Balta1701

They’ve been very explicit about this one. https://www.theringer.com/platform/amp/mlb/2021/5/26/22453796/carlos-rodon-chicago-white-sox-return-to-form

So they have one pitcher in the rotation who won’t pitch a full season. Doesnt that make another pitcher who may or may not pitch a full season but who can be really good…a priority?

So you don’t see any contradiction between sayin the Mets didn’t have time to do that kind of deal in November and expecting the white Sox to pull off 2 or more major trades in the next year week?

And you expect things are less busy now? Just an example - Keuchel goes to the Mets. Yay, bad contract swap, except oops the white Sox now need like 40 starts from Lopez and Lambert if there are zero injuries. Not ideal! So we have to go sign a starter, and everyone else in the rotation is a righty so we’d love a lefty, maybe leaving Danny Duffy? This still feels like a problem.

If there was a time to think big, that might have been November. More time, more FA options left for the Mets to use the space they’d clear. Right now feels way more like “get an answer on every exam question before you’re out of time, don’t waste all your time on one problem” pressure.

Kiner-Falefa is. The good news is there's several options available. The bad news is that the best of them, Harrison, was a 1.5 fWAR player last year, and most of them were 1 or worse.

Fine by me, just give me someone before there’s no one left?

If I had to say which position is more important for adding a warm body, it’s probably 2nd base rather than RF. The Vaughn/Sheets/Engel setup isn’t good, but compared to Leury starting with his (and Anderson/Moncada’s) injury history and unable to be used in his proper utility role? With only really Romy as a backup? That just seems untenable.

Didn’t see a place for notes like this and seemed useful.

Right now this would have hurt because it would use up about 2/3 of their space under the tax. If they had declined Kimbrel like they should have, this would have been a solid use of funds for 1 year. Now you’re back onto one hell of a rotation on paper with plenty of depth, as opposed to a shallow rotation with good pieces but that has a moderate risks associated with health and depth.

This should go somewhere as it does remove a catcher and IF option and changes up the twins a bit.

The way you phrase it is “we are happy with the guys we have, we think guys like him will fill big roles for us this year, but I know Rick Hahn is always going to be open if he has a way to improve the team”.

I just realized that since Katz came from San Francisco, Rodon probably kept the same coaching style.

Maybe 6 years ago. Three years ago he already had the shoulder issue, and pitching through it probably caused his TJS in 2019. Some of that is also on Cooper, like it or not.

Mlbtr had a really nice summary article of him, they guessed slightly lower than what you just quoted. https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/02/johnny-cueto-free-agent-market.html

That could easily be one of those “don’t talk about this as it will hurt your next contract” issues since he has the best agent money can buy. If he’s having issues with that, mental or fatigue or cardiovascular, I’m not sure they’d show up in a standard physical unless he complained.

Conforto was a long COVID guy? Are we sure that’s something he’s fully recovered from? There are plenty of people with lingering symptoms almost 2 years later.

Unless they bring in a catcher who is better at blocking the plate, and consistently switch to that catcher when he comes in, he is a really bad matchup for the White Sox.

Oh, 12 team playoff.

Minimum salary - got a huge boost, from about $615k to about $700k per year. Luxury tax level - huge boost from $210 to $230 million. Removed the multi year penalties. Added a Steve Cohen tax, an especially high level of tax, starting at $290 million. Added stuff for pre-arb people. $50 million to be distributed to pre-arb players every year based on a WAR calculation to be agreed on later. Top Rookie of the Year voting finishers get a full free year of service time. Some unclear changes in revenue sharing. Some sort of bonus was added for teams that grow their local revenue a bunch - they pay less to revenue sharing. Exceedingly smart. Draft lottery. Teams can’t wind up in the lottery multiple years in a row to discourage tanking for picks (slight difference between big and small markets here) Draft pick reward to limit service time manipulation- bring a top prospect up on opening day you get a draft pick reward. Rules changes possible in a year - pitch clock, banning shifts could happen in 2023. Union will either come up with an agreement to allow international draft in a couple years or qualifying offers come back. The CBT, minimum salary, revenue sharing, and international draft each became major issues the last few times.

Well, Fangraphs has about 6 projection systems on their page right now. Kimbrel projects to an average of an ERA in the upper 3s, and about 0.6 WAR in those. Corey Knebel, who the Phillies signed for $10 million, projects for basically the same. An actual strong reliever, Hendriks, is shown projecting for about an average of 1.7 WAR and an ERA in the upper 2’s.

If they pick up $4 million-ish they should be able to, even I agree with that. $6 million if things go terribly. If his option was $10 million then I would have said picking it up was generally an ok risk.

If you want a stronger reason for angst, it’s that this team has a shallow pitching staff without organizational depth, and the last two difference making pitchers on the market are now gone, one of whom they could at least have pulled off a 2nd round pick for and didn’t do so because of confusing reasons.

And that first half was driven by a career best BABIP and career best HR/FB rate.