caulfield12

And that worked fine in 2004-05, but most of that was just dumb luck, because it has only been repeated once in 14 years. Hahn tries that every year and we ended up with Nova, Santana and Banuelos. The logical thing is to sign one first tier guy and then someone like a Wood or Wacha and hope for a rebound. The problem is we almost always get 2-3 guys who nobody would put on a top ten list (other than Dunn and Robertson) and just hope for the best. Puig, Castellanos (price rising by the day) and Ozuna are three obvious choices, but none are LH and the first two should give you 1.5-2.0ish fWAR But not really move the bar all that much, either. God knows what Puig would do to the clubhouse chemistry when he doesn’t have a firm hand like Francona to rein him in.

The ideal player would be Brandon Belt, but the Giants are not just going to give him away. The likes of Smoak, Moreland or Adams don’t move the meter much. They’re going to have to find someone blocked in another organization...like Aguilar was in CLE. He was good for one over-performing season in MIL at least. They simply need to hold the fort down one year while waiting on Vaughn.

This is the case with 98.9% of outfield prospects (supposedly possessing at least 3-5 tools)...read up on Billy Beane, for example (albeit much more highly-regarded than Cordell.) So much of it is mental/psychological.

Except the author works for the White Sox and would lose his job quickly if he even suggested the White Sox should think about moving him to DH to make way for a better/younger LH hitting defender at 1B.

Pick any position players besides Grandal and Rendon and the same is likely to occur...and even Grandal will hit an aging curve unless he spends more time at DH/1B, where his value is lowered substantially. I’m not being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to pick the right free agents, Hahn is. And those two players weren’t as crippling as Robertson, Cabrera and LaRoche turned out to be...and trading Semien/Bassitt for Shark. Those moves are what basically forced the rebuild, because the Sox had nothing in their minor league system to fall back on. And the White Sox are never going to shell out $175-225 million on two free agent pitchers anyway. You would have gotten more believers that we were going to sign Machado and Harper than the two pitchers you just named. So your suggestion is to do what exactly...they have nobody to trade that’s not critical to the rebuild?

Shocking. Of course, the Rockies are buried, but it at least gets him a contract offer or two next year as a strictly platoon or bench bat if he can finish strong. His defense at 1B helps his cause...guy like that goes to NYY and becomes a post-season stud then fades back into obscurity.

Durham?

Just follow through your IPad, very simple to watch/listen through MLB.tv as long as the connection is decent. It’s probably dead of night there, but listening is easy to do without totally waking up and paying 100% attention.

It also would have been the equivalent of 2016 June/July James Shields if you were actually trying to compete...the second half recovery would be too late. All things considered, it worked out okay for the Sox...mostly in preventing a nightmare list of even more unqualified journeymen starters from taking the mound, above and beyond the names we already threw out there.

Bumgarner’s pitching so well down the stretch he’s adding another year and $20-30 million onto his contract demands. Of course, he could end up similar to Keuchel if he gets too greedy and isn’t totally honest about future vs. present/past values. Lots of FA’s have too much pride and feel they should be getting bank for 2010/12/14 when it’s now five years in the past.

How is that negative fWAR? You mean estimated? They’re going to get roughly 4.5 for Machado and Hosmer. Not great, but hardly crippling with the remainder of their roster construction. Balta would tell you that rate of return for Hahn FA signings (had Hahn inked them) definitely is not bad compared to his historical record. Machado had 21.7 over his previous 4 seasons for an average of 5.4, which would obviously be better than 4. It’s not like he’s repeating 2017, though. The real problems are Hosmer and Myers, but Myers was good last year and they traded Reyes in order to open up more playing time and bring in an exciting prospect in Taylor Trammell. They got Chris Paddack for Fernando Rodney, and an unnamed SS for virtually nothing. The moral of the story is don’t overpay 1B/DH/corner outfielders in free agency. That said, the White Sox have and still face the same problem. The Yankees solved it by coming up with Tauchman and Urshela. The Dodgers with Muncy, Taylor and Turner. The best organizations fill roster holes or cover up payroll issues by innovating and exploiting niches. Can Rick Hahn do the same?

Sure, but then they have to replace him again next season...when it’s really going to be important to stabilize the rotation.

If every free agent is worth approximately $9 million on the free agent market and Machado will finish the year around 4 at his current pace, then what’s the problem? How are they crippled? They’re all the way up to 14th in attendance, which is well above any AL Central team. They only have a payroll of $97 million, which is about $27.5 million less than the average MLB opening day payroll. They can carry those contracts (Machado, Hosmer and Shields) and still have room to add a veteran starting pitcher because the rest of their payroll is comprised of mostly 1st to 3rd year players, with the exception of Kirby Yates. By your argument, we shouldn’t sign any big free agents because, as Balta has pointed out numerous times, the majority go against the teams that signed them and can occasionally be franchise crippling. That said, if we were crippled by Adam Dunn, Paul Konerko and John Danks, then just sell the franchise and enjoy the profits so White Sox fans can move on.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Major_League_Baseball_draft We should be thankful the Twins took Jay over Benintendi...lots of “what the heck happened to ——-?” between picks 8 and 24. Fwiw, the Astros learned a ton from their mistakes with JD Martinez, Appel and Aiken. If the White Sox have ever 100% learned their own lesson, I’m not sure what we have to show for it, Luis Robert, I guess. But even then, they didn’t exploit that signing by bringing in another $20-30 million worth of players because it was enough to set a one-time precedent that they would blow away their ceiling.

The Indians and Twins are both on pace for 94-96 wins this season. Granted, they got to beat up on three bad teams.

Then let’s just throw out using fWAR and bWAR and go back to traditional Greg Metrics instead...so he suddenly became “lucky” as soon as he left the White Sox, just like Tatis and Semien.

They’ve also gotten 5.3 fWAR just this season for the joy of trading away James Shields and Fernando Rodney. But yeah, usually trading for 1B/DH types...especially on $140+ million contracts, isn’t wise. You would have made a better argument combining the $$$ for Myers and Shields to get just 0.7 fWAR. Which is pretty much the sum of the value the White Sox received from Nova, Santana, Alonso, Jay and Herrera for roughly the same amount this year.

McCarver used to be really good in the 80’s and early 90’s...

Pretty terrible footwork there by Anderson. E20.

https://www.sportingnews.com/us/mlb/news/gerrit-cole-injury-update-astros-starter-scratched-before-throwing-pitch/1fq2swt0aj53m12s8ybtrpig4e Cole apparently felt something wrong with his leg warming up...right hamstring tightness.

What? They then drafted Bregman, Kyle Tucker and Cameron, who was turned into Verlander. Terrible...

He has been worth 12 fWAR in less than four seasons...how much would that have been worth bringing in a free agent to put up those numbers? $75-100 million? Which is basically about the same we are talking about paying Grandal now. Even Avi with a 1.6 fWAR would have been worth well more than he was going to get in arbitration.

Except they’re 1/2 season away from from being in “win now” mode.

When you have to compete against one of the most successful organizations in baseball history, bold steps are required to get your fanbase to buy in again after missing the playoffs for well over a decade.

He was in Arizona and literally playing against our Arizona extended spring team a week or two after the trade.