Balta1701

So was Freddie Freeman in his second full season.

"We don't need an ace because we have one." "All right, 3 game series against Cleveland for the division. Bieber is in game 3 so we got this. Game 2 is...Mckenzie? Oh, that might not go well." "Oh hello Houston's playoff rotation. So let's see, game 1 is Verlander at least you have only 1 ace. Game 2 is...McCullers? Oh."

If Martin is in the 6th starter role, I think he's likely to get what, 20, 25 starts if he stays healthy with this staff? Maybe even a good shot at breaking camp with the team. He has minor league options remaining, so that's plenty of work to see if he can build into something. If his next year isn't good enough, that's a role that has the potential to cost the White Sox the division, but he's pitched well enough this year to at least get a look in that role. Can't have an all star everywhere. Lambert - I think it's time to try him in the bullpen from day 1. They clearly need the bullpen arms out there and he had more success as a bullpen arm than as a starter. Plus, he also has options, so if he's starting the season as a bullpen arm and a whole bunch of people come back healthy for a short time, he can be moved up and down as a depth piece. Still leaves me needing a starter just to get back to Cueto level somewhere.

The answer to the first depends on what the salary limit is. The White Sox are most likely around $25 million under their current 2022 payroll, give or take minor tweaks and arbitration numbers for everyone. Burnes is Arbitration-2, so he'll get a raise on the $6.5 million he earns this year, let's say $8.5 million to be conservative. If Abreu then gets $11.5 million to make the numbers round - that leaves about $5 million left over under the 2022 payroll, which is clearly not enough for a stud LF unless they trade for one. If the true payroll limit was the Luxury tax ($217 million or so counting benefits), that would leave them another $20 million to use on top of the $5 million I just left, and that would be sufficient to sign a top flight LF. I don't believe any OF going to get vastly over $20 million per year this year other than a fairly tall guy from the Yankees. Alternatively, if Rodon were to be at $25 million a year - signing him would basically leave the White Sox's payroll for 2023 at the 2022 level, with no moves made for LF, and with Abreu removed. In that case, they would still have Vaughn at 1b and probably about $20 million remaining under the tax line (maybe a little less if Rodon's salary is higher than that) - it would be a challenge to fit the best LF on the free agent market in under that, but you might get away with a Benintendi under that number. The other option in that case would be to trade for a young LF and pay the prospect price.

If Davis Martin and Jimmy Lambert are the White Sox's main 5th/6th starter options and they're each getting 20 or more starts, I wouldn't have a lot of confidence in the 2023 season. If they throw in another 5th starter type, at least yeah I'd feel better a tiny bit, but what are the odds that is a step down from the current rotation with Cueto? The rotation is already, to me, not good enough to compete with Cleveland, and swapping Cueto and Velasquez for Chris Archer or Chad Kuhl seems like a downgrade on paper.

If a Gavin Sheets was on the FA market, where he's -0.5 fWAR in his previous 2 seasons and his most recent season was a .707 OPS in 400 plate appearances, I think he gets a minor league deal with an invitation to spring training. The only value in this player in terms of a trade is that he has several years of cheap control and a minor league option, so if he does get better there's upside and a place to stash him. Right now, he has not demonstrated that he is a big league roster caliber player, let alone a starter. So yeah I don't think he lops very much off of either of those deals - bottom feeding teams don't like taking on bad money just to get players they can beat on the FA market, and actually competitive teams won't be wanting to take on that deal to get a player that might not make their roster.

Then make your numbers make sense so I don't have anything to call you out about. Not that difficult. Given the amount of work we put into these, when I see Cease getting 60% of what Giolito got and 40% of what Burnes got in someone's arbitration projection, and at the same time Kopech getting half of what Lopez got, I am going to always point that out as an issue. It almost looks like its deliberately misleading. And when you use the same numbers again later in the thread, I'm going to call it out again.

