almagest

I have to admit, I'm cracking up each time Zavala's name comes up as the savior to the 2024 White Sox season.

He wouldn't be. Zavala isn't in the majors anymore, same as Maldonado.

So all of these guys would be better under KW/Hahn? Moncada and Eloy wouldn't have gotten hurt? How exactly does a change in SVP and GM accomplish that?

Benintendi, Eloy and Vaughn alone are half of that negative fWAR. Moncada hasn't played in months, and probably won't play again this year. Robert isn't even at 1 fWAR yet. Those are the guys you counted on to be the "good" players. They were on the roster already and were going to play. They had to at least be decent for this team to be normal bad, no matter what. Romy barely plays in the outfield. He's not an OF. Also, again, Romy also only has 100 AB, and would likely be exposed with the Sox because they would be forced to play him way more than the Red Sox. There was no one else available in free agency or on the trade market (except McCarthy) that would get this team like 20 more wins then they have right now. McCarthy is much better than Fletcher this year. That looks like a miss, and doesn't bode well for Barfield if he was that bad at evaluating players in his org. Getz isn't the only reason they are so barren in the minors. KW/Hahn did a terrible job drafting, signing and trading players. Being unhappy and skeptical is fine. I am unhappy and skeptical. I am not wallowing in negativity and pinning all the blame on a guy who has only been doing this job for a year, in what is most certainly the worst organization in MLB. He's got another year to prove himself in my mind - he probably won't be fired even if he's awful because Reinsdorf, but if they don't start showing improvement then Getz needs to go too.

Sounds like a KW/Hahn apologist to me

You're right. No one expected all of Benintendi, Vaughn, Eloy, Moncada and Robert to be practically useless this year. And it's not revisionist history to realize how absolutely screwed this team is after what we've seen this year and the tons of insider feedback we've gotten about what an utter disaster this organization was under Rick and Kenny - so bad that even Reinsdorf had to fire KW, who he considered a son and who brought him a WS in 2005. A guy who Jerry blocked from interviewing for other roles. A guy who likely had a job for life, and yet still managed to screw it up somehow.

If people read what I actually said, and not what they thought I said or wanted me to say, then it would be easy to see I'm not a Getz apologist. I'm just trying to be realistic about what's possible in one season with an organization this bad and not whip myself into a pointless frenzy of negativity.

"I don't like him, but give him a year because this entire org is fucked and there's no way to tell if what he's doing is working yet" is an apologist to you?

No, he didn't. Once again, you don't get to this level of historic incompetency without a full, multi-year, thorough organizational failure. None of you have even come CLOSE to showing how this could be a 60 win pace team through any set of realistic signings or trades. It's not possible with how utterly terrible they've been, and that's 100% due to the decisions made by Reinsdorf, Hahn and Williams over the last 8 years. And again, grading him on player moves this year is IRRELEVANT. We're not going to truly start seeing the effects of the changes that are happening and need to happen until next year. Plenty of people around the team, including people on this board, have been commenting on what a bad state this org is in, and how much is changing and needs to change.

Agreed that Vaughn needs to go, but I'd give Elko a shot at 1B. He's been pretty good at every stop, and assuming he continues to play well in AAA there's no reason to spend resources on 1B. The rest makes sense.

No, you are missing the point. There's no way letting some bullpen pitchers and Seby Zavala go caused the problems we're seeing this year. You don't get to this level of historic incompetency in one offseason. This started with the sell-off in 2016 and is a complete organizational failure, largely due to Kenny Williams, Rick Hahn and Jerry Reinsdorf. Believe me, I'm not a fan of Getz, but pinning it all on him because he made some bad bullpen moves or traded for guys who didn't play much in the most lost season in the history of the MLB is reactionary and short sighted. These moves literally do not matter right now. Most of the changes he's making are not going to show returns for a year at best. This might be the biggest org tear down we've ever seen. That's how BAD they are, from top to bottom. It's disgusting, and it's even more disgusting that Reinsdorf tried to sell this as a quick turnaround.

It's amazing to me that so many posters equate "I'm giving Getz another year because Jesus Christ himself couldn't make this team win 60 games" with "I am fighting for the respect of Chris Getz". It's also amazing to me how so few posters understand that the major league team they have is a result of nearly a DECADE of incompetence.

Zavala has barely played. You're banking the turnaround of the catching position on a guy who has appeared in 18 games, has 0.1 fWAR and is now in AAA. Losing Zavala is not a problem. Trading for Fletcher and DeLoach then burying them is ridiculous. So is burying Colas. I'm hoping that was Pedro, and at least two of them get playing time now. The bullpen guys I'm not as upset about, because, again, I don't think they'd be nearly as good here due to the pressure of trying to be perfect every game due to the team's lack of offense, and because I'm not convinced Ethan Katz or whoever manages the bullpen knows what they're doing. I'm still also not seeing how Zavala, Colas/Fletcher/DeLoach and a better bullpen gets this team to +20 win pace.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

Zavala is at -0.4 war this year, same as he was for the Sox last year. He’s only gotten 39 at bats though, so I really can’t see how you’d be counting on him for much of an improvement, especially since Lee would be getting most of the playing time. I agree on Colas, but let’s be honest - he hasn’t shown us anything to make us believe he’d be better. Still worth trying, I’ll give you that, and I hope he’s out there now that Grifol is gone. Romy Gonzalez only has 100 at bats this year. It’s likely he’d be exposed in a full time role. If you combine his entire career (~120 games), he’s basically Nicky Lopez this year. Not an improvement. If you add all those relievers you get 2.7 WAR. Definitely an improvement over the garbage they have now, but not enough to make up 20 games, especially when your offense averages 3 runs per game. Bullpens struggle when they have no margin for error. I’m also not sure any of these guys would be good here - I think Katz is terrible with bullpens.

