Jake

I think we can all agree that if his strikeouts don't go back up and his walks don't go back down, he's probably going to stink

Well at least there's some appreciation around here for how difficult it is to prove cause and effect. As far as Vargas goes, he had murdered AAA pitching to an extent that would have made you believe he would be competent in MLB. He was not-horrible in his first exposure to MLB pitching. Then he had an extended run of bad play with the Sox. Then he had an extended run of competent play with the Sox. I think part of the reason it's not crazy to think that the Sox changed something is because the change in his play from horrible to solid coincided with a change the Sox suggested to his swing/stance. Maybe that was coincidental or bound to happen regardless. The world is a complicated place.

The thing Bruce is quoting Getz on is in the context of Getz being asked whether they're looking at playing Teel in the outfield or Quero perhaps some other place and he was poo-pooing those ideas specifically. I don't think it's meant as a statement about whether they might get some DH reps (although it won't shock me if they ultimately decide not to use the DH slot to give them ABs).

From the wording in the article, I wonder if his claim is focused on the Sox not giving him adequate treatment for his bad reaction moreso than making him get the shot in the first place. Not sure how plausible it is that quicker treatment or whatever would have any long-term impact on his recovery from the reaction.

FWIW, Giolito's underlying metrics had some flashing warning signs. FIP about a run higher than ERA and xERA about a run higher than the FIP. He didn't lose velo or anything but he wasn't striking out and generally things weren't trending better as the season went on.

At a glance... Fedde's stuff didn't change that much last year. Velo about the same, movement pretty similar on everything if not a little bit better. Strikeouts way down, walks way up. A command issue? Maybe. I also notice that his pitch mix changed, especially to lefties. With the Sox, he was leading with cutters against lefties and changeups as the main secondary off of that. Sinker used for a different look or to grab strikes. After he left, he dialed back the cutter use, increased sinker use, and more puzzlingly started using his sweeper a lot against lefties. That's not something you see very often especially when a guy has a decent changeup already. In 2024, he allowed a .694 OPS to lefties. In 2025, he allowed a .922 OPS against lefties. Overall he didn't fare much worse against righties year over year although he did still see a drop in his strikeouts against them, suggesting there's more than just platoon splits at play. So maybe the Sox think they can get him back to a cutter-changeup focus against lefties and get him back to innings-eater status.

I am also irked by the comparison between Leury and Lenyn. They are just two players who are not superstars and that's about as far as the comparisons go. Totally different types of players and I think the end of Leury's run has made people forget that he was pretty useful for a while. But even the most useful versions of those two players are completely different. Lenyn has become a bat-first player with adequate fielding (when things are going good) whereas Leury was a glove and speed guy first and foremost and it was just a question of whether he could slap his way into enough production to keep the versatility afloat.

Law said the system isn't as good as you would think it would be based on how good the top of the system is. He said Getz appears to be doing everything right, hiring the right people, investing in the right processes. However, he said before he fully buys in on the "new" White Sox organization he wants to see the team have more cases of the organization turning non-prospects into prospects. I watched it and did not see it as much of a criticism but rather Law trying to be evenhanded about how he really likes the big names in the system but also that he seems to think those guys are more examples of good scouting than good development. He thinks the Sox have something to prove for the latter, which I think is fair to say even if you're a Chris Getz enthusiast. Those things tend to take time to really pay off. FWIW, I really opposed the hiring of Getz for all the obvious reasons most of you did. It wasn't at all clear that he distinguished himself in his previous job and even if he had, the process that led to his hiring was indefensible. That said, this is the team I root for and I'll try to just take things as they are. It's easier to see now how Getz got the job...he frankly seems less of a baseball man and more of an executive. I suspect he played the organization's internal politics really well. And he had a message Jerry liked to hear: the Sox won't win because you hired a singular baseball expert in the form of Kenny Williams or whoever else, but rather the Sox will win because you build the organization like you build any billion dollar business. Yes smart leadership but also good, durable infrastructure and excellent middle management. And from my perspective, the fact he convinced Jerry to invest in the organization itself is a good sign. It seems to me that Hahn-world did and does grumble that Jerry didn't give him the resources to succeed because of his disinterest in investing in long-term things like player development. Well, Getz convinced him to do it. It came at a hell of a cost and with unknown results. But he did it. And Getz has also managed to avoid almost all nepotism hiring that infected the previous administrations. So the worry I and many had that Getz represented a continuation of the old regime seems misplaced. It feels almost like Getz had an outsider view all along and was trying to do his job while fully aware that the Sox were not run like the good teams were. Again, he seems like a true executive — I am not the mastermind, I am going to surround myself with as much talent as possible and try to put it to good use. We have some instances where it seems like people with genuine alternatives chose the Sox over equal or better ones. So again Getz is good at some combination of politics and organizational leadership because he has these outsiders buying in. Maybe it all comes crumbling down later and it turns out to just be that Getz is good at talking a big game. We shall see. To the extent we can evaluate his baseball decisions so far, there's been a mixture of good and bad even if the jury is technically out on everything. I am cautiously optimistic, at least about whether the team will find its way out of last place in the nearish future and have some players worth rooting for.

