Should the White Sox attempt to upgrade with Ian Desmond?
/Ian Desmond would represent an upgrade at a position with offensive need, much like Dexter Fowler. Should the White Sox pursue him?
Read MoreWith The Rockies Trade ... What Else is Left?
/Dexter Fowler is still out there, but with the Rockies clearing their outfield logjam, what else is left to save White Sox fans from Avisail Garcia?
Read MoreThe Catbird Speaks 1.29.16 - Avisail Lament
/Poor sound quality sets the tone for James, Ethan, and Matt to wonder just what the White Sox plan is to keep Avisail Garcia from being the everyday right fielder in 2016.
TCS Morning 5: Staring pensively at Dexter Fowler's market
/As we press on through month 71 of the most inexplicable MLB offseason of our lives, the White Sox have a glaring need for a outfielder/designated hitter addition, have been reduced to one clear superior remaining free agent option for almost a week, and...nothing.
Read MoreTCS Morning 5: The attendance is not going to turn around overnight
/The 2005 White Sox were an absolute death machine from the moment the season opened. They won their first four series of the year, and then ripped off an eight-game winning streak. After April 29, they were never less than 10 games over .500 again, and were wire-to-wire division champs. Every galvanizing indicator of "THIS TEAM IS REALLY GOOD" burned bright all season, which wound up being a strong contender for the best season in franchise history.
Read MoreLet's learn stuff about some of the White Sox NRIs
/It's that always exciting time of baseball preseason's preseason when we get to learn about all the players who have received non-roster invitations to Spring Training!
The list, as always, consists of prospects not yet on the 40-man roster who the team wants to get a closer look at, as well as some retreads and guys who are desperately hanging on to their major league dream.
Read MoreTCS Morning 5: Profits > Winning
/Anyone who knows anything about me knows that my favorite baseball article on the internet Monday was Jack Moore's chronicle of Minnesota owner Carl Pohlad's prolonged efforts to cry poor, mischaracterize the Twins as a small market club, and with the assistance of MLB Commissioner Bud Selig--who tried to use their phony crisis to compete as a means to conjure a cost-reducing salary cap--eventually got a spanking new Minnesota taxpayer-funded stadium in exchange for all their public showings of grief.
Read MoreThe White Sox, who never land major free agents, did not land a major free agent
/The White Sox are one of four major league baseball teams to have never signed a player to a contract of more than $70 million in total value. The other three are the notoriously small-market Oakland A's, Pittsburgh Pirates and the Cleveland Indians.
Read MoreTCS Morning 5: Matt Albers is ours and you can't have him
/Thursday was...not a good day for Cespedes to the White Sox optimism. The suddenly aggressive Nationals bid for Yoenis' talents (where were they the first two months of this damned war of attrition??) took up the mantle of the team that would egregiously outbid the Mets, and the Mets continued to be a sentimental pick for some reason.
Read MoreWhite Sox Re-Sign RHP Matt Albers
/According to Ken Rosenthal, the White Sox have re-signed RHP Matt Albers to a 1-year, $2 million deal with a team option for $3 million or a $250K buyout in 2016. Albers was very good in 37.1 IP with the White Sox in 2015, posting a minuscule 1.21 ERA with a 6.75 K/9 and a small 2.17 BB/9.
While this deal has minimal risk and stabilizes the bullpen, Yoenis Cespedes isn't a White Sox yet (and is being linked heavily to the Nationals, who apparently are willing to go five years), so who really cares anyway.
Ethan Spalding is a statistics major at UW-Madison and lifelong White Sox fan. Follow him at @SpaldingBalls
Betting on Avisail Garcia - A Guest Post by Mike Musary
/Mike Musary has taken the time to illustrate the historical risk involved in continuing to award Avisail Garcia full-time benefits.
Read MoreTCS Morning 5: So there is a chance?
/Another day passes, and the possibility that the White Sox have not stood idle while the last of the upper crust of free agent outfielders were snatched up by more aggressive suitors remains alive. ESPN's Jim Bowden went so far as to say on MLB Network that the White Sox are one of three finalists in the bidding for Yoenis Cespedes--a process with no formal stages--along with the Mets and Nationals, with the Mets seeming like the franchise Cespedes would be more obliged to take a short-term deal for, and the Nationals more willing to shell out a long-term commitment, and the Sox somewhere in the middle.
Read MoreTCS Morning 5: Uninteresting Cespedes revelations
/In the wake of Justin Upton finally coming off the board, much of the baseball news world spent Tuesday trying to drill down the mysterious market for Yoenis Cespedes, and mostly came up with...eh?
Read MoreUpton to the Tigers is...bad for the White Sox, actually
/One benefit of the outfield market moving like a particularly unmotivated glacier is that by the time the gut-punching news hit of Justin Upton coming to the AL Central for the perpetually spending Tigers, all hope of the White Sox actually reaching out and signing the best free agent hitter left on the market had all but evaporated.
Read MoreTCS Morning 5: "Well NOW surely the free agent market will open up!"--17th Edition
/Chris Davis signed a contract--a very large, seven-year, $163 million contract--over the weekend to return to the Baltimore Orioles. In the end, the Orioles were able to win out over the competitive bids from...surely someone, at some point.
Read MoreTCS Morning 5: A post-Alexei existence
/It is going to be awfully weird to see Alexei Ramirez in another uniform. Luckily, he's headed to San Diego, which means he'll most likely never be seen again. Ramirez is reportedly headed to the left coast on a one-year deal with undisclosed terms, pending a physical. Even without the terms, it's looking pretty clear that the market for Ramirez did not exceed, and likely not even meet the heights of his one-year, $10 million option.
Read MoreWhat Nietzsche quotes are best for post-game interviews?
/Another baseball season is closer than the frigid, loveless Midwestern landscape would currently indicate. With its impending arrival comes the knowledge that all the assorted cruelties--physical, mental, spiritual--of a high stakes six-month major league campaign are coming with it.
Read MoreTCS Morning 5: The Rockies send the world into a tizzy
/The stagnant outfield free agent market really needed something to give it a kick. Someone or something wild enough to just run up and do something that would alter the calculus of the whole market. Someone like...
Read MoreThe Catbird Speaks 1.12.16 - Free agent market conspiracy theories
/Nick, Ethan and James gathered together to try to piece together what on Earth is happening, or is not happening in the markets for Justin Upton and Yoenis Cespedes. There are no tangible answers, so things get existential quickly.
Read MoreTCS Morning 5: The intrigue of the South Side
/Mid-January 2016, where minor clarifications on the White Sox seemingly incomprehensible public stance on free agent target are the juiciest rumors over the whole weekend.
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