"In reality, there is no meaningful difference between $195M, $197M, or $200M. " "There is zero reason the Sox can’t spend $30M this offseason. " "I’d be shocked if they didn’t have a payroll of at least $190M. " Seems like you are pretty confident in your inside knowledge of their finances to me.

Spotrac shows Keuchel as having a $150k retained salary for 2023. Something to do with the contract bookkeeping that I'm not familiar with. https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/chicago-white-sox/payroll/2023/

Dude, you insist "I stated as fact there's no way they could ever exceed that threshold"...and then insist it is 100% fact that they can exceed that threshold. I'm not allowed to question whether they will, but you absolutely know for certain that there's no difference in that $5 million, and you absolutely know for certain that Cease will get less in arbitration than Giolito did and you're outraged at someone pointing out the difference.

Ironically, the White Sox have some familiarity with Cleveland spending decent change on first baseman thanks to Yonder Alonso and Edwin Encarnacion.

Houston.

Publicly no, but it was definitely one of those things circulating on twitter as a reason why they wouldn't add much salary. Then, they proceeded to not add much salary. Definitive? No. Possible and consistent with what they did? Yes.

I get where you're going with the concept and I don't think it's that outrageous, but I hit a wall right here. I don't think anyone takes on $10 million for Leury or $9 million for Kelly in order to take on Gavin Sheets or Jake Burger. Sheets had plenty of opportunities this year and has an OPS in the low .700s, that's not good enough for a DH/1b. Burger hit better, but has an injury history and was awful at 3b when given a chance there. As a 1b/DH, mid-.700s OPS is tolerable but not great. I wouldn't take Leury or Kelly on in order to get either of those guys if I was the GM of another team, unless you were taking like half their salaries back in bad money from my roster as well. I can get an .800-ish OPS and average defense at 1b from CJ Cron for $7.5 million/year, why are either of those guys worth more?

And yet, we definitely heard that they didn’t want to add any more than Diekman at the trade deadline this year because of their financials. So you may not want to have this conversation and you can insist all you want that it will be easy for them to push beyond last years’ payroll, but it is definitely an open question.

They were about $23 million under the tax line this year. They are 10 games behind Cleveland. That gap is so huge that Rodon doesn’t fix it.

Right now, the White Sox's rotation is Cease, Lynn, Kopech, Giolito, and Martin. The 6th starter is unknown. 3 of those guys hit the IL this year, the 5th starter is a rookie, one of them will be 36 next year, 3 of them had increases in innings in 2022. Hahn may well screw it up if they try to trade for one, but they absolutely need a starter. Frankly, they need at least 2 somewhere to be able to get through the season, the odds that they won't have 2 guys on the IL at once are almost nil (that's the case for every franchise). Trading for one might be the wrong move, they might get super lucky and have one pop out of their system like Martin did this year, but they desperately need starting pitching.

So yeah he'll be here whispering into his ear about how great of a job he's doing Grima Wormtongue style through 2032.

Yeah, I don't know who you're talking about that wants Dylan Cease to take a hike but that would be very weird.

You may not want to admit this, but there's a big difference between having $25 million and $30 million to spend for this org. If Nimmo is $20 million for you, just following your outline - that's the difference between a $5 million and a $10 million pitcher to go with him. Andrew Heaney in your first post is probably well out of your price range. Cueto probably is, even. So yeah, at least to me, that makes a big difference.

So um, you're predicting rain?

$25 million. You had Kopech make half as much as Lopez made in arb 1 also, so you were low in multiple spots on arbitration numbers. Could be $26 million to match this year, but $30 million is definitely a payroll boost over this year.

Y'all know bloody well that he'll still be here for 2024.

After he spent $16 million on Herrera, $17 million on Kelly would seem very much like a Hahn deal if it wasn’t for the posts about LaRussa having a role.

Just to stress again, you got to $30 million by projecting that Cease will get paid half as much in arb year 1 as Giolito did.