MackowiakYakYak

You change what you can change? I don’t know everything about Gordon’s career but don’t you want players that try to max out whatever potential they have? edit: All the specifics beyond the slash lines. How hard was he working, was he a good teammate, etc.

Welp, the championship window was nice. I’ll always remember those amazing moments in the regular season.

Wasn’t that the issue with Collins as well?

Romy yes, Colas no. Colas is at the point in his career where a good number of teams would have him as a 4th outfielder to let him see more of the highest level of pitching. He’s closer to being a AAA starter than a league-average MLB starter, but he’s not a mistake to have on a 26-man roster.

The question is what would be the win conditions for the current construction of the Sox to beat team X in the playoffs and how realistic is it for that condition to happen. The Sox currently have the possibility of elite pitching, but how likely is it for at least 3 starters to be healthy and firing on all cylinders? We don’t have a very healthy staff and there’s a good deal of inconsistency with some of the starters. As far bats and fielding, we don’t really have game changing bats and a good fielding series would be one where they don’t give the other team extra runs. We can’t expect better than average outcomes from our fielders.

That Hawk quote is great and you summed up my thoughts pretty well. Real fans know the strike zone doesn't exist and its just a trick the pitcher and catcher play on the umpire.

I hate the Yankees as much as any American lacking brain damage but I've got complete and total respect for Judge. He earned it and I won't take what I'm feeling out on him or Yankees fans. Sure they have everything a fanbase could ask for but I'd be having a bad day if someone told me Timmy's Field of Dreams home run was off a ball juiced just for him. The situation sucks for everyone. I am tired of capitalists taking obscene amounts of money at the expense of our dignities. Sure we are White Sox fans and have no dignity to begin with but it feels especially pathetic to be a baseball romantic anymore. The sport has likely never been what I imagined it to be. I can accept that. Still I feel that we lose more of baseball's aesthetics every year. Seeing the strike zone sucks. Having gambling shoved in our faces sucks (RIP sports radio). If I have to watch the pitch clock tick down behind the batter that will suck more than anything. To get to the point, Manfred juiced the Judge balls because he wanted the money. It is as simple as that. That's why they rolled the goldilocks balls out for the important games. Manfred wants to create the best product for advertisers. I can deal with change and would accept pitch clocks and robot strike zones. Those two things on their own would be manageable. Everyone's got their breaking point and to me its when the billionaires decide they want a specific player to break a record. This sucks. I'm too young to be acting this old.

Agree with everyone on moving Hendriks. Relief is the only spot where I'd prefer to have 2 war split between two players rather than having one elite reliever. Intimidating bullpens are created by having good pitchers to cover the 6th-9th, not just focusing on the 9th with occasional long saves. This team had a solid enough bullpen last year and it meant nothing because the team was out of too many games by the 5th inning. We have a solid enough stable of relievers to not turn RP into a weakness if we trade Hendriks.

That’s what Tampa Bay and the Dodgers have been doing the last few years, at least at the MLB level. Tampa has most of their top players by fWAR playing multiple positions. Granted most of that has been corner outfield or 1B as the second most played positions, but they are using 1B/LF/RF as opportunities to get better matchups for their hitters. The Dodgers have been using Lux, Taylor, and Muncy as multi-position starters which allows them to choose which matchups they want for their bench players. They aren’t forced to use a Leury to fill a specific hole in the lineup every single time. Instead they can shift those 3 around to fill a the gap and still choose the right bench player for that specific game. That’s absolutely the way to go for every prospect that doesn’t project to be an all-star at their primary. The greatest benefit would be for middle infielders where you’d want them to be comfortable at 3B and corner outfield, but I’d also want my corner outfielders to at least be comfortable in both corners as well as 1B. There is just too much benefit to flexibility even if the player would never be good defensively at the other positions.

Difference in opinion between the writer and the staff (or algorithm), which is interesting because I’m used to seeing outfielders called fringe in centerfield and they then get a 50 or 55 fielding. Any resident experts have an opinion because I’ve mostly heard that he is an above average RF that can handle occasional CF starts.

Rodon, McDowell, and Baines are the best top 5’s since 1977. They’ve only drafted that high 7 times from the ‘77 draft until now and 2 of those are Madrigal and Vaughn.

That’s a smart way to play the game. It’s much more important to have him healthy long term and it’s not as if we notice him giving away bases or outs because he “isn’t trying.” Keep the legs healthy and keep him in the lineup.

Hearing the arguments and throwing out my own, I think that this off-season was fine. Not even offering Rodon a QO is inexcusable, but most other decisions that were made were fairly reasonable. The only value the organization lost was a possible draft pick and Zack Collins. The Leury contract is most likely lost money, but Graveman and Kelly are the only other future monetary obligations the Sox brought on. So the Sox made one incredibly dumb decision, one dumb decision, and paid for multiple years of two late-inning relievers. They lost very little player capital and will be on the hook for relatively minimal future dumb contract money. I don't think there were many perfect players to chase after so that's fine for an off-season. The Sox problems come from previous failed off-seasons and we've talked through all those previous problems already. The organization doesn't have valuable prospects and we didn't land any of the previous FA whales that would've truly been game changers. This off-season became an L when we didn't sign Bryce Harper not because of anything that did or didn't happen this actual off-season.

