South Side Hit Men

White Sox Catcher Home Run Lead: Zavala 6 - 110 ABs Grandal 6 - 213 ABs

Vaughn is the second best player on this team. He will finish likely finish 2nd or 3rd in OPS at season end. The battle for silver .790 Burger .786 Eloy .771 Vaughn

Andrew Vaughn, driving in the runs. But let’s send him down to work on something or the other.

Zavala ties Grandal with HR #5.

Gavin Sheets should be sent down, if Eloy can’t play RF until they get a real one, just play Frazier and bring up Hamilton. Benintendi didn’t look very good on that play either.

It’s multiple long plane trips, and he’s three years younger than Tony. Nive start, Sox hitters look locked in.

Not sure if it's Pedro or Hahn's decision, perhaps they are trying to maintain a semblance of trade value. Who knows what injuries he may have at this point this season. Tim should have been 7th vs. RH Starters, perhaps also even against LH SPs at minimum the past two weeks and hope he can turn it around. He's at .417 the last 28 days, .155 the last 14 and .000 OPS the last 7. April 10th - IL (.731 OPS) Returned May 2nd May 10th (.647) May 19th (.590) Decent stretch to June 4th (up to .633) 91 point drop to .542 June 6-27

Now need to win five straight for a 5-2 road trip heading into a week at home and the ASB. A loss leads them to a season high 14 games under .500 record. Oakland was able to beat the Yankees last evening, so looks like they still have life in them. Wonder if Rick Hahn will take the 4th of July off in lieu of speaking to the media after a 3-4, 2-5 or worse road trip against two beatable teams.

My read is to consistently have your team in an actual "multi-championship competitive window", you need to make significant investments in your front office, scouting, player development, analytics and managerial / coaching staff. You also need to fully fund your international slot money, have a 40 man roster of quality players who can cover normal year to year injuries every team faces. Jerry has never been interested in any of it. He hires the cheapest inexperienced person, spends the least on all of the front office aspects noted above, and their primary successes in the free agent market have come from bargain deals like McCann, Dye, Cueto and others, and he prefers just about any solid plus player walk once they reach FA, with a few exceptions like Konerko who gave Jerry his ball.

He's been saying for decades to people in the industry that it's best to target finishing in 2nd place and dangle carrots in front of (gullible) fans. He has been operating that way for 42 years and counting. 2005 was the lone year the White Sox advanced in the playoffs, and it took several unexpected career years for it to happen.

The White Sox ERAs in the 1960s were significantly impacted by the large dimensions at Comiskey Park, and also the "modern deadball era" across MLB which ultimately lead to a lowering of the pitching mound, and the adaption by the American League of the Designated Hitter rule.

The one reason it makes sense for the White Sox to draft college players is the fact that they are not good developing players, using the NCAA to do their work instead of improving their internal player development. The problem has been they have focused on relievers and 1B/DHs, the lowest hanging fruit in terms of acquiring depth, when they should have focused on players who are solid all around players, especially up the middle defensively, unless they were a potential MVP talent like Abreu. Hahn Era Rookie of the Year Winners: Hitters High School (5): W. Myers; C. Correa; C. Seager; C. Bellinger; M. Harris II International (6): J. Abreu; R. Acuna Jr.; S. Ohtani*; Y. Alvarez; R. Arozarena; J. Rodriguez College (5): K. Bryant; A. Judge; P. Alonso; K. Lewis; J. India Pitchers High School (3): J. Fernandez; M. Fulmer; D. Williams International (1): S. Ohtani* College (1): J. deGrom

They are in a worse spot headed into the next four years than they were in 2016. Hahn signed Eaton, so gets credit for that, but also flipped anything of value inherited by Kenny. He has Robert as the only blue chip in 2023. The long term future is as bad as it has been than it has been since the depression / Charles Comiskey Death / Bridgeport post segregation panic generation of Sox fandom (1930-1950). If Hahn continues into the 2030s, the current generation will experience an even worse stretch and may ultimately force a move from Chicago post half century of Jerry Reinsdorf.

Ozzie had many years with much better players than Ricky, not sure why Ozzie thinks he is funny dunking on Ricky, but then again this guy praised Castro and had one good year in a decade here, and was among the five worst hitters in MLB history with the number at bats he had. As bad as the players have been this decade, I'm also looking forward to dinosaurs like Ozzie and Boyer and Hahn and Boston and Stone to finally be washed away with new ownership.

