Balta1701

1. Kopech should be starting this year. He has a decent chance of being a better starter than reliever, he has the arm, the secondary stuff to succeed as a starter. 2. No, technically they could always wait another year and turn him into a starter, but whenever it is done they would have the same problem - the innings jump. 3. Whenever Kopech is turned into a starter he will have an innings limit because it will be a big jump from his previous year. That means something like 130 - 150 innings, if reached, will see his arm hitting a wall and you don’t want to just push him through it without rest. So, if you do turn him into a starter, you will probably need someone to take 10 or more starts. 4. He does have an injury history, so there is need for caution. However, if he gets a minor injury you still have to try to work him back into the rotation afterwards, otherwise you really are giving up on him as a starter. 5. He could very well be a top of the rotation starter, but he should not be off limits in trade discussions. If you got a front line starter for him who was already stretched out, or an all star at a position of need with several years of control, there could be some benefit to moving him overall. It is unlikely there is a match out there for that, but worth checking on.

Generally bad. UZR has him as just a tiny step better than Jorge Soler out there last year, overall one of the worst regular RF defensively in baseball. DRS has him being negative out there pretty consistently, bad enough last year to be the equivalent of ~1 lost rWAR. In his time in LF, DRS has him decent.

If the White Sox are able to trade Kimbrel without having to include substantial money or take back a comparably bad deal, then yes, they will deserve praise.

That's literally in 27 games, 115 PAs, and you're selectively getting games where he wasn't healthy enough to play the field.

If no one will offer Rodon comparable money to the QO, then that is a pretty strong sign that there's something going to be wrong with his physical.

The problem is - that would be a bad deal for Rodon. If it's not 3 years mostly guaranteed, then he doesn't make that much more than he does on a shorter term deal, and on a shorter-term deal he can prove he's healthy, hit a higher innings total, and really cash in next offseason with a true multi-year deal. He is better off taking a 1 year, $20 million deal and hitting the FA market again than he is taking a 3 year $30 million deal with a bunch of incentives that could bump it up more. This is also a Boras client we're talking about, and they know that getting back to FA at the time the market is ready for you is how you score the largest deal.

I haven’t called them cheap. Im not a fan of this decision, but they spent $16 million 2 days ago and are lined up with a $150 million+ payroll already.

No but he also didn’t get to build up his arm at all in 2020 with how that year went. What would his year have looked like without this permanent damage people are suspecting? Do you think he could have thrown 175 innings without it? 130 seems like a really big number for him and a real impressive success based on where things started and I struggle to understand people thinking that is a red flag.

A fundamental question - would you expect anything more than that from a guy recovering from TJS and the 2020 season nuttiness, after they were pushed for a lot of innings in the first half?

Can anyone translate this part?

…last year, after recovering from TJS, changing his offseason training program with the team (credit to RaBBit for calling that) and changing his pitching approach (varying FB velocity, throwing a changeup). There’s good reasons to suspect that 2021 could represent a breakout year for that player.

As I said in that post there is some funkiness in his spin rates, but it’s not a clear pattern. His 2 seamer spin rate dropped compared to 2020, but his slider spin rate shot up in 2021 to the highest of his career. There’s also no obvious drop off when the rule came into effect. I can’t rule it out, but a first look doesn’t scream that as the answer.

But he was a 4.9 fWAR pitcher this year. Given the caveats, if I ask what an $18 million pitcher is to that algorithm, it’s about 2.3 wins. So you aren’t betting on him for 30 starts with the QO, if he performed like this year, he would be quite a solid acquisition at 20 starts.

Pending a CBA which could change things, my best guess is he signs somewhere for 1 year and about $20 million. We have seen a bunch of guys wind up with deals like that - Semien comes to mind recently. If he gets a lot less than that then yeah teams are thinking there’s a deeper medical issue beyond just innings increasing and fatigue. Unless they do an opt out, I struggle to see Boras going for a 2 or 3 year deal. If he has another strong season and throws 160 innings next year building on this years work load, then that seems to set him up to cash in massively, and a 2 or 3 year deal would prevent that.

