BamaDoc

I was waiting for the season to wind down and work delayed me from starting what will be several posts of where we are, 40 man, and what to do. thxfrthmmrs beat me to some of this so tip of the cap to him. The 2019 WS were bad. In many ways we were worse than out actual record. In other threads some state that many who contributed to our suckiness will be gone but they are only partially correct. In order to go forward, I think we realistically need to see where we are, identify the good and bad in order to develop a plan forward. Hopefully our front office is doing this constantly. I am using baseball reference(BR) and fan graphs(FG) data. https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/team_compare.cgi?request=1&year=2019&lg=MLB&stat=WAR According to WAR of playoff teams, we are 15-20 WAR from being a contender. You can argue some of these stats may not be the best to use but anyway..... Something good: I was surprised to see that by WAR, we had the sixth best bullpen (BR). Unfortunately we had the worst SO/W . While our GB% was second best, we were league best in lowest hard hit ball percentage. (FG) This was mentioned in a Athletic article that while most of our starters are using the high fastball approach, many of our relievers are going for grounders. Our HR rate was a little better than average so pitching down didn't kill us. Conversely for SIERRA people, we were the worst. My take away is it is not as bad as I thought. Think pitching is bad all over baseball. Could certainly improve but a lot of young options also are on the way. Bad: Our batters should never see a strike, well almost never. We walk at the lowest rate in baseball and strikeout nearly at the highest yielding the worst W/SO ratio in baseball. That includes NL teams who bat pitchers. We swing at a higher rate at balls than any team but the Tigers and we make contact with those pitches less than anyone but the Royals. While some of this is our scrubs, many are significant players. You can tolerate this if a player makes up for it in another area like power leading to a decent OPS or WRC. However we have Leury not walking, slugging .374 while striking out 136 times. Yolmer slugging .322 with 112ks . McCann 135 k 28.8% rate , Abreu 150k . Moncada improved greatly but still 150k and Eloy 132 though both made up for it in other ways and you hope they improve further. In a weird stat, we have the highest batting average on balls in play. Unfortunately this is a stat which often portends regression. Anderson and Moncada are near .400. McCann is way above his norm at .363. If those three regress next year you are probably needing even more added WAR to contend. By WAR, we have the second worst overall outfield. Especially in RF as all are aware by now. Eloy could improve his defense as well as settle in even better at the plate(remember when Hahn said he didn't come up because they wanted him to improve defensively? Sure you do.). Robert should eventually fix centerfield though I think he will get a steady diet of sliders off the plate away and fastballs up out of the zone. He hopefully doesn't bite but he has almost always had a pretty low walk rate. RF I will get to in another post of what to do to fix but currently I don't think this years options will be the answer or return. We have by WAR the worst DH combos in baseball. Again the answer probably comes from the outside although if Abreu is back, which we all expect the team to do, hopefully more time is spent at DH. Despite Jose's 121 RBI and offensive contributions, his glove is still still still -1+ WAR. He needs more time at DH and who knows how much the infield defense/errors improve with a better glove. SP: Giolito huge plus. Hopefully holds steady but not sure you can expect 5+ WAR. Lopez starts. Reinforcements on the way from injury though may not begin the year with the big club. Cease depending on spring training and you probably need a couple more. Previewing, one or two free agents you can pencil in for awhile. One swing and possibly one you sign could be flippable as people get healthy. Nova gets some consideration. More in later posts. So thats kind of the review. We have real issues and a lot of solutions to come from outside. We have earned the draft pick we get. There are so many issues I am thinking .500 maybe before contending seriously unless things break right where players don't regress, others improve, acquisitions perform(that would be a change) and good health(would really be nice). The good news is there are a lot of guys who got there chance during the rebuild and can pretty safely be moved on from but I will get to that more in the 40 man discussion.

Focus has been a repeated issue mentioned all year. He has shown flashes of brilliance where he has been effective and still hitting 97-98 late in games. If improved focus leads to improved mechanics/repeatability then he could improve. He is still young and maturing. I doubt he has a night and day switch like Gio. He had a longer bad stretch, then a good stretch and finishing disappointing. You hope for more consistency. Shorten the length of bad to ok and still have a real good stretch and you have a valuable pitcher. The one thing he offers which can't be underestimated to this team is innings. He takes his turn and generally pitches a decent amount of innings. When we have guys who can't get out of the first it helps.

In 2000 PA Mazara has 1.8 career WAR. Comparison, Avisail Garcia in about 3k PA has 7 WAR. I agree with you about anything is an improvement over what we have out there. If we could get him for what you propose, I would consider it but hope for better. The original poster stole some of my thunder. Working on what will be several long posts/threads and our team numbers are shockingly bad. Spoiler pitching ain't great either. The game has changed to where people don't care about strikeouts due to the launch angle homer revolution. The problem is we have guys like Yolmer 2HR/111k and Leury 7HR/135 k who are starters. FYI McCann 133k, Abreu 148, Anderson 105, Yoan 148(sig improvement), Eloy 130. Fun fact on Engle (209 ab/ 72k) If he could hit at his strikeout rate he would be ahead of Anderson at .344 in the batting race! I can't wait for Madrigal who gets pissed off/embarassed any time he strikes out. Frank Thomas has not been retired that long. He struck out over a hundred times in a year three times in 19 years (max 115). Eight years more walks than K's. Career walk rate added .118 to OBP. We should really evaluate a two strike approach for some of these guys and especially developmentally.

