Balta1701

Giolito who, without sticky stuff, put up a 4.90 ERA in 2022 Is something we brag about. I mean, that isn’t the pitching coaches fault, we give him credit when bad things happen that aren’t totally his fault/ And while we are at it, how about the super responsible time we raced him back from COVID and another injury in April of 2022? Our best defense of Katz continues to be “oh there’s too much blame to place it on any one person.”

You’ve pretty much backed off to saying “sure there’s no reason to have any confidence in Ethan Katz but Hahn did a terrible job too”, and you’re right. But that is the point, there’s no reason to have any confidence in Ethan Katz! The best you have is “the mess wasn’t all his fault”, but that leaves no reason to think he is going to be a powerful voice for wisdom and responsibility with this pitcher all of a sudden. “It’s not the majors fault that the stadium collapsed!”

Yes, Katz was important in helping Rodon turn his career around. But the specific subject was whether we had confidence in them using Crochet responsibly, and how Katz would totally use a guy responsibly. Except, with the biggest reclamation project in Katz's career, Rodon, the pitcher was used totally irresponsibly! He threw a 9 inning, 114 pitch no hitter in the 2nd game of the season, and then he was back on the mound 6 days later, no extra rest! They had him throw 90+ pitches per start in literally every outing he had until after the All Star Break. He threw 430 pitches in 4 starts in June. Somehow, this pitcher broke down, how could that have happened when they took such care of his arm? That seems pretty darn relevant. Other stuff that seems relevant from those breakout pitchers. Davis Martin - had a pretty decent 2022. Blew out his elbow. Gregory Santos - Had a good 2023. Has had multiple injury issues since September. As of right now, I don't see any reason why "Ethan Katz totally knows what he's doing why are you criticizing Pedro" is anything I should believe.

Yes, Carlos Rodon's 2021 is truly a relevant example. A hard throwing left hander who had gone through multiple surgeries, was coming off TJS, and where they pitched him in the first half like there were literally zero restrictions on his arm only to have his body wear out in the 2nd half. That should totally raise your confidence in how they will handle Crochet.

Why exactly should I have any confidence at all in Ethan Katz when basically I haven't seen anything positive in terms of big league pitching performance since the sticky stuff ban started?

The White Sox were worse than the A's?

I will be excited to be proved wrong, but I don't think they can resist their own urges enough to use him as a true 3 inning opener. I think Grifol is going to say he's a starter so we have to use him as a starter and that means 5 innings first time out. They couldn't resist the temptation of using him on opening day, why should we expect them to be responsible about his innings total?

But opening day is already spoken for.

For a guy who doesn't rely on velocity and who has an issue with the long ball, there could be similar benefits to pitching in Charlotte. If those hitters push him to identify a couple things he needs to improve on, that could be important too. But anyway, the important thing right now is actually to give him time at AA. I'm only bringing this up because people here and on twitter have been talking about bringing him north this year since he was performing well in his first 10 spring training innings. Let's put him at AA, see what he does there, and figure out the path.

Didn’t he turn down 6/$150?

I'm convincible by that, if it's actually clearly beating the league for 3 months. If he's u know putting up an ERA of like 4 this year, then spending some time at AAA next year won't be a mistake. Leaping from high A to the big leagues? Naw, at least make the jump to AA first and show me he can handle AA. He hasn't done this leap yet, skipping past it because he was having a good 15 innings in spring training? Naw, go to AA.

At least to me, if you want to get him to 120 innings, the safest way to do that and perhaps the only way to do that is to drop the stress of some of those innings by making them minor league innings.

And if there's any day during a major league season that is routine and forgettable, it's opening day.

I don't want him out of the bullpen! Putting him in the bullpen was Hahns thing, it was as intelligent as every other move Hahn made. Send him to Charlotte, use him as an opener, build him up with 3 innings an outing against minor league competition for April, 4 innings per outing in May, give him a break there, move to 5 innings or so in June, then evaluate what his arm is doing, how his body is feeling, how his off speed pitches look, how his velocity has gone. If everything has gone to plan, call him back up mid-year and let him inch his way into the rotation with pretty clear innings limits in the second half. If there are any setbacks, be patient, and try to make sure you don't do anything that shreds his elbow or shoulder again. Figure out when you want to shut him down from there - I am not as into the 80 innings limit as some people are, if he works his way up to the big leagues and throws more innings than that, at least I kept the intensity low on some of the early ones rather than having him go against big leaguers, but still be super cautious in the 2nd half about making sure he gets extra rest.

I'll take the over.

I'd say right around July 1 if he stays healthy and has no set backs. Take it easy, ramp him up slowly, a couple innings per start at first, maybe even use an IL stint around mid-May to give his arm a break, and evaluate as you go. See how his arm holds up at first, build him up so maybe he can give you 5 innings, then let him face big leaguers. Frankly, it probably wouldn't hurt him to have some days where he focuses on throwing his offspeed stuff as much as he can at AAA either. Go a whole inning or two without any fastballs, get the feel for both the changeup and slider as a starter would.

Exactly. Thorpe has barely made it to AA, he has 1 full season at high-A ball. He should be at AA at least until he's so dominant there that he earns a callup to AA, or otherwise for nearly the full season. If you want to talk to me next offseason about jumping him from AA to the big leagues, I probably still wont' like it and would argue for time at AAA, but that's at least feasible. I wouldn't care one bit about him having a bad start today, he's on a new team and mid-March is normal "Dead arm period" for pitchers as they ramp up. But we heard way too many versions of "calling Thorpe up based on his spring training" here and elsewhere online over the past few days, and shutting that down is fine by me.

And when he gets hurt again, you won't blame the people who made the decisions. We've seen that before, with this pitcher.

Even Pedro can't tell us that a guy with a 7.45 ERA had a great spring, right?

At the very least we don't have to hear about how his great spring training justifies him skipping AA and AAA.

Yeah I don't care one iota about Reinsdorf's pocket book or the extra year of control here. This is a risky strategy because it's risky to take a guy with arm problems and no history of building up innings and put him into max-stress innings against big leaguers when you should be trying to build his arm up. If he gets hurt, people will just say "Oh he would have never made it as a starter", when the org just can't help themselves but find the high risk things to do on the way. Send the guy walking into a minefield and if he doesn't make it across its his fault.

This one is.

Yes. So a guy throws a baseball and therefore he is now stretched out to be a big league starter. No multi-year conditioning effort required! He stretched out in the offseason. Frankly, ludicrous. I'm as into turning him into a starter as anyone, and this is a super high risk way to do it. We know his arm isn't well conditioned as he has never thrown innings and you cannot do that magically, guys get hurt when they try that. We know that in the modern big leagues it is a max effort league, guys throw way harder than they did even 10 years ago. Taking no time to even build up his arm because he threw a baseball in the offseason...blah. Standard White Sox fare, pretend guys don't get hurt and act stunned when things go wrong with the plan, it's how Crochet was treated all along.

"Stretched out all winter"? That...makes no sense! Stretching out a starter typically takes years, to condition their arm to be ready for the workload. Did he throw 160 innings over the winter? If so, he probably should be shut down already.

Or if the 4th QB hasn't gone off the board, the Bears are in a good spot to trade down with one of the teams 11-13.