P.O. Sox: Project(ing) Birmingham to Chicago, White Sox diss tracks and more

When it comes to opening up the floor for P.O. Sox questions, I usually wait for the moment the White Sox start to change a narrative in order to give the questions a longer shelf life. Then the White Sox opened this season 3-22, and the only question was the one we wrestled with every day: "How bad is it really, and how long will it be this bad?"

The White Sox have since stabilized and are playing a brand of baseball befitting of a standard second-division team, but I'd gotten out of the habit of soliciting questions before Andrew reminded me, and for that I apologize.

Because Andrew was the one who revived this feature, let's start with his question:

James: These questions are often about calculating the timeline of an important prospect like Drew Thorpe, and then I do something boring and rude like talk about a reliever.

And I see no reason to change! Give me Caleb Freeman! Give me Eric Adler!

Jim: Anthony Hoopii-Tuionetoa here, just because I want to see what his name looks like on the back of a jersey. I think the starting pitchers currently off the 40-man roster will be in line behind Nick Nastrini and Jonathan Cannon until some trades or DFAs occur.

Jim: I think we already saw the closest thing to it with the protracted squabble between Todd Frazier and Adam Eaton. Frazier won by KO with “Pay off your mortgage, I don’t know what to tell you,” since it got Eaton to admit that he didn’t actually have a mortgage. Eaton charged at him with blue-collar posturing, but then got insecure about not being rich enough to buy houses with cash like other players. That’s pretty much impossible for anybody to top.

So let’s go in the opposite direction and picture a Tanner Banks diss track. I think it’d sound a little like Cal Solomon. I will include no links. Either you know what I’m talking about or you don’t. It’s too tough to explain.

James: I’ve written on deadline enough that imagining one Sox employee releasing a diss track late at night, with the response being launched just a few minutes later, only makes me sigh very deeply. “Family Matters” and “Meet the Grahams” were both released the night after the three-hour rain delay in St. Louis, and if any Sox employee made me write anything additional after that game I would be very upset. 

Jim: I technically have an account on every major service, and probably enjoy BlueSky the second-most of any, but I’ve kinda stopped posting everywhere. Part of it’s that I have a toddler hanging on my arm for a lot of the day, so responding to texts and emails gets prioritized for the times I’m able to complete a thought. Another part of it is that I’ve grown to realize that we’re not meant to know the bad opinions of people we’d never have a reason to know existed, which makes me not want to offer my own pollution.

Or maybe I’m just tired most of the time. That's probably it. I conserve my energy for here, the podcast and the Veterans Committee chat. Inquire for details.

Speaking of the Veterans Committee, here's a question from one of our VC members:

James: (channeling Grifol so hard that my hair starts to thin) You know what I’ve seen from Schriffen so far? I’ve seen someone working. I’ve seen someone talking to players in the clubhouse and everyday, working to build a rapport and a feel. I’ve seen someone sitting in on every media briefing and taking in the information. So how’s he calling the game right now? I don’t care, I’m not even listening (this is true, I very rarely have ever listened to the broadcast while in the press box) because I’m focused on the work he’s putting in and where it’s going to take him.

(Connection breaks)

I, uh, what happened? Um, (exhale). It seems nice that he goes out to meet fans at tailgate, especially since fan attitudes toward the team can put him in difficult spots. 

Jim: As somebody who does listen to a fair amount of his broadcasts, I’ll grade him with extreme prejudice (followed by future grades):

• Rhythm, pace, cadence: 45 (FV: 60)
• Rising to the moment: 60 (FV: 70)
• Baseball knowledge: 30 (FV: ??)

His positivity in the face of a 3-22 start made him sound untrustworthy, not in any sort of diabolical sense, but more like a tourist who was told to be a local expert. Now that the baseball has leveled out and the product more closely matches his tone, that dissonance is no longer front and center, so I think the environment is more forgiving.

He has a good voice, he keeps the game moving along, and he’s starting to get more out of his interactions with players and coaches, so it’s fine on a game-to-game basis. But when you switch to another broadcast, whether it’s Len Kasper and Darrin Jackson or the other team’s feed, you realize that he still isn’t conversant in baseball, which is a difficult gap for me to reconcile in the way that I consume White Sox baseball. 

James: I wouldn’t think so in either case. Even with Luis Robert Jr. present, and now Bryan Ramos surprisingly on hand, much of the next core is not on the major league roster yet. Front office rhetoric has shifted from “We want to turn this around as soon as possible” to more “But that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen quickly.”

Erick Fedde is a 31-year-old Scott Boras client who would have to have some level of transcendent love of the coconut shrimp at Lawrence’s to pass up a pretty near term chance to hit free agency. Korey Lee is on currently at a high point of the peaks and valleys of catching development, but won’t reach free agency before 30 and isn’t the most highly touted backstop prospect they acquired last year. 

