almagest

Side note, I did not realize how good Ketel Marte has been the last three years. 3.1 bWAR this year already. 4.9 and 6.8 in 2023 and 2024.

Bring up Baldwin and release Capra. Even if Baldwin stinks he'll be better than Capra.

Yes. Did everyone all of a sudden make changes that caused a ton of injuries? Maybe, but I doubt it would take effect that quickly, and we have no evidence to indicate that these kinds of changes were even made with these pitchers. If we see a bunch more talent go down in the next year or so, then there should be some tough questions to answer.

You should probably look up what gaslighting means, because "applying the same argument you're making to a related concept to illustrate how it's wrong" is not what gaslighting is. If it makes you uncomfortable to admit that the White Sox have been good at developing hitting by the same criteria you applied to pitching, then you should probably consider that it's not worthwhile to compare what happened 11-25 years ago to what is happening with the player development staff they have today.

When did I ever claim the Sox made amazing, positive changes? I'm in here arguing the opposite - their pitching development has taken a step back from their height from 2000-2012 or so, and I'm hopeful Bannister is bringing some of that back

Everyone I named was as well, except for Valentin. Looks like the Sox have been pretty good at identifying and developing hitting talent.

You're assuming the injuries we've seen were due to things the Sox were telling them, though. You can't make that assumption. We've heard nothing about the Sox coaching Schultz or Smith to gain velocity or make pitch shape adjustments that would lead to additional arm stress. It's also sensible to not try to make a guy who already has top tier stuff ever so slightly better. That's diminishing returns. You help them with consistency and with being able to endure a full season of pitching load.

Sosa is fine for where they're at as a team. I don't need to see any more Rojas or Capra.

They might. If a borderline guy has a mediocre fastball (which is like <95 now), but the Sox have some changes that could result in higher velocity, why wouldn't they suggest them to him? Also, these kinds of guys are going to search out that advice themselves. That's why I brought up the steroid example - any advantage they can find, even if it has bad effects longer term. Someone like Smith or Schultz already has the stuff. They're not gonna mess with that unless there's a reason to.

Those weren't alterations for velocity or improving pitch quality, though. Hagen Smith was for command, and Schultz they're trying to prevent him from relying on his cutter too much.

Then the White Sox must be much better at hitting talent evaluation and development than we give them credit for, because that list is even better than the pitching one you gave. Look who came through the system from the late 90s on - Carlos Lee, Magglio Ordonez, Paul Konerko, Aaron Rowand, Joe Crede, Alexei Ramirez, Tim Anderson, Yoan Moncada for 9 WAR over 2 seasons, Eloy before injuries did him in, Marcus Semien, Fernando Tatis Jr They had some stellar trades and FA acquisitions too. They recognized the value Jose Valentin represented (then fucked it up by replacing him with Royce Clayton, though Valentin was basically done after playing for the Sox), they turned Uribe into an incredibly valuable player for a WS run, they resurrected Jim Thome's career after a terrible, injury plagued 2005 in Philly and Jermaine Dye was mediocre in Oakland then put up incredible numbers in 2006 and won World Series MVP in '05. If we're going back this far, then honestly we should be pretty happy with the results we've seen.

I don't know who you're arguing with. We agree. Sale, Glasnow and Kershaw are guys who have enough talent to pitch at less than max effort and still get guys out reliably. I will caveat Kershaw, though. He was an incredibly reliable pitcher (200+ IP for 6 years, then 150+ IP for 4 years) before covid, age, and mileage on his arm caught up with him. I'm saying more marginal guys need every advantage they can get, and that's who is going to continue to go after max effort strategies. They're the ones who will need TJ even if the more talented guys know when to dial it back, just like the only guys getting caught with steroids now are the ones who need them to move up in the minors/have a shot at an MLB roster.

