Chicago White Sox

Who is Vaughn blocking?

Are you comparing the Cubs’ revenue profile to ours? We can’t spend what they spend…full stop.

Paying market value for wins isn’t progress though. If you try to build out a core in free agency, then it’s almost certainly going to fail. You have to have some semblance of our core and right now we have nothing. That’s why any talk of achieving 83 wins by 2026 is wild to me. We don’t have a single player we can say with a high degree of certainty will be a key contributor for 2026 outside of Robert and even then there are questions. We are basically starting from zero and that means it will take multiple years just to get to any level of respectability. I know that sucks, but it’s the unfortunate reality we face.

We practically spent $200M on payroll during the peak of our window. Money was spent…it was just allocated extremely poorly.

And what happens when these guys start regressing in 2027? Will that still be worth turning a 50 win team into a 60 win team?

Losing 90 games is not the same as losing 120 games though. Signing Kim and another B tier free agent isn’t vaulting us anywhere close to 83 wins. I get the desire to want more interesting baseball, but trying to take shortcuts won’t work where we’re currently at the process. I think if enough goes right this coming season, then we start to see some legitimate moves next offseason. Until then, just hope some of our fringier, but major league ready prospects turn into something useful because otherwise it’s going to be an ugly season.

Steamer 600 projections based on the lineup at Roster Resource post the addition of Rojas: Tauchman, RF* | 109 wRC+ | 1.8 fWAR Robert, CF | 103 wRC+ | 2.7 fWAR Benintendi, LF* | 104 wRC+ | 0.9 fWAR Vaughn, 1B | 110 wRC+ | 1.1 fWAR Rojas, 3B* | 95 wRC+ | 1.9 fWAR Sosa, 2B | 95 wRC+ | 1.7 fWAR Vargas, DH | 103 wRC+ | 1.8 fWAR Baldwin, SS# | 92 wRC+ | 1.9 fWAR Lee, CA | 73 wRC+ | 0.1 fWAR Obviously these would be very different with real playing time projections and Vargas is inflated if he’s a primary DH, but this level of output would be leagues better than we got last year. I will also note that both Quero & Teel project as 2+ win players, so our biggest black hole will have reinforcements pretty early into the season most likely.

What would you propose they do then?

Good point. And the cost to run a second DSL team has to be small once you have the infrastructure in place. Should be a no brainer.

I don’t get the Nagy comparison at all for Johnson. Ben is the visionary of the Lions offense, whereas Nagy who was a clear second in command who had play calling taken away from him one point because he wasn’t delivering. I get a good O-Line can make things look better, but what Johnson has put together in Detroit is incredible. He runs some gimmicky plays, but to pretend that’s his whole schtick is wild to me. The dude is an incredible play caller and knows how to run an offense that best utilizes all of his weapons. There are no guarantees with a first time HC, but he’s 100% the dude we need to hire IMO.

Man I really hope not. Unless you think he’s got a decent chance of finishing top two in the AL ROY vote, play the team control game and send him to Charlotte. A great AFL should not overide a tough season in AAA.

This is great stuff but a sad reminder of where things stand and how long it will take to right the ship. That being said, Paddy needed to go and someone had to convince Reinsdorf that signing teenage Dominicans isn’t evil and provide the highest ROI of all forms of talent acquisition. And despite all his flaws, it appears that Getz may have finally got Jerry over the ledge based on how David Keller has been talking.

$60M is clearly absurd, but so is making a bunch of B & C tier signings early into what will be a very painful rebuild.

The key issue with your idea is signing free agents a couple years ahead of being competitive means they will likely be on the downswing by the time you are actually good. Obviously there can be exceptions, but production is typically front loaded based on the age of most free agents. I don’t hate the idea of adding Kim, but I think he will cost more than you’re thinking and will likely demand an opt-out. And on top of that, I’d like to give Colson a real chance to stick at SS because it frees up 3B or 2B for other guys we already have in place at those spots worthy of opportunity. Ultimately, I think we’re a year away from making these type of moves.

Rojas would be a massively negative value player playing against RHP at 3B or 2B. No idea how you are making this comparison.

Romy did that hitting entirely against LHP and is unplayable against RHP. He is not an option for the Rojas role at all.

The other thing with Meidroth is that’s he’s already a very fundamentally sound defender and doesn’t really need a ton more development there. Honestly, his only two issues are limited range defensively and somewhat lacking power on the offensive side of things. Unless they want to tweak his swing and hope for generating more power (which seems risky given his profile), there isn’t much for him to work on in the minors. However, a month or two down in Charlotte wouldn’t be the worse of things to get him acclimated to the org and and buy an extra year of control. And it allows Sosa a better opportunity to show he can handle 2B defensively and that he’s closer to the hitter we saw in September.

I fully agree with your main point, but Rojas will not be getting 500 plate appearances with us. First and foremost, he won’t be here past Aug 1st unless a ton of things have gone wrong. Second, he has strong platoon splits and should never play against LHP (outside of the occasional reliever). I’d say 300 is a much more realistic expectation for him and hopefully it ends up less than that amount but again that’s my main concern with signing him.

My guess is a deal like that would have to come with early opt-outs.

That seems like a pretty light contract for him.

What makes you think he’ll finally be able to identify a good OC? They had like four different ones during his three year run in Miami. And does his handling of Tua make you confident he’s the right guy for Caleb? Hiring Flores would be a tremendous risk and one we can’t afford to take. I just think it’s foolish to hire a HC candidate because he runs a good defense, especially when you have a young developing QB. Go grab the next defensive oriented HC who fails like the Vikings did with Flores themselves and you are set at DC. This next HC hire to be entirely focused on turning Caleb into a legit franchise QB and that dude is Ben Johnson. Warren needs to make it happen one way or the other and settling on anyone else (even Vrabel) would be a huge disappointment.

I think he means the other Kim the Dodgers just signed.

Murfee, Scholtens, or Colas IMO.

It’s not going to happen obviously, but trading Robert for Lux would be even dumber now than ever before.

Oh you’re talking about Yolmer. Did Ordonez or Lee come up that way?