Balta1701

Right now as a 24 year old on a roster that believes pulling the ball is a mistake, Vaughn has an .802 OPS. This would be good for 11th among 1b performance in MLB. They’ve burned some of his control and value for that reason but he’s clearly a valuable player to a significant fraction of baseball.

According to the other thread, JR will enforce non compete clauses on Hahn and KW to keep them all.

Next question.

If Reinsdorf treats his employees this poorly then it’s hard to imagine why they’d stay.

Well over the 3.4 year stretch that included 2020 Kike put up 11.5 rWAR, so he’s clearly been a significant step above Leury in his career. He’s been hurt this year so his numbers are way down - could that presage a permanent decline, sure. Could he come back better next year? Also possible.

I mean, this is definitely another reason why you would act and move on after they hired LaRussa because this would also be poor treatment of your employees. Shove the manager down his throat and then use a noncompete agreement to kick him out of the league if he disagrees, and this is considered a solid job situation?

Haven't we seen GMs move from franchise to franchise before? Immediately coming to mind is Jed Hoyer, who I don't think left the Padres feeling that good when he jumped ship, right? Doesn't that tell us something about whether other teams are using non-compete agreements?

I mean, today's a prime example of the issue with him right? Having a 1-1.5 WAR 2b covering that position most games isn't bad as long as you can manage the roster. You play him some of the time and then you have a decent backup or two who also swap in to keep everyone healthy. When you get to a high leverage spot and the game is on the line, you swap guys like that out of the lineup and play for the platoon advantage to try to give yourself a better shot. But you can't do that if you play a man down all the time for reasons that make no sense, and you can't do that if you don't have tolerable backups or kids you can swap in. The problem isn't him, it's that we have a manager who can't recognize players' strengths and weaknesses and a roster that has too many black holes.

Eh, he's been about a 0.9 fWAR player this year. For $5 million or whatever that isn't bad, it's nice and cheap and basically a slightly below league average starter, and the money saved by going cheap there was instrumental in creating this dominant bullpen. Seriously, if we had 1 fWAR players at 2b and in RF or on the bench the last couple years it actually makes a big difference.

Remember that he can’t interview for another GM position (or anything lower) without his owner’s consent. He would most likely have had to resign to do things like that.

I offer no judgment against you for enjoying baseball and looking for the bright side. And I also agree that they still have a shot at the playoffs. Regardless of whether they make the playoffs or not, some things however remain true. They are in a rough spot this offseason. They played this season as a mid 80s win team at best, dramatically underperforming. It is unclear how they can fix this, and the financials leave them very little room to maneuver. They likely have nearly $170 million committed next year counting contracts and arbitration for guys who they don’t have replacements for, and that’s without Abreu. If they want to keep Abreu, they wind up with very little to spend to match this year’s payroll, and a lot of their high priced guys are difficult to move. And oh yeah, they’d have lost Cueto too if they did that. None of these things change if they win the division with 88 wins or if they fall behind and finish with 83. The exact payroll limit might depend some on a playoff birth, but that doesn’t change the large amount already committed. And that’s one we can point at right now.

The Guardians are currently on pace for 86.3 and will have the tiebreaker unless the White Sox sweep them the rest of the way. 87 might win it since the white Sox would be winning a lot down the stretch but I think 88-89 is more likely required given the tiebreakers.

Tweet is from today, article is from last year?

On the subject of a “rebuild”, I continue to believe the only option for the white Sox is some version of running it back again next year. They have too many guys under contract who have performed so poorly they can’t be moved for what you’d need to get to justify a rebuild. Robert, Moncada, Eloy, Grandal, Giolito, Lynn, Pollock, Kelly, Anderson - you’d be selling low on any of them, and Grandal is on the edge of DFA. For example, moving Lynn or Moncada might save them money next year, but you’re unlikely to get anything back that makes the team better other than saving money, and you might even have to send money with them. Does moving Moncada for no return, saving some money, and having Burger start at 3b make this team better? Does moving Lynn for scraps and having $15 million to spend on the FA market make them better if Davis Martin takes his spot? With all of those guys, continuing to play them and hoping for improvement remains the only realistic option. For some of them it gets you through their contract, for others maybe they can stay healthy or have a comeback season and that rebuilds their value. They have guys they could trade to bring back a solid haul such as Cease, but doing so doesn’t get them out of their current contract situation. It does them little good to trade Cease for a prospect haul that helps in 2 or 3 seasons while they still have to pay Grandal, Lynn, and the others next year. What happens if a few of those guys return to form, but you traded away Cease, so you’re still only an expensive .500 team? Furthermore, there’s no reason to think Cease or Kopech will be worth vastly less next offseason if it does come to that point. Change the entire coaching staff and front office, parade Rick Hahn through the south side after being tarred and feathered, make some tweaks around the edge to the roster with the limited room you have, and hope that a new staff can reinvigorate some of these players next year. If they can, maybe the team competes, or at least maybe someone like Moncada regains some value. If they can’t, then you’ve cleared a couple contracts (Kelly, Lynn, Grandal), and now you talk about moving a Cease or a Kopech at the deadline next year or in winter 2023-2024.

There are certainly ways that this could work out. If Sosa and Romy could fill Harrison’s role and Colas could fill the RF hole, you can use Vaughn at DH or trade him for a pitcher and move Eloy to DH while keeping Abreu. It’s maybe only a short term plan, and it relies a lot on Colas and Sosa being big leaguers when at least Sosa isn’t one right now, but it could work. We should just be conscious of it. You resign Abreu, you effectively are done on the FA market for anyone other than scraps.

Just remember, if you keep Abreu at his current salary, you basically have no more money to play with. Effectively, re-signing Abreu to his current salary leaves the White Sox a couple million dollars below their ‘22 payroll. To add anything other than scraps, they would need to subtract someone if they can’t massively increase payroll. With how their expensive guys have performed this year making their salaries almost unmovable, basically adding Abreu means you’re very close to “the team is on the field”, except you also lose Harrison and Cueto. This may be the right decision, but it’s one we should be conscious of.

Have they called this or do they think they can get a few Innings in between rain batches?

I wonder if they cut back on their marketing staff this year since the team would sell itself. We always used to hear the opposite about that office, they’d move heaven and earth to give a fan a good experience.

Haven’t these two starters matched up like 3 times this season?

Hahn also thought that a fair offer for Machado was $175 million over 8 years.

There are press people who said that the driving force in the Kelly acquisition was LaRussa. So while I don’t have any urge to let Hahn off the hook, I don’t want to let LaRussa off the hook for the bullpen signings either.

They physically can’t do that tomorrow. One of them will have to either play or be on the IL.

HE HAS TWO STRIKES TONY

Who exactly would have sufficed that is in this organization? Romy, who was I believe already hurt in the offseason? Yolbert, who hadn't shown signs he could do anything?

I know there have been plenty of times people have been inactive for a few games without being put on the IL before but I have never seen it happen over and over and over again like this year.