I wish Eloy lots of luck and smile ear to ear as I welcome Sale back to the place he never should have left.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Come on man. This is just a terrible thought.

Sale is a 29 yr old proven star in the league.

Eloy is unproven and no one really knows what he will be.

_________________
"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

Eloy’s going to be very good. But yes I would take the proven HOFer in his prime over him.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

I think he will be very good too, but we know Sale is a stud.

_________________
"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

Sale has been a stud who tires down the stretch every year.

_________________

I will say I agree with FF that you don't allow the front office who couldn't figure out how to surround an ace and a solid 3, plus a FAR SUPERIOR 1B to try and rebuild after the ace and #3 are gone.

After the trades there should've been a wholesale front office house cleaning.

_________________

Sale is simply not as good as his numbers suggest. Especially in the AL Central. He is partially responsible for the White Sox failures 2013-2016.

Still a great pitcher. Still a pitcher you'd want on your team. But not a generational player and certainly not prohibitively untradeable. The Sox could have traded Sale and gotten better immediately, they just became enamored with Moncada and passed up better offers from Atlanta and Washington. The least they could've done is forced more out of Boston, not getting Benintendi or Devers out of the deal was a real let down.

Been saying this for a while. On the other hand, they did win the off-season in 2016.

Rodon has top of the rotation stuff. There is no denying that. His problem has been his work ethic and between the ears. The White Sox know him best. If they think he’s past that then there’s no way they should trade him but if they think there’s still some immaturity there and someone makes an offer they like. Trade him.

You are just wrong about Chris Sale. He is easily one of the best five starting pitchers in all of baseball. The Sox blew it by not only trading him but even by not locking the guy up to a multi-year deal.

_________________
An Ode to the Texas man who shot an Antifa terrorist:

Oh, he might have went on livin'
But he made one fatal slip
When he tried to match the Ranger
With the big iron on his hip

We had all kinds of time to trade Sale. Years, in fact. We didn't get enough. I wanted Boegarts thrown in the deal. "Impossible" they say. "Oh well", I say. "We move on to the next deal then."

And move on and move on until you get value for the future HOFer

If you don't trade Sale, what are your plans for winning? They shuffled the deck around him how many times and they didn't get anywhere. It's definitely a legitimate argument to say they didn't get enough, but I think they had to try something radically different rather than doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

The rebuild could go on with Sale pitching. I was quite happy with every other deal. It doesn't matter whether Sale was the 1st to go or last to go.

This was the biggest issue I had. There was no hurry.

_________________

It could, but the most efficient way to do it was the way they did it. If you're going to get bad, get bad as quickly as possible. Also, cash in your valuable assets for as many valuable prospects as you can get. If you've decided to rebuild, the only reason not to trade Sale is if you think you can get more for him by waiting.

I understand all that. But the thing is we're talking about the best pitcher I have ever seen in a Sox uni. This isn't Q. And arguably we got the same haul in the Q trade that we did in the Sale trade. If Sale was still pitching today, we'd still be bad(Sale is worth 6 wins), we'd still have 5 or 6 prospects in the top 100.

Like I said, I'm tickled pink with every other trade, so in the the grand scheme, my complaint about not getting enough is a below average complaint. It could grow with hindsight if Sale is a beast in the playoffs. It's the main reason Boston wanted him so badly. Time will be the judge of this trade.

It was time to trade. They werent winning with no matter who they surrounded him with. The team underachieved year after year. It was time to rebuild.

"They werent winning with no matter who they surrounded him with."

Who said they were? That isn't the argument. I have no problem with the rebuild or the 6 or 7 other trades. I have no problem with trading Sale. The argument is the value of Chris Sale, considering the lack of time constraints, the value of his contract monetarily, and his overwhelming talent. Look what Theo gave up for a #3 pitcher. What would he given up had Sale been available?

The consensus out there is we got fair value. IMO, no we didn't and time will be the judge.

What is the problem with his work ethic? I am not questioning your statement but rather who has said this that know him?

_________________
An Ode to the Texas man who shot an Antifa terrorist:

Oh, he might have went on livin'
But he made one fatal slip
When he tried to match the Ranger
With the big iron on his hip

Yep.

_________________
An Ode to the Texas man who shot an Antifa terrorist:

Oh, he might have went on livin'
But he made one fatal slip
When he tried to match the Ranger
With the big iron on his hip

When you have two good to great starting pitchers and have control of them financially, you BUILD your team around them. The failures of Williams and Reinny in the past should not be the decider of what you do going forward. They should have fired Williams a long time ago and brought in someone who could build a good baseball organization including a scouting organization. Bringing in old past their prime guys and trying to coax one of two good years out of them is the huge mistake that they made.

I think that too many White Sox fans got frustrated by the incompetence of the Sox organization in general and the cheap ass owner and wanted some miracle to come to their team. They looked at the success of the Cubs and Stros and decided to go along with this fool's gold approach that Hahn sold to the fandom. I say that if they really wanted to rebuild, they needed someone who knew what he was doing and they didn't bring that guy in.

_________________
An Ode to the Texas man who shot an Antifa terrorist:

Oh, he might have went on livin'
But he made one fatal slip
When he tried to match the Ranger
With the big iron on his hip

Hi. You suck.

_________________

+1

Unless you're the Cubs, and virtually every prospect hits for you, a rebuild is a numbers game. A significant portion of these prospects are going to be total flame outs or turn into backups, see the post that started this thread. Therefore, if you're going to commit to the rebuild, you can't hold back, you have to liquidate all of your assets. In Dan Bernstein parlance, you need as many spins of the wheel as possible.

His contract is almost up, isn't it? If they didn't trade him, he would walk as soon as the contract was up, and they would either lose him for a compensatory pick or a package of far less than Moncada, Kopech, and Basabe.

Two of Rodon, Kopech, Cease have to show they are top of rotation starters by the 2020 All-Star break for Hahn to keep his job.

I try to think of it in broader terms than this. If the Sox are good I'll be happy. If they suck I will not. It matters not who is playing well, just that the team is good.

This sounds nice in theory but Hahn has one of the worst track records in ML history right now as a GM so if he hasn't been fired yet he's got his job for awhile I'm afraid.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Hahn doesn't have a track record yet. Seems to me the keys to the car weren't handed to him until after the 2016 season.

Hahn has about two years to prove himself. If the team is still losing in two years, he is gone. Just like Pace with the Bears.

I always laugh at this ridiculous narrative. If only all of us could be so lucky as to fail at our job for years straight and then get to blame it on our boss and everything is somehow ok and us and our boss get to keep our jobs.

Get a grip. Hahn has been a colossal failure as a GM to date and there’s no other way to describe his job performance. His record is what it is and there’s not really any room for dancing around it unless you’re into this new school way of thinking where putting a terrible team out there year after year is Actually Good.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul