White Sox fill another black hole with acquisition of Frazier
/Another glaring hole in the White Sox lineup has been filled.
Read MoreTCS Morning 5: Tyler Flowers Is Gone? Oh!
/Tyler Flowers was non-tendered. The staff at TCS saw him as, "Not ideal, but nowhere close to the biggest problem with the roster." But Hahn has hinted that a new catcher is on the way? What?
Read MoreTCS Morning 5: Robbing Peter to pay Paul
/"You don't want to rob Peter to pay Paul," has become a recognizable Rick Hahn phrase during his three-year reign, and it's not my favorite one to hear, since it's deployed as an explanation on why he's hesitant to do something. GMs are always more fun when they're making moves, even if they're doomed to fail.
Read MoreRick Hahn and the Magical "Rebuild"
/This morning, 670 The Score’s Bruce Levine published an article with quotes from Rick Hahn claiming that the White Sox will treat this offseason as a rebuilding effort.
Read MoreIf not Alexei, then who?
/The White Sox declined the $10 million option on Alexei Ramirez on Wednesday, a somewhat surprising move that seems to create another black hole on an offense that already has question marks at second base, third base, catcher and right field.
Of course, it’s entirely possible we still see Ramirez in a White Sox uniform in 2016. The White Sox had to act on his option by Wednesday, and with teams able to come to terms with free agents starting on Saturday, they may still come to terms on a deal before everything is said and done.
Ramirez had the worst season of his career in 2015 and, as essentially a replacement-level player who will be 34 for basically the duration of the 2016 season. He’s also only a year removed from being an All-Star caliber shortstop and, quite frankly, there aren’t a ton of appealing options outside of Ramirez should the White Sox choose to go in another direction.
Read MoreSearching for optimism after a season of abject misery
/The 2015 White Sox season was not good. In fact, it may be better described as bad, terrible, disappointing, sad, awful, or any combination thereof, probably best mixed with profanity. After a 2014 season with encouraging signs abound and an offseason full of additions, a team expected to contend finished the 2015 season with a laundry list of embarrassing "accomplishments."
Read MoreA sad look back at our preseason predictions
/Let me take you back to a simpler time. A more optimistic time.
That time is seven months ago, March of this year, when dreams of playoff races danced in our heads. There were dreams of Avisail Garcia: Future Superstar and Jeff Samardzija: Bonified Ace floating around our naive little heads as we moved slowly through the Spring and into a summer ripe with expectations of competent White Sox baseball for the first time in too many moons.
During this innocent month of our lives, the staff of The Catbird Seat tried to predict the success or failures of the White Sox using over/unders devised by yours truly. Some (OK, most) of these numbers will look foolish in hindsight. But we are nothing if not accountable for our actions. Tread lightly, and weep at the wreckage that is a look back at our 2015 White Sox Predictions.
Read MoreTCS Morning: What a weekend for the tank
/1. A sleepless offensive effort in New York is just what the Sox would need to lose a whole bunch of games to the still hard-charging Yankees, while not providing traumatic results during a weekend where Chris Sale, Carlos Rodon and Erik Johnson started. In other words, we knew the offense was terrible, so this weekend didn't provide any new, disturbing information. The Sox scored nine runs in four games, lost three of them dropped 10 games under .500, and are now tied for the ninth-worst record in baseball.
Read MoreRace To The Bottom: Diamondbacks Stand In The Way
/With the White Sox BASICALLY out of contention, every Monday and Thursday until the end of the regular season, we'll take a quick peek at where the White Sox stand in their 2016 MLB Draft position. The draft position is important for two reasons:
The first, very obvious reason is that the higher you pick, the better the talent pool you have to choose from. The second, slightly less obvious reason is that if the White Sox pick in the Top 10, they can sign free agents who are issued qualifying offers without forfeiting a first round draft pick.
We saw this work in the team's favor last season as they signed premium free agents Melky Cabrera and David Robertson and only had to sacrifice picks in the second and third rounds because their draft position was No. 8 overall.
Read MoreAusmus May Be Gone; What About Ventura?
/Toward the end of this past week we began hearing rumors that the Tigers had decided to fire manager Brad Ausmus at the end of the season. The conversation has largely centered around whether the rumor is correct and the rather ugly optics of forcing Ausmus to manage the last few weeks of the season when he knows he’s about to get fired. I want to discuss how it applies to the White Sox.