Like who? What free agents were out there that the Sox would realistically sign that would be a big enough improvement to make up 20 games? I already covered RF and 2B - not much there. Not seeing much at catcher, either. Maybe they could’ve used some of their assets in trades, but who was going to give up a decent major league player for Bummer? Or injured Santos? The ML coaching staff was largely retained from last year, and we’ve been hearing Getz wanted to can them for a while. This team has had issues fielding and playing good fundamental baseball since long before Getz took over. I’ll give him more than one offseason (especially now that Grifol and most of his staff were canned) to fix this problem,

Burger wasn’t Getz. The move also made sense at the time. Bummer had good advanced stats but had control issues and an awful ERA. I doubt anyone was lining up to give the Sox much of anything there. I can see the rationale to grab a bunch of players on the edge of the Braves 40 man and see what you can get. Some of them had a pedigree, and Lopez was a body at second base who played good defense and had a 4 WAR season. They clearly don’t think of Mena as highly as some people do here, and his results don’t show much of anything yet. I doubt he was as highly valued around the league. The Sox clearly made the wrong player choice, especially given Barfield’s knowledge of their system, but they’d probably only have a couple more wins at most. I agree Santos didn’t need to be traded, but maybe they knew more about his injury than we did. Plus there were the rumors that he was the one sleeping. Maybe they just wanted him off the team, and so far he hasn’t done anything since leaving.

Bad teams churn through players like crazy. I don’t understand why this is such a sticking point for people. If the team was good they wouldn’t try to find good players. I already went over the position players sucking - every player who was here last year has been worse. Hard to not be worse when your “good” players suck. The defense also still sucks largely because of those players. Now do you have an answer for my questions or are you going to keep deflecting?

That’s not why they’re way worse than last year, though, is it? Santos isn’t much of an asset, given he was injured at the time of the trade and is still injured. I’ll wait until Mena gets his era below 4 in AAA (or even AA) to call him an actual asset.

I’ve described my rationale for why I think we need to wait a year to really judge Getz in multiple posts. Do you have steps that Getz should have taken to prevent injuries to Moncada and Eloy, or make Benintendi and Vaughn be worse than last season? If so, what should he have done that would have been effective in one offseason? Heck, I’ll even give you one - find a hitting guru like he brought Bannister in to be the pitching guru. Not sure if they had enough time to find that guy, which is why he might be looking for him this year (as discussed in another thread), but it’s definitely something I could buy as a misstep.

Ok, sure. How should he have prevented this? Let’s take firing Grifol sooner out of it, because from what we’re hearing he wanted to do that for a while. What else would you have done to prevent injuries, and make guys like Benintendi and Vaughn hit?

I’m not inventing excuses. You’re inventing reasons to be mad which distract from the actual problems. Dude Profar sucked before this year, go look at his numbers. Big bust. This year is lightning in a bottle for a 31 year old nearing the end of his career. Where did I say Lopez was a positive? He’s a worse hitting, better defending Andrus. Basically a wash from last year. There was basically no one else they could realistically sign at 2B that’d be any better. Go look at what was out there. Maybe a trade for Ortiz would have been better and thats about it. And he would get them, what? 1 or 2 more wins? The players left over from the Hahn era have been ATROCIOUS.

It contributes, but when you only score three runs per game you have no room for error. Fletcher looks like a mistake, but even Judge out there doesn’t get this team to 60 wins. And as I said, they’ve actually gotten better production in RF this year. Same with SS. Catcher and 2B are mostly a wash. Also, I agree - Getz needs to be held responsible for the roster. Next year.

What’s funny about that is the MLB roster isn’t even all that different than last year. The only real departures of note are Cease and a couple bullpen pitchers. Moncada, Eloy, Robert, Benintendi, Sheets, Vaughn, Lee, Sosa, Kopech, Touki, Banks were all here. DeJong was much better than TA. Maldonado was worse than Grandal but honestly they were both awful, so if you’re saying the Sox are 20-something games worse because of Grandal I ain’t buying it. Zavala was Maldonado-esque. Nicky Lopez is doing about what we got out of Andrus last year. Pham and Sheets have been better than what we got out of Sheets last year. The starters have been BETTER this year. No 6.47 era Lance Lynn to deal with. 2023 Kopech and Flexen are roughly the same. Crochet and Fedde are better than any pitcher from last year. The bullpen is the biggest difference, because most of the turnover happened there, and a lot of it was bad. The bullpen isn’t the main reason why they’ve lost 20-something more games, though. Basically every returning position player has either been hurt most of the year or has been much worse than last year. Benintendi, Robert, Eloy (when he played), Vaughn - all worse. They barely average 3 runs per game, and all the new guys have either been better or are a wash. Like I said - this all started long before Getz took over. We’re just seeing it bottom out now.

…I’ve already said how, multiple times. You don’t meaningfully change an absolute dumpster inferno like this organization in one year. They basically need to turn THE ENTIRE ORGANIZATION over. Getz is likely not the right choice to do this correctly, but it’s not because they’re on track to win 40-something games this year.