Balta1701

If over the course of a full season Sheets is a .715 OPS guy, he has no permanent place on a big league bench. He can’t play the OF any more and his only positions are 1b and DH. His main utility would be that you could stash him at Charlotte and have him available as a replacement level player when your DH or 1B get hurt. He did put up a .785 or so OPS after he came back from the minor leagues and tried to go the other way against the shift less. That is a tolerable 1b and fringey starter at that spot. What happens when the hitting coach stops telling guys who can pull the ball for HR to hit the ball on the ground to beat the shift? I dunno. I’m not sure he’s serviceable. Engel has one more year of arbitration eligibility left. He was paid $2 million this year, and salaries usually go up a little in arbitration so he’s probably available at about $2.75 million if you want him. However, that is more than he would get if he was a free agent coming off this past year. With the obvious money crunch the White Sox are facing, it seems likely they will non tender him. But, that does leave them a need for a part time backup OF.

So who is ready to outbid Steve Cohen for Nimmo? $100 million? $120?

Just in case they even interview him, here’s a hometown piece on Espada worth reading.

I think we all saw how little demand there was for Kimbrel last offseason.

To be fair, that’s because Craig Kimbrel was bad and could only bring back something expensive and not very good.

Oh dear lord

Here’s the last 2 years of pitch location maps, first photo is 2022 and second is 2021. The slider is definitely closer to the zone in ‘22.

That’s fine but that also illustrates the problem. If those guys go from 5 to 13 fWAR, they have only made up for what has been lost to free agency through Abreu, Cueto, and Harrison. That still leaves them with a ton of work to do, that has left them 10 games behind Cleveland. And when you start adding up your extra 10 wins from signing Nimmo, Vaughn going to 1b, the pitchers all being healthier, breakout years from Colas and someone at 2b, no injuries from anyone important, I bet some of those things we need to happen won’t work out. And even if it all did…Cleveland and others can still be tougher also. But apparently any acknowledgment of that is so threatening in this thread that saying so is tantamount to saying that the organization should fold.

If any season should ever have taught white Sox fans about how bad the assumption is that no one will be good enough to challenge them for the division and they will walk away with it easily, it’s this year. No one talked a bigger game without backing it up than the White Sox.

Yes. Of $15 million. I think it goes away if his option is not picked up. https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/chicago-white-sox/payroll/2024/

If anything like that has actually happened, I wonder if just changing coaches can fix it.

JR can absolutely be stupid about how he runs his franchise.

99% chance of a win

Has the whole game been umped this bad?

How the Hell? I last looked at this at 8-1.

The strategy so far for some teams is to put a medium quality guy in game 2 if you have already won game 1. That way maybe your #3 starter steals a win in game two and ends the series, but if not then you have a strong matchup for game 3 still.

Holey s%*# Jose that was just plain incredible. Game saving 12th inning shutout play.

The Guardians should just fold, tbh. Take their ball and go home. The mighty White Sox can eat up that 10 game loss in a hurry.

I am gonna say this. On this page of this thread we've gotten "I could easily see an 8 win improvement out of this group" and "We could make up that 15 wins in a hurry", and that has been paired with "We're doomed and have little chance of making the wild card." I think both of those are too extreme. There is absolutely enough talent here to compete, especially with the expanded wild card. It is definitely true that Tony LaRussa sabotaged this team in obnoxious ways this year, we could see that on the field on a regular basis. With an average coach, at the very least they are several games better just from getting rid of the stupidest stuff. But with that said, using the terms "Easy" or "In a Hurry" to describe overcoming Cleveland is failing to capture how far they have to go. For this team to lose its 2nd and 3rd best performers to free agency, spend less money than they did last offseason, get a year older, play a tougher schedule, and have the team suddenly be one of the healthiest teams in the league and have no one struggle such that they can make up that much ground, in a division that is loaded with talented youth? This is climbing a gigantic mountain. This is the kind of recovery that a guy will win coach of the year for if they pull it off. You aren't supposed to get everything going right to that degree. There is a very high chance that they could do literally everything people imagine they want them to do this offseason and wind up missing the division by 10 games again. One of those is too pessimistic, the other side is just as unlikely on the optimistic side.

The word at the end of the game was that he was pulled with bicep tightness. To me that could be anything from 10 days of rest to out the entire ‘23 season. They don’t have to give us an update now since there’s no next scheduled game for him:

Did we get an update on the arm injury Martin suffered in game 162? Do we know it isn’t severe?

If I understand the math right, it is always the amount of money on the deal divided by the number of guaranteed years on the deal. For The first 3 years, it’s $18 million because the guaranteed money was $54 million over 3. If the option is picked up, it’s 1 guaranteed year at $15 million for the final year, calculated after the 2023 season ends. They don’t give a rebate for the extra luxury tax you already paid, it is just guaranteed money divided by years. That’s at least what Spotrac shows and there is nothing in the CBA text that makes me think there’s something they missed. So I think Ricky managed to create a contract that has a $54 million value and a $69 million luxury tax value. Doesn’t matter as long as you’re never near the tax and don’t need to trade him. Matters now.

I did not make that assumption, I said this was really tough. It is tough if they keep Abreu, it is tough if they let him go. Letting him go helps the defense, but it takes away a guy who put up 4 fWAR for $20 million - that is a cost effective guy we are getting rid of. It takes one of those “a whole lot of things go right” setups to make it happen, and it’s even possible that a ton of stuff could go right and they’re still fighting for the last couple wild card spots.