WestEddy

I understand being frustrated with WAR. One felt more in control of a baseball conversation when you could look at HR's, see one guy had 33, and another had 21, and come to the conclusion that the 33 HR guy is "better" than the 21 HR guy. Easy peasy. You can't just watch a game, look at the box score, and see who contributed what. But you're playing a little Skeptical Paradox game, here, pretending that nothing can really be known. WAR isn't computed by some guy drinking beer in front of his TeeVee. Defensive statistics are computed based on zone ratings that have nothing to do with the eye test. If a fielder is standing on spot X, which is measurable, and a ball is hit to spot Y, that is 15' from the fielder, with a hang time of 7 seconds, we know a lot about the catchability of that ball in play. We know how fast a runner can run from one base to another, how fast a player can throw a ball, all of this is quantifiable, and has nothing to do with the "eye-test". Players on offense create runs. Players on defense prevent runs. Creating runs are pretty quantifiable. You hit the ball, and get to a base by the time the play's over. The same happens when measuring defense. Again, completely measurable and quantifiable from a fairly robust data set. When running the formula for Pythagorean wins, a win is worth (roughly) ten more runs scored than the opponent. I'm mixing models, here, but if Jose Abreu can create 5 more runs on offense than average, and can prevent 5 more runs on defense on average, that would be worth one win, or 1 WAR. Again, mixing models, but that's how players are evaluated against each other.

Top right, there's a search box. I've never mastered it, and get frustrated pretty quickly.

It does. But he's years away from the bigs, and he's so young, he can develop better strike zone judgement.

It's most probably a depth addition. They'll need arms in AAA, as well as dudes to toss in the major league bullpen for a week, then DFA when the better guy gets off the IL.

Here's his 2021 prospect profile: https://www.prospectslive.com/scoutingreports/jon-heasley

Fun fact - Jon and John are very different names. Jonathan has the root of Nathan, John is a universal name with equivalents in most languages (Sean, Ivan, Johan, etc.)

I'm just wondering why other teams aren't poaching presumed Blue Jay and Padre international signings. Are the Dodgers the only team confident enough to start telling their commits to look elsewhere?

Okay. Ha-ha.

Lee is a backup catcher who had negative value in 24. Quero and Teel haven't played a full season in AAA. Are you saying the White Sox should run with those three and have complete confidence they will get average ML production from them?

WAR also takes defense and baserunning into account. Watching the games, you could just see players turning routine singles into doubles on Benintendi. I don't know if they're weighted the same, but that's like taking one of Benny's doubles into the gap, and turning it into a squib single. That's why everybody talks of just parking Benny at DH, if they can't trade him. As for Yolmer, that's a guy who turns singles into outs. Force outs into double plays. That said, I don't disagree with your first take. If they're not going to spend on Alonso, Vaughn is fine. I thought an Elko/Colas platoon at 1B might have done the same thing, but if you go grab a Josh Bell, or Rowdy Tellez, you're paying the same amount.

Does anyone have an idea where Patiño would rank in the Sox top 30 at this point?

And they underperformed that by 27 wins. 17 wins would have them in the mid-60's, which would almost call for a parade.

Just for context, here's what Zips thought the Sox would do last year (2024): http://blogs.fangraphs.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/White-Sox-24.png https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2024-zips-projections-chicago-white-sox/

I thought Chris Getz was teaching players how NOT to play baseball, so he ruined every single prospect in our system. It's refreshing to hear somebody say that wasn't the case.

Preller had actual MLB action taken against him and the Padres over concealing health info. Vargas seems to be the guy (to me) that came here, and fell flat on his face because of extenuating circumstances. I like the notion of "we can't just keep a revolving door of hitting coaches" without looking at the organizational processes regarding the exchange of information between levels.

Nor does wanting "fans" to do a Q&A with Getz. Any question not punctuated with expletives and accusations of incompetence will be viewed as "softball".

And my stance is that we don't even really know that Getz was a "bad" GM. There were so many layers of failure before and after his part of the process that most of this discussion rests on people who were just mad Getz got hired in the first place.

Which is why I think all of the negative people should post their resumes for GM here. Then the rest of us could post video of us urinating ourselves laughing at "I played HS ball, and have a fantasy team. My secret for success would be 'sign all the best players', and win a lot!"

Why? Unless Getz winds up in the hospital, everybody will call it "softball questions".

It's the same general malaise that results from a long losing patch, which disappears when they start winning again.

And when addressing the "unlucky". They were so bad that veterans would run into stupid, game-ending plays. Vaughn getting called for interference on an infield fly rule during a 4-run 9th to lose. DeJong forgetting how many outs to get doubled off 1st to end a 1 run game. Jankowski grabbing Vaughn's game winning home run during a late season losing streak. I truly believe there was such profound mental fatigue from the losing, it just built on itself.

It would be surprising if none of the White Sox young starters break 2 WAR. Cannon and Davis Martin both looked like they could be shaky, but mostly solid. Thorpe, before the injury, too. Katz has his work cut out for him with that bullpen.

For some reason, in sports talk, skepticism is interpreted as smart, and enthusiasm is interpreted as dumb. People will pose as skeptical until a core of the two Montys, Smith, Schultz, Teel/Quero and others win their 2nd World Series (because the 1st will be deemed a "fluke" in skeptic parlance). As you said, Getz has overhauled or created many key departments, and processes for interaction between them. He has telegraphed a "type" of prospect he's targeting, focusing on OBP. A 60 win season will be treated as an abomination, an 81 win 2026 as underachieving, and an 86 win 2027 as a travesty of half measures. It's boring.

I think the Dodgers were not forthcoming about whatever injury/weakness/loss of strength Vargas was experiencing. I couple that with Getz just being spun around a little as a newbie doing his first TDL, and somehow wound up a player short. The team's going to be "not good", and he's still not blocking anybody, yet. This is a perfect opportunity to show off the rehabbed infrastructure by throwing a couple of coaches on the guy and turning him into a productive baseball player.