I don't know the Sox were ever considering another high-end SP. Not even offering Rodon a QO shows they didn't even want him for a single year at ~$19m. As far as I could tell the Sox showed no intention of getting a SP they would have to pay more than a few million. Ultimately they were wrong to not consider the value of adding another high-end SP or at least qualifying Rodon to see what might happen there. Schwarber would've been awful as a RF signing. He is terrible defensively in LF and that's the spot he's played his whole career. The Sox weren't looking for another bat-only LF and they definitely didn't want one on a long-term deal. He looks like the obviously better option now because Pollock has had to play so much LF and has absolutely fallen off a cliff, but spending money on Schwarber still wouldn't have been the long-term answer. This team has excess value in 1B/LF/DH players and even though Schwarber would be more valuable than the other options he would not add enough value to the team to make him worth his contract. I don't want to be paying both Eloy and Schwarber to play terrible LF when we can put a cheaper terrible defender like Sheets or Vaughn.

Only Anderson could've been reasonably predicted to be good this season. Wacha and Perez were signed as lottery ticket 5th starters and we got our version of that by signing VV and Cueto. Cueto worked out of those two lottery tickets and that is great. If you sign Anderson then do you end up getting Cueto to sign with the team for a minor league tryout? The depth SP issue is complicated because who knows where underperforming guys want to sign to revive their careers. More Quad-A SPs should've been acquired, but getting a single gem out of your SP depth is better than expected most years.

What is everyone grading these acquisitions based on? What you would've wanted an acquisition to be for that position? The value (trade pieces or $ amount) given up for the player? The expectations of how that player should be performing? If we are grading the front office then we should look at the positions as a whole. So we should consider the cost to acquire and alternatives. Reese McGuire, although he hasn't been great, has been a solid defensive back-up catcher that only cost us a player with less value for our team. Reese McGuire shouldn't be anywhere below a C because there isn't a reasonable expectation for a cheap back-up catcher to put up 2 WAR. I'd say he's a B because he was solid as a backup and has done well when injuries require him to play most days. The other way of looking at it is how we would expect a player to perform based on their own track record. I think this is a bad approach to grading acquisitions because its really just grading performance and can be done for every player on the Sox. Harrison has averaged out to be what we expected him to be at this point. I think he should be graded slightly below his current stat line because of how terrible he was to start the year, but he's roughly been what we would expect out of age 34 Josh Harrison. I'd give him a C- if we are only looking at how we were expecting him to play. Still I don't think we should grade based on that second method so we should analyze JH based on who could've filled the 2B role and what that would've cost. Madrigal has been terrible this year so we don't have to relitigate that right now. Eduardo Escobar has produced similar value to JH. Trevor Story has been much better than JH but I don't know that I would want to be on the hook for that contract. It really seems like a cop out because JH hasn't been good, but I don't honestly believe there was a substantially better option to fill 2B this off-season. I might give him a C grade because he gives the team flexibility to get the right guy to play 2B for next season (which I'm sure they will manage to screw up).

All but a few hitters on the roster are having the worst stretch of their careers. If these players were playing only slightly below expectations then this team is in first place. The Twins are leading the division but have mostly been carried by strong offensive performances. They are a good team, but the Sox roster could be better if our players return to form. The Guardians are more well-rounded than they have been in years past, but they also do not have the two or three great starters we are used to seeing on their teams. If the White Sox are able to get what is expected out of their players then this team could very easily go on a run to win the division. 5 games over the remaining 106 games is not that many to get back.

They’ve got a roster built around sluggers. They’re great fastball hitters and a lot of the “stuff” pitchers are more or less two-pitch fastball and slider guys. Many of the hitters on their roster can more or less sit fastball and wait to punish that or a hanging slider. If Keuchel is on his game then you have to work with something outside of that “mash fastball” comfort zone. Line drive hitters can mostly adjust their approach but a lot of the Yankees power guys only have one way to operate.

The only balls that have landed for him have been these barrels. 2 of his 3 hits are a double and triple. Once his regular contact gets through the infield then his BA is going to get up to at least .250

Great among MLBers in a given year is what people typically mean. I think you’re looking for all-time great with your list.

Bryant also became a mediocre defender at 3rd before he started getting moved around. You don’t see the top tier defensive 3Bs being moved out of position all that often. You really don’t see any great defenders moved out of their main position because great defense is rare and incredibly valuable. Peak Eaton wasn’t much more valuable because he could also pass as a center fielder. You want to set up great defenders so you don’t have to move them.

“Oh man Leury is terrible cut him” ”Wow he is really heating up” ”That Leury home run was the best part of the series!” He’s paid $5.5m and consistently puts up 1 war with a 2 war peak last year. He doesn’t look like he’s slowed down or gotten worse. We know who Leury is. He’s just bad for stretches of time but he makes up for it by letting us use two roster spots on the positionless Vaughn and Sheets.

Jerry is going to be the one funding it. Giolito wouldn’t be on there because he’d probably have to negotiate with Boras.

I think it’s true he won’t be good this year but I hold out hope because he’s a low velocity, feel pitcher. I haven’t seen anyone show he’s lost velocity or the stuff on his pitches. His biggest issue last year was that he couldn’t locate anything the way he did in years prior. I wouldn’t want to say he’s cooked like Shields when he’s not a pitcher relying on pure stuff.

It depends on what we want out of him. Stone was talking about how 6 weeks of spring training really is necessary to get pitchers up to speed. If we want him to be 100% and more durable over the course of the year then we give him that full 6 weeks. I haven’t seen reports on how much preparation he had already done before signing though so his six weeks could be very soon or a full six from near opening day.