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Blocking non-elite prospects is not a bad thing. Let Sosa force their hand by raking in Charlotte for a few months. This move is fine.

Anyone who is upset with this move is just mad at the world and will never be happy. There is no downside to this. He is an above average glove and has some pop in his bat and can also play short. Also a good clubhouse guy.

Never going to happen, but wish they would just eat the $ and cut Luery. HE’S the 1 that is the clog. Would be nice to have Elvis and Romy both on the roster with Sosa waiting at AAA. Luery is really just in the way and doesn’t contribute anything

So much for all the fluff stories this past week about how "great" Romy looks. ?

Oh it's real, and it's spectacular.

Going off the past two years roster construction/injured list usage leads me to believe they don’t know what the f*** they’re doing.

C'mon now who is he blocking ? Romy, the guy who had one good season a couple of years ago in the minors but has been hyped up this spring ? Great if he's so good let him prove it in the minors. Sosa ? Again let him prove it in the minors. He only just turned 23 . He raked in Birmingham and has a history of being slow to adjust to the next level. He got almost as many PA in Charlotte as in did in Birmingham but his OPS was over.100 less in Charlotte. Anyone else is below Romy and Sosa in the pecking order. It's one year for heavens sake and $3M. It's not like the Sox are going to stand in the way of some superstar minor leaguer who needs to come up right away just so Andrus can play every single game of the season. We should have a good idea of how good this team is by the All STar break. If they suck, great, bring up the few young guys that might need to see MLB pitching and start the adjustment process. He went 11 for 11 in stolen bases last year and seems like a guy who knows how to take advantage of the new pickoff rules in the right situations. He's a heady guy and has a lot to offer.

"Seemed like he hustled and tried and hit OK." Send to Brooks Boyer and the White Sox marketing team for their 2023 tagline.

We WISH we were only committed to just $3M for Leury, which again reinforces how much of a steal this is at just $3M. I wouldn't have loved bringing back Andrus for the $10M or so I honestly thought he would have gotten with a starting SS gig, but $3M to be our 2B with his secondary benefit being a legitimate backup plan for TA? This is great.

The Sox cannot afford to play Sheets in the OF. The OF was slow and couldn't throw anyone out. Colas alone had 11 assists in the minors last year and 7 in Birmingham in only 32 games in RF ! With the shift gone a lot more hits are going to get through to RF and you need Colas out there with his strong and accurate arm. Last year teams ran wild on the Sox OF especially the Guardians.

I'm fine with it. Whatever gets Luery to play less isn't a bad thing.

It's better than the $5.5 million they paid Harrison last year.

If I had to have a beer with one person from this message board, you would easily be my last choice. You’re such a loser.

Nothing says white sox like signing a bad player to play out of position

The better defensive SS is at 2B. Only in this organization.

just because he's useless at multiple positions doesn't make him useful.

I mean if he can get him to be pre 22 Leury, he has a use on the roster. Who knows if that is possible or not, but it is nice to hear he isn't being given the job, even if he probably is.

I’ve never heard of a solid defensive SS not being good at 2B. Most solid shortstops can play pretty much anywhere. And if Andrus struggles at the plate, Romy will get a shot, which is right where we would have been without this signing. Also, we have a backup plan for SS now in case TA gets hurt. I really don’t see any reason to not like this move, unless you think he will struggle and continue to be in the lineup all year.

Desperate for ticket sales is my guess…but you know what could solve that….actually opening up the check book on a real superstar

SoxTalk: The Sox really need to add someone for 2B. Just someone so we don't have to rely on Romy or Sosa right away. Hell, even Harrison would have been a good option. *Sox sign a veteran middle infielder on a good deal* SoxTalk: Not like that! God this team sucks.

He's not blocking anyone. Neither Romy nor Sosa are ready to be everyday starters. This acquisition allows them to be eased in. You could argue this does them a service by allowing them to further develop without the pressure of performing at a high level immediately. And good clubhouse guy is generally someone with good character who plays the game hard/smart. This signing is a good thing. It's okay to have good things sometimes.

What else should they have spent that $3M on during Spring Training? Or should they have not spent anymore at all? Also you said he's going to be a below average hitter out of the #9 hole..... The average #9 hitter last season hit .226 with a 81 wRC+. Andrus only one time in his career (29 games in 2020) ever hit below .226, and is a career .270 hitter with career 86 wRC+. For a #9 hitter, he will be just fine, and that is ignoring all the positives he brings on the bases, on defense, and in the clubhouse. This isn't an exciting move, but it's a pretty easily a positive one.

Putting Liam on the 60 until he wraps up his treatments seems like the least they could do for him. Let him return at his own speed, if they make him take more time so what? His health needs to be the priority over baseball.

Oh you just looked at Kelenic's big league numbers tonight?

Also, having a 2B with SS caliber range is more important than ever

At the very least he should be a plus defender, just don't count on the fluke offense

You've probably heard or seen some of the trailers for this over the past year or so. Now the release dates have been announced for the three part documentary "Last Comiskey" profiling the "Doin' the Little Things" team that won 94 games shocking the baseball world and the final year of Comiskey Park in 1990. Parts will be released on You Tube starting on March 2, with the other parts to follow on March 9 and 16. Many of the players and front office agreed to be interviewed for the documentary as well as fans, media members and Nancy Faust (who provided the music!) Matt Flesch and his people worked for over two years on this which started as a project during COVID isolation. I provided a lot of the highlight video from out of my library. Fans also provided still photos and home movies. Looking forward to watching this...from what little I've seen Matt and his people did a very professional job.

Despite what you think about Leury vs. Andrus these are the facts. Last year in 1 season Andrus had more fWar than Leury has had in the last 4 seasons combined 3.5 to 2.9. However fluky you think it is , it happened. It might not be likely to happen again but a 2.0 fWar would be the 1st time that's happened at 2nd base for the Sox in a very long time., I think someone said since Iguchi. One player never makes or breaks a team. Ohtani and Trout can't push the Angels into the playoffs. Only a full team playing good baseball together can do that. Good defense, smart baseball and good base running . These are fundamental things that need to be done by all players. These things elevate a mediocre player into a good player. I am not against playing young players. I might be the guy highest on Colas on the whole board. In his case they really need his arm in RF and there's no one else who can give them that . I also believe in his bat. He has a much better chance of succeeding than the overhyped Romy or the not yet ready for prime time Sosa. Nothing suggests Romy is anything special either but I hope they both kill it in ST & AAA and make life hard on the decision makers. Andrus will be gone soon enough and the Sox have more than just Sosa knocking on the door in the infield with Ramos and Rodriguez. Youth will be served eventually on the Sox infield.

He has a use on the roster, just not the one that has been enacted for the last 6 years.

If nothing else Grifol seems more willing to push back against what I'd consider FO driven narratives -- at least in public. Wonder if come July the team is 40-48 and he starts calling out the guy that built his roster. That would be fun.

Based on populations there are dozens more who are and just afraid to say it out loud. It would be nice if people who are straight didn't cause so many problems for those who weren't so they didn't have to "deal" with it either, but that isn't the case.

Well, a handful of young White Sox infielders just learned once and for all how much your manager’s public vote of confidence is worth. Hopefully Andrus really did discover another gear of some kind, because he projects to be no better than the in house options, and the cost of the acquisition isn’t the $3m — it’s the lack of development/evaluation the Sox are paying in opportunity cost. If nothing else, the Sox now know they’re on track be in exactly the same boat next year. I know, I know, I’m too negative. Complain about everything blah blah. But look, mathematically, Andrus 2022 looks like the most obvious dead cat bounce anyone has ever seen. Literally no one was buying it, there is no defensible objective argument whatsoever that he is likely to approach what he did last year. The in-house options aren’t good, but it isn’t clear at all that this even qualifies as an upgrade to them. This isn’t a big loss in a vaccuum, but it continues the Sox trend of paying a steeper and more diverse price than any other franchise to make marginal upgrades. No team more consistently robs peter to pay Paul.

Disagree. Tony La Russa is gone

Yeah, certainly some hyperbole there. Just seems like the unhappy posters are the loudest.

it's possible the first people were also the people happy about this?

