Balta1701

I’ll do you one better. Why is Moncado?

This is one of the Boston sportswriters a couple weeks ago (I think; there used to be verification to make this clear)

If he was going to pop that ligament, fine, but work him in the minors first. See if his arm build up, and maybe you avoid burning a pre-arbitration year. A popped ligament doesn’t mean he can’t recover, but it does take years.

Kenny Williams was not the GM at the time of that trade.

So in other words an average Tuesday?

Why are we concerning ourselves with this, as in the board? Because there is literally nothing else going on and we’re the sort of loons who will talk about anything and half of us are genuinely mad. Plus, very good chance this guy is on the big league roster early in the year. We as in the White Sox? Because it’s after the winter meetings and the White Sox have 2 outfielders, on of whom is a rookie. The market is starting to clear out, the top two outfielders are gone, the backups are starting to clear out, and they don’t have enough warm bodies to fill the outfield in the big leagues or Charlotte. They had to go get someone.

That "Defensive rating" column though includes the positional adjustment value for playing SS. Tim had a negative UZR last year and if I limit to guys who played 500+ innings at SS he was 29th out of 35. He was also negative on OAA and DRS last year, so all 3 defensive metrics say "This guy was below average for a shortstop". If you want to say it this way, he was a "well below average shortstop but an average player because shortstop is such an important defensive position".

Was Quintana ever a "hype player" though? I feel like he was just a nameless guy buried at the bottom of the Yankees organization until the White Sox jumped on him. I specifically remember thinking "WTF are they doing this guy" when they rushed him up from like a month in AA to fill a rotation role in 2012, and yet...viola.

You know what you're right. My bad, that was completely wrong. Oops. Apologies.

If he really had to "unwind that bullpen heavy payroll", Graveman and Lopez could easily have been moved already.

I still think that picking a high risk high reward lefty in the mid-teens of the draft is fine as long as you put him on a long term path to see if he can be a starter for you. If it doesn't work out you probably get a reliever out of that, but if it does work out then a few years later you've built up his arm and you've got a really elite pitcher. I have a much bigger problem with putting that in the bullpen because we need cheap guys to help us win right now, and our team in 2021 is so good we can sacrifice having an extra starter ready in 2023 or 2024.

Here are all CFs on Fangraphs, minimum 500 innings, sorted by range. I had to shrink the font to get Robert onto the screen. Bah, it seems to downside when I actually post the image. Here's the link. He comes in 26th out of 30. https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=cf&stats=fld&lg=all&qual=500&type=1&season=2022&month=0&season1=2022&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&startdate=2022-01-01&enddate=2022-12-31&sort=16,d

I had very little access to White Sox season ticket holders in middle school.

Anyone want to take my bet that he's the 4th outfielder on opening day?

I don't know how it will end up, but this is easily the largest amount of unhappiness I've seen from the die hards and season ticket holders.

They lose Giolito and Lynn to free agency and try to patch up LF, 3 starting pitcher spots, and their bullpen with $8-10 million free agents next offseason and say that they think they can compete right now. Most of the White Sox fan base will insist that this will finally be the year that everything goes right and that they're going to clearly break out with these replacements. Several people will continue to say that Rick Hahn isn't to blame for anything it's on everyone else. Maybe KW retires.

You asked what the White Sox have lost since 2020 and 2021 that could have dug them a 10 win hole. Jose Abreu and Carlos Rodon do that compared to 2021 on their own, with no steps back from anyone else. One specific issue - I'm actually skeptical that Robert can have a 5 to 6 WAR year playing a whole season, because in 2022 Luis Robert was a negative defender in CF. No one seems to have noticed because everyone around him was so bad, but his range took a big dropoff since his hip injury. If Luis Robert is a negative defender and he's actually lost a couple steps long term, then no he can't have a 5 to 6 win season because those kind of numbers assume he is a strong defender. He dropped in sprint speed from 21st in MLB in 2020 to 203rd in MLB last year. Can you convince me that Luis Robert is going to regain the speed he lost?