It's telling that more than half these guys were somewhere between 13 and 25 years ago. That was a completely different org and league at that point. Let's stick to the last 10 years, which is somewhat modern. In that time, you have Cease, who is definitely NOT an ace. He had one ace quality year and regressed due to the same command issues that have plagued him throughout his career. You have Lopez, who failed as a starter here, turned into a decent reliever, then caught lightning in a bottle last year in Atlanta. Hardly a victory lap. You have Giolito, who was probably the worst starter in baseball, then went outside of the organization to Katz who helped refine his mechanics (which I'm sure helped Katz get the job after they fired Cooper). Then Giolito turned in three years of #1-#3 starter quality before he fell off a cliff. Victory for sure, though he's the only big value they got out of that trade. Assuming Eaton didn't get hurt, they might've just been better off keeping him. You have Bassitt, who barely pitched in the majors here, so who knows how well he would've developed after his rookie season. Trading him for Samardzijia was still incredibly stupid but I'm not giving the Sox credit for a major league career he didn't have on their team. Kahnle was a good pickup, but who knows how much his struggles were due to the Coors effect and playing for the only org that rivals the Sox in shittiness. He's also a reliever. They're wildcards.

No, I’m saying the Sox got the better of the deal for sure, but Sale has overwhelming stuff. He’s hall of fame caliber and can pitch at 85% and still be great. Guys like Davis Martin need every advantage they can get, consequences be damned.

I’ve been a big Charlotte fan but I’m starting to think the Sox should look for a better affiliate that doesn’t allow for 87 mph exit velo 42 degree launch angle homers

The Red Sox probably still win that World Series without him (108 wins and 11-3 in the postseason) so I’d say yes. I think you have to do that with guys like Davis Martin, though, otherwise they wouldn’t make it to the bigs, much less be effective there. You can probably take it easier with the guys with 90th percentile+ stuff.

I think have just been so atrociously poor at developing hitting that by comparison pitching looks good. It’s not like the Sox lead the league in pitching statistics every year. They’ve just hit big on three left handed starters.

It definitely is in game, but it seems like hitters are pretty well maximized to do as much damage as their pitch recognition and talent levels will allow. If we went back to the times when pitching low in the zone with high 80s and low 90s velo was the norm and tunneling wasn’t well known, we’d see some crazy damage.

It's also an arms race with hitters. Hitting has been optimized so heavily in the last 10-15 years in ways that have the advantage of not leading to more injuries. Pitchers likely need to heavily focus on stuff maximization, otherwise we'd have an offensive environment worse than the late 90s and 2000s, when a 5 ERA was a decent 4th starter.

This is true, but you still need a platform to build upon. This is one of the biggest problems in data science - so many people want to start from the end goal and don't understand that you need to put a ton of work into collecting, sanitizing and normalizing your data first. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the White Sox accumulated a ton of player info during their Hahn-driven modernization, but did not understand how to properly leverage it to develop the insights needed to build good proprietary models and predictive analytics. I think these are reasonable assumptions, given what we've heard about lack of opposing player scouting, internal siloing and lack of quality internal data-driven initiatives in the org, plus what Bannister said during this podcast. This bothered me too and was the worst part of the podcast. "We're having pitchers learn changeups" isn't much of a revolution. I wish Chuck pressed him more on it, though I could imagine a couple reasons why he was reluctant to share more - A) they don't want to give away their perceived advantage, or B) they're still working on developing these internal insights (because the data collection and cleanup was such a mess) and are currently relying more on old-school methods, like Coop teaching everyone a cutter. It's not an under-valued gap, that's just a talent issue.

The "had TJS or will have it" part is easy, I'm sure, but the biomechanical advantage part likely isn't (otherwise I'd bet the Dodgers would be doing it). Hopefully that starts to show up as they draft and acquire more pitching in the next few years.

And I'm saying I don't know if that's going to matter because a lot of the damage is already done, unless the Sox focus on drafting guys who have some biomechanical advantage that they can identify, or who either already had TJS or need it right away.

You're missing the point. This is a problem throughout all of baseball because of how pitchers are taught to maximize velocity before they're even drafted. There's not much the Sox can do about it. Having so many pitchers drop around the same time is likely a statistical anomaly.

The Sox did not prioritize maxing velocity the way other orgs did, and velocity is what correlates heavily with TJ surgery. I don't know if the Sox are prioritizing max velocity more now (I suspect they are, as everyone is), but I do know that every pitcher is told to prioritize velocity as soon as they show any ability to pitch at a high level, so I'm not surprised to see a rash of surgeries needed. Hopefully they don't all hit at once like they did for the Sox this year, but I would expect every viable prospect to need TJ at some point.

Now these guys look decent on the road and horrible at home