Games like that are why the Sox are 10-22 and closing out this week’s look at surprising teams. The Sox have five one-run losses and another in extra innings. (I don’t think I’ve explained this construct lately. Extra-innings decisions are games tied after nine, and even if they don’t end as one-run games -- much more likely with the stupid-runner rule -- they should be lumped in with one-run games. I will sometimes use the shorthand 1/x for these games.) The Sox are 4-6 in 1/x games.
It’s the pitching. The White Sox are 29th in ERA, 28th in FIP. Unlike some of the other teams we’ve covered, there’s no one unit to blame. Sox starters, even with Giolito pitching well, have a 5.12 ERA (21st) and a 5.09 FIP (25th). The bullpen is one of three, with the Giants and A’s, to have at least a 6.00 ERA. Sox relievers have a 6.47 ERA and a 5.41 FIP, both better than only the semi-pro team the A’s are running out there. White Sox pitchers have walked one out of every nine men to come to the plate this year, something only a small handful of teams have done over a full season in the last 60 years. This is mid-1980s Rangers territory, when Bobby Witt was walking 140 guys a year and Mitch Williams was pushing 100 walks out of the bullpen.
A long time ago, obsessed with plate discipline, I diddled with a stat called the “walk gap,” which was simply the difference between a team’s walks allowed and walks drawn. It turned out to be more noise than signal and I haven’t pulled it out in some time. Just for fun on a Friday...
Walk Gap (BB drawn - BB allowed, 2023)
HBB PBB WG
Athletics 102 163 -61
White Sox 89 143 -54
Diamondbacks 79 117 -38
Royals 79 115 -36
Marlins 82 114 -32
HBB: batter walks
PBB: pitcher walks
We have a whole season of crazy 2023 A’s stats to cover, including them being on pace for the highest walk rate allowed since MLB first expanded in 1961. You do not, under any circumstances, want to be listed in a table with them.
The White Sox are 10-22 in no small part because they are in the bottom five in both drawing and allowing walks. They don’t control the strike zone, so they lose.
When Sox pitchers do find the plate, they’re getting hammered. They’ve allowed the second-most barrels in baseball; only the Royals have allowed more. Close to half the batted balls they have allowed have been hard-hit. The White Sox have allowed the second-most homers and third-highest slugging average in baseball. Remember, Pedro Grifol retained Ethan Katz as pitching coach, so continuity shouldn’t be the issue here.
It’s tempting to blame the manager. This same group of players, more or less, was a .500 team last year and a playoff team two years ago. Pedro Grifol has had to run a bullpen without his pricey ninth-inning guy and with the pitcher who was going to replace him, Lopez, allowing six homers to 53 batters faced. None of his starting pitchers, save perhaps Giolito, has pitched to expectations. The lineup...man, watching that game yesterday, it really seemed like a non-hitter came to bat in extra innings more than was reasonable.
The Sox are once again seeing their lack of depth, and in particular their lack of internal development, bite them again. White Sox second basemen are the worst position group in the game -- a .129/.164/.181 line. Lenyn Sosa completely failed when called on after the Tim Anderson injury. Their right fielders, with Oscar Colas unable to launch, are 13th-worst at .200/.244/.270. Remember, most of the White Sox core, the players we’ve been talking about for four years, were acquired in trade or, in Luis Robert Jr.’s case, signed out of Cuba.
Conventional player development has been a challenge. They do have three first-round picks in the mix, but none of the depth pieces that good teams produce all the time. The other 10-22 team we covered this week, the Cardinals, has far more good MLB players than these Sox do. The lack of internal options was a big reason why the Sox struggled last year when they had injury issues, and it’s biting them again this year. Anderson and Jimenez have spent time on the IL, and Yoan Moncada has been there most of the season. Moncada’s replacement, Jake Burger, quickly got injured. Liam Hendriks, of course, has been battling non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
The White Sox didn’t spend enough money in the offseason, and the money they spent has produced nothing. Elvis Andrus is one of the worst players in baseball and Andrew Benintendi one of the least-productive left fielders in the game. Mike Clevinger has been a generic back-end starter. I didn’t notice this until recently, but the team’s Opening Day payroll in 2023 is somehow lower than it was in 2022. They’re going backwards at a moment they should be pressing the gas pedal. Never change, Jerry.
