Balta1701

You say this as though the Phillies don't have recent experience with it! They made 5 straight playoff appearances, topped out with the #2 payroll in the league. Then, they had to rebuild for several years, and dropped their payroll down below $100 million. That brought in guys like Nola. Then, they splurged on Harper knowing they weren't quite ready yet, but got a huge boost in ticket sales out of it. Now, they're back adding, and oh look, the NL pennant. That's what teams are supposed to do!

He was genuinely bad on defense though and no one started teaching him defense until he got to Seattle. He would have been expected to figure out defense himself if he was stuck here, and he wouldn't have been able to.

No.

No, no no. How many years did the Red Sox lose money with those guys? They had both of those guys in a 10 year stretch, so obviously if they've lost money so regularly the Red Sox must be completely bankrupt by now right? The Phillies must be a mess after a couple years of Dombrowski, right? They don't value winning over profit. They understand that revenue responds to performance. If your team is making the playoffs and making world series runs over an extended stretch, even losses during 1 or 2 seasons will be offset by big wins the years that they have the biggest successes. We thought the Phillies had to be overextended last year, they spent more than us, I think they're a taxpaying team, they signed Castellanos and he hugely struggled. And now they've signed what will probably be the 2nd or 3rd biggest contract this year. Do we think the Philadelphia Baseball Club will be filing for bankruptcy in 3 years? Naw.

My instinct is that on his own, Anderson with 2 years remaining should bring back a prospect who's probably in the 50-100 range as the centerpiece, probably with a minor piece as a throwin. The Cardinals have 5 guys in that range. A SS who is ranked above Montgomery on that list (both are shown as 50 FV on Fangraphs), 3 pitchers, and an OF. I'd say if the White Sox are rebuilding, one of those pitchers as the centerpiece makes sense?

If the White Sox were going to commit to a 4-year rebuilding effort I would get it. Someone presented a concept of sending the Dodgers Moncada, Grandal, Giolito, Hendriks, and Anderson earlier this offseason as a way to do a hard restart. The Dodgers could use 4 of those guys, the White Sox would get out from under contracts. The big problem for the White Sox is they have no one to replace Anderson, at least not this year. Montgomery should not be up this year, even if he has a great year you don't want to push a top prospect up past AA that quickly, and he definitely should not be up in April. If Montgomery had a great year and took over the position in 2024, you might expect it takes him a couple years to get up to his full potential, because that's common everywhere. So if you trade Anderson, you might get a solid return, but you're taking a step back for 2023 and then following 2023 you start losing pitchers with no one to replace them, so trading away Anderson is to me a full white flag on 2023 and beyond. And no, they're not trading Anderson and then spending $300 million on Correa or $150 million on Swanson. Not when they're already deferring money to 2024 on Clevinger's deal because they're under such tight constraints for 2023.

Maybe he has a leg injury sometime soon, but based on his last few years I feel like I can just write the number "6" in his baserunning column on Fangraphs for 2023 and expect I will be pretty darn accurate. Seems like he's doing the exact same thing every year.

Turner turners 30 next June apparently, so this buys out his age 29-40 seasons. And he looks to be as surefire of a 4-5 win player on B-R and 5+ win player on Fangraphs as I've ever seen. Certainly seems reasonable that the last couple years will be a writeoff but that makes the Phillies offense a whole lot better and has to force the Dodgers to do something.

But in 2017 Wheeler was hurt, so Wheeler had only 2 healthy seasons prior to his deal. In those seasons he put up 4.2 and 4.6 fWAR (3.6 and 3.3 by B-R). In the 2 seasons prior to now, Rodon has put up 4.9 and 6.1 fWAR (5.1 and 5.4 rWAR).

If it were me, I'd be imagining roughly equal time for Grandal and Seby, with Perez filling in as needed, and I think there's a good chance that's an average catching pair. It's not what the White Sox are paying $18 million for, but that needs to be treated as a sunk cost. If you add extra money behind the plate, how much better than an average catching position is that going to make them?

Brantley shows as being worth -4.9 runs on defense according to Fangraphs, and he's been a defensive negative the last 2 seasons. As big of a worry, the dude has had two separate shoulder surgeries in his career, so it's worth pondering whether you want a lot of repetitive motions from raising his arms to catch fly balls and throwing the ball to the IF.

And Eloy becomes your main LF? Ugh.

