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Do any of you share my trepidation that the moves this front office might make could very well be worse than just standing pat? They erred badly in their off season moves, and aren't likely to fix their mistakes, at this late date and out of desperation. "Don't just do something-stand there".

This reminds me of this tweet

I will be in Denver @coors field with my kids tomorrow and Wednesday. Lets see if we can get on a roll

I'm waiting for NotSteveChisek to post so that we can get some real information.

Hope you are right about the wins. Not sure about Tony waking up, there is less oxygen in Denver and he needs more sleep.

This isn't a Carlos Rodon game thread, but he averaged 96 on his fastball tonight. He still got a ridiculous number of whiffs on it. Even aces have bad starts. There is no way to ever spin not offering him the qualifying offer or matching what the Giants gave him as a good decision.

Who wins a 40 yd dash between Grandal, Jimenez, and Vaughn? No one. They all pull a hammy 30 yds in.

Haven’t heard much from the “make Burger the everyday 3B” crowd lately.

Stop hitting it on the ground

This guy is legit fraud FYI and likely a Soxtalk member, perhaps even the same clown who ran the Al’s Cheesy Beef account.

I’d be pissed if we traded Vera for Happ. Not just because I think Happ sucks but because I don’t want the cubs to get a real prospect for this jabrony they overdrafted.

Yeah, the "front line starter," who ended up being Vince Velasquez and the second baseman "like Marcus Semien," who ended up being Josh Harrison. This is a bad joke.

You don’t trade 6.5 years of Luis Robert plus plus plus… for 2.5 years of Soto. Period.

if anyone wants to know why I always would rather max out for a star, it's because paying 1/2 the price for 1/3 the player sucks.

