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James Fegan's article over on the Athletic with his first take on the roster led to a lot of comments wailing about the Sox' inability to fill the RF and 2B slots with above average major leaguers. That's not the Sox' main problem. Here's the problem. This list is not any ranked order. 1. Tim Anderson, 79 games, .686 OPS against RHP 2. Yasmani Grandal, 99 games, 64 OPS+ 3. Luis Robert, 98 games, .702 OPS against RHP 4. Yoan Moncada, 104 games, 76 OPS+ 5. Eloy Jimenez, 84 games. 6. Lucas Giolito, 4.90 ERA over 161.2 innings. 82 ERA+ 7. Michael Kopech, 119.1 innings. 8. Lance Lynn, 121.2 innings, 99 ERA+ 9. No more Jose Abreu, who played 157 games at 133 OPS+ The core of the White Sox cannot stay healthy, and even when they are in the game, do not produce at superior levels. Only Eloy Jimenez produced an OPS+ above 110. Meanwhile, the starting staff had Dylan Cease and Johnny Cueto pitching when called upon at superior levels. Kopech didn't get to 120 innings, and Lance Lynn and Lucas Giolito were sub par starters. They are also a bad fielding club, though taking Vaughn and Sheets and Jimenez out of the outfield should help. For the Sox to contend for anything, these 8 players all need to stay healthy and produce at superior levels. If they do, it won't really matter who plays 2b and RF, because they can carry a couple of weaker spots in the lineup. If they don't, it won't really matter who plays 2b and RF, because those positions cannot makeup for failures from the core of the team.

Good front offices never stop finding ways to improve, add depth, and insulate against unexpected poor health and underperformance. Shrugging your shoulders and saying “Well they just didn’t play like they should have,” or, “well if they just would have stayed healthy” is indicative of a loser’s mentality. You’re either doing everything you can to win, or you’re just not.

The problem is that outside of Cease none of the "core" guys are elite at anything. Moncada is nowhere close to the "young Robinson Cano" that Sox nation was promised he would be 6 years ago. Luis Robert is nowhere close to the "latin Mike Trout" that some hyperbolic people said he would be. Eloy has shown some flashes at the damage he can do with the bat but he is also a clumsy tin man that is higly unlikely to ever put up a 5 WAR season.

A healthy org could work to fix what is wrong with the regulars *and* fill both 2B and RF with competent major leaguers. It doesn't have to be either or. It shouldn't be a tall task to fill the two gigantic holes in the lineup while also addressing the major ills of last season.

Really don't understand the lack of aggressiveness in bringing in guys on milb with some upside for the Charlotte rotation. Guys like Brailyn Marquez and Touki Toussaint signed for minor league deals and would likely easily be some of our best SP depth after the Chicago rotation. Connor Seabold was DFA'd and traded for peanuts to Rox, etc. Hope Hahn still plans to add there, not only for Sox depth, but also so Charlotte has some semblance of a pitching staff unlike last season, so they aren't having to do bullpen games a couple times a week.

I'm not sure getting rid of his short arm action is the right thing to do. It was the thing that made him effective because the release point made it hard to pick up the ball out of his hand. He also threw harder with the short arm action vs. his long arm action prior. I'm sure there's people way more knowledgeable than me advising him, but Lucas decided to bulk up last off-season and it didn't really help him.

You in mid-season form and it's not even February. He's wearing sneakers throwing off a mat lol.

Article in The Athletic (pay): https://theathletic.com/4089120/2023/01/14/white-sox-san-mondry-cohen-arbitration-deals/ Sox hire former Washington assistant GM Sam Mondry-Cohen. He spent the past year as a consultant for the Phillies. He's a senior fellow for Wharton’s sports analytics and business initiative at Penn. At Washington 2009-2021, he created their research and development dept and developed their internal stat data base. His "experience with the Nationals is rooted in trying to distill analytical information into actionable takeaways for players on the field" To me, what shows this is really legit is that he will be traveling with the team all season. Good article; worth the read if you have access.

It's fun watching other teams trying to improve.

Not only has he trended the wrong way and is coming off a particularly bad season...he also has a domestic violence incident in his background and I wonder if there are teams remembering that given how the response to that behavior has evolved since 2016.

Gio couldn't cheat last year. Maybe he can be more sneaky this year.

...you do realize that minor league contracts are basically zero risk, right? I've never understood the gripe with minor league signings / spring training NRI's. Super low risk. Even this org isn't stupid enough to sign non-prospects to block the development of actual prospects.

OK, now this is how you come into a signing press conference.

