Balta1701

Yes they have been asking too much. But they also only have 2 years of control left of this player before they have to pay him. Unless he explodes in performance this year, his trade value doesn’t go up at the deadline this year, it hovers for a while and goes down. Cesar had 1.5 years of control, a little more expensive than this guy, and he only got Pilkington. Plus, it’s a little tough to see them competing in that division the next 2 years. You may have noticed there are a few good teams in the NL west.

Um, is Michael Brantley actually CGI? There was a weird 1980s special effect vintage green line around him in that at bat.

See, I’d just say we need to hit more home runs.

Does anyone know how to find the records of the entire league in games where no home run is hit? We see that stat for the Sox yearly but I have no context for it. I’m imagining many teams have that same issue of specifically losing on days where they ball stays in the ballpark.

If the Rockies are basing a high price on his RBIs then there's not going to be much to talk about.

He also appears to have only 2 years of control remaining, and his fWAR was significantly lower than Moncada's even if their rWAR's were similar, because a lot of his value seems to be coming from defense and I think the systems don't agree well on defense. This is also his first year in his career where he was worth over 1 fWAR. Gut instinct - he is a guy who could be gotten for a couple of pieces from our system, one of whom is a legit/top 15 piece, but he isn't a guy you're going to talk about unpacking Vaughn or Crochet or anything close to that. You might get away with something like one of the top 3-4 minor league starters + Foster, since the Rockies are always in need of pitching.

At least historically, my impression was this was exactly what they tried to do up to 2016, almost every year, when they finally hit a wall.

Isn’t “trading away the cost controlled guys” the setup they have used consistently the last 3 years? Narvaez, Walker, Dunning, Madrigal, Heuer, Pilkington? That’s sorta their MO.

I think it can be done but I don't particularly like it. You lose Leury from the bench and replace him with Romy, you keep the same backup catchers, and the bullpen weakens some. Here's an interesting thing about Marcus. This year he'd have been a great fit for the White Sox as his splits were reversed and he beat up right handers. However, I don't see any other season like that in his career, normally he beats up lefties more than righties. A guy who beats up righties fills a need for the White Sox more than a guy who beats up lefties, we have several of those. Will his platoon splits stay reversed next year or will they revert to his career pattern? That's actually really important for answering this question, as a team can beat us in a short series by throwing several righties at us right now.

Ok, got it. Baseball savant team stats. They were bottom 5 in launch angle in 2019, bottom 3 in 2020, bottom 10 in 2015-2018. While this is something to work on, it does predate Menechino and there’s no drop off with him starting. It does suggest that as a team, they don’t care about launch angles, across multiple coaching staffs.

What was that like for them in 2019 and 2020?

The Vaughn I saw was starting to figure things out against right handed pitching in June and July, but broke in August for what I believe was fatigue. IIRC he has a stretch where he was hitting close to .300 against righties for a month or two? There seemed to be a lot to build on there to my eyes. They definitely do have an overflow of players at those positions though. Until they have another option or an injury happens the current setup would seem to put Vaughn in RF, which isn’t ideal even if he gets spring training there to work. Conforto to RF and Vaughn to the DH spot is one option, but it’s quite a bit more expensive than Sheets at DH. Interested in other options if people have them.

To a good extent though what they did during the season was effective. They were middle of the pack in strikeouts, 19th in home runs, but 7th in runs scored, 3rd in OBP, 10th in slugging. In the playoffs yes, hitting home runs is historically magnified, so there is work to do, but I don’t know that the answer is obvious. Getting Eloy on track might be the most important part that I can see. My money says that Vaughn, if here, shows substantially more power next year just from experience. I do want to see Robert hitting the ball in the air more, that’s fair.

Yes. Decent chance it trends on Twitter this series. Almost certainly will if they reach the World Series.

The Tomahawk chop happening during the World Series would look…icky.

Someone here suggested that this whole thing was a strategy to drum up calls and interest in him before they actually had to decide on his option, and that would be a decent setup to me. I see this as a very difficult trade to find a partner for - you need to find a team wanting to shed their own overpaid player, where both guys are better fits with their new team, but without the White Sox including much money to go with. Make an effort to drive interest on that before you have to make a final decision?

That was one of the ways it could go that I thought of ?

Bah, rest is fine. The next Billy Hamilton can cover when guys are resting. Goodwin in CF might have cost us a game or two, but it didn’t ruin the season. The real question is whether we need to structure our bench to cover for long injuries. That could be a “Trade Eloy” message or a “We need a much better backup CF option capable of starting for a long stretch at any OF position” message. Edit: second thought: we saw Engel unable to fill that role this season. While a new OF would be more expensive than him, his Arb money could go some of the way to covering that, and we might need his roster spot too.

You’re in the offseason thread. You made a point that these guys have not played together much. Does that mean you think they should count on it happening next year or are you advocating bringing in a different player somewhere? If you don’t want to talk baseball team construction then don’t come into a thread about it, make a relevant point on baseball team construction, and get snippy when I ask for you to take it to its conclusion and outline a strategy.

That’s me. I will say it again - if they pick up his option, he will be here next June.

These guys don’t seem cheap? They seem quite expensive.

So what are the odds they play together 140 times next season? It seems like it would be a mistake to assume that will happen.

This is an underrated point and we saw how it mattered throughout that series. The Astros got this far with Dusty because Dusty is a collaborator with the rest of their organization. I seriously doubt Dusty was using computerized defensive positioning when he coached the Giants or Cubs 20 years ago, but that information is available now so he’s using it. When he decided McCullers was pitching game 4, did he decide that based on his gut or did he consult with others in the organization to come up with the decision that gave them the best chance to win the series - the right way would be the latter. He made a LaRussa level mistake in game 3, literally blew the game, but when other people have good information he used it. Contrast that with the White Sox. After the famous “LaRussa gets the rules explained to him” incident, it was reported that people in the dugout were trying to explain the rule to him and he told them to shut up - exactly the opposite of a positive, collaborative relationship. Their analytics coordinator is a nepotism hire from the Cardinals in Shelley Duncan - the Pale Hose Eric Trump - exactly the kind of hire you make so that LaRussa wouldn’t have to put up with all that crap Baker has to hear from those people who don’t know the “right way” to play baseball. And the end result we see on the field. We’ve covered the lack of shifting and how that was key to this series ad nauseam, but how about the pitching decisions? Lynn goes game 1 in Houston when he’s known to struggle there - did they know about that and ignore it or did they not even bother checking? Afterwards what was their comment- “oh maybe the game plan was bad”. What was the game plan? He threw about 70 pitches, 6 of which were offspeed, just like Lance Lynn the entire year, so was the game plan anything other than “be Lance Lynn but with playoff level TWTW?” Doesn’t appear so. Did LaRussa know how rarely Crochet was used in back to back outings and not care, or is Duncan there just so LaRussa isn’t bothered with that stuff? Sometime last offseason LaRussa had a quote about how he thought they had a lot to learn from him and the way things used to be done, and while seemingly innocuous, this type of performance is exactly what we were expecting. The White Sox remain an organization who are obsessed with playing the old fashioned way, with going with your gut and winning because your TWTW is higher than the other team, LaRussa is a symptom of that organizational failing, but he is also bringing in people and doing things to make it worse.

His teams had some dynamite chemists.