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And don’t they say command is last thing to return after TJS?

His change up wasn't the problem. It was fastball location which sets up them swinging at the change. No one swings at the change if they know it is coming.

I was looking at his 99 ERA+, but yes I don't disagree. He wasn't very good and doesn't have much of a ceiling. He'll probably end up in the bullpen as a good outcome.

Probably because the whole front office was stunned by the fact that the Sox didn't trade Luis Robert after the 2021 off-season, which everyone knows is when he should have been traded.

Honestly, 13 of 91 100 loss teams being above .500 the following season is higher than I would have guessed. That’s something under 15%. I would have guessed closer to 5%. What that means for the 2026 White Sox, I have no idea.

If they need to save 10 million so badly they'd take a return of injured guys and a pick worth $1.5 million then MLB needs to step in because Jerry doesn't understand how to run this business.

The point on Thorpe is we don’t know what he is. To say he “stinks” completely ignores his minor league track record & prospect pedigree and over-indexes on his first eight major league starts. He’s obviously got a unique profile with less margin of error when it comes to command, but I’m giving him a much bigger runway than that first cup of coffee with is before making such declarations. He may end up busting, but I liked what I saw from his change up when he was with the Sox and his minor league numbers show a dude with impeccable command and an ability to generate weak contact. I remain cautiously optimistic for now.

It has also become a meme that Chris Getz knew the entire organization was going to fall apart because he was left such a horrible, horrible mess that he couldn't have possibly done better than the worst team in the history of baseball, so in that world, why keep Luis Robert vs trading him after his amazing breakout year?

Generally speaking, guys who can spin a curve can spin a slider. You’re right about the consistency of the curve being difficult, which is why guys like Gio and Cease adopted the slider as a primary secondary. I think if he busts as a starter you focus on the fastball/slider combo and forget the other stuff.

I have no idea where EXACTLY they are looking as of now. I will also mention that they are testing as we speak a southern Spur to the same line, depending on where they are looking. I will say if it is north, walking distance probably isn't further than you walk from a metra at 18th for current Soldier Field.

Come on man. He literally faced Cleveland, Kansas City, & the Angels in his first 10 starts as well plus the Marlins who were actually a bottom 10 offense per wRC+ (unlike Baltimore as you cited). The difference in team quality between those two samples is minimal. Regardless, you are now suggesting that his K rate doubling in his last 10 starts vs. his first 10 starts is because he faced the Guardians one extra time. You know as well as me that’s absolutely ridiculous and you would normally call out any other poster for suggesting it. Again, the original argument here was whether Burke stinks or not. You said you watched his early starts and that he did not get better as the season progressed. That is an objectively false statement whether you believe his last 18 starts to be signs of improvement or just performance variance. And then instead of posting advanced metrics during those two (or three) different time periods to suggest the underlying peripherals were all the same to help the performance variance angle (which I’m confident wouldn’t be the case), you cite a bunch of full season metrics and pretend that young players can’t / don’t get better with experience. Which again, is another absurd hypothesis and just simply lazy analysis. No competent GM would evaluate a young player (rookie, minor leaguer, etc.) solely on full year results and most certainly would look for signs of improvement & development. Ultimately, I do believe he’s a much better SP than the guy you saw in his first 10 starts and closer to the guy who put up a 4.25 FIP over his last 18 starters. If I filter on SPs who pitched 100+ innings last year, that FIP would rank 70th of 119 SPs. Go down to 80+ innings pitched and he would be 78th out of 138 SPs. Either way, that production is approximately mid #3 starter level. Whether he can maintain that into next year or regresses some remains to be seen, but I don’t think a rookie SP who performed at that level for his final 18 starts “stinks” in any rationale way.

I'll come back to this to. Thorpe was a very polarizing prospect. He's basically the second coming of Kyle Hendricks, but being Kyle Hendricks means you have to be perfect. Hendricks basically was that for 6 years, but anytime Hendricks hasn't been perfect he's been a bum. Additionally, Hendricks never really missed bats like Thorpe did in the minors, so he was always pitching to contact. With Thorpe, I think he's going to have a steep learning curve pitching to more contact. The funny thing about command and walks is that while the higher in level you go the more predictive of your MLB production, those on the extreme ends of the curve (BB rate) have less correlation. This is driven mainly by guys who attack the zone until they can't anymore (MLB). Thorpe could be one of those guys. Or maybe he adds 2 MPH post-surgery like Skubal, his fastball goes to avg and he dominates the league with his secondaries. Maybe he was hurt throughout all his MLB time and that's something to hang onto. With Thorpe though, the margin for error is so small and he's been everything but pinpoint when up-leveled. With Kay, no I didn't watch his NPB starts. Last time he was in the big leagues, he was bad and his big change was going from 4 seamers up in the zone to throwing a sinker. MLB hitters today are crushing the ball down and being beat up in the zone with four seamers so I'm skeptical of that transformation taking as much hold in the US.

