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Right now the Yankees look like the team to beat in the AL with a 50+ projected fWAR, so I figured it would be a fun exercise to do a position by position comparison to see how we stack up against them and where we must improve to narrow the gap. Note, this won’t be an OD roster comparison, but rather a potential end of season view to account for key call-ups or guys returning from injury. Lineup: 1B: Abreu vs. Voit | EVEN 2B: Madrigal vs. LeMahieu | NYY++ SS: Anderson vs. Torres | EVEN 3B: Moncada vs. Urshela | CWS+ LF: Jimenez vs. Frazier | CWS+ CF: Robert vs. Hicks | CWS+ RF: Eaton vs. Judge | NYY+++ DH: Vaugh vs. Stanton | NYY++ CA: Grandal vs. Sanchez | CWS++ Bench: IF: Mendick vs. Wade | EVEN OF: Engel vs. Tauchman | NYY+ UT: Garcia vs. Ford | EVEN BC: Collins vs. Higashioka | NYY+ Rotation: SP1: Giolito vs. Cole | EVEN SP2: Lynn vs. Severino | EVEN SP3: Keuchel vs. Kluber | CWS+ SP4: Cease vs. Taillon | NYY+ SP5: Kopech vs. Montgomery | NYY+ SP6: Lopez vs. German | NYY+ SP7: Stiever vs. Garcia | NYY+ Bullpen: CL: Hendriks vs. Chapman | EVEN SU: Bummer vs. Britton | CWS+ SU: Crochet vs. Green | EVEN SU: Heuer vs. Ottavino | EVEN MR: Marshall vs. Cessa | CWS+ MR: Foster vs. Loaisiga | CWS+ MR: Fry vs. Nelson| CWS+

We went from wanting Bauer -> Snell -> Darvish -> Musgrove -> Burnes -> Quintana -> Richards -> to now being cool with Adam f**king Wainwright..... c’mon guys this is a joke, the fact that Jerry has a budget in place for a team contending for a World Series is disgusting

Just use the WAR number that better suits your argument.

As an old school baseball fan, I relate to home runs, rbi's, sb's, runs scored, etc... WAR seems to track everything that happens everywhere on the field and grade it. How is this possible? Wouldn't that require dozens of watchers trained to score performance? It seems impossible to have all those scorekeepers using a fair and unbias system since we have trouble agreeing on an error call for example. Jose Abreu won the MVP but 3 position players had better WAR scores...why did Jose win? This question is not meant to be a clever way to say WAR is somehow BS. Some of you put great stock in it but I have trouble understanding why you value the opinions of people you don't know. I do see a usefulness for baseball executives having their own in-house grading systems but the average fan is lost when he tries to grasp what is WAR. Please try and explain in a clear non-condescending manner as I am sure many would like a better grasp of this subject.

Signing Robert. Trading Q, Sale and Eaton. If not for the trade capital they had, this team would be horrible for a long time. Not many teams had what they had to trade when going into a rebuild.

Spoken like a true meatball fan. Use one play as an example against years of data. I guess the data doesn't fit your world view. I am no great believer in defensive metrics and even less in framing but I'll take Grandal for his overall body of work offensively and defensive than just about any catcher.

I'm surprised Tony didn't insist they sign Eck to close.

Those really smart people didn’t have clarity from the short-sighted billionaires who employ them.

One of these days JR is going to surprise all of us in order to repay us for our patience.

Both the Sox and Yankees also are "maxed out" in terms of payroll, so that's even. Of course the Yanks are up against the luxury tax and the Sox are up against .....

The way you use fWAR is like this: when you see your starting C stand there with his thumb up his ass while the ball rolls between his legs and you don't like that because it doesn't fit your world view that he's a great player, you go onto fan graphs and find a number that says he's a better player than the other guy who isn't such an idiot in the field, and then you post it on a discussion forum as evidence of his quality play. And you post a HR clip also.

I am sure everyone would be, but if it was considered likely by the industry, he would be out of the White Sox price range.

I’m sure this will be the time the incredibly advanced in age free agent recreates their production instead of falling off a cliff.

I agree with most of this. But Anderson is significantly better than Torres. I would put that one as CWS++

Good idea. I might disagree with Abreu vs VVoit, since Jose is MVP, RBI leader, etc. He might regress, but Voit is not in that arena. Likewise Timmy vs Torres.

Maybe I'm biased, but I'd give us the edge at short.