Eloy: .762 OPS; 9 HR, 30 RBI Andrew: .758 OPS; 12 HR, 45 RBI Never understood the Eloy love or Andrew hatred here.

And who gives a rats ass about making the playoffs beyond Jerry counting extra money (glad he got screwed out of it in 2020). It's about advancing in the playoffs (winning pre 1969). The three years the White Sox advanced in the playoffs: 1906; 1917; 2005.

Robert Junior and Zavala are the two very good / excellent defenders on the entire team. Everyone else is far below average across MLB, with Grandal, Vaughn. Burger, Anderson and Eloy in the bottom ten, and Andrus (2B), Shields and Colas just outside the bottom ten solely because they didn't play enough games. White Sox Positional Defense Runs Saved (all players): Catcher (87 Total Players): Zavala (7th); Grandal (81st). First Base (70): Vaughn (63rd). Second Base (87): Gonzalez (70th); Andrus (73rd); Sosa (81st). Third Base (82): Moncada (39th); Burger (76th). Shortstop (69): Andrus (54th); Anderson (67th). Left Field (91): Benintendi (80th). Center Field (79): Robert (5th). Right Field (87): Colas (68th); Sheets (76th); Eloy (78th). Note: Eloy is grouped with DH because that is his primary position this year. His rank reflects where he would appear if listed as RF, his lone 2023 defensive position.

Every year I come here after these projections are released, fans are incensed at how low the team overall and several individuals are ranked, a mix of believing players will reach the highest range of performance and games played projections. Baseball Prospectus sucks, Fangraphs suck, Vegas sucks, etc. No, the White Sox (and many other teams) suck. Some of these ideas are laughable. Promote Colas? He has a few dozen games in AAA and needs a lot more work there before being completely overwhelmed at the ML level. The problem is these guys (Colas, Sosa, Rodriquez) were clearly rushed to fill the pathetic depth needs. The problem is not they weren't promoted fast enough. Colas played 7 games at the AAA level. And was promoted, and failed miserably. Ditto what they have done with Vaughn, Cease, Kopech. "Jerry's chickens, have come home to roost."

Perhaps this is the parade Rick is talking about.

Rick Hahn at home, knowing he is signed through 2027. #FireRickHahn

The emphasis on the bullpen is consistent, though without the same results or quality, because Hahn going to Hahn.

Pedro doesn’t have talent to succeed here. The one area of poor judgment that you can’t fault him for because there are only 30 MLB managerial jobs is not doing what Joe Espada did and that is tell the White Sox thanks but wait for an opportunity with an actual chance to succeed. I think he is doing a good job learning what or who he can trust and do the best he can with the roster he has. Sounds like Hahn lied to him about a bunch of promises or representations of what he was stepping into and allowed to do, based on his comment to “Talk to Jerry” last week. I’d be pissed as well working for an asshat like Hahn.

Eloy is pouting because he is now an everyday DH. Eloy is an everyday DH because he can’t catch baseballs or stay healthy. Trade Eloy if he stays healthy into mid-late July.

Kim Ng is the only external person Jerry is familiar with besides Tony La Russa who he’d hand over the club to run the baseball side. But I’ll take that over the alternative: Waiting for an undetermined future year / decade for Jerry to die. Adding 1-2 years for the estate to settle and a new owner to be formally approved by MLB. Adding 1-2 years for a transition to a new FO including removal of all officers including Brooks Boyer. Adding 3-5 years to build a domestic scouting team (pro and amateur), create a analytics team, build a minor league instructional system, build a training and medical staff, hiring a major league manager and coaching staff. Acquiring 160 + players at all levels.

MLB Trade Values: Bryant + Palmquist = Negative $118.3M Moncada + Eloy = Negative $20M Rockies would need to eat Benintendi’s deal as well ($20.7M Negative) and include these minor league players to make it fair: 2B Amador $24.2M OF Fernandez $14.6M C Romo $13.1M OF Veen $12.2M RHP Vargas $7.8M SS Bernabel $5.0M That’s the value of eating really bad contract money. That’s also why the Sox won’t be getting much beyond a bag of dicks at the deadline, because Jerry will be looking for teams to eat contracts, not spend prospects. Not to mention the fact Hahn is involved, doesn’t know WTF he is doing.