Balta1701

I come not to praise Caesar, but to bury him. Abreu and Cueto were the white Sox’s second and third best players this year by Fangraphs, and Harrison was also a positive player. All 3 of those are FAs they have to replace, and replacing your second and third best players is an obvious issue. They might have $40 million to spend in a very optimistic scenario and they have to cover 8 fWAR just to replace those guys, and what, 15 to clearly catch up with Cleveland, and they might well get better with all that youth? This ain’t gonna be easy. Fixing the defense alone up to average gets them 3 fWAR or so. That don’t fix this. This is really tough.

Not surprised he wound up with a no decision. Poor dude.

Werewolf by night is also super fun. Good Halloween stuff. A little gory if you have a preteen.

Yeah I doubt any of these folks really demand a full years salary for that, but if they work 6 months a year in 3 game batches, there needs to be a way for them to afford health care for that part of the year and to earn enough to cover half the year.

Depending on how he is defensively, a 113 wRC+ for Vaughn at 1b might be worth about 1 WAR there. So it's a downgrade of 3 WAR or so at 1b unless Vaughn is much better on defense than expected. So removing Sheets from the OF and adding in one of the best OFs in baseball in his place might be worth 3 or 4 wins.

Does it involve removing Abreu and his 4 WAR in order to do it is the hard part?

"There's a right hander throwing up in the bullpen right now. Warming up. I feel like throwing up right now." -Rooney

Hey it's John Rooney

Duvall - starting LF, out for half the year. Rosario, $9 million a year OF, missed half the year and was a -1 WAR OF when he got back. You just basically made the Acuna/Robert or Acuna/Moncada comparison yourself. Like I said, you have "1 fewer injured key guy", more injuries to their depth. Strider wasn't supposed to be part of their 2022 rotation, Cueto wasn't supposed to be part of the White Sox's 2022 rotation. Fried had 30 starts? Giolito had 30 starts. Oh, and yeah they had guys like Ozuna and Anderson who were just plain bad, sounds familiar there too. The White Sox's top 5 starters made 132 starts this season. The Braves' top 5 starters made 132 starts this season.

Just pick a team. Some of them are a little healthier than the White Sox (Cleveland is in this category) but this super healthy roster people are expecting does not exist. Here's Atlanta. Atlanta regulars who hit the IL: Max Fried (Concussion) Huascar Ynoa (Made 17 starts for them in 2021, Tommy John Surgery) Ozzie Albies (All star and silver slugger in 2021, missed 60% of the season, unlikely in first playoff round) Spencer Strider (Made 20 starts for them this year, ERA of 2.67, currently out with an oblique injury, would be their #2 or #3 starter right now) Adam Duvall - missed half the season with a wrist injury Kenley Jansen - missed 3 weeks Acuna - Missed 2 weeks with a knee issue, never fully recovered from injury last year. Luke Jackson - one of those relievers from the 2021 team - Tommy John Surgery Eddie Rosario - missed 3 months with an eye injury Orlando Arcia - Utility guy - missed a month with a hamstring injury Darren O'Day - signed to a minor league contract, came up and had an ERA of 4 out of the bullpen, missed whole second half with a calf injury. They have a couple guys who stayed fully healthy and they're important guys. Morton came back healthy. Kyle Wright is healthy. Fried was only out a short time. Swanson and Riley stayed healthy. But that's the case for the White Sox too - Cease was healthy, Abreu was healthy. Cueto threw more innings than he has since 2016. Their key setup men - Lopez and Graveman - healthy the whole year. The Braves lost more minor league guys than the White Sox, so they also lost a bunch of depth. They had more time used on the IL than the White Sox. They probably had 1 more key guy stay healthy than the White Sox - Swanson vs Anderson might be a comparison there, but that's it. What they did have was sufficient depth and sufficient talent to overcome those injuries when they happened. They even overcame a bad season from Ian Anderson, who was demoted to AAA. This is a comparable injury report to the White Sox.

This is a playoff game and it's going to be over in 2:20.

And there's the Cleveland Comeback.

His salary is the 2nd highest in baseball for a reliever next year, assuming a mutual option in philly gets declined. He'll be 34 next year, had an arm injury, and his numbers have deteriorated the last 2 years. While he's still very good, and you may totally support "The second highest salary for any reliever in baseball" as a fair deal, it is definitely an exaggeration to say it's a bargain. Fangraphs, for example, valued him at $12.7 million this year. Furthermore, having the luxury tax number be $18 million next year when his salary is $14.3 million is clearly an issue if they wanted to trade him, as the only teams likely to trade for the 2nd highest reliever salary in baseball are also teams very near or in tax territory.

I'm pretty sure we just had a manager who did exactly that and got pretty much everything he wanted. It did not go well.

Best tweet my wife read last night on that subject: ”Oh god he’s in a hallway, run!”

No they weren’t a once in a lifetime team. They won like 91 games the year after that. That’s the point! If a GM does his job, that becomes possible.

So did Max Muncy.

Everyone said the same thing about Davey Martinez, and then he finally got a chance and bang, trophy.

Remember the reaction of Leury and Freeman at 2b on the first 1-2 walk?

Because last Monday's game was a home game. They were on the road before that. Much of the team's media would have been traveling with the team along with the players prior to Monday. If they waited until after Wednesday the players would already be heading out. Starting the series on Monday was the last day they could count on everyone being able to come to the press conference who wanted to be there, including press, players, coaching staff, front office staff, etc, and easier to do it to start the series than on the last day of the year.

Literally every single world series winner you can write that about. Stephen Strasburg shredded everything about his body right after the 2019 world series, he has pitched 31.1 innings since winning WS MVP. Had that injury occurred in 2019, boom Nationals never win a title. Where are the Braves last year if McCullers doesn't get hurt? The Dodgers starters in the series against Atlanta were Joe Kelly (Yes that one), Urias, Knebel, Scherzer, and Buehler twice. Note - no Kershaw, no May, no Bauer for reasons. The Braves got awfully lucky in their opponents pitching staffs. The 2005 White Sox were really well put together. But they were not the only really well put together White Sox team of that decade. The next year the team won what, 91 games? The team had 3 playoff appearances in 9 seasons, barely missed a 4th. Out of 9 seasons from 2000-2008, they finished under .500 once and .500 once - that's over .500 7 times in 9 years. With the expanded playoffs now, that's a setup that would have a team in the playoffs 5 or 6 times. A team having everything come together one season when they're quite good for a decade is always somewhat lucky, but it's also luck that the team made. Unlike the current GM, they even seemed to learn from their mistakes - '05 they went with a team that was deeper and stronger on defense than the previous years, and they fixed the 5th/6th starter spots that were costing them in previous years. For the White Sox to match that performance, they have to be over .500 in 5 of the next 6 years, and if they did that, I think there's a good chance there's a deep playoff run in there. That was basically the rebuild strategy, in fact - have a core that could still be contributing in 2026, 2027, so that the team has a number of chances at making the playoffs and going on a run, since things become quite random at the end of the season. And there would be compliments towards the General Manager for sustaining success for that long.

I think we're smart enough to take both his career record and the circumstances into account. For example, he's made the playoffs twice, but he's been "Going for it" in 6 of those years, 4 different times he's thought he had a playoff team, added players, spent money, and traded away players to try to win now, and missed the playoffs. Even giving him a break on the rebuilding years, that's just absolutely awful. Most GMs get to do that once, maybe twice. This is where I get to saying that most teams in the league would have fired Hahn 4 times so far, with a good fraction firing him 5 times.