Balta1701

For those who didn’t look at this, Elvis Andrus’s 2022 White Sox stint was the flukiest thing I’ve seen in stats recently. When he joined the White Sox, his exit velocity went down, his ground ball rate went up, his strikeout rate didn’t change, his walk rate dropped dramatically, his launch angle went down, but suddenly his home run rate went up to 20% of his fly balls, which would have been among the top HR hitters in baseball and which is totally unsustainable for a guy with a 6.7% career mark on that. This was statistical payback for Cesar Hernandez, who they acquired after he had a huge HR/FB rate and they were astonished that it went back to normal when he came to the Sox. If the mechanical fix helped him hit more weak ground balls, then it was almost successful except for a few fly balls that went over the fence. Giving a guy a starting job after a fluke HR/FB season is a Hahn move to the letter. It’s why they acquired Hernandez. It’s exactly what they did with Kimbrel. Can’t ever look past the first row on the MLB.com stats, that’s nerd territory. If anyone wants to bet me that he will have 500 plate appearances and a HR/FB rate over 15% this year, let me know what the terms are. That’d be a big drop from last years Sox performance. Go for it.

Romy has played 3 games in CF since he was a 19 year old at Miami in 2016. This is such White Sox thinking.

You realize that photos have “metadata” right?

She didn’t set out to entrap him, she didn’t even bring this to MLB per reports, other people did. This is off the deep end.

Most people demanding proof of abuse would probably be ok with “photos of the bruises”? “Ok you did that but why didn’t you pull out your phone as he was punching you” strikes me as a very odd reaction.

We call these SLAPP suits. They aren’t designed to actually win, they’re designed so that they make the people who are sued show up in the press, sometimes they have to pay their legal fees if they aren’t included in the costs of the dismissal which is common, but compared to the millions of dollars a Clevinger can afford for lawyers a battered former partner can’t afford anything like that even on a temporary basis so they’re likely to retract their statements even if they’re accurate just because of money. This type of lawsuit threat is a very standard thing for a guilty party who is trying to intimidate someone. https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1019/slapp-suits Even the concept of this is why he should be on administrative leave. There is literally zero benefit and a ton of loss for MLB and for the White Sox In this playing out in public. This should be a private matter regardless of the outcome and no one comes out of this looking good. The end result of this is MLB having people associate them more with domestic assault and intimidation, regardless of what actually happened. This will cost millions long term at minimum For the White Sox and the MLB, but if Clevinger intimidates her into shutting up it’s worth millions to him. Just put him on leave and let me be bored with spring training fluff. A new manager handling this for weeks? Good luck.

Neither of those guys can play CF so one of the guys you mentioned or Hamilton still must make the roster.

Andrew Benintendi, one of the most bland and good but no where near exciting players in the big leagues, is a reason to be optimistic? Yup. Sounds like a summary to me.

What the Hell? Is this image super pixelated for anyone else? It works normally when I click on it but it's like a blown up thumbnail in this window?

Said yesterday? Nothing. Done previously? Refined his organizations background check and monitoring procedures following incidents like Vizquel and what they observed happening with Bauer. Not jumping to the front of the line signing this guy until appropriate personal checks were done. But that would have required effective leadership.

I read the Merkin version of this and it sounded so weird (ongoing treatments) that I thought that there was a typo and they were talking about Liam rather than Larissa.

Worth adding to that post. Not only did Hahn watch the Dodgers eat $30 million because of their weak background checks and fail to learn from it, this isn’t the first harassment issue in the recent White Sox organization under Hahn’s management. The White Sox endured a harassment case involving Vizquel and whatever else happened after that to get Wes Helms fired from managing their AAA roster last year after he was previously on Vizquels staff and was then promoted afterwards. With that recent history of failure to monitor and failure to conduct appropriate background checks, “oh now we know that we should have done this” is a completely unacceptable third strike.

According to Clevinger’s agent, he didn’t even know about the investigation until she shared her bruise photos. And even if his legal team was doing something, MLB should not have waited until February to be doing interviews with the victim. Clevinger doesn’t control her interview schedule. That should have been done months ago, all of them. People’s memories get worse over time, you don’t delay stuff like this unless you’re looking for reasons to cover it up.

Overall reactions to today: 1. There is absolutely an ongoing investigation. It is completely ludicrous that this isn’t completed yet. I’ve got no explanation for this other than Manfred was slow walking it and hoping it could be covered up. 2. Mike Clevinger should be on administrative leave today. There is absolutely an open investigation and a baseball team should not be hung with having to answer these questions or having his victim on the radio being interviewed. This isn’t just bad for the parties involved it’s horrible business for the whole league. How is “sports radio is interview a woman who shared photos of her bruises” anything you ever want your league dealing with??? Put him on leave and avoid this spectacle, you can count this as part of his suspension if and when it happens. 3. The White Sox didn’t do a bad job of answering questions today. If there’s an answer you hated, it’s a question that should never have had to be asked because of items 1, 2, and 4. In many cases there are no right answers. 4. Rick Hahn did an awful job of checking the background of a player with a checkered past. There is potentially a missed police record and likely a record of other s%*# that was missed. This would look bad on a GM having a great run, this is I think the 6th time this GM should have been fired. This isn’t excusable. 5. There is a very high chance that he will be suspended during the season. There is enough here that Manfred will say there’s a high chance something bad happened and he will hand down some discipline, the investigation will just determine how much. This will of course happen right after the White Sox have already lost a different pitcher to injury. Someone will say that no one could possibly have seen this coming.