Balta1701

The last time he threw this many innings was 2016. Having to count on him for more than 120 was always going to be iffy.

You trust them to do a successful bold trade?

Like it or not, 80% of this roster is already set. Next season is determined by whether they can make Moncada, Lynn, Giolito, Grandal, Robert, Etc. into good enough players to make up ground on Cleveland. If not, then you have a much different team and different set of decisions in 2024. That fact doesn’t change with a different GM.

He says that and then Abreu decides to play one more year and Reinsdorf says oops there’s your FA money figure the rest out.

That improvement may also be a short lived statistical quirk. That’s what happened with Vaughn last year. Defensive stats just don’t do that well over short terms.

Eh this is also silly season. Hahn always plays those games of not trying to give away the blatantly obvious. It’s when he tries to give a sound bite that he gets himself in trouble! “We are looking to add middle of the order bats, not just one”. “Ask me after the parade.” “If we keep playing like this we will be right there at the end.”

The first paragraph is literally exactly what we said about Andrew Vaughn last offseason and we used that to justify him being out there again.

This all sounds like the description Hahn gave in 2020 before they hired LaRussa.

Just remember, in 2019, the White Sox's manger prior to LaRussa was asked how he uses analytics while making decisions (ultimate fluff question for some article, shoulda been easy) and his answer was "my response is f*** you."

He said several times upon leaving SF that he was taking a break but he'd see how things went. Clearly left the door open at the time.

Not the worst suggestion ever, he's controlled, fills a need, and wouldn't cost a ton. But...the White Sox already seem to have some attitude and locker room issues. Is it smart to acquire another one and then dump it onto a new coach?

He threw 120 innings this year. On paper, you would like to pencil him in for 160-ish next year as a reasonable number. But yeah, deep down, you need to know who your 6th, 7th, and 8th options are in your rotation because very solid chance that they're needed. That almost goes for any team, but Kopech and others highlight that issue for the White Sox.

White Sox are 6 games ahead of the Cubs with 3 to play.

Coming into the year, "Dallas Keuchel being an issue" and "Michael Kopech might only be able to give 130 innings" were both things that should have been totally unsurprising. Joe Kelly being hurt to start the year can't exactly have been surprising - he was hurt when they signed him! Did these seriously catch Ethan Katz off guard? "Hey Ethan, we need someone to get ready to come into a game on April 15. Oh I'll go get Kelly up. Dude, Kelly hasn't pitched yet this year he's rehabbing a bicep injury. What? When did this happen? 2021."

I don't think that's surprising at all.

That is also basically the Luxury tax line, $215 million - counting the included benefits and the weird contract shenanigans.

I've said this in a couple spots, but I don't think that this starting rotation is good enough to compete right now - they weren't that great this year and even then they had a massive overperformance by Cueto that saved them from being really quite bad. On paper next year Davis Martin replaces Cueto and ??? replaces Martin as the 6th starter...and as usual "no one could have predicted they wouldn't stay healthy" is not an acceptable answer. So let's at least look at starting pitching here as a possible route where they could talk about trades. Therefore, looking at guys who are cost-controlled for roughly 1-2 years here as trade targets, on teams that either might move pitchers or who aren't currently competitive (leaving the Dodgers, Braves, Astros off the list for obvious reasons). Guys with 3 arb years remaining are probably going to cost more in terms of players than the White Sox can afford. Milwaukee - Burnes, Woodruff - each has 2 years of control remaining. Arizona - Merrill Kelly - good this year, 2 years of control remaining. Miami - Pablo Lopez, 2 years of control remaining. Alcantara - might be about to win the Cy Young? Cleveland - Bieber, doubt that's worth talking about. Some back of the rotation options - Kyle Freeland (Colorado), Brad Keller (KCR, just moved to the bullpen), Erick Fedde (Was, ERA >5). Maybe the Yankees decide to dump Montas? Maybe the Twins move someone, but again are they going to help us?

10th in WAR/FIP isn't top tier by my standards, and that's supposed to explicitly exclude defense.

Oh there is absolutely a huge risk now of this all falling apart. After 2023 they clear one bad contract (Grandal) but they lose 2/5 of their current starting rotation (Giolito, Lynn) and none of their top pitching prospects look to be anywhere close to ready by 2023 (unless they try to stretch out Crochet). So they would have some money to spend, but a lot of people to replace, and we've seen how risky the FA market is when you can't afford the top guys. 2024 loses Anderson (who does have a potential replacement) and most of the bullpen. On top of that, we've seen a young Guardians team already step up and put them in their place, and the Royals and Tigers have a ton of youth sitting around that won't be 23 years old and inexperienced forever. After they made the playoffs in 2020, it looked like 2021-2023 was the window where this team could be peaking and have a solid path to the playoffs before they started losing guys to FA and the Tigers and Royals stepped up. They wasted 2 of those years on LaRussa and have a fresh challenge from Cleveland, but the 2023 point where the White Sox could start getting worse still stands. If they miss the playoffs again in 2023, I don't know what they would think their path back is - other than selling off Cease and others.

Wasn't he quite a legendary a**hole when he played for the White Sox?

Huh?

For every name you can come up with that you're familiar with, there should be a name interviewed that we don't know. I have no idea who the pitching coach is for the Nationals, the bench coach for the Padres, the 3b coach for the Mariners, or the AAA coach for the Dodgers are. I could Google them, but I won't remember their names in an hour so why bother? But that doesn't mean there aren't really good people working their way up through those positions, people who would be an excellent fit for this job if given the chance.

This thread wasn’t created until July 23. There was a general disappointment with the offseason, well deserved. But people also gave him more than half the season just in case: note that this also appears at the trade deadline, where it was rational to worry that he’d foul things up more if he did anything.

I don’t know what standard you’re using but I definitely would not call the 2022 White Sox pitching staff “top tier”. 16th best ERA, slightly higher WAR thanks to park adjustment and heavier weighting for strikeouts.

I go a little the other way. I think they all deserved consequences so I don’t feel the slightest bit bad for him getting hit with some. It is only unfair that others did not, punishing him less wouldn't make this more fair to my eyes. That said, he has actually suffered a penalty for his actions, a fairly stiff one. I do think he should have to talk about this in any interview for any position he takes. I don’t think this should get him permanently banned from baseball.