Chicago White Sox

This will be one of the younger teams in baseball next year.

It’s a controllable, left handed reliever who can be flipped at the deadline if he’s any good. Bannister must really like him for us to be targeting him. Honestly, it just comes down to the price. Age doesn’t really matter all that much given this dude’s circumstances.

32 year old, left handed reliever. Quit baseball at the age of 26 and became a carpenter. Sat out for four seasons before finally coming back after figuring some life s%*# out and getting healthier. Made it the majors last year with Boston and was somewhat productive as a reliever for them. Appears to have five or six years of control remaining.

They shouldn’t trade him just so he gets more playing time. We’d obviously have to make it worth their while. But it’s clear they don’t want to rely on him from the get-go and given his position he should be available at the right price.

Yup, it’s really diminishing returns outside of a few spots. Quality over quantity is key at this point and that may prove challenging right now with Robert.

Goldschmidt to the Yankees. Getz needs to figure out a way to acquire Ben Rice.

But seriously, I’ve said it before, but there is a legit sales pitch to be made by the White Sox: Top Three Metro Market => Significant endorsement opportunities No Established Stars => Can immediately be the face of the franchise Limited Japanese History => Doesn’t have to live in the shadows of others Stress Free Environment => Can develop in the majors at his own pace Quality Pitching Development => Bannister a proven difference maker Top 10 Japanese Population => Access to some cultural elements of home Direct Flight to Japan => A small bonus that certain cities can’t offer The one thing Getz has been able to do as GM is sell his vision. Obviously the road ahead is going to be rough, but not everyone is afraid of a challenge. As someone who works for a Japanese company, I can say many of these guys value things differently than Americans. If this dude wants to create his own legacy, winning a World Series on the south side of Chicago would one of the best ways to do that. And I truly believe that can be a massive selling point.

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Thanks for sharing. Surprised they can fit two stadiums and a bunch other s%*# on that site.

Are the Sox giving up their plans then? I don’t see how the developer could be working with both the Sox and Fire simultaneously.

The issue I have is it only takes a handful of weeks to claw back a full year of control. And one month in AAA doesn’t change his long-term roadmap and I personally think it would be good for him given his challenges in Charlotte last season. IMO, unless you feel he’s a serious threat to be a top two finisher in the AL Rookie of the Year race, the value trade-off is just too much.

If he can stick at SS, that helps things immensely. But I can’t comprehend for the life of me how any intelligent being would think burning a year of service time and starting him on the major league roster next season makes any sense when we are years away from being competitive. I would lose all faith in Chris Getz if he did this.

Drew Thorpe for pitcher. Brooks Baldwin for hitter.

I will say 3.4 wins. My assumption is he falls off slightly from his past 4.75 win pace due to a lack of protection causing him to do too much. So if healthy, I’d assume he’s a 4.0 win player next year. However, I’ll assume some minor injuries and discount his production by 15% to cover games missed.

Trading a guy who was a star up to last season for a post-hype prospect and a 45 FV kid who projects to be a utility guy in the majors makes us deeper?

It’s amazing how many ways you can try to spin this thing. From 2020 to 2023, Robert put up 12.0 fWAR to Bellinger’s 6.5. He was nearly 2x more productive than Bellinger despite 10% less plate appearances. And even in your beloved “Bellinger was 10th in NL MVP voting” season Robert outperformed him by half a win. Full stop, Robert has been the better player since arriving in the majors until last year. I don’t even know what you’re arguing at this point because your story doesn’t hold without massive levels of spin. If you want to assume 2024 is the new version of Robert moving forward, then I’m not sure there is anything to debate. I believe both you and Balta both did this same garbage with Cease coming off his 2023 season and those pessimistic takes were both quickly proven wrong last year. I strongly believe the same will happen with Robert in 2025 and hopefully Getz doesn’t overreact to a single bad season and sell low for a bunch of crap that won’t move the needle.

It fucking blows my mind that you are pretending players aren’t capable of having a bad year. The dude you are desperately trying to hype up as Robert’s equal put up -1.0 fWAR in 2021. He’s averaged 2.7 fWAR per season since then. There are endless examples like this. Again, context matters and if can’t see the obvious reasons why Robert may have underperformed last year then it’s clear to me you are looking for reasons to hate on him.

What offends me is you thinking Robert is suddenly a sub 1 win player because “he lost the tiniest amount of athleticism”. Like is that a real take or are you just looking for an outlet to unleash more negativity? Because if it’s the former, it’s one of the more laughable takes I have seen on this board, up there with “we should move Timmy to catcher.”

Let’s do a ban bet Ron style. If Robert posts less than 1 fWAR next year, I will accept a one year ban from this board. If he produces above 1 fWAR, you take on a one year ban. That work for you? Clearly we aren’t going to convince the other of our opinions on this topic, so instead of recycling the same argument over & over again and polluting the broader discussion on the board, let’s put some skin in the game and let Robert settle this once and for all.

Yes, that’s the argument from the anti Robert crowd. That we must move him now for low certainty / low impact prospects or else we will likely end up with nothing come the trade deadline. All because Robert had a 2024 season in which he was likely never healthy and was playing for a historically bad club, with a completely incompetent manager, and no offense around him at all.

So you think 2024 is the go forward expectation for Robert and not the dude from 2020 to 2023?

Arbitrarily picking the last two seasons is what I’m talking about. Like why not go back to 2020 when Luis first came up? Robert put up 7.1 fWAR from 2020 to 2022, while Bellinger put up 2.1 fWAR. That’s 3.4x the production despite ~20% less plate appearances. But hey, if we exclude those years and anchor off the 2024 season, we can craft a much better anti-Robert, pro Bellinger narrative. And by the way, Bellinger got his current contract after a really strong 2023 season. While he wasn’t bad last year, he regressed tremendously and he was arguably not worth his $25M salary as a 2 to 2.5 win player. If he returns to his 2023 form, he’d have surplus value and would likely opt out of his final year of the contract. The reality though is that 2023 looks like an outlier for him and the market has reacted accordingly. Not sure what any of this has to do with Luis Robert though.