Balta1701

NBC Chicago said last week he had an interview scheduled on Tuesday. Then the Sun Times DVS said he talked to Ozzie and no interview was scheduled. which was weird because both were on the record and isn’t NBC Ozzie’s employer? Beats me.

If this happens we will have a a full year to complain about it, no reason to rush into it now.

I did find one way to get some of this data despite the BP Paywall, the Sun-Times gave an update on this at the end of August that included the rankings and WAR lost by the Cubs and Sox. https://chicago.suntimes.com/2022/8/27/23319923/white-sox-cubs-injuries-impact-war The difference between 4th most WAR lost (Sox) and 11th most WAR lost (Cubs) at that time was just over 1 WAR in the B-P counting. For their numbers, it looks like a middle-of-the-pack team lost about 5.75 WAR to injuries and the White Sox look to have been on pace to lose about 7. Cleveland was in fact one of the healthiest teams in baseball and that was a big advantage for them, but still only a portion of the advantage they had over the White Sox. When folks say the White Sox need to "Stay healthy", that requires projecting that the White Sox will be one of the healthiest teams in the league for it to make more than a minute difference. The White Sox really weren't that different from an average team. The difference between the White Sox and a team of average health looks to be 1.5 WAR. If we were talking about losing the division by 2 games, this would matter. The difference between the White Sox and Cleveland appears to be about 5, so if you want health to be a big factor next year then the White Sox need to be one of the healthiest teams in baseball, because according to B-R being average or even slightly above average on health isn't going to change much. I do note that the B-R metric seems to be very different from the mangameslost version on this, which I don't think is all that surprising as it's not straightforward to calculate WAR lost by injury if you're trying to factor in what would happen to rosters if guys didn't get hurt. In the B-R version, Tampa Bay lost the most WAR to injury due to Franco being out, they lost probably 8 WAR. Mangameslost has the Twins losing 10 and Houston losing 9 (McCullers, Verlander for a couple weeks, and Brantley, hmph this actually sounds somewhat believable).

Maybe the market goes wild with so many teams wanting OF help and a new CBA existing, but yeah I would have guessed that $10 million range coming off of everything for him is probably reasonable if he's actually able to play. Do we even know if he's expected to be healthy enough to play in 2023 to start the year? We don't want another Joe Kelly signing.

When Garcia signed with the Rays after a terrible season with the White Sox, he got 1/$3.5 million though. He got 2/$20 from the Brewers after a 2 win season with the Rays, and he got that Miami deal after a 3 win season with the Brewers in '21. And let's also not forget that Conforto was already pretty bad in 2021, at least by his standards, due in large part to a different injury.

Alvarez also was actually a non-terrible OF this year in part thanks to a strong throwing arm. He was -8 on the statcast OAA Outs above average, but he was a positive 6.7 on UZR and a +5 on DRS, in 56 games in LF, with that positive performance largely driven by his arm so maybe the difference in the stats is that OAA isn't taking throwing into account for that number. Over a full season those are pretty good fielding numbers for a LF. Remember that series against Cleveland where they just said "screw it, Eloy is in LF, so every ball that is hit anywhere in LF is a double because he can't throw anyone out and he can't run to get the ball?" Houston doesn't have that problem with Alvarez.

Wasn't there a set of denials a week ago saying "Harris has not been interviewed by the Sox" or something like that?

For now I get excited when I see AJ on tv. Please don’t take that away by dumping him in with Ventura.

3 of the Sox’s last 4 managerial hires have ended as train wrecks and I’m pretty sure their final seasons were all miserable to watch.

Technically there were no other candidates, they conducted no legitimate interviews last time.

I would hesitate to put too much emphasis on the reversed splits. His splits were better against lefties in both ‘19 and ‘21, and we saw how much trouble we got into with Pollocks reverse splits last year. I also noted before ‘22 that Semiens splits were reversed in 2021 and that also flipped back on 2022.

That’s whole year. At Charlotte alone, .686 OPS against lefties, .887 against righties. That’s in like 200 PA.

.895 OPS against lefties, .947 against righties.

Who else on the current White Sox would hit 1st? 2022 wasn't all that great for Anderson, and the only 2 regulars who had a higher OBP than him were Abreu (Gone) and Eloy. Is Eloy your leadoff hitter next year?