Read MoreAvisail: A Rebuilding Project on a Would-be Contender
/I've seen this movie before. White Sox acquire a "raw / toolsy prospect" with arguably zero defensive value, no control of the strike zone, and minimal athleticism. Somehow, even though power is that prospect's raison d'etre, they still cannot pull the ball like...ever and wind up being one of the least valuable players in the majors. Hundreds and then thousands of plate appearances go by while the White Sox posture themselves to compete, but hamstring themselves by treating this utterly useless prospect as a cornerstone of the offense. Rinse repeat.
Read MoreTCS Morning 10: The most important game of the season was won
/The most shameful chapter in White Sox history is over; they have re-taken the season series bragging rights away from their brothers in shame and disappointment: the Seattle Mariners.
Read MoreState of the Offense: Reasons for Optimism and Despair
/Since the All Star Break the White Sox offense has had its best stretch of the year. The pitching has taken a step back from unsustainable greatness, so despite a 7-game win streak in there, the team as a whole hasn’t made any progress. They were 41-46 at the time of the All Star Game, and they are 51-57 now. But, now 108 games in, we can take another look at where the offense is viable and where it is still irretrievably broken.
Read MoreThe White Sox were neither buyers nor sellers, and that's OK
/The trade deadline passed and the White Sox did … nothing.
Unless you’re one to get worked up over the acquisition of a minor league infielder, all the rumors that have been bantered about over the past several weeks resulted in nothing.
And you know what? That’s OK.
Read MoreNobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition or the White Sox Offense
/Coming out of the All Star Break, the White Sox went 1-5 against the Royals and Cardinals, while averaging three runs a game on offense. As they stared at 42-50 with a -81 run differential on the season, there wasn’t much reason for optimism as they started a 4-game set in Cleveland against the likes of Corey Kluber, Trevor Bauer, Carlos Carrasco and Danny Salazar.
Read MoreDon't Hire Ozzie Guillen Again
/There has been a lot of buzz on social media and the White Sox blogosphere about whether or not Robin Ventura should be fired. It has certainly been discussed here. This week the Chicago Sun Times suggested that the White Sox not only fire Robin Ventura, but that they should replace him with Ozzie Guillen. NBC's Craig Calcaterra wrote his thoughts on the subject yesterday, although he primarily focused on the style of the article, and only briefly touched on the actual question of whether Ozzie should come back. Although Craig concludes that bringing Ozzie back would be a good idea, I have to disagree.
Read MoreDon't trade Chris Sale
/The Sox are bad again, so let's begin a discussion of trade options in a familiar place of the most unrealistic and extreme point of debate: trading the most valuable member of the franchise!
Read MoreState of the Offense: How Is A Tire Fire So Boring?
/I originally started this State of the Offense "series" thinking that the offense would eventually wind up somewhere close to league average, but that after the first twenty games they were in an underperforming slump. Then after another twenty games...the offense was still terrible. As I write this, 63 games are in the books, and the White Sox just got shut out in back-to-back games, managing fewer than 4 hits in both of them. At this point it's just a matter of marveling at how bad the offense is.
Read MoreWhite Sox Draft Ruminations
/There is a certain futility to speculating about the MLB draft. For one thing, baseball prospects, unlike those in the NBA or NFL, for example, are so many years away from ever making it to MLB - if they ever do at all. Then you have to factor in for years - like this one - where there isn't a clear cut Top 2 or Top 3 or Top 4 and chaos reigns. As opposed to say, last year, where there was a pretty clear Top 3 and the only question was their sequence. Then you have to take into account the different valuations that different organizations place on tools, present baseball skill, cost, positions of need, etc. etc. And, what's more, it's not like teams necessarily have anything to gain from telegraphing the players they're interested in - and you could argue it is quite the opposite. Still, while forecasting specific players may be quixotic, there are still inferences you can draw from a team's general draft philosophy.
Read MoreThe AL Central and the MLB Draft: A recent history
/The success or failure of teams in the MLB Draft is difficult to determine. The main reason for this is because it takes so long for most draftees to reach the majors, and players shuffle from team to team so often (whether it's by trade or otherwise) that looking at a particular team's draft class for a particular year will often only yield one or two players who actually made an impact on that team's major league roster.
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