Yes...last offseason was the easiest one. This one is next easiest. They will keep getting harder to "win" unless they start to lose.

Frankly (pun unintended), I find it unlikely that there was any intent to exclude the Big Hurt from the graphic. I don't really know who would have a beef with him, first of all. And then I don't know why that person would be involved in the minutiae of making the graphic. My gut feeling is it's just someone who was given a task of talking about firsts and missed the forest for the trees. If I was running the show over there, part of my response would be putting everyone through a White Sox history bootcamp. There's a decent chance that the people putting this together were born after Frank's best years were behind him. That's not really an excuse because you need to communicate to your fans, not to yourself. But it rings as a likelier explanation than people being pissed off at Frank. I'm pretty much going to ride or die with the Big Hurt, but I think he's making himself look kind of bad here too. Definitely making the Sox look worse, but he comes off as sensitive. Maybe there's some hard feelings about the role he'd like to have in the organization or TV channel or whatever. It wouldn't be the first time and he's not always wrong about how he feels but he seems to just wear it all on his sleeve.

Time will tell, but it seems like a lot of what we hear about Acuna's past experiments in the OF would indicate it might be a natural position for him. But the sharp eye of Statcast can be very unforgiving...

I think they would like to, but I'm not sure what kinds of sacrifices they're willing to make to do that. For instance, are they willing to take away at bats from Quero for this purpose?

Not sure what the O's are planning. Depth I guess. I don't know how a team that is trying to make the playoffs will have room for him on their 26-man roster. Hedging their bets with injuries I suppose.

My thinking is they will not let go of Mead so soon. I'm not 100% on it, but I think Getz is going to try to find a spot for him on the roster. I also do not think Benny will spend much time on the bench to start the year. This leads me in the direction of thinking Baldwin starts the year in AAA. Getz has shown a tendency to use minor league options as a way to delay making 40-man roster decisions. I think Lee is a goner if both catchers are healthy at the end of spring.

I wonder if there's any chance that Murakami is back home looking at this news cycle in sheer horror..."I make a little request and suddenly my new team has the whole country talking about how I clean my ass!"

I don't really know how I'd grade it. It certainly could have been worse...if they didn't bring in some of these veteran types to build some depth, it's the kind of thing that leaves you a couple strokes of bad luck away from losing 120 games. Murakami was a really fun addition, although it's ultimately hard to interpret given that a two-year contract limits our ability to see him as part of a "young core" even if he is young and hopefully one of the core parts of the 2026 club. If the Sox went out and signed every top of market guy, I guess that would have been fun. But probably dumb, to be frank. So that wasn't my expectation. LouBob trade is okay. They took a gamble bringing him back and it didn't leave them with nothing. We'll see how Luisangel looks. Given that it appears most MLB teams wouldn't have taken him for $20M on the open market, turning him into anything is kind of a plus. And I think there's more potential to Luisangel than what it would look like on the back of the baseball card. So I don't know. I find it weird to see how a lot of national media are patting the Sox on the back like they had a really big offseason. I think I see it as more competent. This isn't the time of year I expect the Sox to be pushing the team forward just yet. It's all about developing the guys on the club. And maybe if they have set things up well, we'll look back on this offseason as more important than it currently seems.