Not a lot of fastball/curveball guys out of the pen anymore in baseball, and his curveball is his best pitch. That's the main reason I don't see the bullpen utility for Burke, because curveballs are challenging to be consistent with/find in short stints. Of course, his stuff could always get better disrupting everything we know about him. It's happened before, but it's not something I would expect or predict.

It's become a meme that Getz is dumb for not trading Robert at the end of 2023. That's hindsight. We now know his production was going to fall off the table. We now know 2023 wasn't the year he magically became healthy to play 145 games a season. Yes, in hindsight, we know that the 2023 off-season would have been the perfect time to trade him. Hell, with this crystal-clear hindsight we possess, why not say that the Sox should have had a fire-sale right after the 2021 season? Moncada just put up a 4-bWAR season. They would have gotten a haul for him.

As the local I'll ask you: would any location be within very, very close walking distance of said train?

I really get the feeling they now have to move him for SOMETHING after the latest signing.

They do have a train line that goes right through Hammond.

You can still easily get to Jets/Giants games via public transit from NYC. Takes me just as long to get to Yankees Stadium or Citi Field. Unless everyone thinks Indiana is gonna dump an astounding amount of capital into public transit, that's not gonna be the case for the Bears.

To my eye, for whatever that’s worth, his stuff is pretty good overall. I just get the impression from watching hitters that it’s easy to pick up and plays down. I do think, however, he could be a weapon out of the bullpen if starting doesn’t work out.

I read where the KC Royals have bought land in Kansas. Losing a baseball team and football team in KC can't be a positive thing for that city.

Run values added are going to be derived from your overall value which is heavily tied to results. Depending on the system you use, the correlation is high enough that you won't see a lot of positives with negative outcomes, but you can see individual pitch values where a pitcher is succeeding despite failure. Burke really doesn't have anything to hang his hat on. I'll also agree that FIP is a better predictor of future production; xERA isn't much better than actual ERA. His FIP being as bad as it was is the #1 indicator of his flaws, but I figured we could get more granular.

I know Hammond's Mayor decently well. He will give away the farm to get the Bears there. Literally anything he can do, he will. I would also bet money that our Governor would back up the truck for something like this, as we love giving billions in abatements and relief to things like data centers, which provide little to no jobs and economic activity, so a football team wouldn't be much different. I don't know how much the Bears want to leave Chicago, but I will promise you that Indiana will bribe the hell out of them to do so.

There has to be a positive for a state like Kansas to welcome the Chiefs. They view the Chiefs as an asset. I'm assuming Indiana view the Bears as an asset. I saw where they are already doing studies in Hammond for the stadium. Looks like Hammond is the spot for the new stadium.

Thanks. I didn’t realize Skubal had that velocity increase. You didn’t really answer the questions from my first paragraph, so I turned to Chat. It sounds like the run value stats are measuring results more than pure stuff, similar to ERA. Does that sound right? You could locate a perfect fastball with the bases loaded, but if the hitter breaks his bat and bloops one in for a couple RBI, it’s hurting your fastball run value (just like it’s hurting your ERA). Now, usually the best pitchers have the best ERA, so I’m guessing the best pitchers also have the best pitching run value stats. But it sounds like stats like FIP and xERA would be better predictors of future success. Would you agree with that?

Burke's command absolutely is the problem. The issue with most pitch metrics when used without proper content is they leads you down the wrong lesson path. Burke raw stuff is solid, but he commands it so poorly, mainly by wasting a lot of non competitive pitches far out of the zone that he overcompensates by throwing strikes. His zone % is actually quite high (he throws a lot of strikes). Pair his inconsistent fastball velocity with poor command and you get into a situation where you throw a lot of avg fastballs down the middle of the plate to prevent a walk. He's throwing a lot of strikes but usually with fastballs behind in the count, which had a tendency to get hit hard. He's had individual games where his fastball sits at 97 and his swing strike rates on the curveball is absolutely elite. There's a lot to work with there, but poor command like this usually ends with a guy finding his way into the pen.