I decided to take a look at our batted ball profiles compared to the ML average and if our middle-opposite field hitting approach is actually causing some of the power decline we've seen with the team in 2022. Here's what I found. Name Pull Pull wOBA Pull GB% Pull GB wOBA Pull FB% Pull FB wOBA Pull LA Pull EV Pull Pitch Center Center wOBA Center GB% Center GB wOBA Center FB% Center FB wOBA Center LA Center EV Center Pitch Oppo Oppo wOBA Oppo GB% Oppo GB wOBA Oppo FB% Oppo FB wOBA Oppo LA Oppo EV Oppo Pitch League Average 37.80% 0.426 54.80% 0.177 18.10% 0.876 6.1 89.9 87.9 37% 0.317 46.50% 0.214 25.45% 0.311 9.5 88.9 89 25.10% 0.324 22% 0.401 37.90% 0.226 26 84.7 90 White Sox 35.30% 0.382 59.60% 0.172 13.68% 0.781 2.4 89.8 87.2 37.25% 0.325 48.10% 0.221 24.40% 0.348 8.5 89.7 88.6 27.43% 0.352 25.30% 0.464 36.50% 0.198 23.2 85.7 89.4 Andrew Vaughn 29.79% 0.491 54.80% 0.231 13.70% 1.158 3.1 91.1 86.6 38.36% 0.363 56.38% 0.257 19.15% 0.672 4.4 93.9 87.9 31.83% 0.329 30.77% 0.332 32.05% 0.187 17.4 89.3 89 Luis Robert 35.50% 0.531 63.22% 0.269 10.35% 1.287 -1.5 90.9 88 36.33% 0.372 50.56% 0.315 20.22% 0.344 6.4 89.6 88.5 28.16% 0.306 20.29% 0.406 37.68% 0.306 28.6 86.1 88.8 Eloy Jimenez 34.62% 0.541 50% 0.197 27.78% 1.239 8.8 97.2 88.7 48.10% 0.298 64% 0.276 16% 0.221 -1.4 91.4 88.2 17.31% 0.098 44.44% 0 44.44% 0 13.3 89.8 92.1 Tim Anderson 30.13% 0.251 77.78% 0.158 4.17% 0 -7.3 86.3 87.2 38.91% 0.355 60.22% 0.205 16.13% 0.359 -0.1 89.5 88.3 30.96% 0.501 27.03% 0.587 32.43% 0.381 17.6 88.7 88.6 A.J. Pollock 44.40% 0.342 56.04% 0.069 10.99% 0.708 1.9 89.4 87.2 32.68% 0.283 44.78% 0.295 26.86% 0.049 13.4 89 88.4 22.93% 0.302 10.64% 0.354 38.30% 0.304 36.6 85.2 89.6 I'm sure if you've read this forum a lot, you've seen a handful of posters constantly complaining that the White Sox don't pull the ball in the air enough. The reason for that is because on average, pulled fly balls get you a .876 wOBA. That's pretty much as good as hitting a line drive. Hitting the ball up the middle and to the opposite field give you far worse results than pulling the ball, as seen by the .317 and .324 wOBA when hitting the ball to center and the opposite field. There is one caveat to pulling the ball though: you'll hit a lot of grounders since you'll probably roll over on pitches more often with that approach, as seen by the near 55% ground ball percentage when pulling the ball. This is far higher than a batted ball in any other direction. Pull-heavy teams might tend to be less consistent offensively, but when they do hit their share of fly balls in the air, they're heavily rewarded. The teams that tend to pull the ball more tend to hit more home runs. The White Sox, in all their infinite wisdom, have gone away from the league trend and are 24th in the league in home runs and 27th in ISO despite having multiple guys in the lineup with massive raw power. They do however, lead the league in singles. When you look at the way the Sox hit, a couple of things really stand out. They don't pull the ball as much and when they do, the results kind of aren't there with the team as a whole. They pull the ball on the ground more than the league and hit way less fly balls than the league. so even though the league is having success pulling the ball, the Sox are not. They are better than league average when hitting to the opposite field and to center. So you might be able to say that the middle-out approach the organization teaches is working. Especially when the Sox get a gaudy .464 wOBA on ground balls to the opposite field. The only problem with it is that ground balls to the opposite field usually only get you singles. And the Sox as a whole don't have enough consistent hitters to link singles together to score runs. Which is why you often see the team have 6-8 hits and have like 1 or 2 runs. It sure seems like the Sox and Menechino thought they had found some kind of market inefficiency by hitting the ball to the opposite field, but in reality, they've just managed to get a bunch of hits while not scoring enough runs. You'd also think this middle-out approach would help in situations where the bases are loaded, but that obviously hasn't been the case this year. In general, the team is doing what the Sox and Menechino are preaching in terms of hitting philosophy, but the results simply are not there because the approach only works if you have a lineup full of consistent hitters. That's something that the Sox simply do not have at this point. That being said, it doesn't have to be that way. The Sox don't have the same type of hitter all across the lineup. This middle-out hitting approach benefits some guys while it's seriously hurting others who could be helping this team score a lot more runs. One guy who benefits from the middle-out approach is Tim Anderson. As you might have guessed, he is a monster when he hits the ball the other way. And he hits the ball the other way a lot more than just about everyone on the team. However, his hitting approach basically makes him useless when he pulls the ball. He puts it on the ground a staggering 78% of the time when he pulls and he doesn't have a hit yet on a pulled fly ball this year because he's only pulled the ball in the air 4 times all year. You read that right, 4 times. Sometimes you have to wonder why teams even bother playing a LFer when he's up. The funniest part is that a decent amount of those pulled grounders are probably when the Sox had the bases loaded. TA's numbers this year aren't bad, but something still makes me think that his swing/approach are kind of broken at the moment. On the opposite end, we have AJ Pollock, who pulls the ball a lot. But his timing is so bad that he just ends up rolling over quite a bit. That's why he has a .069 wOBA on pulled grounders. Nobody really hits well on them, but .069 is something else. Then we get to the 3 guys who I think this middle-out approach is really hurting. When Luis Robert, Andrew Vaughn, and Eloy Jimenez pull the ball, they get results. When your wOBA is over 1.000 when you pull the ball in the air, you should really think about doing it more. What's worse is that for guys like Vaughn, hitting to the opposite field isn't really working. He hits opposite field more than Tim Anderson, but only has a .332 wOBA to show for it. Luis Robert's numbers look ok when he does go opposite field, but he's also popped the ball up a ton when going that way (14 times) and it looks like he's making contact for the sake of making contact. Even in advantaged counts. So he ends up looking like a slap hitter when he looks like Mike Trout when he pulls the ball. Eloy has always had good opposite field power, but that was before MLB decided to deaden the balls even more. In a small sample this year, he has yet to get a hit on an opposite field fly ball. The majority of his power has come when he has pulled the ball. One thing to look at is the pitch velocity that these opposite field hits occur on. Outside of Eloy (small sample), all these guys are hitting pitches slower than the ML average to the opposite field. That tells me that this isn't a timing issue or that they can't pull high velocity. It just tells me that they're doing this on purpose. And if you really think about it, it doesn't make a ton of sense. Why would you sell out the power on the team for some extra singles when the league is doing the opposite and having success? It almost feels like the Sox want to be different for the sake of being different. The problem is that the approach is clearly not working. They're getting out-homered at home and even when they had a mostly healthy team in the playoffs last year, they ended up putting weak balls in play just to make contact. They probably aren't going to make a change at hitting coach this year, but I hope they do something about this in the off-season. As is, they're probably ruining some of these young hitters' careers by having them do something that isn't actually productive. TLDR: Fire Menechino

Vaughn, Montgomery, Colas, Vera > 2 years of Soto

More of our players need to play with ouchies.

