caulfield12

Sure, the 2005 White Sox prove that point as well. But there's at least a 75-80% correlation with Top 10-12 payrolls and making it to the postseason. The exceptions are only the A's, Rays, Brewers and Sox/Braves in recent years. Of course, you also have to factor in expanded playoffs, with 40-45% of teams making it two years ago, like the Marlins.

All comes down to the managers then. Uh-oh. Maddon is not the Gandhi as Cubs fans believed, but he's at the very least competent and still relatively innovative. It's not like Ross came right in and led those veterans to the playoffs in their final opportunity.

Yes and they without 2/3 best hitters in Acuna and Ozuna. Well, we can keep repeating these exceptional cases or stare reality in the face based on the eye test, bad body language other than Vaughn and Harrison. Then there's the painful experience of taking in a typical TLR postmortem where you can see he's clearly struggling with his once sharper mental acuity...

PITCH ARSENAL Coming out of the bullpen, Herget is a five-pitch pitcher that can spray the ball across the strike zone with vertical and horizontal movement. His Curveball (25.1%), 4-Seam Fastball (24.7%), Sinker (24.7%), and Slider (23.1%) are evenly used with a Changeup filtered in just 2.3% of the time. As his velocity sits between 73-92 MPH, his best pitch based on tracking data is his Curveball. Opposing batters hit for a sub-two average (.190), a .333 Slugging Percentage and an exceptionally high Whiff rate of 51.4%. Even though his velocity does not light up the radar gun, Herget has the ability to blow a fastball by any batter especially as he feeds them a steady diet of offspeed pitches. Amongst qualified pitchers, Herget’s horizontal movement of his 4-Seam Fastball (16.6 in) would rank third in Major League Baseball behind Joe Smith (16.7) and Tim Hill (18.9). Herget worked best against left-handed batters in 2021, working a .211 average with only four hits and eight strikeouts. Basically effective softer tossing 6th or 7th inning guy with a starter's arsenal. Deceptive fastball at 91-93. https://www.halosheaven.com/2022/1/11/22877905/los-angeles-angels-player-review-jimmy-herget

Then you would pay him about $5-6 million.

Who was it arguing he was going to be up last week or no later than this weekend?

Trout has like double the OPS of anyone else on the roster and leads the majors again. Don't let him, Rendon or Ohtani beat you. So it will doubtless be Ward Adell Walsh that do the damage.

Try $175...at least go by the same payroll numbers that everyone else uses. But you're making a great argument for poor allocation of resources. The Twins and Tigers at $135 million, and they collectively added 3 $100+ million contract guys in Baez, Buxton and Correa. The Twins also added Ryan, Bundy, Archer, Gray and Paddack to their rotation whereas we were only able to scrounge up 9.70 ERA in his last ten starts VV. The Indians even swept us with half our payroll. And signed the biggest get of all in Jose Ramirez.

Or Escobar. Or Wendle. Or Taylor.

What was it last year out of the pen? Had to be at nearly twice as many sliders… Swing and miss percentage on both pitches?

Isolate August 2005 until he got injured in May in Cincinnati the following year. That’s the specific stretch. Nobody in the world would claim Buehrle or Garland were ever the best in the entire sport during a four month timespan including the postseason. And yes he did take the only lost that October in a very close game against Paul Byrd of all people.

If a HoF manager doesn’t have the cojones to pull him against his wishes, who does?

This does sound like the 2016 predicament in a way, except that team got out of the gate and played way over their heads and everyone knew 23-10 was a mirage. Or you can simply go along with the .500ish team narrative that has been established over the last ninety or so games (and not the red hot May/June 2021 Sox team that made us a Top Five favorite entering the season). At roughly the 40 game mark in 2016 we decided to start looking for a “big game” pitcher to swing the odds back on our favor somehow…let’s try not to do something foolhardy like that again, Hahn.

You can never get on a consistent roll with Keuchel and VV in the rotation…that much is patently obvious. You start two games out of five with only 25-30% odds of winning out of the gate. That’s not easy to overcome with this current offense. Expecting Cueto to be April/May 2016 Matt Latos is being pretty optimistic, too.

“Paddack has looked OK so far, but as teams see him multiple times the 2 pitch mix is going to hurt him.” My argument is that this is exactly what Kopech is, at least right now. There are some pitchers that can get away with that mix…05-06 Jose Contreras threw just two pitches 90% of the time and was the best pitcher in baseball during that stretch. Let’s see how Kopech does against really good offenses outside the AL Central.

Paddack throws 93-96 touching 97. Eventually Kopech is going to have to 1) be more precise with his slider, 2) add more non-hanging curves to the mix or 3) get back to his expected 96-100 velocity. When he was a rookie, he was one of the most hyped young pitchers in the game. Maybe not quite as highly regarded as Kopech, but he wasn’t worlds behind, either. As the weather heats up and flyballs and warning track flyouts begin to leave the yard with higher frequency Kopech is going to have to make some major adjustments. It’s one thing against the Indians or Royals…but neither will end up the year as top offenses.

Or Liam has had a heavy workload the last five years and is slowly losing his stuff and location as a nature part of the aging process. How did Katz treat him differently this year? Isn’t the lockout, cold weather and abbreviated spring training just as likely to be factors in his FB velo being down 2-3 mph?

Well, we could also pick 10+ pitchers like Wacha or Rodon that would have us with a much better record…or Seiya Suzuki if they hadn’t held onto Kimbrel and been forced to add yet another aging, slightly less expensive ballplayer. That money was available because they were recently willing to give it to Giolito. Now it likely goes to Cease, Kopech or TA7 for an expensive extension. Or a very thin FA group next offseason.

That said, unless Kopech is at 96-99, he’s not much different from Paddack as a predominantly two pitch pitcher…

Except the Padres wanted an established closer who was much cheaper than Kimbrel…and already had Pomeranz and Hill from the LH side.

No, but the Twins are now considered the favorites…and will likely stretch their lead out the next month or so. It will be interesting to see if the White Sox have the character to fight back or they just fold like a cheap suit exactly like the Twins last season.

8-9 consecutive losses by the WS winning teams has happened just twice in history. 83-79 Cards’ team lost eight consecutive twice and 1953 Yankees did lose nine in a row in early July before beating the Brooklyn Dodgers in October. Let’s not make it seem totally normal. And yes, the 2005 Astros were 15-30 in the early season but lost to the White Sox. The Twins have somehow lost 18 consecutive in the postseason, the Indians now 8, so 2-5 definitely seems better in comparison, I guess…

Pollock is owed $10 million this season. Engel would have to play RF with your alignment or Leury Garcia. Grandal would also wear down at catcher if not allowed to DH. There are no easy answers. The lineup would be especially vulnerable against RHP if Sheets is sent down, which would have to happen with this plan. You can't say you value defense and put Sheets in RF.

This reminds me of bringing in Mackowiak to play CF in 2006 for Brian Anderson when they could no longer tolerate his 575-600 OPS...that didn't work out very well.

Closest is 2010-14 Giants. Sox fans would probably take one trip to the ALCS at this point.