You're right, that is an unpopular comparison. The defensive metrics did a very funky thing in 2015/2016 with the White Sox where they disagree a lot on whose fault their poor performance was - do they hang it on the pitchers or on the defenders - but Melky Cabrera was not worth the $39 million paid to him at the time. His OBP over that contract was .328, although he did give you the doubles. And he was just rotten defensively. My problem with Brantley is that he's a lot like Eloy in 2 bad ways. I don't really want him in the field because he's not good out there and I'm worried when he's in the field that it will contribute to him getting hurt. Unlike Melky, he can absolutely hit without steroids, I think we can be confident of that. His OBP over the last 8 years or so is .370. However, he missed half of last season hurt, he missed nearly all of 2016 and half of 2017, only played 121 games in 2021 so even in the best of scenarios with him you have to expect he will spend some time on the IL. If we had a DH spot available I'd be all for him, but my instinct is you will get better value for your dollars out of someone like Bellinger or Duvall who were plus defenders last year. You can't hide Brantley's and Eloy's gloves at the same time.

An important thing I recognized while going through the ZiPS projections - for Robert to be on the pace of 2021, he needs to be a plus defender. In 2022 he wasn’t. I don’t know if that’s poor spring training preparation or the hip surgery having long term affects or something lingering from that midseason leg injury, but it’s quite important for how good he can be.

The problem with blowing it all up, aside from convincing ownership, is that so many of the white Sox’s players have depressed value. Moncada, Grandal, Kelly basically have none. Anderson, Eloy, Giolito, Graveman, Bummer, Lynn still have some, but all are coming off injured, down seasons. Robert still looks good to a trade, but also still had a down season. Kopech hasn’t had a breakout year and no one will pay assuming he did. The only guy you’d be trying to trade at a high value point is Cease, and that’s not enough to restock this weak system. A rebuild of this team therefore now could easily be a 5-7 year process. In this case, the only strategy that makes sense to me is to play for the trade deadline this year. If a couple of guys have better first halves, they could be worth enough to make selling a better bet at that point. And sometimes, teams can outplay their talent level by 10 games, we’ve seen Seattle do that recently. A key part of doing this of course would be “first do no harm”. Don’t take on multi year money that hamstrings you long term if the deal goes bad - no matter how sure if a thing you think someone is, it here’s always a chance of an injury or a down season. And what did the Sox do on their first deal? Used a mutual option seemingly to defer money into their 2024 payroll, because that worked out great this year already.

The good news is the White Sox have an excellent record of helping pitchers avoid leg injuries recently. (Recently = I don’t think any of them have been hurt since mid October).

According to DJ last year Lopez has previously talked about how he would like a shot to go back to the rotation. This came up in a game where they were talking about Kopech having done the bullpen to rotation move.

So is “having to defer $4 million to 2023” a sign that they are really tight on money for 2023? Any other reason why they would do that?

Conversation breaks BMags’s brain, leads to the phrase “historically power year” being posted. ?

But Colson Montgomery is listed as a 50 FV on Fangraphs right now so he would not count if dealt by your standard?

(presumably this has nothing to do with any trade rumors).

While this is a solid slogan, that teams are hoarding prospects more than ever, when you check numbers this doesn’t hold up. https://www.mlb.com/news/top-prospects-traded-at-2022-trade-deadline At the 2022 trade deadline, there were 7 top 100 prospects traded. That was the highest since 2017. That’s the same number as when the White Sox were doing their big moves. This year, the number 17 and number 22 prospects were guys acquired in trades. Looking back a year, at the midpoint in 2021 12 top 100 prospects were guys who had been traded. This includes Top guys such as Sixto Sánchez and O’Neil Cruz. https://www.mlb.com/news/best-prospects-acquired-in-trades You might be able to convince me that teams are less likely to trade top 10 prospects right now, but Montgomery isn’t that. With what the Dodgers and Padres have done in recent years, I think you will have trouble supporting a statement that teams are less willing to trade top prospects than they were 5 years ago, and the last trade deadline supports that. Do you have any data that you can cite that supports your intuition that teams do this less than 5 years ago?

We have a really good recent comparison. Adam Eaton was a guy with 3 years of control coming off 2 five win seasons. He returned a guy who was recently a top 10 prospect but who had a down season (Gio), a consensus top 50 prospect, and a borderline top 100 prospect, plus another wild card. Right now, Montgomery is #60 by MLB.com, and Vaughn although he has substantial value still he has put up two negative years, clearly can’t play anywhere other than 1b, and has already lost two pre arbitration years. Those two have clearly less value than the Sox got for Eaton. Numerous teams can match that with two top 75 prospects. Cleveland, LAD, St Louis are some I noted earlier, and those offers would have a big advantage over Vaughn for Pittsburgh because they have two extra years of control on a guy.

Montgomery and Vaughn as the core is a strong offer. Might still not win but a solid offer.

Come on man. This team is projected to be below .500 for the season by ZiPS, lost Abreu and Cueto, was under .500 last July, and has a tougher schedule this year. There is certainly a chance of that, a solid one.