Thanks for doing this on such short notice

“The doer alone learneth.”

When we last spoke, you seemed opposed to a White Sox rebuild, but now you’re willing to talk prospects?

“The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.”

Do you find it hard to believe still the Sox had the nerve to trade a franchise player as revered and loved as Chris Sale?

“This feeling is a hindrance to the acquisition of new experiences and the correction of customs: that is to say, morality is a hindrance to the development of new and better customs: it makes stupid.”

Ok, you’ve given a lot of flippant and mean-spirited answers over our time, and called me stupid a lot, but come on. Fans have cause to mourn the loss of Sale.

“What is new, however, is always evil, being that which wants to conquer and overthrow the old boundary markers and the old pieties; and only what is old is good.”

The centerpiece of the Sale return and now of the entire Sox farm system is Yoan Moncada, an incredibly tooled-up physical specimen with franchise player potential but still a lot of swing-and-miss and risk in his game. Do you have concerns about his ability to adjust to big league pitching?

“When will we ever be done with our caution and care? When will all these shadows of God cease to darken our minds? When will we complete our de-deification of nature? When may we begin to “naturalize”humanity in terms of a pure, newly discovered, newly redeemed nature?”

So you think Moncada’s tools will carry the day?

“You will never get the crowd to cry Hosanna until you ride into town on an ass.”

Yes, uh, the physique is uh…let’s move on to Lucas Giolito. He’s obviously already undergone Tommy John surgery and saw some worrisome depreciation of his stuff last year. Do you still see top-level potential after all he’s been through?

“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”

Michael Kopech and Reynaldo Lopez are both very talented but are also seen as  future relievers by some evaluators. What do you think of the Sox placing their hopes on such volatile projects?

“One has to take a somewhat bold and dangerous line with this existence: especially as, whatever happens, we are bound to lose it.”

So you think their deliveries can be reigned in?

“It was only the coarser and more violent that conquered the more spiritual and delicate.”

Luis Basabe is a true centerfielder with power potential, but a lot of Sox fans worry he’s another toolsy outfielder with contact problems. Do you think the Sox are still overlyy drawn to those types?

“Never yield to remorse, but at once tell yourself: remorse would simply mean adding to the first act of stupidity a second.”

Regarding Dane Dunning, do you think back-end rotation types like him often go unappreciated?

“Not only are they better than the powerful, the masters of the world whose spittle they have to lick (not from fear, not at all from fear! but because God orders them to honour those in authority) – not only are they better, but they have a “better time”, or at least will have a better time one day. But enough! enough! I can’t bear it any longer. Bad air! Bad air! This workshop where ideals are fabricated – it seems to me just to stink of lies.”

So, you’re high on Dunning, then?

“Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.”

Do you think the Sox need to keep making trades or do they have enough pieces in their farm system in place to consider holding onto Jose Quintana?

“One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.”

What do you say to fans preparing themselves for a grueling rebuild period?

“Everyone who has ever built anywhere a new heaven first found the power thereto in his own hell.”

Thanks again for having your centuries-old quotes taken out of context and repurposed for abstract analysis of moderately popular baseball team.

“The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.”

Lead Image Credit: Mark J. Rebilas // USA Today Sports Images

Was it time for the White Sox to move on from Robin Ventura?

“There is so much in man that is horrifying!…The world has been a madhouse for too long!”

So, yes? You think it was the right thing to do?

“The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.”

Do you worry about the bizarre mechanics of having Robin Ventura’s final season to prove himself going down with his preferred replacement working as his assistant? Does that not seem like a strange situation for both of them?

“This predilection for and overvaluation of compassion that modern philosophers show is, in fact, something new: up till now, philosophers were agreed as to the worthlessness of compassion. I need only mention Plato, Spinoza, La Rochefoucauld and Kant, four minds as different from one another as it is possible to be, but united on one point: their low opinion of compassion.”

A lot of White Sox fans likely have trouble warming up to having a man the Cubs fired as their manager, especially in lieu of some calls for another former player like A.J. Pierzynski, what do you say to them?

“The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.”

What of the famed ‘Cubs way’ do you expect to see Renteria bring over to the South Side?

“They muddy the water, to make it seem deep.”

There has been a lot of momentum for the White Sox to rebuild, focusing on arguments pointing to how much Chris Sale or Jose Quintana could pull in a trade, the need to revamp their farm system, their stagnancy with their current roster’s core, the price of trying to patch up this roster in free agency being prohibitive–

“I have, perhaps, never read anything to which I said ‘no’, sentence by sentence and deduction by deduction, as I did to this.”

So, should we anticipate the Sox investing and adding to this current group to compete in 2017? How do we buy-in to this leadership group being aggressive enough to pull that off, when they have mostly stuck to the mid-level budget shopping model that paid off in 2005 and 2008?

“What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more’ … Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.”

So…they’re demons, then?

“Amor Fati – “Love Your Fate”, which is in fact your life.”

