TCS Morning 5: A glimpse at Trayce Thompson's future?

 The Boston Red Sox agreed with former White Sox farmhand Chris Young to a two-year deal according to multiple reports. After initial alarmist concerns that this hinted at a trade from the Red Sox outfield group of Mookie Betts, Rusney Castillo, Jackie Bradley Jr., and Brock Holt...until more sober voices suggested that Young was more likely a platoon bat/competent major league quality insurance for when one or more of those previously named falls flat on their face in an everyday role. Which is likely.

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TCS Morning 5: Signs of actual free agency

After the curious departure of their GM, a disappointing 2015 that included a deadline sell-off, the Tigers are somehow still being the Tigers of the past five seasons: they're effing going for it. Jon Heyman reported they reached a deal with right-hander Jordan Zimmermann in the neighborhood of five years and roughly $110 million.

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TCS Morning 5: White Sox could be swayed to trade a bad player

The encouraging part of the Dan Hayes' report that the White Sox are open to trading Avisail Garcia is that it shows the White Sox are aware of what we are seeing on a daily basis, that Garcia is: currently awful, showing no progress, and an increasingly poor bet to put things together offensively to a degree that will overcome his mounting shortcomings elsewhere.

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TCS Morning 10: The continued ascension of Trayce

Jeff Samardzija's White Sox career likely came to a close Tuesday night with seven confusingly efficient innings against a sleepwalking Royals team, as the Sox cruised to a 4-2 victory. There were back-to-back home runs at one point, there was a startlingly low number of whiffs, but he now has a couple of outings to point to say he figured it out as he hits free agency off a season where he posted a 4.96 ERA over 214 innings with a career-worst 17.9% strikeout rate at age 30.

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TCS Morning 5: Build your new Sox contender

Other than psychic relief, there's no huge benefit to making Adam LaRoche sit under the bench for the last week, other than keeping the path clear for Trayce Thompson playing time, but you can give rest to Melky Cabrera, or possibly the hopeless Avisail Garcia for that. Unless the Sox are simply purging LaRoche, eating all the money, and not trying anything else, they have reasons for trying to see if he can do something remotely positive.

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The Catbird Speaks 9.21.15 - The dog days of September

The season's almost over and the White Sox are wasting away their final days, so Nick and James got together to discuss, well, mostly the offseason and how to fix this swiss cheese roster, but also what major things there are still to watch.

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The Catbird Speaks 9.11.15 - Just half a lineup away

It's the dog days of September, and the White Sox are in the middle of their regularly-scheduled playing out the string, which means:

-Only so much Samardzija left!

-Carlos Rodon and Erik Johnson could be the future of the new Sox rotation that is waiting for an offense to back it up.

-How will the Sox upgrade at third, second, right field, DH, etc? Beyond Mike Olt, that is? Is Adam LaRoche ever hitting again?

-Does Avisail have a future in the Sox core?

Join James Fegan, Matt Adams and Ethan Spalding as they update the state of the White Sox.

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TCS 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.

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TCS Morning 10: The Sox dress up in funny clothes and still beat the Mariners

Those 1976 uniforms sure were fun to look at. Coupled with CSN's compilation of file video from the late-70's Sox and full commitment with disco segue music and cheesy graphics, the Sox mixed a fun callback to rather ridiculous uniforms with a genuine examination of their own history. Let's do something like this every year

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TCS Morning 10: It's nice to have a bullpen

We rag on the heavy handed emphasis on the importance of the bullpen that Hawk Harrelson trots out, especially in the light of the Royals 2014 success model, but it's hard to think of a game more clearly poisoned against the Red Sox by their own previous failures than Tuesday night's 5-4 come-from-behind Chicago victory.

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TCS Morning 10: Rookies can occasionally be good

Carlos Rodon came into Tuesday having put together two sharp outings since the beginning of June, and was stacking up a performance record that would justify getting yanked from the rotation if the Sox were still deep in the race. For what it's worth, Rodon had been using the hot-hitting Geovany Soto as his personal catcher. Tuesday he switched to the revered platework of Tyler Flowers and the correlation with an incredibly sharp demolition of the Angels lineup is hard to miss. Blessed with a slider that is completely overwhelming when he's ahead of the count, Rodon was just far enough on the right side of the border between just enough command to dominate with pure stuff, and being a complete mess.

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TCS Afternoon 10: At least being this bad doesn't matter anymore

The White Sox got predictably kicked around by the Royals in Kansas City this week. Three one-run losses later, they're 3-10 vs. the division leaders on the season, and have yet to win in Kauffman Stadium in 2015. They're now 2-7 since the non-waiver trade deadline expired, as the absurdly great pitching that propped up their hot streak has fizzled to the point of allowing seven runs per game.  Jeff Samardzija in particular, ended his 10-game streak of seven innings or more, and has barely cover more than nine frames in his last two outings with a 15.43 ERA.

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Interview 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 AnswerThis has yet to be decided, actually...

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