Balta1701

What can you do at $180 million? That was the last reported payroll limit, although it did conflict with Hahn's statement a day or two before.

The other part with Giolito we can’t ignore is that his spin rate was down substantially on his fastball last year. How much of TOR Giolito was a function of spinning the ball faster thanks to sticky stuff?

The owner did not want him back, it sure seems like there’s a personal issue somewhere in there.

I could definitely see him taking 2/20 with an opt out after 1 but the White Sox insisted they don’t do opt outs last time it came up.

I forgot Dylan Cease and Andrew Vaughn didn’t play in 2021.

Why would he be after 2 years, if there’s no opt out?

The 93 win team is now missing Carlos Rodon and Jose Abreu, and facing a tougher schedule.

So you believe he’s an instant 30 WAR upgrade on Rick Hahn. Wow. I’m convinced now, I’m surprised that’s such a clear and obvious conclusion and I apologize for missing it:

“Chicago Man would accept a $250 million check if offered. Print it, headline done.”

Tampa Bay.

Let’s neither over nor undersell James Click. Click genuinely did not build that. Only about 1/3 of the players on that roster were acquired by him. Furthermore, the development programs the Astros had going that helped their pitchers and hitters clearly existed before he was there. He did build a stellar, championship bullpen. That was nearly all him. He also didn’t trade away anyone who since became a star - that could have been a risk with guys like Peña, Franber Valdez, etc. He also didn’t sign major busts. The guys he did bring in or sign included guys like Neris and Verlander. Better than Hahn? You betcha, but a trained octopus could meet that standard. Best in baseball? I don’t think he got a shot to prove that true or false. He was fine, but in an already established excellent circumstance. He couldn’t have done better, he could have done worse and didn’t, but it’s possible a lot of guys could have matched his performance given what he walked into.

So the part of this that really annoys me? The White Sox shouldn’t need a catcher the next few years unless they do one bad thing they’ve done before. It is not that hard to get average production from your catcher spot. The White Sox got nearly 2 WAR from Seby Zavala last year and also picked up and then traded away a 1 WAR catcher in Reese McGuire. Luke Maile put up a .627 OPS, got 200 plate appearances, and still put up 0.7 WAR for Cleveland. All you have to do to be a valuable catcher is not be terrible defensively. The White Sox decided Omar Narvaez had no skills as a catcher and dumped him. He found organizations with better coaches and became a solid defensive catcher. Last year he played half the season, put up a .597 OPS, but still was a 1.1 WAR catcher. Right now the White Sox have Carlos Perez, a 26 year old who hit 21 home runs last year at Charlotte, and Seby Zavala, a 2 WAR catcher last year, both pre arbitration. The only reason these two can’t cheaply give them 2-3 WAR, maybe better, as soon as 2024 is that they aren’t being coached so they can’t be counted on to be average defensively. That’s true even if Seby can’t repeat his 2022 offensive performance, if he can then he might be better than that alone. While Murphy would be an upgrade over that, it’s not worth trading away a guy you hope will be a star himself in Montgomery in order to avoid having to deal with teaching your young catcher things when that’s all the upgrade you get.

The good news is that Twitter still exists so Rick Hahn can once again use that as an excuse for why a deal didn’t happen.

Yes.

I have no idea if this is a fake account these days.

Eh, when Abreu has put up numbers in that range he has been a 2-2.7 WAR player, which is probably relevant for Vaughn too. I wasn’t too thrilled when they extended Abreu after a 115 wRC+ season and remember calling his 121 in 2016 a disappointment. That would be…ok but not great? That would still be a decent downgrade at 1b next year compared to this team; and this team wasn’t nearly good enough.

https://www.baseballtradevalues.com/trade-simulator/ Kopech or Colas work in place of Crochet, Vaughn + Montgomery would be considered an overpay. Vaughn + Colas/Crochet + Romy/Sosa also works. Outside of Robert, Cease, and Anderson, the White Sox have no one else with enough value to make up the core of a deal considered fair here (Giolito and Hendriks have some value but not to the As, would need a 3rd team)

I checked since your numbers didn't add up, and Vaughn had a 125 wRC+ through August 31 last year. Not 133.

He was also quite bad in July despite an IL trip at the end of May - so it's a little hard to jump only to "he's worn out and that's why he is struggling at the end of the year", unless he's just really not able to maintain physical conditioning that lasts through the start of the second half. If that's the case, he has other problems beyond just playing the OF.

I would be happy to take fairly good at 1b from him next year he has been a long way from that.

A lot of people have also noticed the 200 rpm drop in his spin rates on his fastball this year as well.

While that team can compete if enough guys return to form, I continue to believe that I'd say "that team can compete if enough guys return to form" if all they did was sign Gallo and Kiermaier and back of the rotation pitcher. That leads to the key point. However good of a job we do adding players this offseason - it won't matter nearly as much as getting the guys currently here back to form. If you do a spectacular job of adding players, they might get you 25% of the way caught up with Cleveland, while the other 75% has to come internally. And second, what are the odds that the current guys won't get us there? Seems annoyingly high to me. In other words, I would still go with "First do no harm" as the message this offseason. We don't know what things will look like next year, but if Moncada and Grandal struggle again that might be all it takes to leave that team missing the playoffs again, and now they traded Montgomery and are 1 year from losing Anderson and have only 2 pitchers in their 2024 rotation. Was that worth losing Montgomery and Crochet? Naw. Worry about that at the trade deadline if you have to, don't trade away anyone of really any value during the offseason. You could do everything right in the trades, have everyone scouted correctly, and still set the team back a couple years.

He was a negative defender at both corner OF slots last year according to both UZR and OAA, with a big negative on Range. It wasn't a full season of data so you can quibble with how representative it is, but with the size of the OF in San Francisco, if he already doesn't have good range at the corners, that seems like a pretty bad matchup. Maybe the Giants could sign Judge and Kiermaier and that would make them more content to move Yaz out of the way for pitching. But again, this has gotten so complicated that I'm not sure why the Giants wouldn't just sign a starter.

That actually comes back as fair value here, in fact Gio is shown as less valuable than Yaz. https://www.baseballtradevalues.com/trade-simulator/ Do the Giants have anyone else who could play CF? It looks like someone named Austin Slater played there roughly 1/3 of the time last year, but he sure looks like a 30 year old journeyman type player with big platoon splits, so he really can't be a full time CF unless they have another lefty who can defend in CF.