The Rundown:
- Josh and Jim share their frustrations on the White Sox front office whiffing on a golden opportunity to sign Manny Machado. Moving forward, what will it take for this rebuild to work and can it work in spite of the efforts from the front office?
- Best friend of the show, Dan Syzmborski of Fangraphs shares the 2019 ZiPS projections.
- Continuing our 2019 position previews, Josh and Jim look at the White Sox starting pitching staff.
Presented by SeatGeek.
To listen, click play below:
Good podcast. Thanks
So I was a little hesitant about listening to this, slightly pissed off at a specific client of mine that is basically causing me to have to stay at work till 10:30 PM tonight… but what can you do. I wasn’t sure if this wouldn’t make me pissed off more.
Its frustrating, not unlike the clients I work with, the Sox keep trying to do the same thing over and over again even though its not working. The Sox struck gold with this method in 05 and have been hooked since. Now though, its just become a sad survival mechanism and a way to explain away to their traumatized fanbase why they failed yet again.
So yeah, the Sox need some major therapy. Hell, I’d do it for free even…. it would probably be healing for me. Being a Sox fan sure has had its great moments, but this team is so frustrating nowadays that my interest has wained. I guess thats the case for many Chicago sports teams. I will always be a Sox fan simply because its linked so deeply into my family tradition and heritage, but I cannot remember the last time I took joy in rooting for the team.
I think I’m just going to spend spring training watching last year’s Olympic curling replays instead.
I think you are touching on a key point.  I don’t think the organization fully realizes how much they deflated the fanbase with this failure and the ramifications it will have on attendance.  My feeling is the fanbase has reached the burnout stage.
To be fair, I’ve never really followed actual ST games, or much news coming out of it except injuries. But I’ve always been happy just knowing spring training was going on, out there doing its thing. However, this entire offseason was just so exhausting (and I’m not even on Twitter!), that I don’t care about spring training. At all.
I have an MLB.TV subscription, last year, I watched the least WhiteSox games in a season in recent years. I found myself watching more games with the Athletics because they were an underdog making it to the play off without pitching (they did have a mega star in 3B which the Sox failed to accomplish by no signing Machado).
This year? Thus far I have cancelled my mlb.tv subscription. I don’t wanna pay money to watch a depressing team.
So, it matters a lot. Put a competitive team on the field, and people will come to watch it.
The other thing they draw on is people like my mom:
She grew up two blocks away from the stadium and is a neighborhood girl. Met a guy and moved out of the city. Now wants to come back on mothers day with the grandkids all dressed in pink. Is the team on the field the concern in these situations? Not really. Its more about just making the sale.
The Sox have become not unlike the dope dealers that are not that far away. Get the sale done, who cares about the product. The consumer probably won’t be back but you made enough to get through the day. Of course, this isn’t going to end well. To many pissed off parties.
They have no idea. There are always going to be the people in the neighborhoods going to the games. But you cannot fuel a team by providing a place for south side high schoolers to get drunk and make out on a weeknight and with an occasional Sunday purchase from someone like me that might leave after 7 because he is pissed off and only had to pay 10 bucks to get in.
At this point, the only thing I find interesting about the Sox is SoxMachine. Jim and Josh and the community produce great stuff that I really enjoy reading and listening to.
I know the web is replete with fans saying they are done watching teams, but I only saw a couple Sox games last season and I have absolutely no interest in watching any this season. Not out of spite – it’s just that it’s going to be a really bad team without any singularly excellent performers (like Sale) that might make a non-competitive team interesting on a particular day. I’d absolutely pay attention to a competitive team, but the Sox appear to have decided they can only afford to not compete.
Podcast good, projections bad.