White Sox Season in Jeopardy

[Bertz]

Yes, that's -1.6 WAR from the bullpen

[squally1313]

On 12/18/2024 at 12:19 PM, soccer10k said:

The gambling site I use put out over under win totals and the White Sox is 50.5. I did a bit of googling and found a few in the 58-61 range in years past (the 2019 Orioles coming off a 115 loss season were still at 58). But it’s pretty crazy the over under has the Sox going 51-111 this year.

 

1 hour ago, Bertz said:

Yes, that's -1.6 WAR from the bullpen

There's a part in that article, I believe, where he still says they are projected for 61 wins or so, so seems to be pretty good value in that number on the gambling site. 

[Rex Buckingham]

I could not name one single Sox pitcher in that bullpen, so the -1.6 WAR tracks

[soccer10k]

1 hour ago, squally1313 said:

 

There's a part in that article, I believe, where he still says they are projected for 61 wins or so, so seems to be pretty good value in that number on the gambling site. 

My first instinct was a kind of want to bet the over. 51-111 is still an awful team and that gets the over. At the same time, that’s still a 10 game improvement which is a lot for a team that hasn’t done anything except trade away their best SP.

[squally1313]

5 minutes ago, soccer10k said:

My first instinct was a kind of want to bet the over. 51-111 is still an awful team and that gets the over. At the same time, that’s still a 10 game improvement which is a lot for a team that hasn’t done anything except trade away their best SP.

Draftkings has them at 51.5. I'd take the over just from the normal bounces of baseball and just how clearly checked out the entire team was for like...4.5 months out of the year. But agree there's been no meaningful improvements. 

[CubinNY]

You have to wonder if Jerry is gearing up to sell or move. 

[PackLandVA]

[soccer10k]

White Sox about to be over .500 for the first time since Opening Day 2023.

[BigbadB]

14 hours ago, soccer10k said:

White Sox about to be over .500 for the first time since Opening Day 2023.

Only 3 teams this decade have won their home opener 8-1. The first two (Dodgers 2020/Braves 2021) won the World Series. Team three, WHITE SOX! Place your bets!

[Derwood]

Vegas had the O/U on total team wins for the White Sox at (I think) 53.5, which is the lowest figure in decades

[imb]

White Sox unveiled a patch on their hat yesterday to memorialize how many losses they had last year. 

[soccer10k]

How it started:

How it's going:

[Tryptamine]

So barring a 6 run comeback, the White Sox are now 4-14 (.222). That puts them on 36-126 pace. Since the start of the 2024 season they're 45-135(.250). At what point does the league step in on this? This isn't even an attempt to put a competitive team on the field. 

[Regular Show]

On 4/17/2025 at 3:41 PM, Tryptamine said:

So barring a 6 run comeback, the White Sox are now 4-14 (.222). That puts them on 36-126 pace. Since the start of the 2024 season they're 45-135(.250). At what point does the league step in on this? This isn't even an attempt to put a competitive team on the field. 

Yeah, I'm not exactly sure how this situation will resolve itself... I don't believe MLB and Rob Manfred will ever force Jerry Reinsdorf to sell the team or apply any public pressure. They don't want the White Sox to move to another city like Nashville. I know Manfred wants Chicago to remain a 2-team city.

They might strongly encourage him to sell his stake to Justin Ishbia behind the scenes and let him become the majority owner. Reinsdorf clearly doesn't want to do that and is annoyed by the reporting. I think he knows his legacy is a bad one but he wants to salvage it (in his mind at least) by getting a new stadium deal done. I don't understand him and I think he's just a stubborn old man set in his ways who doesn't care about doing what's best for the franchise (selling the Sox to another ownership group).

If I were to predict what happens it would probably be his family and friends finally convince him to sell his share of the team to Justin Ishbia in the next 3-5 yrs after this latest rebuild stalls and no new stadium deal is announced.  Maybe he croaks and then his sons sell the team to Justin Ishbia. The endgame is Justin Ishbia eventually taking over the team and it'll probably be a good thing (I say probably only because his brother Mat Ishbia has done a horsefeathers awful job as the majority owner of the Phoenix Suns).     

[Rex Buckingham]

In baseball it's a lot easier to throw money at the problem though, which the Ishbia family seems to be willing to do

[mul21]

13 hours ago, Regular Show said:

Yeah, I'm not exactly sure how this situation will resolve itself... I don't believe MLB and Rob Manfred will ever force Jerry Reinsdorf to sell the team or apply any public pressure. They don't want the White Sox to move to another city like Nashville. I know Manfred wants Chicago to remain a 2-team city.