As with the Cardinals, the best thing the Sox have going for them is their competition. The Tigers and Royals are zeroes, the Guardians can’t hit and the Twins are kind of the AL’s Brewers, always competitive, yet lacking depth. This division can be won with 86 or 87 wins. It’s just not clear these Sox can get there without everything going right. I projected they’d be 100 runs better this year, with improvement on both sides of the ball, in part because I thought they’d be more healthy. That hasn’t happened, and a bullpen that enabled them to close out wins last year has undercut them in 2023.
For the second year in a row, I just overrated the Sox coming into the season. The Pirates, the Cardinals, the Orioles...I look at their starts and still think I’ll be right about them, more or less, come September. The Sox, though, I just missed. I keep failing to weigh their lack of player development, lack of depth, in projecting them. It’s a blind spot; I usually consider a team’s #27-#35 guys more than most analysts do. This team, if it could keep its top 15 players upright, would win 90 games. The second anyone pulls a hammy or tweaks their back, though, the whole thing falls apart like an off-brand Jenga set you got stuck with in an office Secret Santa.
The Sox will bounce back, of course. They’re not really a .300 team, even in their current state. Maybe they’ll even get everyone back for a couple of months at a time and look like the division favorites. In the future, though, they either have to get better at producing players or better at buying them.
Jiggafini19Deux
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Something to feel good about for a change.
Jiggafini19Deux
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Southside Sully
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The crazy thing is they are 7 games out at 12 games under 500. The central in both leagues, is how you say, dogshit.
Crazy Balki
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That's a testament to how catastrophic a failure this franchise has been.
The AL Central has been one of, if not, the worst division in baseball for years and the White Sox have managed to win the division a whopping four times in almost 30 years since the AL Central was established.
It's absolutely appalling how Jerry and co. have failed miserably to take advantage of how horrible this division has been. And instead, they're contributed to its overall ineptitude. And there's literally zero explanation other than internal mishandling to the highest degree. Jerry is just fortunate that he shares a division with 2 franchises somehow just as or more abysmal in the Tigers and Royals. Of course, he also thought it was a good idea to hire a bench coach from one of said abysmal franchises.
This team is way too much talent to be THIS bad. Jerry needs to sell this damn team. I continue to be enraged at how much talent and assets he squanders, while he lets his management coast through failure after failure.
And he does not deserve the opportunity to redeem himself. First he let the Bulls rot by letting Krause drive the roster into the dirt, followed by the disaster that was GarPax. Now he continues to let himself and Kenny meddle everywhere, all while failing to address the absolute monstrosity that is their analytics, sports medicine and farm system, or lack thereof.
MacIrish75
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Yeah, absolutely. But I think I’d prefer them actually trying to win with the pieces they have than allow Kenny and Rick to oversee another rebuild.
Crazy Balki
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I think it's more that they're going to hold onto everyone at the deadline, because everyone they have is of little to no value because of how woefully underdeveloped they are, or how injury plagued they are.
Jiggafini19Deux
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This is truly the only hope any of us have as Sox fans.
He has a very good money making deal on the ballpark. No matter how bad they are, however many people show up, he just keeps cashing in. He was quoted years ago that the key to it all is to give the fanbase hope so they keep coming back.
The man had The 1990 Chicago Bulls Michael Jordan dynasty and couldn't wait to destroy it.
Southside Sully
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Jerry Reinsdorf and the truth make an appearance as the White Sox struggle
"Finish in second place every single year because your fans will say 'Wow, we got a shot. We're in it! ' But there's always the carrot left."
Jiggafini19Deux
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The draft is July 9th. They have the 15th pick.
I'm honestly not even hopeful they'll do anything smart with it. Probably some HS pitcher or an athletic player who can't hit or get on base.
I'm honestly not even hopeful they'll do anything smart with it. Probably some HS pitcher or an athletic player who can't hit or get on base.
zelezo vlk
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Y'all really think they won't trade Giolito?