Can you even count Stanton to be in their lineup anymore

The difference between old time stats and WAR is that WAR tries to take into account fielding and baserunning in a single metric. The reason Fangraphs and Baseball reference have different WARS is that fwar uses Ultimate Zone ratings for their defense and Ultimate base running and weighted stolen bases for their baserunning and rWar uses Total zone ratings for fielding and linear based system for baserunning. The big difference in WAR is with pitchers as FG uses FIP (fielding independent pitching) instead of ERA which doesn't use actual runs scored but uses a predicted runs scored based on the number of walks/hits/homers given up. For MOST pitchers, over a few years FIP is very close to ERA. For some pitchers its a big difference...which is why some heated arguments on Soxtalk about it. Sort of like the batting average balls in play argument...this guy was not as good as he actually was because he was lucky (or unlucky)...but maybe that guy has a skill set that leads to more Babip...and round and round we go. While the fielding and baserunning stats are subjective it tries to be much more objective than the old stats like fielding percentage used to be. 20 years ago old-timey baseball guys thought Derek Jeter was a GREAT fielder...because he played in NY, made some flashy plays occasionally and didn't make any errors. When they started looking at it turns out he was a terrible fielder...-1 defense War per season. Zone ratings calculate how many balls an average player SHOULD get to...it's why Robert is so good...he catches way more balls than the robots think that he should...Jeter was the opposite. The problem with a lot of stats is people use them with too much certainty...the idea is that FIP will give us a better idea of Cease's future than ERA (Cease's FIP is terrible his ERA is pretty good). The future is uncertain...something like FIP should allow us to pick out a hidden gem (as I was arguing in the Musgrove thread) and I really couldn't find much evidence that it did. I think one of the greatest things I ever read about stats was from Moses (Bill James). He said if you sat in the stands every day and watched a baseball team you couldn't tell the difference between a .300 hitter (all star) and a .250 hitter (journeyman) because it amounted to a single hit a week. (500 at bats, 150 hits vs 125 hits over 25 weeks). Because baseball is a game of lots of repetitions a small difference per week can make a big difference over a lot time. Before I get trashed by the throngs...this is just my interpretation of the scientists behind the new stats and you can do a google search on any term and it will explain in minute details by the experts.

Jose shouldn't have won MVP, simple as that.

Fuck, I'm really warming up to the idea of getting Cruz. His age scares me, but adding a potential 900 OPS bat would be filthy

When Hand went unclaimed there were no vaccines and a extreme amount of unclarity of what this season will look like. Now, there are two vaccines out with a third likely on the way, and fans are starting to be allowed into more and more stadiums. It's only 500k in the end anyways. Probably gets claimed or never put on waivers in a normal year.

Hang on. He went unclaimed at $10M but signs as a free agent for $10.5M?? The really smart people running baseball today sure are stupid.

Except Rutherford and Clarkin netted the yankees a top set-up reliever, closer and third baseman.

It would sell out our future a bit, but.... the best way to improve now might be to trade Vaughn ++ for Corbin Burnes. You then take the money you save from not spending on that last SP, and use it to sign Nelson Cruz. Then both the lineup and the starting staff are flipping loaded.

I am shocked that our early round college picks - Sheets, Walker, LuGon, Burdi, etc, don’t have much value in the trade market. Not.

Lol, cmon

JR "So who should be signed for our 5th starter? I need someone that the fans have heard of but doesn't require a lot of what would you kids call it these days, cash Money. I can't exactly swim in my own gold pool if I don't have gold to build it with. So help me out people. " TLR "I member Wainwright as a ToR pitcher. He can do it, he did it before. Plus he only needs 6 million dollars. He can mentor these guys."

There's no way that Giolito and Lynn are "equal" to a healthy Cole and Severino. The Yanks have a much better rotation if they are healthy. Sox have a better IF defense. Yanks probably similar defensively in the OF because Eloy brings down the quality of the OF D so much. Offensively both lineups are deep with power and speed, and lots of tough outs. Both bullpens should be very good, but you never know how that will turn out. Overall IMO the Yankees are definitely the better team ATM. The Sox don't have the horses yet. Also when you add D TA is way better than Gleyber.

No way Giolito = Cole. Cole is #1

Good luck k with that. There is no question, unless there are a lot of injuries, the White Sox are going to be a good, fun team in 2021. But face it , this offseaon, just like most others. We are the Wiley Coyote of fanbases.

Its only nice if it comes with a monster bat.

Their SP depth is way better than ours at the moment, no idea what Hahn is waiting for. If they’re banking on Katz performing miracles we’re in big trouble.

This honestly helped sell me on Cruz even more.

You're right it doesn't look right because it's listed as even so you misread it.