I live nowhere close to where the Sox play, so in scheming some dates to fly out to see the Sox play this season, I thought maybe going to Spring Training would be interesting. That said, I've never done anything like that so I'm not sure what it's like. I'd be going in the second week of March. I'd be taking my wife, who has become Sox-crazed as of late. Can anyone share experiences, suggestions, etc.? Obviously the games themselves would only be a part of the appeal. And if you ever went and thought it wasn't worth it, I'd like to hear that too.

In AAA last season, Sandlin threw: 28% 4-seamers, averaging 97.1 mph. Standard sort of rise-y profile and gets a few whiffs but not amazing. 22% cutters, averaging 91.6 mph and generating decent swing as miss but also got hit hard. 21% sliders, averaging 86.8mph with a lot of sideways movement and pretty good depth. Similar results to the cutter as far as okay whiff rate but lots of hard contact. 14% sinkers, averaging 95.7mph. Seems like an ordinary sinker. Not a ton of sink really but a lot more run than his 4 seamer which is part of the job description. Doesn't get whiffed on and got hit hard as sinkers tend to do. 12% sweepers, averaging 85.3mph. This thing has a ton of sideways movement and wasn't hit very hard relative to his other offerings. I don't know whether it might be the case that Statcast is inadvertently classing his good sweepers as sweepers and his bad sweepers as sliders. 2% 82mph curveballs. Too small of a sample to pay much attention to. 1 changeup. See above. So he's not really throwing anything that moves away from lefties (other than the sinker, which you don't want to use against oppo-handed hitters). From the data, the only change in his approach to pitch selection against lefties was canning the sinker. He threw about 60% of his pitches against lefties in AAA so he was not enjoying platoon advantage very often. Interestingly, righties made better contact against him anyway (xwOBA much higher for righties than lefties, although lefties had better actual wOBA).

FWIW, Hicks had a 4.35 FIP and 4.61 xERA last year, so the back of the baseball card might be a touch misleading on just how bad of a year it was. I think his basic issues are straightforward: can't get swings and misses on his heater because it's a sinker, doesn't have a pitch to get lefties out, and he walks too many guys. I suspect the walks would get better if he had a more reliable whiff pitch, especially against lefties. Not as sure about Sandlin, seems like he showed some signs of being a useful player in AA last year before they started pitching him out of the pen in AAA where he got beat up badly. Not sure if that was a load management thing or what. Boston decided to protect him from Rule 5 for whatever reason, so that tells you something.

A real, live major league outfielder. I can't complain.

Yeah I think it's easy to overrate just about any player if you're making confident claims that somebody is going to be good. But certainly I think if someone wants to move a controllable player to make space for Sam Antonacci, they are almost certainly overrating Sam Antonacci (who obviously has a chance to be a MLB contributor).

To be fair, Noah Schultz doesn't throw with much extension. One of those recent prospect rankings (Law?) cites it as a deficit to his profile.

I have a hard time believing Boston is going to salary dump a guy who was regarded as a top 10 prospect in MLB just a year ago

Abreu and Rafaela are both very good. Rafaela is really not Getz's "type"; takes horrifically bad at bats. Abreu is the more likely target, I think. I don't know what the Sox could give them that would make sense for both sides. Hard for me to imagine Getz giving up something really valuable for a guy who already has 2 years of service time.

Quero hit 17 HR in 111 games as a 19 year old and 16 HR (mostly in Birmingham) in 98 games as a 21 year old. I suspect his power outage has a strong mental component, letting the ball get very deep and taking a contact-oriented pass at it because that was the most comfortable way for him to deal with the very talented pitching he faced. But sometimes it can be as simple as giving yourself permission to start attacking the ball out front. I have a little bit of optimism for Quero just because he's flashed that power before and frankly he doesn't need to do a lot more to be a super useful player.