Balta1701

All the other points that I've been making in reply now show up in why the White Sox are in 3rd in the way-too-early Zips projections. Twins - much younger roster than the old White Sox. Fangraphs doesn't project them to drop off like they project for the White Sox old guys. White Sox - lost a ton to free agency, more than the Twins by quite a bit. Twins lost a 4.4 WAR player in Correa as you note, White Sox lose a 3.9 WAR player in Abreu which you don't. White Sox also lose way more in pitching, and Andrus and Harrison were each more valuable than any player other than Correa the Twins are losing to FA. White Sox had a record a few games better than the Twins, but a run differential that would make them about 5 games worse than the Twins - only their record in 1 run games prevented that from sorting out. While there remains a path to them being the best team in the division with a lot of bouncebacks and a serious underperformance by Cleveland, this White Sox team is far from the best team in the division on paper and the Zips projections are capturing that.

I will suggest there that this wouldn't involve "extensive discussions" if the White Sox had sufficient confidence in Sosa at 2b this year.

Wong led MLB in errors from 2b last year. It was a big surge in errors for him compared to the previous year, but it was a return to what he did early in his career. With him next to Anderson in the IF, and Vaughn’s lack of range (can’t say anything good or bad about him receiving throws yet), there would be a good chance of a super sloppy infield next year.

The second guy is from the Boston Globe so would be in position to know this.

Statcast shows a pretty solid dropoff in his sprint speed, and most of the dropoff in his defense appears to be on balls he had to come in for, with a little bit of trouble moving to his right. The biggest change though wasn’t in the number of balls he got to, it was him making a ton of errors. This looks like a guy who couldn’t cover as much ground as he used to, kept trying to, and in the process made a lot of sloppy plays and errors. Either that, or maybe he was working through a leg injury and things weren’t as crisp for him in the field either?

The ol trade value simulator has Wong at 0.1 - meaning he’s basically a guy who could be fairly claimed on waivers or who the Brewers picking up his 2023 option was a close decision. If the White Sox are taking on his full $10 million salary, the answer seemingly should be “not much”.

The White Sox are in no real Position to take back a bad contract without dumping one of theirs.

There is perhaps 1 player in baseball where Soler would be an OF upgrade compared to him - Andrew Vaughn. Soler is awful out there. He is, on average, worse than Eloy. If the Marlins could clear the last 2 years off of that contract without having to take a comparable amount of money back, I would imagine they would do so quite willingly.

Kelly + Garcia for Soler? White Sox take on long term money but clear out 2 roster spots. Not particularly balanced due to the extra 2023 money for Soler but if we're being crazy?

$173 million for the 69 win 2012 Red Sox has to be a strong contender any time that is looked at. $190 million for the 64 win 2017 Detroit Tigers.

If I use Banks as a comparison, he had a K-rate of 10.5/9IP in 2021 at AAA before getting called up, whereas Cronin was at 7.71 in AA before moving up to AAA (and I'm not going to even hold his K rate at AAA against him). Maybe his control got better at Charlotte, but it was pretty bad in the first half - 14 walks in 28 innings, and when his BB rate went down his K-rate went down even lower too. His GB rate isn't world beating, only slightly higher than Banks's. There's nothing on this stat line anywhere that suggests he's going to be a big league contributor any time soon. He could potentially come out of the bullpen and put up an ERA of 5, I'd believe that while doing what he was doing in the minors, but could see him being worse than that also. Are you guys expecting something better than that?

MLBTR had him projected at $18.1 million. https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/10/mlb-projected-arbitration-salaries-2023.html

So now something bugging me on a different side. If you think this team is competitive for the playoffs, even if they won't get there but they can get back to the upper 80s in wins and just miss the last wild card spot, isn't that worth it to not sell off right now?

I don't believe you're getting MLB players for any of these guys right now that will somehow make this team better this year than the current guy will. Not one of them, Hendriks included, is going to return a position player or pitcher who will be a major contributor right now that makes this team better in 2023. The format just doesn't make sense - teams are only going to be dealing for guys like that if they think they can compete this year, so why are they going to give up someone who they're counting on to help their big league squad? Maybe if you double up 2 of them together, you have a format that returns one, but that opens up two holes. Hendriks + Giolito might intrigue someone to the point they give up 1 position player, but now you've weakened the bullpen and you need another starting pitcher too. Maybe you could do Anderson for a starter, but that's pretty much a lateral move at best because now you've created a hole at shortstop.

