Balta1701

They got out of the multi-year penalties so no, they shouldn't care about the luxury tax for this year.

Dafuq? No he isn't. He's played 10 games since his slump ended and I'm looking at his stats during those 10 games right now. They are .293/.370/.390. I have no idea where you got your numbers.

I will promise to not worry about him for the entire time that people will promise to stop saying that he should be rushed to the big leagues or be our starting 2b sometime in 2020. I think this is a fair trade.

That doesn't mean they're any good! Some of those guys have ERAs over 7, WHIPs over 1.5, in the minors right now. Go to previous White Sox top 30 lists and you'll find similar numbers of relievers, many of whom never even made the big leagues. From 2015 - Spencer Adams, Tyler Danish, Chris Beck, Jace Fry, Nolan Sanburn, Andre Wheeler, Michael Ynoa, Jordan Guerrero, Andrew Mitchell, almost all of them viewed as relievers, Fry is the only one who even had decent outings out of them.

I'd be interested to see which stat going into fWAR is allowing that one number to be substantially better than all of their peripherals...but here's replies in no particular order. 1. "Slightly below league average" is 20th out of baseball. That is not "Decent". Teams that are 20th in baseball are already looking at that as a major need if they want to compete. For example, the Cubs are right there with us and they are looking at aggressively moving to upgrade their bullpen because that's bad. 2. Many of their other stats are notably worse than 20th. Their bullpen performance appears likely to look worse soon. 3. About the only difference between them and a bullpen that is far worse than 20th is Alex Colome, who remains a potential trade candidate. 4. The bullpen reinforcements aside from Burdi are either >1 year away or would have to be rushed substantially 5. The bullpen reinforcements overall look questionable at best. This is not a path to improvement. This is a path to having to buy 3 or 4 guys on the FA and Trade market in the offseason to get up to average.

Ha, I just discovered that Fangraphs under advanced stats allows you to sort by the difference between ERA and FIP. Guess which bullpen has the biggest difference between their ERA and Fielding Independent Pitching in the bigs right now (which suggests an ERA that might go the other way)?

Click the xFIP, FIP, BB/9, and K/9 tabs for me.

Keppinger was DFA'd after 1 season with substantial money still remaining.

Their ERA is good but their peripherals are in the bottom 5 of baseball right now. They're helped by a low BABIP and a low HR/FB number, both of which are likely to go up as the season goes along. And then, if they trade Colome, well I'm not sure there's a big leaguer out there. Can you be more specific about which guys in your top 30 you think will be in next year's bullpen? I'll grant Burdi even if he seems to be having the slowest TJS recovery in the history of TJS. But look at the other guys in the prospect list, which one are you referring to? Hamilton with the ERA of 9 in Charlotte? Jordan Stephens? Kodi Medeiros with the ERA near 7 in Birmingham (I'm amazed that's even possible). Ruiz? Burr? Guys down at A ball who we will race up? The White Sox don't have much in their system right now. Saying that guys are top 30 prospects down there doesn't mean much right now.

Can I propose a rule that we stop mentioning Madrigal as a part of a championship team until his OPS at A-Ball is no longer bouncing around .700?

Dunning just had TJS and hasn't done that much work at AA, and he'll come into next year having barely pitched in a year and a half. People have confidence in Covey now? I guess pulling the plug on Hansen as a starter does seem likely now, so perhaps he does count.

Seriously, what bullpen reinforcements do you have confidence in right now? I guess they'll have to give Burdi a shot given how highly they drafted him, but aside from him name one young reliever in our organization you think is a major contributor next year? Bummer looks improved to start this year, but he and Fry seem to have switched abilities from last year to this year. Juan Minaya has a decent ERA in the bigs this year, are we confident in him, his ERA at Charlotte was >5?

Good point. Hard to see how this team is any better than .500 next year unless they make that kind of move, but you're right, we'll see the Rick Hahn window dressing and blow $10 million on Dozier.

Well we had Adam Eaton and those 3 teams were pathetic losers who are still fighting the same fights 3 year later, so perhaps there' another ingredient.