Chicago White Sox

Per Bob:

Home for nuggets and rumors that don’t warrant a full thread. Per Nightengale, Burnes & Fried both expected to get $200M+ and should sign this week. And he believes Fried will sign with the Yankees or Red Sox.

We aren’t winning anytime soon. Baldwin can play SS until Montgomery or whomever we get in a Crochet trade is ready. If Brooks performs well with the bat, then he slides over to 2B. If Sosa is also performing, then we have a really good problem. I’ll worry about that issue when both of those things happen. The Vargas issue is different because he doesn’t really fit anywhere. He has the tools to play at multiple spots (3B, 2B, LF, RF) but he lacks the skill to be good at any of them, at least the moment. And for 1B / DH, he doesn’t have the power you’d want to see out of that spot even if his hit tool returns to form. I am not giving up on him yet, but he’s a really frustrating player to plan around.

I don’t disagree and positional prospects are valued like they are for a reason. That being said, windows also fade fast and I think it’s crazy to not take a shot when you 95% of the pieces in place. If the Orioles never make a World Series while having Rutschman that’s a major black mark for Elias.

Sox need an actual LatAm program for that to ever be an option. And unfortunately for us, there’s nothing Jerry hates more than spending big money on 27 year olds even it’s proven to offer the highest ROI of any form of talent acquisition.

What’s weird is Sosa never had that reputation in the minors. Physically limited perhaps when playing SS, but I always interpreted scouting reports on him to suggest he’d be a very solid defensive 2B. I’m willing to give him more time and see what happens. It’s not like he’s blocking anyone at the moment.

Starting to scout other teams’ message boards to get a sense of how their fanbases value Crochet. The Orioles fans at the Hangout are a hard pass on Crochet if it costs even one of Basallo or Mayo. They want and are expecting a SP via free agency due to their new owner. It’s interesting to see how quickly fan expectations change as there is almost a sense of entitlement over there. Regardless, like their fans, Elias cares more about prospect clutching than winning championships and I think we can take them off the list. Over at Sons of Sam Horn, there is certainly a desire amongst some Red Sox fans to add Crochet. At first, there was a large contingent of posters who felt Abreu plus filler could get the job done, but it appears there has been some acceptance that it will cost substantially more. Anthony & Campbell definitely seem like untouchables to me, but there have been a few proposals centered around Mayer and lots of mock trades with Montgomery. Regardless, I think there is a real desire within the org itself to start pushing some chips in. Meanwhile, the general consensus at PhilliesPhans is that Crochet is really good and so is the Phillies rotation, so why pay a steep price for Garrett when there are other areas of need. To their credit, they realize Bohm doesn’t make any sense for us and for the most feel it’s going to take legit high end prospects to get him. Of particular note, they feel that Dombrowski is definitely interested in adding him despite that full rotation. Also, someone proposed a trade lead by Abel and said he couldn’t understand why the Sox wouldn’t take that 🤣🤣

Which is why you use this season on guys like Lenyn Sosa. He put up a 116 wRC+ against LHP last year…can he repeat that? Who fucking knows, but if he can, he’s suddenly a very valuable bench piece if this s%*# is the going rate.

The Orioles just spent $25M/year on O’Neil & Sanchez. They got a weak-side corner OF platoon guy and a backup catcher. And this is despite a massive need in the rotation. No idea what the f*** Elias is doing, but I do hope a few of those Orioles fans at The Hangout are fuming (just the couple douchy ones). Also, just because I find it amusing, Austin Slater got 10% of the AAV that O’Neil just got and yet from 2020 to 2023 he had a higher wRC+ against LHP (140 vs. 130). Don’t get me wrong, O’Neil is the better player and is coming off an elite season against LHP, but it does highlight why Slater at $1.75M was a very smart scrap heap signing for us.

That Harper deal will forever be the steal of the century. And no star better fit a franchise than Harper to the White Sox. Everything would have probably still flamed out because of KW & Hahn, but at least it would have given us one of the most marketable stars in baseball to help convince little kids to become White Sox fans. Now those same kids on the bubble get Miguel Vargas. No wonder my kid wants nothing to do with baseball and only loves the NBA and really just its stars.