Rather than try and go into detail, I'll just link to Fangraphs' explanation: https://library.fangraphs.com/misc/war/ The big thing about WAR is that it takes into account averages for each position, how easy it is to hit/pitch in the various ballparks and the quality of opposition. A .900 OPS at 1B for the Sox and a .900 OPS at CF for the Cubs don't result in the same WAR (ignoring the defensive component for a moment). As for MVP voting, it's subjective, the voters may or may not pay attention to WAR, and even if they do, a slightly lower WAR that pushes a team over the top into the postseason could be considered more valuable than a higher WAR that pushes a team from 5th to 4th place.

Might want to check your math there.

Stunningly bad? First 29 games of his fucking career. You really have some ridiculous sized blinders on.

Yeah...those .340 hitters will mess you up every time.

"Garbage" take.

I will allow it.

Rats off to ya

Talk about cherry picking. Houston Astros 2017 fWAR https://www.fangraphs.com/teams/astros/stats?season=2017 Lineup fWAR (33.8): Altuve 7.6; Correa 5.1; Springer 4.5; Gonzalez 4.0; Bregman 3.5; Reddick 3.4; McCann 2.6; Gurriel 1.7; Marisnick 1.4 SP fWAR (12.2): Morton 3.1; Peacock 2.9; McCullers Jr. 2.8; Keuchel 2.3; McHugh 1.1 (Verlander 1.0 not counted) Chicago White Sox 2021 projected fWAR https://www.fangraphs.com/projections.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&type=fangraphsdc&team=4&lg=all&players= Lineup fWAR (23.1): Grandal 4.2; Robert 3.5; Moncada 3.5; Jimenez 3.3; Anderson 2.6; Madrigal 2.4; Abreu 1.8; Eaton 1.5; Collins 0.3 SP fWAR (12.5): Giolito 4.2; Lynn 3.0; Keuchel 2.6; Cease 1.5; Kopech 1.2 Will some players exceed their projections? Likely, though some will also fall short. Astros staff bolstered by Verlander, a Cy Young pitcher. Don't see the White Sox ever swimming in those waters under current ownership, which is why realistic current speculation of a final piece revolves around 40 year old soft tosser who pitched for Tony decades ago, and the key 2021 acquisition after Hahn proclaimed "our team is on the floor" is a one year rental of a #2 SP. Hahn's playing with one man short Hoosers analogy is apt, at least when expectations go beyond possibly winning an extremely weak division and actually contending for a World Series. There is a reason all seven Central playoff teams were b****slapped in Round 1 last season upon facing legitimate MLB teams. let alone super teams like the 2017 Astros. Note - Updated total fWAR Lineup total for Astros.

Wainwright is better than Cease and Lopez so I'm in on a short deal. I would have preferred Kluber, but at ideally you're just looking for him to make 10 starts at the beginning of the year. If Lopez is your #6 starter to start the year and then he's #7 whenever Kopech is ready I think that's totally fine. I would much rather they try to find a Nova level starter and spend on a DH, but it kinda looks like finding a Nova and doing nothing at DH which would be bad, obviously.

Wainwright at $5M or $6M is better than Gio at $5M. And unlike Rodon at least he can throw a pitch in the strikezone.

+ 2) This move makes so much sense for this god damn backwards organization ran by JR and Tony. I would be 100% OK with this move as a 6th starter/depth role. Teams need 6 legit starters this year (and probably going forward). Get Wainwright and Bauer.

So fucking true.

Wait, did I miss something where this is actually happening? Or are people getting pissed for no reason?

I disagree. I'd be content with the Sox rolling with Vaughn as the primary DH, Collins as the back up C, and Mendick, Engel, and Leury as the utility guys. The only true need IMO is a back end starter, and there are a lot of options still out there. If the Sox aren't ready to make Collins the back up catcher by now, I don't know why the hell he's still in the organization.

Literally the most American thing I can think of is looking to improve upon what we already have. If that is now "Liberal" thinking, well that explains why I left the Republican Party. All of the sudden it is being labeled as un-American to try to improve this country, as if you have to fall into line with conventional thinking, or get out. This country used to welcome people looking to improve it, and the lives of people in it. But now you can't out of fear you might make your political party, or its leader, look bad. As if party has become more important than country. It's sad. To be clear, the American response to COVID is 100% embarassing. If not the worst in the world, when you factor in the resources and ability we have in this country, it should be considered the worst in the world. The fact that the percentage of deaths we have versus our percentage of world population very clearly shows this failure.

EVERY SINGLE COUNTRY YOU LISTED AS SUPPOSED S***HOLE COUNTRIES HAS FEWER COVID DEATHS PER CAPITA THAN THE US AND IT ISNT PARTICULARLY CLOSE.