Garrett Crochet is a fairly perfect target because his age lines him up with a gradual Sox build up but his remaining team control does not. But he’s a hard-throwing lefty that stuff metrics love who will hit free agency as a 27-year-old, so I would again have to wonder what has made him irrationally love Chicago, or where the revenue is coming from to inspire them to throw money at a pitcher with not insignificant injury history, at a level only seen before the Zack Wheeler bidding. 

Montgomery is not on the 40-man, so he’s unlikely to be the beneficiary of a wave of injuries the way Ramos was. This is someone they not only felt had real development left on both sides of the ball coming out of spring, but also feel has enough superstar potential that keeping his rookie status intact going into next year is not irrelevant. DeJong is giving you as much or more than you could reasonably expect from a green Montgomery right now, so I don’t think anything at work in Chicago is nudging them to act before August. 

James: In the sense that we were asking him about his job status at 3-22 and he’s since acknowledged that it was the darkest period of his career, sure, this current situation is more tenable than 6-44 and a record-setting pace would be. He was kept on to be a stable hand during a time of transition and the team went through the worst 25-game stretch in franchise history and no one started cracking each other’s head open to feast on the goo inside. That’s a feather in his cap, even his outfielders still miss the cutoff man.

I don’t anticipate an extension. If that were to change, it wouldn’t change by mid-May. 

Jim: Yeah, I think things have calmed down enough that you can table the thoughts about keeping Grifol to save money, and bring the conversation solely back to baseball-related arguments. Even if Jerry Reinsdorf had no qualms about paying two managers for two years, once the Sox decided to enter another rebuild, it didn’t make sense to hire a promising new managerial candidate and immediately saddle him with the worst possible product, because it’s hard for managers to weather the baggage of that much losing. As long as Grifol isn’t inspiring mutinies or interfering with the players the front office wants evaluated, he’s probably doing the job well enough, as weird and off-putting as his public-facing persona is. Save the next manager for the start of an upswing.

I also don’t think extending him does anything for saving money, because any Grifol replacement would probably earn just as much, with maybe a small bump for cost-of-living adjustment. Most first-time managers work pretty cheap because they can’t take any opportunity for granted. 

James: I guess that feels like a bit of an oversimplification. The Sox acquired Lee and Quero at last deadline, spent first round picks on Montgomery and Gonzalez, and certainly discussed position player fronted packages for Cease. The Orioles used first round picks on Grayson Rodriguez and DL Hall, and that they dealt Hall while he still had prospect shine is a model for how you can leverage pitching prospect depth. 

Both Thorpe and Iriarte were guys Bannister and others felt they could get more out of than their present value, and that seems like how a club should leverage such resources. Seeing Alec Hansen and Jonathan Stiever’s value wither on the vine due to injury and other issues, or the fits and starts of the Tigers arm-centric rebuild obviously gives us pause. But at the same time the Sox do not have much of a track record of paying top of market for pitching, so developing a healthy amount of their own is the only alternative.

Josh: Opening Weekend was better attended than I expected (79,074 fans for the three games), and all three games were a gut punch as the Sox lost by one run in each of them. Leaving the stadium, the vibe felt like "Maybe a bounce here or two or better pitching from the bullpen and the Sox could have won this series." Bad weather made the two games against Atlanta not enjoyable and an excellent reason to watch from home. Then, the Cincinnati series flipped the table. It was a "What the hell are we watching here? This is not Major League Baseball." vibe. There wasn't enough beer to make that weekend enjoyable, and it felt like a waste of time. 

But the vibes have improved since the Tampa Bay series, a series sweep that no one saw coming. There's less heckling of White Sox players making awful plays (I'm guilty of this) and way more high-fives. Fewer fights in left field bleachers, more people trying to start the wave, and more congregating in the center field concourse. There's no sense of entering a funeral parlor, which was the case in 2022 and 2023. Those teams were expecting or hoping to win, and you just left the ballpark depressed and angry. 

Now, I take my time getting to the stadium because there's no rush when expectations are embarrassingly low. I'm just there to hang out with my friends and other White Sox fans in Section 108, where the contingent of Full Season Ticket Holders has grown. Our friends (Beefloaf, Chorizy, MySoxSummer) have cultivated what I compare to your local dive bar. You visit enough times and recognize the same faces. After a few more visits, then you remember people's names. A month later, and you're debating which Chicago strip club Tommy Pham is most likely to get stabbed at (Polekatz was the winner). It's loud and boisterous with an awful viewing angle, but it's the most fun area to catch a White Sox game because of the people. 

Sure, beer is cheaper at home, and John Schriffen's broadcasting has gotten better recently. To me, nothing beats watching baseball live, and to do so with White Sox fans who are just there to hang out with little to no expectations of the team has made it more enjoyable than expected. Misery loves company, and right now, the company has been good.