Fully agree. Montgomery is obviously a nice prospect and you never want to give those up if you can avoid it, but he doesn’t really impact their near-term roadmap. I fully expect him included in any major trade, whether Crochet or for someone else. Anthony & Campbell seem like their two untouchables IMO and I think they’d be hard pressed to give up Teal just due long-term need. That makes Mayer the most expendable of their big 4 and with Merkin saying that we are targeting a SS in a Crochet trade it just makes too much for him to be the centerpiece.

I don’t think Soto is going to Boston unfortunately. Mets or Yankees appear to be the leaders.

The more I think about it, the more that I feel like a Crochet for Mayer + Montgomery trade will happen. Just makes too much sense for both sides.

I think there were some clubhouse issues with him too.

That would help no doubt, but at least with Soto off the books the market for Burnes & Fried will actually start moving and that will help Crochet talks.

I mean, you have said this like 20 times over the past couple of weeks. You seem to be implying there is something wrong with sticking to the bargain bin at the very beginning of a rebuild.

What would be the point of signing a free agent like this right now?

Good. The more top free agents that sign ahead of the winter meetings, the more focus that will be placed on Crochet.

If Soto signs tomorrow, I think there is a good chance Crochet gets dealt at the Winter Meetings this week.

Yeah, no thanks on Walker.

I don’t think this true. Those Harper / Machado contracts were absolute steals at the time and large part due to market conditions. Literally none of the heavy hitters were involved that offseason and that greatly suppressed bidding. I also don’t think this Soto contract will ever be viewed as a steal. $730M is a fuckton of money and I’m not sure a cool billion will be seen as cheap when you look at the valuations of major league post the recent regional TV collapse for many clubs. Just my opinion though. I do agree that Jerry needs to go 🤜🏼🤛🏿

Exactly, patience is needed. And I won’t sugar coat it, Vargas legit looked bad when I watched him last year and the Statcast data backs that up. But at one point, this dude was considered a serious prospect and he put up very good numbers in AAA last year. It would be absolutely nuts to cut bait on him 157 plate appearances into his tenure with us after our scouts highlighted him as a kid the front office should pursue. And to do so to give a different post hype prospect an opportunity is the definition of insanity.

We are a year or two away from normal bad. Signing Soto a $700M+ contract right now doesn’t make much sense IMO and that contract will never be the steal that the Harper / Machado ones were. Don’t get me wrong, I’d be ecstatic if we signed him, but I can’t really fault Getz for not pursuing Soto right now even if we assume a theoretical Reinsdorf doesn’t exist world.

Crochet was on the team last year and we were the worst team in baseball history. Adding Dylan Cease to it doesn’t suddenly make us competitive. The damage Jerry, KW, & Hahn have done to the org is practically unfathomable and that’s not an understatement. The key to being successful in Major League baseball is having a continuous pipeline of controllable, young talent. Under this past regime, we basically decided we wouldn’t be serious about adding talent from the Dominican Republic and instead would overpay for whatever Cuban talent became available and sign what we could out of less impactful countries like Venezuela and Panama. This has essentially left us with a lack of young LatAm talent coming into our farm, which is a massive disadvantage. Beyond that, we have under-invested in key functional areas like Player Development and Analytics. For years, we have been so far behind the times in using technology and data to develop our prospects and it shows with our hit rates. The vast majority of players drafted come in and make little progress before eventually flaming out. The really high end prospects may reach the show but usually come up ill prepared for the major league game. When you combine this with an empty LatAm pipeline you end up with a consistently bad farm system. All that being said, the single biggest way to improve our long-term outlook is to destroy the insular nature of the org. I am not a big Getz fan, but to his credit, he is going outside to bring many key people and those additions will come with fresh ideas and best practices. And when your foundation is rotten to its core, there is so much low hanging fruit that even an unqualified GM hire can make material improvements. However, those changes will take some time to bare fruit and we can’t rush that process. What that means is accepting defeat these couple seasons and running out a really bad product. Spending a bunch of money right now would be an exercise in futility and would in another failed outcome. A year or two from now is when you start being serious in free agency and add some win now prices. Until then enjoy a bad team lose a lot of games and hope we can identify a few surprises who can be a part of the next core.

So his look is a 157 plate appearances after being traded from the eventual World Series winner to the worst team in baseball history?