Balta1701

I would very much expect that there will be some issues, even for guys who haven't had them before. That's one of the reasons why this team should have 7-8 known starters (Player X, Kopech, Lopez, Stiever, Crochet all in the 5th spot for example), because even the frontline, veteran guys haven't had to do anything like this rapid change in innings and arm conditioning.

I...agree. Feels weird

The "Without a problem" part is sort of hard to verify. It's almost certain there were people there who had it, there will certainly be some people at the game who come down with COVID afterwards. Did they get it at the game? Dunno.

So to be clear, you mean it was the White Sox not sharing updates on their minor league site, not the Padres.

So you don't want expanded playoffs?

I dunno, Braun targeted an innocent guy doing his job taking samples and tried to destroy his career.

Then at some point this team needs to get a deal done, because the number of names available is dropping quite quickly now.

So when you exclude the 5 times they've done so over a 20 year period (adding in Hendricks) they haven't done it. I see...one problem with this logic.

I think this leaves a big cap hit problem still to solve. Intriguing concept.

Correct. This behavior, btw, is exactly what is predicted when a gigantic demand hole is blown in the economy, as happened previously in 2008.

But...out of the last 5 years, the title has gone to a 100 win (or 100 win pace for 2020) team 4 times. This is a trend too - if you're a 95 win team these days, there's a good chance you run into someone substantially better than you, and you have to pull an upset to get past them.

In case anyone actually cares about data, the median home sale price in the Us has basically been stagnant since 2017. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS

Math was a few posts ago

Kopech has 1.041 years of service time. That means he has 41 days of big league service time. A full year for salary purposes includes 172 days of service time, and right now an MLB season is 187 days long. That means Kopech needs to stay at AAA for 56 days this year to get that year of service time back. That puts his callup date at or near May 26, give or take whatever weird rules I don’t know. Keep him at AAA until May 27, give or take a couple days at most due to those legal errors I don’t know, and you get that year of control back.

If the White Sox were also adding everything they needed in addition to Lynn, no one would say it made no sense. Hendricks was absolutely ideal. But we’ve seen Quintana and Richards both sign elsewhere in the last 2 days when you could make a case for either of them as a solid fit for this franchise at a reasonable cost, and they definitely still need a pitcher out of a winnowing field. Sign Bauer and that becomes no issue, but if they let him go, we’re getting down to scraps left over.

Someone has to win the NL central next year by default, unfortunately. Otherwise I’d be considering that concept.

this is wonderful.

You answer the same question what will Madrigals fWAR be this year and why do you have such confidence in him?

By Fangraphs, Madrigal was 0.1, and La Stella was 1.2 WAR. If we take that to a full season, and even assume Madrigal is healthy so double his, that would be a >$25 million value difference.

Here’s the basic problem. Madrigal could be the player we saw last year, who would be a 0 WAR player over a full year (his batting average would not stay that high), terrible on the base paths and on defense. Or he could be a good base runner and great defender like we were promised and wind up a 3-4 WAR player. Except for the fact that he wasn’t last year, that’s what I would have expected, but last year was stunningly bad for a player of his pedigree and frankly I would have never guessed he could have been that disappointing. He shouldn’t have been, not with the amount of experience he has. And on top of that, he seems really injury prone. I simply don’t know what he will be next year. I didn’t see Vaughn at all last year and somehow I feel more confident in him for next year. And that’s the problem - he’s got an enormous possible range, and if the team isn’t confident in him showing substantial improvement, then they are well justified in shopping him.

The 2017 Astros won 101 games, had an electronic advantage, added Verlander at the waiver deadline, and they were so talent loaded that SI declared they would win the 2017 World Series 3 years in advance. I will give you the Nats. They are the 1 team to win a WS recently that wasn’t a super team, you almost have to go back to the 2014 Giants and Bumgarner to find the next example of a team winning a title without being incredibly loaded. The 2017 Astros are the definition of a super team. Aside from the Cheating, that’s exactly the level the White Sox need to reach if they want to take a trophy away from the other monster teams out there.

It is not wrong to note that the World Series is now being won consistently by superteams. That should be the target. If Madrigal gets us there, great. But if we are expecting multiple guys to have sophomore slumps and growing pains, then we need to be thinking in the long term with every move. Hendricks works great for that. Dunning for Lynn? Doesn’t.

You added the second part later, so let’s note how different the league is today. The 2020 Dodgers had 9 position players and 10 pitchers who put up 0.5 fWAR in the shortened season.

Then why on Earth did they trade for Lynn? You’ve just told me this team isn’t ready to compete this year.

ZIPs projected him for 1.7 in 2020. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2020-zips-projections-chicago-white-sox/