I get the concept. Here's what I think is the toughest question - out of the list of names you just gave, is there any guy who doesn't have an obvious path to being worth more at the trade deadline than now? TA - stay healthy in the first half, better focus, just perform like he did in 2021. Multiple big name FA shortstops might depress the market in the offseason (See Correa getting caught at the end of the market in 2021). Giolito - couple of injuries, COVID, down spin rate and velocity. Just perform like he did in 2021. Lynn - Coming off injured year and being rushed back to big league team clearly affected him early, stay healthy, perform closer to 2021. If off to a good start, his option year could look more valuable. Hendriks - stay healthy for the first half. Relievers often are worth more at the deadline than in the offseason. Graveman - coming off bad second half. Stay healthy and have a strong first half, reliever worth more at deadline? Bummer - coming off bad and banged up year. Stay healthy and strong first half, and count on good reliever prices again. If I was trying to revamp this thing as quickly as I could, I think there's a strong case for waiting until the trade deadline for most of those guys. Consistently coming off down seasons, hard to see them returning so much now that it's not worth taking the chance on a better return at the deadline. 2 of those guys stay healthy and have strong first halves and it feels like that alone would make up for the value they could get by cashing guys in now.

Is there a recent history of this specific pitching model having predictive ability like that? For that list it basically looks like it is picking out guys who throw a 2 seamer and ranking them higher.

0 walks, 15 hits in 10 innings there. Entirely possible he was somehow focusing on throwing strikes and gave up extra hits as a consequence, but the results weren't anything where you'd immediately say this guy is the next big thing.

Interesting from them. Curious that this basically is tantamount to saying "The Dodgers valued this player incorrectly as his arbitration deal could have been moved in a trade if they are able to sign Judge/Nimmo." Thank you for sharing that one.

I don't know anything about the stat that is putting Cronin so high, but the 1.348 WHIP and 4.7 K/9 at Charlotte last year aren't giving me a lot of excitement. K rate at Charlotte was down from other levels, but still a 7.3 K/9 and a 2.08 K/BB ratio across the minors isn't particularly grand. 1.266 WHIP across the minors so I'm not seeing reason to think he's a huge ground ball pitcher either, giving up lots of hits. 15 hits in 10 innings in the AFL this year, no walks but again only 7 K's in 10 innings there. That's not a scouting report and maybe there's something here that could be deployed in an intelligent way out of the big league bullpen, but the profile of a low K rate and a WHIP that is 1.3 and above is pretty much a mop up guy out of the bullpen at best. Of course, the White Sox need a "mop up guy with an ERA around 5 who won't blow a multi game if they're called up" because they barely have that, but I have no clue how this guy is ranking ahead of Lopez on anything.

I just wanted to give him a fair chance to do a waiver claim before I criticized him for being too lazy to scout any of the guys on waivers. Seriously, the White Sox's depth is awful. There's like 2 positions on their roster where if they claimed a replacement level player with a minor league option, the player would be unlikely to make the big leagues. They're keeping Ruiz with no ability to send him down because they have no bullpen depth. They signed Leury to a big money deal because they aren't creating decent backups on their own. They played two different 1b in the outfield because they didn't have enough outfielders, and both of them were straight up bad. At one point last year Dallas Keuchel was their #2 starter, and it was totally obvious that such a thing was likely to happen coming into the season. They gave away one game because they had roughly 2 available relievers. They were Elvis Andrus and Johnny Cueto away from being roughly a 75 win team. Grab someone. Anyone. Find a player or two who can rotate up and down to AAA so that if someone gets hurt you can put them on the IL and actually have a player available to step in. They don't even need to be good, literally a 0 WAR player could turn into an extra 2 wins on their record if they could pitch the 7th and 8th innings in a 4 run game without giving away the lead or catch the ball in LF as a defensive substitute on a day when someone needs a rest to keep their legs from being hurt. It's somehow completely unbelievable and yet totally expected that they let this roster deadline pass.

So when is it safe to conclude that Hahn passed on making any moves from the teams clearing 40 man roster spaces?

I know there's only so much that you can do to replace Robert when he gets hurt, but you also have to have a backup plan that is good enough where if Robert, I dunno, hurts his wrist, they're willing to put him on the IL for 15 days to let it heal rather than rushing him back and screwing things up for months. That at least has to be part of it, you can't be in a spot where "I can't afford to not play Robert because my backup options are so bad" becomes a thing. I'd say based on very recent history that "Engel, Colas moving over from RF and Sheets playing there for 2 weeks, Leury playing out there" - all of those are pretty darn insufficient.