And they're smart enough to hold onto those prospects rather than spend them on Anderson and Hendriks too.

I bet they did. They project the Guardians to take a step back this year too! Tell me, where are the 16 rookies the White Sox are going to bring up to contribute? Are they well prepared and coming out of a highly ranked system?

Jose Abreu. Carlos Rodon. No biggy right? That's only a 10 win step back. On top of that, a younger Yasmani Grandal (4-5 wins is really big). Dallas Keuchel giving an excellent season in 2020 - without which they probably miss the playoffs.

More than that, if Rick Hahn is this smart and capable, then he should have seen this situation coming. I did! You can go back to the trade deadline and I was talking about getting ready for a salary cut this offseason and trying to minimize the hurt. Maybe he doesn't come in with a full rebuild plan, but maybe last offseason he's making noise about not spending as much on the bullpen since they know they have an upcoming risk of hitting a payroll limit. Or maybe at the trade deadline last year he pushes to shake things up on the roster with a trade - move Lopez and Pollock along with a portion of his contract to a competitive team and get back a AAA outfielder or something crazy like that, saves $10 million and maybe fills the backup OF role. If Pollock was so unhappy on this roster then is LaRussa going to scream about that? I keep coming back to the 2019 offseason. Not only did they miss out on their big guys, but they were complete idiots elsewhere. They added >$50 million to their payroll that offseason and I was very frustrated by it at the time because they made no moves that benefited them long term. Yes expensive bullpen help is nice, but does your 60 win team really need a closer for $18 million over the next 2 years? Do they need an extra $16 million reliever? Do they need a veteran 1b or OF? These were bad decisions at the time, but they also were wasteful. I am not as angry about missing on the Keuchel deal as I am about moves like that which were just dumb at the time and wasted money that they could have right now. These are the exact same moves we've been seeing since, flailing for no reason. With some foresight, you plan ahead and realize that limiting your spending short term is smart, but hey no, we need more bullpen veterans in 2019. It's exactly what they did to get themselves in trouble last year.

I can't stress this enough. The ZiPS projections have these players improving over last year: Kelly, Lynn, Eloy, Moncada, Grandal, Giolito, Kopech, Anderson, Vaughn, Robert, Bummer, Clevinger. They have these players taking steps back: Cease (this seems unlikely - it's like from 4.4 to 3.6 fWAR though so it's only 1 win), Lopez, and Zavala. They have Vaughn going from a .750 OPS to a .818 OPS. They have Eloy, Robert, and Anderson healthier. They have Kelly with an ERA in the 3s. They have a 2 WAR season from Grandal with a .750 OPS. They have a .750 OPS from Moncada. They have all those things and project the White Sox as a below .500 team. Why would they do that? If all those guys got better shouldn't they? Well yes, but they also lost a 4 win player in Abreu, a 2.5 win player in Cueto, and contributors in Pollock and Harrison. That's a hole of 10 wins to make up. On top of that, the White Sox's run differential last year pegged them as a 3rd place team, worse than the Twins and below .500, so if they can't match their elite performance in 1 run games again they're in a deeper hole still. They absolutely can be healthier, improve across the board, and finish below .500. Do not underestimate how deep of a hole they are in.

I think it's entirely possible that Andrew Vaughn is a -10 run or worse defensive 1b. He is probably going to have zero range over there, that's just expected from what we've seen out of him, and that's going to be a big factor in his performance. He also won't get any assists from the shift. We don't know what Vaughn will be in terms of reaction time, picking balls out of the dirt, but it's also totally reasonable that he'll be out of practice on several of those as well. People are comparing to Abreu - Abreu took years at 1b to get used to picking the ball out of the dirt. Vaughn hasn't worked regularly at 1b in game speed since 2019, and never with big leaguers or Tim Anderson throwing to him. It is unlikely to be as bad as him in the OF, because nothing is likely to be that bad. That doesn't mean he will be fine or even adequate over there, he may well have to hit himself into value at 1b again.