TCS Morning 5: A flamboyant bench coach hire
/Daryl Van Schouwen reports that the White Sox will likely name Rick Renteria as their bench coach in the next couple of days.
Read MoreTCS Morning 5: Has enough White Sox stuff happened to fill out a five-item list?
/Maybe the cruelest punishment of following a routine also-ran is spending October watching the Sox shuffle through moves and possibilities that might shift their 2016 record by a half-win or maybe even a whole one, while other teams have the fates of seasons and career legacies swayed by a few outs. There's no easier blog posts to write than "Courtney Hawkins' foot causing him to miss the Fall League will cost him meaningful reps, uh oh" but I've doing this long enough to know how purposeless they are.
Read MoreThe Catbird Speaks 10.6.15 - That awful season is finally over
/Matt, Ethan and James got together to commiserate after a long and awful 2015 White Sox season.
Read MoreTCS Morning 10: Next year in Oakland!
/Reunited with his Spring Training battery-mate, Carlos Rodon threw his sixth-straight outing of six innings or more with two or less runs allowed in Tuesday night's 7-4 victory. His seven-inning, one-run gem--spoiled only by whatever spirit has inhabited Michael Martinez's body--gives him a line over that stretch of 41 IP, 27 H, 8 ER, 4 HR, 15 BB, 41 K, 1.76 ERA. He's throwing real good, guys.
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 MoreInterview With Rick Hahn and Buddy Bell - Recap & Analysis Part 2
/A continuation from Part One. As in that article, questions and answers are paraphrased as accurately as was possible from my notes.
Question 6. Kevin of White Sox and Stuff asked if Rodon’s path to the majors had been determined yet - starter in AAA first, breaking in through the bullpen, etc.
Hahn’s Answer: This has yet to be decided, actually...
Read MoreInterview With Rick Hahn & Buddy Bell - Recap & Analysis - Part 1
/I was privileged enough to be included on a conference call interview of Rick Hahn and Buddy Bell with a number of White Sox blogs on Tuesday. While I didn't record the conversation verbatim, I took notes as best I could and I believe there was a lot to be learned from what each White Sox executive had to say. Here's the first part of what Rick Hahn said and what I took away from it - the conclusion and Buddy Bell's interview to follow in another article*.
Read MoreThe Catbird Speaks 3.24.15 - This episode has a lot more Jonah Keri than the others
/On a rare day where The Catbird Seat staff got work done during sunlight hours, Grantland Contributor and best-selling author Jonah Keri joined the group for a chat on the heels on his full-length feature on the Sox' recent transformation. Even though we had James Fegan, Ethan Spaulding, Collin Whitchurch and Nick Schaefer on the call (Matt Adams was on a scouting mission), this was mostly about letting Jonah talk.
Read MoreThe Catbird Speaks - 2.24.15: It's Spring Training for us too
/As for the actual discussion, well, there was Brad Penny, because we were obsessed with finding out who the ideal long reliever in the White Sox organization is. Other topics include Jeff Samardzija already using as much analytics as anyone would want, trouble with the ESPN rankings, the horror of an eight-man bullpen, and other excellent Sox nuggets.
Read MoreYour Ultimate 2015 White Sox Spring Training Primer
/Spring Training is finally here. What this means is we can all get excited about the sight of actual major league baseball players on an actual baseball field, and then cry over the realization that we're still six weeks away from meaningful games being played.
Still, the season of optimism is upon us, so let's take a look at some of the important things to monitor during the White Sox's time in Arizona.
Read MoreDayan's gone & White Sox notes
/Rick Hahn is known for at least outwardly broadcasting a very aggressive negotiating position, but at this stage, I want to grant him the benefit of the doubt and conclude that there is not a verifiable soul working in an MLB front office that wants to give up anything of substance for Dayan Viciedo. In which case, probably good that they didn't give him 500 more PA's and a gang of innings in the outfield.
Read MoreSamardzija "open to extension," what should he be offered?
/Inking a contract extension to Jeff Samardzija has been a looming unfulfilled achievement in this otherwise sea-change White Sox offseason. Despite being an entirely unrelated action, securing Samardzija's services for an extended period of time is what is supposed to make sending a prospect package--albeit, not a very strong one--make sense. It's not necessarily that the price is too high, it's that the 2015 White Sox are not a super team, so moves that only benefit this coming year would be...not the best.
Read MoreGordon Beckham reunion thread
/Sometime during the Viciedo retrospective, the staff of The Catbird Seat got somewhat distracted and started gabbing about Gordon Beckham returning on a one-year, $2 million deal.
Read MoreGordon Beckham is back; Dayan Viciedo is gone
/So, this happened Wednesday:
Read MoreThe Catbird Speaks 1.26.15 - There was a Soxfest
/The season of unabashed optimism is at hand! In the immediate wake of SoxFest, Collin Whitchurch, Nick Schaefer, Ethan Spalding and James Fegan got together to talk White Sox. Agenda items include:
--Avisail has lost some weight
--They're winning the whole thing!
--Hector Noesi is here to stay
--Much, much more!
Read MoreWhite Sox offseason flurry easing to a stop & other notes
/I have a smattering of thoughts that aren’t worthy of a full post’s energy.
Read MoreWhere we stand
/Rick Hahn is an ever-present character in all White Sox dealings. He's looming not far from the foreground in every offseason story; it feels unnecessary to dedicate our entire focus to him above the actual players coming in. To do so, would be a furthering of the ever-present cult of the executive, where our fascination and praise has diverted from world-class athletes and their craft. Instead of admiring the works of art, or even the artists, we ogle the work of the curator and then take some bizarre fascination in the operating budget they had to secure the priceless. No thoughts of watching Melky Cabrera popping singles all over the yard, just contemplation of 2 WAR for three years for $42 million. Is it worth the investment for a famous tycoon?
Read MoreI don't think excited Sox fans paid for Melky Cabrera
/At this point, picking at the explained logic of some of the White Sox moves in this beloved and lauded off-season is akin to pull the best man aside during the reception to give him "notes" on his speech, but the White Sox continue to support my theory that I would be much less critical of the mythology behind their finances if they just never discussed them at all.
Read MoreDealing With Expectations
/The amount of noise that has surrounded the White Sox during Rick Hahn's supermarket sweep over the past month has been alarming for a fan base that has seen its expectations go from "Win Now" to "Win In A Few Years" over the past few moribund seasons.
Read MoreTony Campana and Rick Hahn
/Without fail, any time a player with any kind of name recognition signs a minor league deal someone will overreact to it. Another phenomenon in the baseball world is that anyone who is really, really fast will get more attention than they likely merit, because people figure all it takes is a little bit more baseball skill and all of a sudden they are Rickey Henderson and Ichiro Suzuki just waiting to happen. Another type of player who gets outsized attention is the Undersized Scrapper - David Eckstein became the poster boy for these guys for a while. The White Sox just signed a guy who has all of these attributes to some extent in Tony Campana. My initial reaction was an old one - fear. And then I remembered that Rick Hahn is in charge now and my fear went away.
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