Matsuzaka got through most of 2 seasons fairly healthy. His first season, 07, wasn't all that great, with an ERA of 4.4. In 2008 he was really effective and 4th in the Cy Young voting, but missed 1 month of the season with a back injury. Things went to crap for him after the 2009 World Baseball Classic. He suffered a leg injury either before or during that, and only pitched 60 innings that season afterwards. He was not awful in 2010, ERA in the mid 4s again over 160 innings, and then went down for TJS in 2011.

There was a weird thing in January of that year where, after Machado had toured Guaranteed Rate Field (was that before the name change), Bruce Levine published that the White Sox had offered Machado 8/$175. It somehow got picked up everywhere and literally shared by the official verified MLB Twitter piece with an image saying "offered" and a picture of Machado and the Sox logo before it got pulled. Shortly after that, Machado's agent started publicly complaining about leaks, and in the end someone from the Padres said that they got involved in Machado's bidding in the first place after that report because that report made it seem like the bidding wasn't going to get out of control and they could get in at a somewhat reasonable price. My guess always was that the White Sox leaked that offer thinking "this will tell everyone else that we're serious and that they should stay away", because why else would it have gone all the way up to MLB itself? And if they were thinking that they could get Machado for $175 and Harper for something similar to that all the way up until February, Hahn saying they could get "middle of the order bats" makes sense. Then, that leak does the opposite and brings in the Padres and the Phillies into the bidding, and the White Sox hit their limit while the two other teams that got involved wound up getting those guys for contracts that, while high, were surprisingly reasonable compared to where FA spending could have gone. Once Machado turned down their offer ($250 million with 2 team options), it was clear they weren't really in the realm for Harper either, so they let the Phillies and Giants battle it out (someone else might have been in there, but the Giants had a short term deal with a higher yearly amount while the Phillies put the long term deal there).

They made a big presentation to him at the winter meetings and then bragged at Soxfest (cough) how they were going after multiple middle of the order bats, but it seems clear that they thought the prices for both Harper and Machado would be much lower than they actually were in order to say things like that. Whatever the number they had in their mind was, they thought they could get both done for something like half as much as they actually wound up being paid. Once the price for Machado rose to $250 million they didn't want to go any higher, and with Harper they weren't seriously participating once things moved towards final bids.

I'm not going to judge this situation based on a bunch of leaks that are hard to follow just yet. About the only ones we've gotten are a handful of people who were definitely talked to, some official leaks that contradict each other (Ozzie's employer says he's interviewing and he tells the Sun Times he isn't), and a couple of potentially credible leaks that say it won't be Espada.

Notice which one I point out - there's one example where there's absolutely no excuse for how they acted and that's 2019. I'm willing to accept that my strategy might be different from theirs in other years, and that it's all just a roll of the dice so sometimes a Tatis pops out of no where, and that they have to deal with JR, but 2019 is simply pathetic. To have 3 years to do their work because of the Robert penalty and not bother to do their work, and then trade their funds to a harder working franchise - that's just a joke. That's so egregious that I'll point it out any time someone leaves that opening, it should not be forgotten.

The Phillies aren't spectacular in any way at what they're doing, but they're not the worst in the league. If you're a middle of the pack team that cycles through rebuilds and competitive years, you ought to have a couple of solid playoff runs a decade.

He kinda did actually. They clearly weren't willing to coach Marcus Semien on any position and labeled him as a crappy failed utility guy the moment he got to the big leagues since he couldn't hit that well and hadn't figured out how to field in the infield on his own. Teaching him would have been too much work, and quitting is easier than working hard, so he was dumped on the As as another sweet deal where we didn't have to send out too much.

https://www.mlb.com/news/bryce-harper-deal-boosts-phillies-ticket-sales

Let’s not underblame here. When the signing limits went away, the White Sox had plenty of money to spend internationally in 2019, and they didn’t even use all of it. They had multiple years to prep for that class, and were so lazy about that work that they had leftover space to trade to a harder working club, Texas, to get them to take on Nate Jones’s busted deal. We should never let this one go. It’s a perfect example of then having an opportunity to improve the ball club and they clearly said “this is not our priority, we care less about this than the Texas Rangers do.”

Espada is a sign that the White Sox understand this, and they're going to work on building up the system around him. And even if they don't do it perfectly, doing it well enough can put them in the same situation as the Phillies are right now. Not always on top, but relevant and occasionally making deep playoff runs. That's where they should be!

I would genuinely like Dusty Baker to win a world series. And Ted Cruz was sitting behind home plate the whole night. Go Phillies. Easily. Yuck.