Balta1701

Give or take arb numbers and whether they nontender guys like Foster, Ruiz, Engel. It’s like $25 million ish to spend if they let Abreu go to get back to current payroll.

If they keep Abreu and can’t raise payroll, they have about $5 million to spend.

2019 - 1.45 2018 - 1.31 2017 - 1.42. 2015 it was 1.61. 2014 - 1.40. top 10 in the league in ground ball rate going all the way back to Ventura. Every year. This is a specific team philosophy. They bring in guys like Menechino because that is the it’s philosophy. Starts at the top. 2013 was actually a fly ball team. 2014 was Todd Steverson’s first year. Who hired Manto in 2012 and who hired Steverson in 2014?

What if I told you that their GB/FB ratio was 1.30 this year and 1.38 in 2016 and 1.41 in 2021, and I was too lazy to check other years?

The low launch angle performance has been incredibly consistent in the statcast era back to 2015. That’s across several hitting coaches and 3 managers. About the only constant is Abreu and Leury over that time.

The only reason that two of their guys signed extensions is that the team was willing to leave them in the minors to earn an extra year of service time if they didn’t. The guy they had to call up to fill Eloys spot after injury - Vaughn - no extension.

It looks like his OPS away from Yankee Stadium this year is .719. He has 8 home runs on the road, but 10 extra base hits on the road and 7 at home - so a couple of balls leaving the yard and a tiny difference in his very weak BABIP are the main factors. I sure wouldn’t call that “great” away from Yankee Stadium.

He is 0 for his last 7, but in his last 10 games he’s hitting .292 with an .838 OPS, 2 HR, and 11 RBI.

Yeah, if there’s a time when you can slip a guy through waivers it’s right now, when teams want all their open spots for trades.

It is going to be very difficult to “reform” this team in the offseason. With a few assumptions about arb offers going to guys like Cease, Kopech, Giolito, and Engel - I count over $160 million committed to this payroll next year - and that’s without either Cueto or Abreu. Their 2022 payroll is about $190 million. I count them having spent about $40 million last offseason on adding guys - next offseason you lose your most effective bat, second most effective starter, and you have $30 million to replace them if there’s no payroll cut and if you actually let both walk. Basically, the bad money spent on Keuchel this year gets redistributed among a bunch of mandatory raises. This is not going to be easy at all.

With Gallo it may very well be predictive of what he will do…and let’s just imagine that they trade for bullpen help, pick up Gallo, and he continues to struggle - that could readily be the difference in the division. Sheets sorta sets a replacement level floor in the OF as that’s what he’s been over the last 2 months and probably what he will be going forward. You gotta find someone better than him if you want to justify making that move. And yeah, it’s harder to make this work at other positions too. Particularly in the rotation.

Ok great. So your OF needs to be better than Sheets, who at least has a .715 OPS since June1. Gallo, for example, is at .644 since then.

I definitely understand what he’s getting at here and it is an issue - the White Sox’s roster is currently 27 players deep counting Burger. Most guys are under contract, most guys don’t have options available. So yes, they could use an OF. They need a roster spot for this. The guys they can cut are Pollock, who is owed $14 million if he’s cut, Engel - who is quite cheap for a backup and has one more arbitration year left so if you dump him for a rental now you have to spend more to find a backup CF next year, Eloy who is owed like $30 million if he’s cut and who people are hesitant to trade when he’s at his lowest value, and Vaughn and Sheets who have options and can be sent down but who are also the only two who have done anything worth the bats in the OF. Assuming Robert isn’t out for the season, which guy do you cut to pick up Gallo? This plays out across the roster. At 2b an upgrade would be nice. Harrison has hit an .800ish OPS since June, are we dropping him or buying out $12.5 million on Leury’s deal? They could use a starter because Giolito and Lynn have been bad. Neither is hurt. You can buy a few innings with IL stints but not enough to create room for anyone decent. Who do you cut or trade to create room for a starter? At the very least these are tough questions because any move we make we might regret within a year or two. I do think you need to clear this catching logjam.

Trading? The guys a dfa candidate. What are we trading?

This algorithm is saying that if they aren’t sellers then they are making a mistake. I am quite familiar with the white Sox management making mistakes.

For this team? I mean, they don’t exactly have a DH opening…

I can do histograms how’s that?

How much did the Mets give up for those who can’t do a deep dice in the deal right now?

I agree in principle, but a guy who has physically fallen off over the course of a year will show the same pattern as a guy who had a bad stretch. Given that at the same time his other elite skill, exit velocity, has fallen completely apart and taken a bigger drop than Moncada, it’s at least worth discussing.

Didn’t they have a guy last year in exactly that same situation and then held onto him?

let’s also note that he was a +15 DRS OF in 2021 but is a -2 DRS of in 2022. It is also fair to note that he’s been a positive RF and strongly negative LF, but the strong defense isn’t as clear cut as it was this time last year.

5 years ago he was among the top 10% in baseball in exit velocity. This year he's at the bottom 1/3. That's a very big difference, with a consistent trend downwards so even though it had a drop this year, it's a drop that fits with what he's done in previous years.

This really isn’t “laughable”. It’s probably a 20% discount on what he will get by going through all of free agency if he stays healthy the whole time and never has a down year. To get signed early and lock in an entire career of earnings, that’s a pretty reasonable discount.