Balta1701

You’re right, I missed wheeler being in Keuchel’s spot, need more coffee before posting. Yes, the Lynn trade still makes sense with Wheeler instead of Keuchel.

I kinda get that one based on money. Coming off 2020 they clearly needed 1 more starter and depth. They then passed on more expensive pitching options for Rodon last offseason as well, Lynn would have been useful for them still but they had to leave money available so that they could beat the market on Adam Eaton. Wheeler, Keuchel, Cease, Gio, and Rodon/Kopech/Lopez/Dunning would have been the 2021 setup.

Wasn’t Charles Comiskey so cheap that a bunch of his players threw the World Series?

Does he have to be claimed and put on a 40 man or does he become a free agent?

Adam Duvall, .228/.281/.491 (38 HRs) = 2.4 fWAR last year. Randall Grichuk .241/.281/.423 (22 HRs) = 0.4 fWAR Hunter Dozier .216/.285/.394 (16 HRs) = -0.2 fWAR Jorge Soler .223/.316/.432 (27 HRs, epically bad defense) = -0.2 fWAR There's last year's low average high power RF comps.

There's not a lot of comparison points for recent guys hitting FA after putting up multiple 5 win seasons. Lucas put up a 5 win season in 2019, was on pace for another in 2020, and put up a 4 win season in 2021. Jose Berrios was a step below that, 4-1-4 in fWAR the last 3 years, and he got $7/$130. The next step up from that is guys like Sale and Strasburg, who are pushing $30 million per season in their deals for various lengths. They were regular 5+ win pitchers before signing theirs. So there's seemingly a big difference depending on what he does the next 2 years. A little bit better could legitimately be worth $50 million to him.

They also buried him at the back of the bullpen inexplicably for 2 months. He threw about 20 innings combined in July and August - after doing no rehab stint. They ardently refused to stretch him out until the very end of the year and often had him going 3-4 days without pitching. They then asked him to pitch on 1 day rest after a >40 pitch outing in the playoffs, which he never did the whole year. Still salty about that.

Yes. If he sucks they get heat. After all, that happens in this organization. People are evaluated based on their performance. Constantly. No one is laughing at that concept, I promise.

Because you are deciding what I believe without reading my posts. I even included him in the one you replied to.

What’s actually interesting about these bullpens is that the old strategy - taking starters who were struggling and converting them (Cotts, Hermanson, Jenks, Thornton, VV?) or finding relievers who were good but undervalued based on luck (Politte, Swarzak) and getting one or two good seasons out of those guys has been way more effective than paying big money for relievers based on their previous year.

If you can’t see how there’s a difference between saying “this team could be really good” and “this team is ready for a championship” then you’re being deliberately naive again.

Spotrac has a tracker. I was slightly wrong, they were the 6th healthiest, not 5th. It’s early and I’m at the dentist, sorry. https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/disabled-list/2021/cumulative-team/

The White Sox were also in the top 5 teams for fewest games spent on IL last year, so to me the idea that the 2021 White Sox saw extreme bad luck in health is extremely dubious.

No, I also didn’t know that Jermaine Dye would get off to a terrible start, that it would take a full half season for Contreras to find his groove, that Crede’s offense wouldn’t develop until after a back injury, that Takatsu would go from being excellent to worthless, that Podsednik’s regular season power would disappear or that he’d get hurt and be unable to run after the As break, that Rowand’s would take a big step back on offense, and or that Uribe’s offense would take a major step back. I did have an inkling on Hermanson because he had been really good in the 2nd half with the Giants the year before, but I didn’t expect his back to go out, ending his career. What I did see was a deep, well constructed roster where if one person struggled for a while, there were other ways they could contribute and there were people who could pick up the slack over a full year.

I loved the 04/05 offseason. It was the first time I could remember where I could point at the lineup, rotation, and back end of the bullpen and think that every spot could potentially be filled with a quality player. No 5th starter vacancy, no catcher who can barely hit, no 8-9 spots in the order filled by guys who were barely big leaguers. There even seemed to be an emphasis on defense, bizarre for this franchise.

Each side submits a number to an arbitrator, giving some amount of a raise over the previous year. If it gets to arbitration, the player argues for why he’s worth his number, the team argues why he wasn’t. They also argue based on precedents from other previous contracts. In General, many teams don’t want to go through that process. Prior to a deadline, the sides can agree to a contract that is typically in the middle of the two sides- this prevents the team from having to explain why their player sucks. Note that the Blue Jays didn’t want to go through that with Chapman right after trading for him. The White Sox almost never go to arbitration, it’s been like 1 player in 15 years before this, if that. The White Sox and Giolito were negotiating and got to a whopping $50k apart. Why they didn’t make a counter offer to split the difference- maybe even for $25k, is totally baffling. The White Sox submitted a number to the arbitrator $100k lower than their last contract offer, Giolito submitted a number $50k higher. Going though this process could save them as much as $150k. It has likely infuriated one of their best players to save that admittedly tiny slice of money, and they might lose their case anyway. This is either then being unbelievably cheap, or retaliating against Giolito for being the team’s player representative. Feel free to be cynical this is infuriating.

His name was Chris.

Ah the ol’ reply to a 3 month old post on a rumor that obviously didn’t happen?

I love and hate that this isn't exaggerating at all.

9 years and $200 million. Slight discount compared to Strasburg for getting it done now.

Graveman also has a likely issue we talked about yesterday in the game thread with Bummer in that he is a ground ball pitcher, so his performance is moderately affected by the quality of infield defense and defensive positioning.

They just pulled some complete Pittsburgh Pirates s*** today.

This is kinda low even for the White Sox. For a good long while they took pride in avoiding the contentious arbitration cases because telling your players why they're bad and you don't want them isn't a good look. There's precedent in the org's longer history, but this is still pretty darn low.

The year Gerrit Cole nearly won the Cy Young award in Pittsburgh, he was still pre-arbitration. Pitt had given him one of those $50k bonuses teams give to high-performing pre-arb guys that season. Then, after he nearly won the Cy Young, they tried to take it away, effectively cutting his salary. Boras put that in the press and Pitt had to back down.