The Sox haven't announced the signing yet, so he has not been "declared the 2B." I think Passan and Nightengale mentioned that the Sox signed him to play 2B, but that's just reading the situation, not some sort of declaration that he is going to be the undisputed starter. Sosa has more upside, but he's 23 and has like 2 months in AAA. It's not a crime for him to go back there and make sure his one good professional season wasn't a fluke. Romy I don't think has any more upside than Andrus (and has a much lower floor), but I still think he makes the team.

For those who didn’t look at this, Elvis Andrus’s 2022 White Sox stint was the flukiest thing I’ve seen in stats recently. When he joined the White Sox, his exit velocity went down, his ground ball rate went up, his strikeout rate didn’t change, his walk rate dropped dramatically, his launch angle went down, but suddenly his home run rate went up to 20% of his fly balls, which would have been among the top HR hitters in baseball and which is totally unsustainable for a guy with a 6.7% career mark on that. This was statistical payback for Cesar Hernandez, who they acquired after he had a huge HR/FB rate and they were astonished that it went back to normal when he came to the Sox. If the mechanical fix helped him hit more weak ground balls, then it was almost successful except for a few fly balls that went over the fence. Giving a guy a starting job after a fluke HR/FB season is a Hahn move to the letter. It’s why they acquired Hernandez. It’s exactly what they did with Kimbrel. Can’t ever look past the first row on the MLB.com stats, that’s nerd territory. If anyone wants to bet me that he will have 500 plate appearances and a HR/FB rate over 15% this year, let me know what the terms are. That’d be a big drop from last years Sox performance. Go for it.

In reality it is probably the best option at 2B that was available for Jerry's cheap budget. If he can do anything similar to what he did last year he will be a great 8-9 hitter in this lineup

Apologies for posting this again in the same thread, but if you want to use wRC+ to evaluate a 9-Hole hitter's value, then you either missed this or chose to ignore it. Player A is Andrus. Player B is Leury Legend. Your eyes aren't deceiving you. Garcia has been the better, more productive player since 2017 using specifically that metric. It also shows that Andrus is actually below average in that department. If he was that highly sought after, he wouldn't have still been looking for a job at this point in the year. Even the Red Sox chose Yu Chang for $800K over Andrus with Story going down with injury. This isn't a case that Garcia should be starter, just proving that Andrus isn't any better than what currently is on the team (unless you truly value his potential clubhouse leadership at $3M). I liked Andrus when he was picked up last year, and he was a fun player to root for during a s%*# season, but people need to take off the rose colored glasses that those 181 AB's should not be the expectation for a 34 yr old whose about to learn how to play 2B for the first time. There's $5.5M tied into Garcia (this year) and now $3M in addition with Andrus - both of whom are essentially the same player with the bat. Imagine if they took that $8.5 and combined it with Clevinger's salary and what they may have been able to add to the team. It's just another classic Sox misuse of limited funds. FWIW, I believe some combination of Romy and Sosa could have match both of these player levels of production for this season. They both have far more potential than some sort of Garcia/Andrus combo.

Your 2023 Chicago White Sox....It is what it is.

This is the dumbest take I've ever seen on this site. Literally your franchise SS vs a 3 mil economy deal. Are you personally gonna ask Tim to move to 2nd?

No one hates the Sox more than Sox fans. I will stand by Andrus while sending Leury on a Space X moonrocket.

One thing I will say, is that I still hope they give Romy a decent shake at winning the job. He’s most likely just a guy, but you’ll never know if you don’t give him regular reps. But you’ll never see me complain about depth, especially depth as professional as Elvis with a great glove.

You don't move Tim Anderson for someone who may only be here 2 months.

The rest of the league seems unimpressed. Im just glad Leury is kept at arm’s length

Aww. I was dying to go out for a drink with a creepy fucking weirdo on a message board and you were top on my list. Too bad.

Would you be buying??

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At only $3M this is an absolute steal. The guy was literally our best position player during the time he was in our team. He put up a 2.0 fWAR in only 43 games, which is absurd. Even if he can just do that same production spread out over a full season, it will be the first White Sox 2B to reach 2 WAR since Iguchi in 2005.