They might strongly encourage him to sell his stake to Justin Ishbia behind the scenes and let him become the majority owner. Reinsdorf clearly doesn't want to do that and is annoyed by the reporting. I think he knows his legacy is a bad one but he wants to salvage it (in his mind at least) by getting a new stadium deal done. I don't understand him and I think he's just a stubborn old man set in his ways who doesn't care about doing what's best for the franchise (selling the Sox to another ownership group).

If I were to predict what happens it would probably be his family and friends finally convince him to sell his share of the team to Justin Ishbia in the next 3-5 yrs after this latest rebuild stalls and no new stadium deal is announced.  Maybe he croaks and then his sons sell the team to Justin Ishbia. The endgame is Justin Ishbia eventually taking over the team and it'll probably be a good thing (I say probably only because his brother Mat Ishbia has done a horsefeathers awful job as the majority owner of the Phoenix Suns).     

The problem with all of this is twofold:

1. Jerry will never sell.

2. Even if he does sell "most" of his share, the way the agreement is written is that he's the managing partner of the ownership group, so no matter if he owns a majority or not (he currently doesn't, Ishbia owns the limit of 35% a single shareholder can have per the agreement in place and Jerry owns around 20%), Jerry is still the sole decision maker for the franchise and I would bet that will have to be pried from his cold, dead hands.  The Sox are screwed until he dies.

[PackLandVA]

Dan Plesac filling in for Steve Stone for the Sox series in New York.

[BigSlick]

Can someone who pays more attention to these things tell me how the White Sox went from being a normal type mid-level team to being a total and complete dumpster fire setting records of badness? It was only like 2-3 years ago that they were competing in the AL Central and the bottom has completely fallen off which doesn't seem to add up to me. 

I know Reinsdorf and La Russa are like, very dumb and very bad, but its a pretty dramatic collapse in a short period of time. 

[mul21]

7 minutes ago, BigSlick said:

Can someone who pays more attention to these things tell me how the White Sox went from being a normal type mid-level team to being a total and complete dumpster fire setting records of badness? It was only like 2-3 years ago that they were competing in the AL Central and the bottom has completely fallen off which doesn't seem to add up to me. 

I know Reinsdorf and La Russa are like, very dumb and very bad, but its a pretty dramatic collapse in a short period of time. 

LaRussa is still pulling strings behind the scenes if you listen to Chicago sports talk radio pundits.  The game has passed him by and they made a lot of really bad decisions based on his advice.  Combine that with some terrible injury luck, an awful developmental system, and a few guys just completely falling apart (Tim Anderson, I'm looking at you) and it adds up to the predicament they're in now.

[17 Seconds]

wasn't their system almost as loaded as the one theo built? I rememer being slightly jealous that we were declining and they were about to take off. they had so many exciting guys

[Tryptamine]

11 minutes ago, 17 Seconds said:

wasn't their system almost as loaded as the one theo built? I rememer being slightly jealous that we were declining and they were about to take off. they had so many exciting guys

It wasn't quite Bryant, Baez, Russell, etc. loaded but it was quite good, The problem is just about everyone of them fell on their face. Along with a GM who has almost entirely failed by waiting too long to cash in on assets and getting underwhelming returns on trades they did make. Combine those with an owner who to this day still hasn't surpassed a 75M contract, to Andrew Benintendi of all people, and this is what you're left with. It's just a zero effort organization.

[BigSlick]

Tim Anderson.... slappy hitter guys who don't do anything other than hit slappily never excited me. Glad the White Sox are being punished for their impudence to the Baseball Gods. 

[jersey cubs fan]

38 minutes ago, BigSlick said:

Can someone who pays more attention to these things tell me how the White Sox went from being a normal type mid-level team to being a total and complete dumpster fire setting records of badness? It was only like 2-3 years ago that they were competing in the AL Central and the bottom has completely fallen off which doesn't seem to add up to me. 

I know Reinsdorf and La Russa are like, very dumb and very bad, but its a pretty dramatic collapse in a short period of time. 

I made a post about a decade ago about teams that will try and emulate the cubs tanking and have it blow up in their face. I’m pretty sure the White Sox were the team that most fit the bill. So I’ll just go with that. They tried to tank and come out of it but coming out of being a sub .400 w% team is hard 

[javy knows my name]

6 hours ago, BigSlick said:

Tim Anderson.... slappy hitter guys who don't do anything other than hit slappily never excited me.

Sounds like something Ken Tremendous would say, respect

[mul21]

On 5/27/2025 at 2:23 PM, mul21 said:

LaRussa is still pulling strings behind the scenes if you listen to Chicago sports talk radio pundits.  The game has passed him by and they made a lot of really bad decisions based on his advice.  Combine that with some terrible injury luck, an awful developmental system, and a few guys just completely falling apart (Tim Anderson, I'm looking at you) and it adds up to the predicament they're in now.

Speaking of which........