Balta1701

2022 was not interesting. 2011 was not interesting.

Super fun game again despite the site going down.

It is theoretically impossible to be worse than LaRussa. It’s like crossing the speed of light, it’s a violation of physics. Even if he did everything wrong, like LaRussa did, he wouldn’t have the absolute faith of the owner to overrule the front office. But, all people’s hopes that the Sox will be smarter and better prepared…yeah probably not.

If anything, they might have rushed the announcement earlier so that they could do their introductory press conference before news of the arrest leaked, to avoid having to answer questions about it publicly. It came out few days later.

Not exactly an apt comparison as there was a short playoff round before Renteria was fired, but the LaRussa hiring was announced October 30th.

Other people have said this so this is not an original idea. Oscar breaking camp with the big league team in 2023, after not getting a shot in the big leagues down the stretch in 2022 when he had at least established himself as past the level of AA talent and the team kept telling itself it was competitive despite their corner outfield spots being a complete trainwreck...would definitely be a questionable decision.

We probably talked about this last year, but it's not the going rate of these players that render these teams noncompetitive in free agency, it's their own profit-taking. Just to put an example on this, let's go back to 2002, 20 years ago. Forbes shows baseball's estimated total revenue in 2002 to be $3.9 billion. An official statement from MLB's Chief Revenue Officer basically verifies that in 2022 it's going to be above $11 billion. That's nearly a tripling of revenue, on average. How many teams have tripled their payroll since then? (the white sox actually currently have done so, FWIW). The Cleveland Baseball Franchise had a payroll of $78 million in 2002. Now maybe that was a high point for them, but it was $63 million last year. Come on now, you can't possibly tell me that with what has happened to MLB's revenue that the Guardians can't afford a $125 or $140 million payroll. The Pirates were at $42 million in 2002, and $37 million in 2022. They're noncompetitors in free agency because of profit taking, plain and simple. We laugh at the Rockies signing Bryant and bidding on Nimmo, but that's exactly what these teams should be doing; spending some money to try to increase ticket sales and build rosters that compete at least for the Wild Card. Cleveland winning a division and then selling off a player like Rosario or Gimenez would not be a particularly good thing for baseball, but that might well happen this offseason. Refs: https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2014/12/10/major-league-baseball-sees-record-9-billion-in-revenues-for-2014/?sh=514cfafb29c1 https://www.outkick.com/major-league-baseball-mlb-revenue-records-2022-season/ https://www.thebaseballcube.com/content/payroll_year/2002/

Even when he has played partial seasons, he has produced at the same level though. You can’t blame him for 2020 not being a full season either, that wasn’t his fault. If he had no injury in 2021 and had put up 12 WAR over his 3 arbitration years with one of them being 2020, what does his salary look like? I’d say we’d be talking about a 7 year deal similar to Semien’s as the baseline for that player. Not as high of performance peak, but younger.

While you can give him credit to some extent, any GM in baseball would have made those moves in that same situation. Both of them were desperation, oh no a key guy is injured so I have no choice moves. Most wouldn’t have allowed their so called competitive roster to get to that level of desperation in the first place.

I know we got used to the owners keeping salaries down for 5 years totally without illegal collusion, but it doesn’t seem like we are in that era anymore. If there are teams like the Rockies and Giants bidding on the top two outfielders in addition to the Yankees, Mets, and Dodgers, then even the weaker outfielders will be expensive. Maybe something weird happens like with Conforto but this guy is a 5 win OF when healthy who only turns 30 next March. I could easily see it taking 6/$140 to sign him with how this market is shaping up.

Of course it isn’t but it’s not as simple as “the White Sox did their complete and total best and deserve to be constantly praised for the effort forever” either, which is what that leak has seemingly accomplished.

In hindsight, how much of the crying was about stuff like “he’s padding his stats by walking and not helping us win”, the same kind of stupid old school baseball stuff that has people complaining he didn’t want to hit 5th in this page? Now we better understand that “that insane monster has a f***ing .487 OBP, shut up about asking him to bunt” was the correct response.

While I don’t doubt that early in his career Frank Thomas was a jerk, let’s also not forget that the organization didn’t treat him well either. Can we think of any other hall of fame caliber player whose contract got a Diminished Skills Clause?

Tired: the White Sox weren’t good because Frank Thomas wouldn’t hit 5th. Wired: Frank Thomas should have led off.

The article doesn't have a paywall, he suggests that the Rockies will try to go after Nimmo and he isn't sure whether they'll get him, then he says estimates have Nimmo getting $115-$120 million but notes it could go higher.

1. That assumes that what was a self-serving leak from the White Sox was 100% true. 2. His wife's hometown mattered when the White Sox's offer was narrowly ahead of the Phillies offer. What if the White Sox had put 6/$140 on the table? 6/$150?

Maybe Schwarber is even less valuable as his hitting coach encourages him to bunt against the shift. Seriously though, yes, his power hitting wasn't worth that much. That's what bad OF defense does. That's how Andrew Vaughn could be one of the White Sox's better hitters and still be a below-replacement player. The White Sox simply don't need DHs right now, adding another one to the mix would have made them slightly better because a couple of their DHs were really, really bad in the field, but Schwarber still isn't a good fit for this team on defense. The Phillies wound up having enough problems with their OF Defense that they went out and traded for an above average CF at the deadline, and it cost them a top 100 prospect to do so. Imagine that the White Sox signed him, but their OF defense was particularly bad, so they traded Colson Montgomery for Adam Engel who happened to have several years of control remaining. That's almost literally what the Phillies did. And in order of events, Leury Garcia was signed in November 2021, Joe Kelly was signed March 12 2022, Kyle Schwarber was signed March 20 2022. So your post involves some time travel.

I kinda think the people who didn't want Schwarber had a point. Because of his defense and baserunning being quite bad, he was a 2.2-2.6 WAR player this year and he was paid $20 million for that. That wouldn't have put the White Sox anywhere near catching Cleveland, and $20 million a year for 2.5 wins is really expensive for any team with payroll limits. $30 million for Nimmo on paper looks better than $20 million for Schwarber. If we were sitting there with $190 million committed to the payroll instead of $173, but we were 3 wins better because we added Schwarber but didn't play Vaughn and Sheets out there as much, frankly we're in a worse situation because of the extra locked up money. And don't get me started on Castellanos while we're talking about Philly signings.

The joke was that is how the White Sox would get to a $100 million offer for him.

Garfein is NBC Sports Chicago right? They're the ones who said last week that Ozzie would be interviewing, before Ozzie apparently denied it on the record to DVS at the Sun Times. I'm not sure that's any different from what we heard so far and still don't know how to interpret the competing on-the-record claims.

Source?

A 5 WAR player in 2022, has been on pace for about that many every year he’s been healthy? The Yankees, Dodgers, Mets, Cubs, Giants, and Astros all likely in play for OF help? If you think it’s going to be cheap I just wish you luck with that.

I can think of one worse.