Just going through Keuchel’s 2020 and 2021 stats and some of this is hard to interpret. Did you know he actual had a higher ground ball rate in 2021 than in 2020? Going through is stats a lot of the massive drop off is hard to explain. Not a big difference in how many strikes he threw, not a big difference in the opposing swing profiles in and out of the zone. The heat maps on his pitches look generally similar, it doesn’t look like he was missing up with his sinker unusually much. Each of his pitches just got worse. Some of that is likely just luck. He had a great HR/FB rate in 2020 that probably wouldn’t have lasted an entire season, 2021 that did shoot back up, although not the worst of his career. 2020 BABIP was narrowly the best of his career, comparable to his best seasons in Houston, while in 2021 it was his worst since 2013. No drop in velocity. There is some funkiness with his spin rates the last 2 years but it’s not totally clear that means anything - his slider spin rate shot up in 2021 for example. I could certainly be missing something but he doesn’t look like that different of a pitcher in his profile as he does in the results. Short season is probably part of the story, defense is probably part of it, but it also just seems that he plain got hit harder. Exit velocity was a career worst on his slider and 4 seamer, second worst on his changeup. But, nothing special about exit velocity on his sinker. If you told me he was tipping his offspeed stuff I would probably believe that.

Nope. I was wrong. He proved me wrong. Kudos to Katz and the Front office on that call. Made this team substantially better. You can do the Lynn trade, the Kimbrel trade if you want other recent examples of me being wrong. Where did I personally attack you? Disagree with me on a baseball point if you want. Tell me I’m being wrong again because Lopez will be this years breakout guy or Keuchel will have a comeback year or Kopech can throw enough innings. There are plenty of baseball reasons I could be wrong. But drop the personal attacks.

Then report me for it. Please.

Can’t address the point so you make it personal. If that’s all you’re going to do the whole offseason then just ignore me, I don’t do that garbage to you.

Ironically, if you could find another potential 5 win pitcher with Rodon’s profile this year who was available for 1/$18, I would say that’s a perfect fit for the rotation. The White Sox will need to get Kopech some innings but not too many, and the White Sox will probably pitch Keuchel and Lopez some but won’t want to overexpose them. And someone will get hurt at some point. That means 100 to 150 dominant innings would be a great use of those funds, and if you got more than that you’d probably be cautious and try to set the guy up for the playoffs. If they sign a scrap heap guy for depth for $5 million, and he’s putting up an ERA of Keuchel, then there’s a big temptation to push Lynn, Cease, Giolito, and Kopech even harder during the regular season, especially if the division is closer. If there’s a 3 or 4 game lead in August and Lopez, Keuchel and signee are all iffy, would they use Mr Offday a couple times as the 5th starter to try to widen their lead? With him, you open April with your top 5 guys, or maybe even Kopech in the bullpen, and you begin swapping guys out even within the first few weeks. The only good scenario here is they find a Rodon type for $5 million who breaks out with Katz, but can lightning strike twice? Best chance, maybe Lopez?

I do what I can.

I do find it somehow appropriate that the first 2 offseason things I said we should do were cut Kimbrel loose and offer the QO to Rodon and the White Sox have done the exact opposite both times.

If you only thought you were getting 130 innings from him again - Kopech (with innings saved by Rodon being there), Cease, Giolito, and Lynn could still be a solid playoff rotation. But on other guys I can’t see either Gausman or Scherzer only getting $18 million, can you? Even if they could move Kimbrel, between having to add to the bench and 2b and RF, along with a starting pitcher at $25 million or more, that’s a lot of needs to cover with like $45 million (which would put them at the $180 million you talked about previously).

The only time I can think of where the white Sox thought they were competitive and had such a limited offseason was going into 2013, where I think they might have basically added Keppinger and a couple minor other bits? Im sure I won’t like it when they do it, but there will be some move, through trade or otherwise, to try to make a splash.

I gotta say, #2 on its own would make no sense to me. If they believed he was healthy - are they going to find any other 5 win pitchers on a 1 year, $18 million deal? Not likely. And with Keuchel being a guy we could readily drop from the rotation for at least part of the year, there would be plenty of need for 130 or 140 innings of his work next year.

The QO would have been quite a good deal for the White Sox if he repeated what he did this year. The White Sox will face a major challenge finding that kind of performance for $18 million. It can be done, and perhaps he couldn’t live up to it this season based on something they believe they know about his shoulder, but this is a big loss.