Balta1701

I totally get the need for starting pitching depth, but it’s worth noting again that a bullpen with Velasquez, Lopez, Keuchel, and to some extent Crochet Is a straight up bizarre construction when none of them can be sent to Charlotte to stay stretched out for spot starts (Crochet could be but no reason to think they’d do that). Half the bullpen is basically long relievers, none of them would be getting regular work until a starter went down, and they’re not ready to throw 80-100 pitches during the scheduled double headers if they’re not doing so. edit: this is aimed at any trades with the A’s.

See last point.

Right in the middle of a sentence during an interview with someone else. It’s quite the running gag on on and Castellanos hits a deep drive to left and that’s a two run homer.

I think the idea that everyone is fixated on one requirement is something of a straw man also. If a LH hitter was all people wanted, there should be more interest in Schwarber. What you actually see is a preference for Castellanos because after some consideration of how injury and COVID affected his 2021 performance, he’s the only one who can give lineup balance and a defensive upgrade. Schwarber balances the lineup but provides no defensive help. Suzuki probably provides defense and would be a decent bat but that lineup balance is important. Castellanos provides none of those but apparently hits home runs at inopportune time.

Can he stay healthy for a full season? Are the White Sox doing everything they can to keep him healthy? (Proactive rest, working with him to limit risky plays like diving in the OF or sliding into bases? Making sure everyone who plays the OF has good fundamentals to avoid collisions? Having a solid OF alongside him to limit his full speed sprints?)

That is the one person on earth whose job Is literally carrying water for the organization.

What if he’s moved for a trivial return and they have to eat $4 or $5 million?

While it wasn’t going to kill tanking, the draft lottery and draft rules were built to somewhat reduce the reward for it. There are also financial rewards included for teams that grow their local revenue, which obviously Cincinnati will not do. It’s definitely a start, we will have to see what else needs done to go in that direction.

And Kimbrel put up a -1.1 WAR season and was arguably the worst reliever in baseball during the first year of his contract. And frankly, I didn’t bring him up!

You can actually see something really important when he gets to Boston. His ground ball rate drops from 46% to 31%, and his line drive and fly ball rate both shoot up. His hard contact rate shoots up. None of those went down to their previous levels after they went up. He remains a pitcher who gets a ton of strikeouts, but he gives up a fair amount of hard contact and home runs. His HR/FB rate is quite high overall, which is why it should have stood out in 2021 like a sore thumb if anyone in the White Sox’s organization looked. What that means for his performance is that he gives up runs in bunches. He can easily go 10 or 20 or 30 inning stretches with good numbers because they are short enough to filter out some of the home runs and his high strikeout rate means there’s extra time between those home runs. Your favorite stretch in 2020 - all you are doing is filtering out the home runs. Outside of terrible 2019, you can do that in any of those other seasons - find stretches where he’s solid, but then a home run or two comes along. That’s why he’s a mid-level quality reliever now, and has been for years.

The White Sox paid 1/2 of his remaining salary on a waiver wire trade.

Would you trade for Adam Dunn’s last contract at any point during it if you were a GM?

I believe they are absolutely accounting for the previous years’ performance yes. The fact that his only good stretch in his current contract was dominated by luck and the two previous years he was a below replacement level player is in there. In fact, if you average the previous 3 seasons of his deal, he averaged 0.4 WAR per season on this deal, so a projection beyond that is being a little optimistic - and that’s what GMs will pay for.

Projected performance for next year, averaging the 6 projection systems on Fangraphs currently Hendriks: 1.7 WAR Iglesias: 1.4 WAR Kimbrel: 0.6 WAR Knebel: 0.55 WAR

I mean, the right answer in that case is to pay somewhat more to solve the handedness problem given that such a player is available.

Here’s the one problem - why isn’t the team’s exit velocity nice and high if those guys are driving it upwards?

BABIP: 2019: .279 2020: .320 2021Cubs: .203 (career low) 2021Sox: .295 HR/FB: 2019: 36% (legitimately unlucky) 2020: 16.7 % 2021Cubs: 3.8 % (career low) 2021Sox: 19.5% (a little unlucky but less out of line with his career). Arguably the luckiest reliever in baseball is what other teams are looking at when determining his performance next year.

First of all, if Hahn actually did a survey because he didn’t know…he’s got a problem because why would anyone tell Them the truth? This was obvious at the time - it’s a great way to hurt a playoff team this year if they’re stuck with him. Second…this part was obvious in November. They weren’t going to get a big return for him no matter what, agreed? If they had a single offer that took on his whole deal and returned something…why didn’t they take it? That has been the case last year and for the whole last week. They aren’t going to get a much bigger return for him no matter what they do, so if they have all these offers, why haven’t they taken one? And third, maybe it doesn’t make rational sense? Maybe it actually is ego and needing to prove something? Rational sense says he has not pitched up to being the second highest paid reliever in baseball this year and that contract would be extremely tough to move without picking up some money because he didn’t.

They can’t. He’s not worth $16 million. They have to admit a mistake to move him.

A long time ago here there was someone with the slogan “trade the relievers.” Any time there was a deal proposed where the white Sox gave up a reliever he liked it, on the grounds that there were only a handful of fully reliable, dominant relievers in the whole league. However, the fact that they were pitching only 60 innings meant that some relievers would look way better just by chance, and if you sold those guys at their peak you could win the deal every time and build up talent because the other GM would overpay based on luck more than talent. I don’t remember who that was , but I can’t help but notice that Hahn’s strategy Is the exact opposite. He’s the GM that poster wanted on the other side, to take advantage of.

B guys include Lopez, Velasquez, Kimbrel. Joe Kelly had been that level before too. Graveman only has 1 year as a reliever so harder to know if he could have that downside.

They have $18.6 million under the tax before anyone goes in the IL and spent $6 million at the deadline last year.

Adam Engel is in his 2nd arb year and will probably cost over $2 million.

Between the high BABIP and surprisingly low hard hit rate, this actually makes a case that the White Sox offense is at risk of taking a step backwards this year that I hadn't realized was there.

I liked it also, but I didn't scroll down to any of his stats beyond the first line. That was my mistake.