What would you say to White Sox fans who wonder why they should keep supporting a struggling organization, who ask why they should consume a product that leaves them unsatisfied?

“As born winged-insects and intellectual honey-gatherers we are constantly making for them, concerned at heart with only one thing – to ‘bring something home.’”

A World Series title? In 2017?

“Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.

Ahh, that sounds more like something you would say.

“Only sick music makes money today.”

Lead Image Credit: Patrick Gorski // USA Today Sports Images

If Avisail can hit for consistent power for the last two months of the season, he should get a job in 2017. If he hits a .200 ISO for even one month, they should probably roster him, since it would be a completely unprecedented breakthrough. He hasn’t had a single month of .200 ISO since 2014, and that carried the caveat of him missing half the month because of that faceplant he suffered in Colorado.

He’s a big, strong man who can hit baseballs to the moon, but doesn’t have the approach, plate coverage, pitch recognition–whatever, to do it on a consistent basis. But sure, give him August, or more, to show it again. There’s nothing else to do. If Mike Zunino can be fixed*, why can’t he?

*Mike Zunino is likely not fixed

2. Here’s a fun thought experiment. Most people remember Gordon Beckham as a rookie sensation who did nothing but disappoint afterward, but from June 1 to Aug. 30 in 2010, his second year in the majors, Beckham hit .297/.343/.490, smacked 30 extra-base hits in 275 plate appearances and pulled his strikeout rate down to 18.2 percent.

Why pick Aug. 30? Just for the sake of a three-month sample? No, because that was the day Frank Herrmann hit him in the right hand with a wayward fastball. X-rays were negative–though the technician thought it would be fun to joke with him and pretend the situation was more dire–and Beckham returned a few days later, but complained of struggling to grip the bat. He scuffled to a .188/.278/.219 line down the stretch and was pretty much completely shut down from hitting after Sept. 15. A stretch in Beckham’s career as good as the one cut short by that pitch has not been seen since.

Ironically, Brent Lillibridge replaced Beckham in the lineup in that fateful game. A little over a year later, Lillibridge had his right hand shattered by a pitch from Josh Judy, ending his shocking breakout 2011 season. In the deluge of sad White Sox memories I’ve built in my head since 2010, Lillibridge fighting back tears after the game, keenly aware of the sudden end of his moment in the sun, still burns prominently. He never so much as batted .200 in a season again, and was done as a major leaguer less than two years later.

What I’m sayin is, Tim Anderson can take all the time he needs to come back.

3. James Shields is deservedly irked again about being trashed in public by his former owner, Ron Fowler of the San Diego Padres, who apparently considers him to be of similar ilk of Matt Kemp. Criticizing one’s own players in the press is one of the few transparent and unquestionable ways to be a bad owner these days.

Since everyone is playing armchair GM, tanking trade value (they dealt Shields for a 17-year-old and a home run machine and had to pay money to do it) is something we can all agree is bad. Someone as clearly temperamental and reactive to immediate results as Fowler is clearly a source of chaos, but also gives general manager A.J. Preller the mandate to act decisively (up until he gets suddenly fired, at least). That alone seems like something to vaguely jealous of at the moment, even if everything else that comes with it is truly awful.

4. Jose Abreu admitted he felt relief after breaking his 33-game homerless stretch, which he also noted was unprecedented for his career. He made similar comments about being relieved when he ended an 18-game drought in 2014. The whole thing is multiple shades of bizarre. If he’s pressing, it’s the type of pressing that leaves him incapable of squaring up pitches gift-wrapped over the heart of the plate, and doesn’t bode well for how he’ll adjust to his continued decline as he ages.

Between this and his huge chase rate, which a lot of people just discovered this year, it’s amazing how troubling all these bad habits get once elite tools stop blotting them out.

5. In the fog of the Sox suffering through another pointless second half with no hope of a playoff berth, and an unclear future about what they will seek to do in 2017, let us again look to Nietzche for clarity:

“Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders.”

Lead Image Credit: Rick Osentoski // USA Today Sports Images

Now that the White Sox have gone 6-18 since their high point of 23-10, how do they refocus on competing for what is still a wide open AL Central race?

“It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.”

What is a major league clubhouse like during stretches such as this?

“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”

Is it time to remove Robin Ventura as manager, or he is a scapegoat for larger issues with the roster?

“What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.”

What should White Sox fans expect from James Shields?

“We do not hate as long as we still attach a lesser value, but only when we attach an equal or a greater value.”

Who on the trade market could provide a good fit in the White Sox lineup?:

“There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.”

Do you worry about rushing Tim Anderson, or putting too much on his plate if he’s called up mid-season?

“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”

Is there a nugget of hope for White Sox fans to cling onto at this point?

“I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.”

Friedrich, thank you. It’s always a pleasure.

“We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers.”

Lead Image Credit: Rick Osentoski // USA Today Sports Images