You aren't wrong but what do you want people to discuss? Once it was clear that the front office wasn't tearing this down, it goes without saying that the season rests on the core playing more and improving. You want everyone here (and our beat writers) to just log on everyday and post that we hope Robert stays healthy and takes a step forward? No, people are going to talk about the stuff the front office can do to improve the club.

In general the Sox have made some good hires. I don’t love the whole offseason but from a hiring perspective I like it. Player acquisition - they are relying too much on reversion from the mean and need to deploy more resources on the club.

Based on the grip and the radar gun total it looked to me like he was throwing a circle change-up.

Seems good if it has him touching 753 mph

Based on the actions of the FO and ownership they were never serious. What Jerry/KW/Hahn have done from 2017-present is just like what the Hawks did in the mid to late 90s. They have pissed off the fanbase to the nth degree. When they trade players next winter the fans will hold a similar grudge that the Hawks fans did to Bill Wirtz. Sox fans are not coming back to the park until there is new ownership. It's already started.

When they’re younger than Tex, it makes me pause.

This is why I’ve been so frustrated this off-season. I think any diehard Sox fan realizes Tony (& Menechino) fucked this team over immensely and that we should see unprecedented improvement from some of our core guys. That being said, this has been a team with holes & lacking depth for many years and Hahn continues to ignore obvious areas for enhancement. Even with organic improvement and better health, we are still likely behind the AL’s best teams. When the rebuild started, I honestly thought we’d see some of that old school KW killer instinct from Rick to push us over the top, but he’s been incredibly passive overall. Part of that is due to his failures building a sustainable farm system, but he could have easily add some depth this offseason without tapping into his two or three top 100 prospects. Just frustrating to see our competitive window coming to an end without the organization pushing hard for a championship.

I'm disappointed he wasn't on horseback.

Yes. And it was still blatantly obvious that Houston was on another planet. In 2021 the players all had good years and even Eloy/Robert were productive after their injuries. They still got pantsed by the Astros and it wasn't particularly close. As many players put it all together that year as you could possibly expect and they still failed. 2021 was the peak for this group and they couldn't win a round in the playoffs. If it wasn't obvious there was no window in June, then it damn sure was in October. I said it last winter, there was no realistic path to contention for the Sox without Jerry pulling a Cohen. And there is more of a chance of me both winning the powerball and getting struck by lightning on the way to turn in the ticket.

Isn't June of 2021 when the team was 43-25 (the best record in baseball) and all the (healthy) core players were having good to great seasons?

This has been obvious since June of 2021. The core isn't good enough. All 2022 and 2023 are doing is wasting time and team control and delaying the inevitable. They missed on the players. Not enough high end talent. It happens, time to tear it down and try again. I don't think these guys are ever going both stay healthy and put it together for a whole season. It will always be some combination of injuries and underperformance. I hope they're mediocre enough this year that they pull the band aid off in July. There was never any window.

Problem with that strategy is that clearing the decks and trying to reload is an absolute mess next year. Worse than this year. Next year they have several guys with still increasing contracts (Moncada, Anderson, Eloy, Robert), they cost more for the same amount. Vaughn is arb-1, Kopech and Cease are Arb-2, so just holding those guys and treading water costs what, $20 million, $30 million more? On top of that, they offloaded money from Clevinger and Benintendi into next year and the following years. They do get out of some deals that have stank this year...Kelly, Grandal are done. But...they basically lose the majority of a pitching staff! Giolito, Clevinger, Lynn are all free agents - Lynn does have an option, but it's an expensive one ($18 million). If they pick up the option on Lynn, they are probably looking at a payroll going into free agency of $160+ million - exactly where they were this year! Except now they've lost Lopez from the bullpen, Clevinger and Giolito at minimum from the rotation. This year they went into free agency with 4 starters plus Martin, next year they're looking at 3 starters plus Martin, maybe even 2 starters plus Martin if Lynn isn't worth picking up. Imagine having $35 million to spend and needing 3 starters and a key setup man, when setup men like Lopez are getting $10 million a year and good starters are getting $25 million a year? Imagine having $15 million to spend again and having to find 2 starters and having lost your best setup man, plus a bench on top of that? It becomes difficult to get around having to "Trade Anderson for savings and play the rookie" in almost any version of this I see, especially now that it will be harder to justify moving Hendriks for savings.

It is when the organization has a self-imposed payroll limit and is more concerned with fiscal responsibility than winning.

Pretty good twitter thread from Jordan Lazowski from Soxon35th breaking this down

Based on prior player development I am not certain I can blame him.

