MackowiakYakYak

You change what you can change? I don’t know everything about Gordon’s career but don’t you want players that try to max out whatever potential they have? edit: All the specifics beyond the slash lines. How hard was he working, was he a good teammate, etc.

Welp, the championship window was nice. I’ll always remember those amazing moments in the regular season.

Wasn’t that the issue with Collins as well?

Romy yes, Colas no. Colas is at the point in his career where a good number of teams would have him as a 4th outfielder to let him see more of the highest level of pitching. He’s closer to being a AAA starter than a league-average MLB starter, but he’s not a mistake to have on a 26-man roster.

The question is what would be the win conditions for the current construction of the Sox to beat team X in the playoffs and how realistic is it for that condition to happen. The Sox currently have the possibility of elite pitching, but how likely is it for at least 3 starters to be healthy and firing on all cylinders? We don’t have a very healthy staff and there’s a good deal of inconsistency with some of the starters. As far bats and fielding, we don’t really have game changing bats and a good fielding series would be one where they don’t give the other team extra runs. We can’t expect better than average outcomes from our fielders.

That Hawk quote is great and you summed up my thoughts pretty well. Real fans know the strike zone doesn't exist and its just a trick the pitcher and catcher play on the umpire.

I hate the Yankees as much as any American lacking brain damage but I've got complete and total respect for Judge. He earned it and I won't take what I'm feeling out on him or Yankees fans. Sure they have everything a fanbase could ask for but I'd be having a bad day if someone told me Timmy's Field of Dreams home run was off a ball juiced just for him. The situation sucks for everyone. I am tired of capitalists taking obscene amounts of money at the expense of our dignities. Sure we are White Sox fans and have no dignity to begin with but it feels especially pathetic to be a baseball romantic anymore. The sport has likely never been what I imagined it to be. I can accept that. Still I feel that we lose more of baseball's aesthetics every year. Seeing the strike zone sucks. Having gambling shoved in our faces sucks (RIP sports radio). If I have to watch the pitch clock tick down behind the batter that will suck more than anything. To get to the point, Manfred juiced the Judge balls because he wanted the money. It is as simple as that. That's why they rolled the goldilocks balls out for the important games. Manfred wants to create the best product for advertisers. I can deal with change and would accept pitch clocks and robot strike zones. Those two things on their own would be manageable. Everyone's got their breaking point and to me its when the billionaires decide they want a specific player to break a record. This sucks. I'm too young to be acting this old.

Agree with everyone on moving Hendriks. Relief is the only spot where I'd prefer to have 2 war split between two players rather than having one elite reliever. Intimidating bullpens are created by having good pitchers to cover the 6th-9th, not just focusing on the 9th with occasional long saves. This team had a solid enough bullpen last year and it meant nothing because the team was out of too many games by the 5th inning. We have a solid enough stable of relievers to not turn RP into a weakness if we trade Hendriks.

That’s what Tampa Bay and the Dodgers have been doing the last few years, at least at the MLB level. Tampa has most of their top players by fWAR playing multiple positions. Granted most of that has been corner outfield or 1B as the second most played positions, but they are using 1B/LF/RF as opportunities to get better matchups for their hitters. The Dodgers have been using Lux, Taylor, and Muncy as multi-position starters which allows them to choose which matchups they want for their bench players. They aren’t forced to use a Leury to fill a specific hole in the lineup every single time. Instead they can shift those 3 around to fill a the gap and still choose the right bench player for that specific game. That’s absolutely the way to go for every prospect that doesn’t project to be an all-star at their primary. The greatest benefit would be for middle infielders where you’d want them to be comfortable at 3B and corner outfield, but I’d also want my corner outfielders to at least be comfortable in both corners as well as 1B. There is just too much benefit to flexibility even if the player would never be good defensively at the other positions.

Difference in opinion between the writer and the staff (or algorithm), which is interesting because I’m used to seeing outfielders called fringe in centerfield and they then get a 50 or 55 fielding. Any resident experts have an opinion because I’ve mostly heard that he is an above average RF that can handle occasional CF starts.

Rodon, McDowell, and Baines are the best top 5’s since 1977. They’ve only drafted that high 7 times from the ‘77 draft until now and 2 of those are Madrigal and Vaughn.

That’s a smart way to play the game. It’s much more important to have him healthy long term and it’s not as if we notice him giving away bases or outs because he “isn’t trying.” Keep the legs healthy and keep him in the lineup.

Hearing the arguments and throwing out my own, I think that this off-season was fine. Not even offering Rodon a QO is inexcusable, but most other decisions that were made were fairly reasonable. The only value the organization lost was a possible draft pick and Zack Collins. The Leury contract is most likely lost money, but Graveman and Kelly are the only other future monetary obligations the Sox brought on. So the Sox made one incredibly dumb decision, one dumb decision, and paid for multiple years of two late-inning relievers. They lost very little player capital and will be on the hook for relatively minimal future dumb contract money. I don't think there were many perfect players to chase after so that's fine for an off-season. The Sox problems come from previous failed off-seasons and we've talked through all those previous problems already. The organization doesn't have valuable prospects and we didn't land any of the previous FA whales that would've truly been game changers. This off-season became an L when we didn't sign Bryce Harper not because of anything that did or didn't happen this actual off-season.

I don't know the Sox were ever considering another high-end SP. Not even offering Rodon a QO shows they didn't even want him for a single year at ~$19m. As far as I could tell the Sox showed no intention of getting a SP they would have to pay more than a few million. Ultimately they were wrong to not consider the value of adding another high-end SP or at least qualifying Rodon to see what might happen there. Schwarber would've been awful as a RF signing. He is terrible defensively in LF and that's the spot he's played his whole career. The Sox weren't looking for another bat-only LF and they definitely didn't want one on a long-term deal. He looks like the obviously better option now because Pollock has had to play so much LF and has absolutely fallen off a cliff, but spending money on Schwarber still wouldn't have been the long-term answer. This team has excess value in 1B/LF/DH players and even though Schwarber would be more valuable than the other options he would not add enough value to the team to make him worth his contract. I don't want to be paying both Eloy and Schwarber to play terrible LF when we can put a cheaper terrible defender like Sheets or Vaughn.

Only Anderson could've been reasonably predicted to be good this season. Wacha and Perez were signed as lottery ticket 5th starters and we got our version of that by signing VV and Cueto. Cueto worked out of those two lottery tickets and that is great. If you sign Anderson then do you end up getting Cueto to sign with the team for a minor league tryout? The depth SP issue is complicated because who knows where underperforming guys want to sign to revive their careers. More Quad-A SPs should've been acquired, but getting a single gem out of your SP depth is better than expected most years.