Legitimate question: Why is anyone fascinated with Mazara? Baseball reference stats. .7 WAR. He is a slightly below league avg bat with negative defense. He is left-handed which is a positive but his walk rate has roughly gone from .06 to .05 to .04 which is exactly what we don't need. I see a poor glove, not great bat who strikes out a lot and doesn't walk. Also, you have to give up something for him. Calhoun 2.5 WAR, better defense, walks at nearly.09 rate, also lefty. OPS better than league avg 112. negative k's more. One year left on deal at 14 million. Angels up against spending limits so may get for salary relief as they have a high prospect ready. Prior to hot streak there was talk he could be released for $ savings.

Mmmmmmmm. Their tears taste sweet! On the other hand, I can only imagine some of our posters if we lost a meaningful game.

I will agree he doesn't need to say it. However we gripe at coach speak yet b**** when they give honest comments. Can't win.

Again there is more to article than the quote. He's not wrong. The negative people are really going to freak next year when we struggle. Even if we do a lot of right things this offseason, we may not get the playoffs. If anybody noticed there are some other teams out there that are good and aren't going to give us anything. Rebuilds don't come with guarantees. Hell when the scrubs won their World Series, I thought they would get multiple more certainly one and yet they haven't.

Don't disagree. There was also an article on how he is a role model to many of the non-English speaking guys starting out who are participating in our educational programs.

per baseball reference his WAR has declined from 3.5 to 2.6 to 1.8 . His salary is 4.6 million and if he goes through arbitration, he would get a raise which is why he is a likely non tender. He sees the writing on the wall with Madrigal as the eventual starter and cheaper utility guys. If he really wants to stay, I wonder if a three year deal for 9-10 million would give him enough security to stay? Would that be worth doing?

In somewhat of a back to the original post, what if the scrubs part ways with Maddon?

The original post? Somehow this morphed into "what are your expectations for/during year three of the rebuild and (like nearly every thread) management sucks". Night all. I give up

There is more in the article then I felt comfortable quoting since it is a pay site. I had a different take after reading the entirety of the article. Dang people sorry I tried to bring information to a year long discussion where most people are "reading between the lines" or "interpreting". Read it all before jumping to conclusions unless you are determined to keep your narratives. Are we league leaders, I doubt it, but I was happy to get some look at what they are doing and happy we are not ignoring technology. At the risk of copying to much another Gio quote I’m learning all this stuff from Has and Coop. Whereas maybe a couple years ago I would talk to (Danny) Farquhar, look things up on my own but I didn’t really know what I was looking at. Now it’s all in-house.”

From today's Athletic article by Fegan. Mods delete if I copied to much but a very interesting read. I was impressed and sometimes people make assumptions without information, we all do. Most coaches don't become great or idiots overnight. Sometimes the talent you have to work with makes a difference also.

You don't like the comparison? The teams are finally wising up to not paying for past performance on aging players. The vast majority of big money contracts were terrible for the teams. If you went with my proposal every player would be paid what they were worth/earned each year. Why can't they do that?

Exactly. This is not an employer crushing an employee. The employees had representation. In an agreement both sides "exploit" the agreement to their advantage. The players signed off to what now in retrospect is an advantage for the owners. Teams that operate best within the rules of the system will have an advantage over those teams who don't. I am not pro owner. I am pro honoring your deal. MLB has the advantage of guaranteed contracts. Do any of these players give back the money when they do not perform to the level of their contract....of course not. I would actually like a system where players are totally(or mainly) rewarded for performance. All you would argue about is what portion of the pie goes to players and then let the players union figure out who gets what. That would actually be the most fair. The rookie who is great would be paid fairly. Have a floor for a guy who gets hurt but should any player in a truly fair system be paid massively for not playing? If you say it is because he has earned that by his past performance, in my system he would have been paid then when he deserved it. I get that there isn't a totally fair system for measuring defense, clubhouse, productive outs but with all the computers out there and the money we are talking about it could be done. It sure as hell would eliminate a lack of effort as you wouldn't get paid.

Could add veteran LH bats who could be placeholders for a year: Calhoun Angels, Brett Gardner Yanks, Jay Bruce, Josh Reddick. Cameron Maybin or if looking for a reclamation project Lonnie Chisenhal

In the previous nine appearances before that game, Foster had pitched 11.3 innings and given up two earned runs. 8h, 5w, 12k. Seems like right guy, right time but just didn't work. It happens.

Why we love bunting lol

https://www.milb.com/scores/whitesox/2019-09-02 https://www.mlb.com/whitesox/prospects/stats/affiliates Seasons winding down. Big game for Charlotte Covey vs #8 prospect for Bal. Have enjoyed it y'all.

https://www.mlb.com/whitesox/prospects/stats/affiliates https://www.milb.com/scores/whitesox/2019-09-01 Gio, Kubat AAA

https://www.mlb.com/whitesox/prospects/stats/affiliates https://www.milb.com/scores/whitesox/2019-08-31 Goodbye August. Hello football!

Trying to return to the topic instead of the pissing contest, the most important thing about the Royals being sold for one billion dollars is how it impacts the Sox. You don't buy a franchise for that much money and not plan to spend money and be competitive. The Royals farm isn't terrible anymore and will be another team to compete with. Most have previously ignored them when considering our chances.

https://www.mlb.com/whitesox/prospects/stats/affiliates https://www.milb.com/scores/whitesox/2019-08-30

Everybody chill. Much reacting to nothing.

Shocker!