The 2023 is calculus is simply. Eloy, TA and Robert play 140+ games and Cease, Lynn and Gio makes 25+ starts, White Sox win division. Probably handily. Minor bouncebacks from Moncada and Grandal would also be welcomed. But if Eloy, TA and Robert miss large chunks of 2023, its going to be a dog fight to stay in the race.

Sox added Mike Morin on a MiLB deal. He hasn’t pitched at all since 2020. I’ll never get why they bring in such random ass arms each year over someone whose actually has potential.

100%. Our problem largest problem is health

wow. That seems like a no brainer.

Saw that Pillar signed with the Braves on a minor league deal. Would have been a solid option and probably a favorite for the 4th OF role if he were here.

He also only made the short arm super effective with the ridiculously spinny changeup though. Now that he can’t do that any more, it seems reasonable to try to adapt. But…he has never been effective against big leaguers without the short arm, so for the season who knows what this will bring.

Fangraphs has Ramos as low-end top 100 type and my guess is he’s not too far off from making the BA list either.

I'll take 5 Alex Fernandez's and spend the leftover $5 on a right fielder.

Short arm action vs long arm action means more with arm climb at foot strike. As long as his arm is in the correct place at foot strike the rest doesn’t matter. The arm spiral and layback are usually the same. Short arm is used a lot to simplify moving parts. The more worrying thing is this guy keeps changing his mechanics every year or so.

I think you’re my spirit animal.

After watching the movie Major League last night, I could not agree with you more. That's perfect.

Tony said: "Again, no one asked you to add the comment that you "have not been a big baseball fan of Liam" and YOU decided to post that in a thread about him being diagnosed with cancer." I stand by my comments which, in context, were appropriate.

Hernandez is rumored to be 500k, so that brings the total down to that 2.4M area. And yes there are several teams that have multiple DSL clubs. Assuming I counted correctly, the Sox are one of 11 teams to only have one DSL team. I believe it to be incredibly dumb and short-sighted given the potential return they could get from being able to roster/play more talent.

"Hey what is the deal with making someone spend $15? Is this the MLBPA trying to force a minimum salary floor?? "You cannot spend $15 when you only have a quarter, sorry."

unfortunately cesar hernandez you are out based on name association. edit: jeremy pena you are very much in.

Apologies - this was an issue with our server (not the server company) but a capacity issue. It hit and basically ran out of space so just started shutting down. It started happening last week intermitently but wasn't aware of the broader issue. Unfortunately - I was traveling in remote parts starting Friday so was NOT aware and when I became aware, well, I wasn't about to cut a rural vacation short for Soxtalk (sorry guys). But yesterday I dug my car out and first thing I did when I get home was chat through and identify the issue, so everything should be back and working well and I don't expect the issue that persisted the past week to pop back up. So we should be back for good.

If you went with one heuristic to judge a bunch of 16 year olds playing baseball, probably their bloodlines would be tops. Despite that, I do get nervous paddy is graduating to a stage of just rewarding friends and former players kids that aren't at the echelon of bidding wars. Feels like he runs things a lot like ken williams. Likes being hands on in the scouting, but maybe runs a smaller network because of it (like how we clearly don't even bother with Asia). He's a great talent scout so we end up with some huge hits, but smaller volume, and the lack of delegation is maybe why we are so often left with smaller classes? Just some theories on why things look like this.

So they're gonna start taking Cease out in the 5th inning while he's throwing a no-no. Yeaaaaaaaaaaaa........

Analytics should impact both player acquisition as well as in-game strategy. One of our major gripes as a fan base last year was the horrible decision making by the coaching staff. Analytics hires like this, to me, show that we’re going to change that.

I love this move. Huge step in the right direction on how they should be getting these players game day ready and putting them in the best position to have success and reach their potential.

I’m sure this person is very smart and does a his job very well, but if you don’t have the talent on the field, I can’t see how this can help us. There are at least 6 to 7 American League teams with better talent than what we have. We had a chance this off season to help this team close that talent gap, we did very little. The organization told us for years they would step up when the time came, that was a total lie. Hiring a smart analytical person is NOT going to cut it for me!!

Yep, pretty much all this. Doesn't one of the shitty Minnesota announcers use "he gawn" now? That's a fucking travesty. Love or hate Hawk, but he gawn, put it on the board, etc, should still be in use by the Sox. I get someone wanting to do their own thing, but ffs, at this point Jason's awful jingle just ain't it. Time to honor Hawk while he can still enjoy it.