Cool. It's a broken roster and Eloy has to actually play at some point.

Lamberts first slider might be the best pitch I've ever seen him throw

Montgomery and Colas struggled today, people will want them gone now

Very encouraging to see Kopech find his good slider the last 2 innings

Foul ball and two of the guys have to run hard. Surprised both aren’t hurt.

Not to pull a caulfield, but man, every Orioles game is exciting

Lol

Sox have to be the slowest team in baseball.

Yaz trying to run hard but his legs just don't move fast enough hahaha

The swing & chase rates against it are basically identical to last season, which makes me think it's not a tipping issue. The velocity is up, but his swinging strike rate with it is 7.8% which is as bad as you'll ever see for a slider. https://www.fangraphs.com/players/michael-kopech/17282/pitch-type-splits?position=P&data=pi&pitchtype=SL

Twins down 4-1 to the Brew Crew early

They scare the hell out of me...you're not alone.

I don't want the front office to touch anything.

The Yankees want to trade Gallo because he is an under performing OFer so the will trade Gallo for Pollock who is an under performiong OFer AND has a player option for $10 million next year. This is not happening.

It only costs money, and makes a lot of sense, which is exactly why the White Sox won't do it.

I still like the give up nothing for Conforto angle.

Kinda funny on his latest video, Zack Hample complained about Gavin’s bp hitting. They showed him hit once in the cage, and no shock, he popped it up

Gavin Sheets should never play RF ever again. Sheets had the opportunity at the beginning of the year due to a respectable 2021. However, he has only looked worse. Does not belong in the big leagues.

Let him put together a package of our spare worthless parts and then be dumbfounded when the organization actually has to give up something of value to acquire an asset. Rinse, repeat.

I wouldn’t trade Colas or Vera straight up for Happ

I assume you're talking about this one: The Chicago White Sox acquire OF Ian Happ from the Chicago Cubs for P Jared Kelley, OF Oscar Colas, and P Norge Vera Yea that one sucks !

If that is the price for a mediocre player, the Sox better sit on the sidelines during this lost season.

Vomit ?

Want to see the worst trade proposal ever written? https://blogs.fangraphs.com/lets-make-some-deadline-trades/

Hahn's definition of growing a pair is to find the best reliever available and overpay.

I would like to see Pollock LF Engel cf Vaughn rf Eloy dh In these 2 games

I predict a few minor moves that will improve the team, but nothing spectacular. For example: Andrew Chafin Jose Quintana Tyler Naquin We'll hear that the Sox had discussions with Washington for Soto, but nothing serious developed from it. Maybe one surprise acquisition in Joey Gallo.

The Sox simply cannot go into next season with Eloy, Vaughn, and Abreu all on the roster. Someone has to go. Then you have to figure out what to do with the other 3 DHs: Grandal, Sheets, Burger. In my opinion, ship out Burger and Sheets for whatever you can get in return. Let Grandal remain at catcher while playing a lot of games at 1st, DH, and bench. Roster needs a complete shakeup to add more defense and flexibility. Roster malpractice from Hahn if they bring these guys back.

Good point. The wrist issue no doubt sapped some power for awhile. Now that he's more fully recovered and also apparently made a swing adjustment, his savagery is on full display.

This would have been the perfect week to rest Eloy, have him DH, PH. Oakland and Colorado do not have easy outfields.

I'd rather have Yolmer than Garcia on this team. That's the level Garcia has driven me towards.

BA org rankings of the teams in the running: Which three teams do you view as the favorites to trade for Soto? Padres 8 (21st in BA) Dodgers 7 (7th) Cardinals 3 (18th) Mariners 3 (1st) Mets 3 (16th) Rays 3 (2nd) Yankees 3 (11th) Giants 2 (17th) Blue Jays (19th) Brewers (25th) Cubs (15th) Rangers (9th) Red Sox (11th) Has nothing to do with farm rankings and everything to do with which orgs aren't run by cowards.