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How exactly does acquiring Swihart prevent any of this?

In BPs fielding runs above average in 2018, Swihart comes in at 63rd, Castillo comes in at 103. I get some people may not be swayed by that, but I haven't seen anything to indicate he's specifically worse at defense than Castillo, who has not been as good of a framer here as he was in baltimore, nor been able to throw out 40% of base stealers.

He may improve himself. He had good prospect stock, then injuries, then inconsistent playtime. That is pretty much the ideal recipe for a team like the white sox that can offer playing time. And again, I care. He's pretty much free. He'd be a really nice second catcher option while we wait for Zevala and Collins because he's cheap, has control, has a good arm, and is a good platoon for RH catchers and presumably Zevala is up first and we currently have 2 RH catchers, and has some nice platoon capability since he plays other positions. Is that going to win us a world series? No, but there's a reason when he was DFA'd a bunch of baseball writers did not believe he'd make it to AAA. He has value. And maybe getting some valuable players is better than not.

A LH platoon hitter for 900 k that can play multiple positions including catcher and allow the smooth transition to our future catchers seems like a good deal. Is paying 8 million for our large bad receiving catcher Wellington Castillo through the year some tremendous advantage? James McCann has a one year deal, consider this a tryout for both. I mean we can drop nicky delmonico for that.

Costs 3x less, younger, more control, plays more positions, hits left handed (way) better than right. Seems pretty straight forward.

https://whitesoxpride.mlblogs.com/mlb-unveils-2019-holiday-special-event-uniform-elements-2ed0a791743e [/img] Man this is ugly,

Lambert getting hit around, but no walks, and keeping them to one run so far. Just 3 ks.

A very good quote that sums up a lot of the discussion on the board with him: That last sentence is really interesting. WHen he fell behind last year, I guess it's easiest to say he should have felt the odds change that it was less likely he'd see a good pitch to drive. Now he's taking that into account and being more aggressive so long as it's in the zone, ideally.

Well put.

Do the yankees grab him?

Hits from left side though, at least.

So here's the pros for claiming him. - Strong arm - Hits better from left side, and currently have 2 RH catchers - is 27 - Can play OF, so if Seby makes a play this year we can move him around if we like him and play him as our catcher when mccann moves on - Makes 900k Cons: - Not a good receiver (though castillo hasn't been with us either) - Not good at blocking pitches.

That would be great.

Counterpoint - he's basically free!

edit: what I wrote here was, in fact, completely wrong.

Red Sox DFA Swihart

File this under "pretty cool" to start the year and super small sample size Anderson talked in spring training about how he had worked a lot on staying back. I thought that would show through in helping in breaking stuff, but...not really. Offspeed stuff however...he's like destroying. Last year Tim Anderson saw 7.5% of his pitches as off-speed pitches (changeup, splitter, fork, screwball). He whiffed on 34% of his swings, and when it came on two strikes, he struck out 32% of the time. Both of these were comparable to his results with sliders. This year? Tim has seen 18 offspeed pitches so far, and he hasn't missed any of them that he's swung at. His 90.5 exit velocity is the highest for any of EVs across pitches during his career. In 8 PAs he's had 5 hits, 2 doubles and a home run. So that's nice. On fastballs its a similar story but less successful. He is making more contact against them (16.5% whiff rate compared to 21.5% last year), and hitting them harder (89.2 vs 87 in 2018). The regression is easy to see on sliders. He has not hit them hard, and has not hit them in the air, but has a .381 BA / .581 slugging with them this year. He swings and misses against them more often. And most weird! His launch angles have changed for the offspeed/breaking pitches. Where they were pretty typically 10/11/10, they are now 9/2/3. He is hitting worm burners on non-fastballs, but at least with changeups he's hitting the crap out of them. Tim anderson! More contact, more barrels, less launch angle. Gonna be fun to see what happens! https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/tim-anderson-641313?stats=statcast-r-hitting-mlb

Bulls are not one back court piece from having their back court figured out.

Props to sixers for dominating comeback, but boy I love watching Brooklyn play anyway. Clips too. But for me I'm just waiting around for when Milwaukee has their first real series tos ee what happens. Kinda bummed at how TOR has played so far.

Honestly I don't think it matters.

Maybe in that the arb $ going to relievers who had already been a closer makes them pretty much market value.

To get a top 100 guy for a bullpen arm, my belief is the contending team will need to buy into the reliever being so dominant they will be the guy they hand the ball to in the ninth of the playoffs. Colome and Herrerra are both good but they would very likely be middle relievers on any contending team, and will return similar. Unless maybe there is a very bad run of injuries and they get lucky.

And people will claim this is revisionist but many pointed it out at the time. Rutherford had developed no power, and seemed to be a classic case of older high school prospect who may have been overrated due to a more mature body. That said with the exception of Florial the yankee prospects that were traded out that summer have busted, though one largely because of the white sox power box. What was that fake ken rosenthal deal? Florial, Mateo, Adams? I was through the moon for that. Cashman man. If he's trading you a prospect that prospect probably sucks.

He's been traded twice including once at the deadline. He has less control and is 30 now. Why would he suddenly be worth way more? He'll need to hit the kind of dominance he only achieved once in his career. I hope it happens.

He's working on his offspeed/breaking stuff and that seems like worthwhile development in the minors. I think he'll be up in like mid july.