Chicago White Sox

See my last post. I will disagree it’s a luxury pick. Whether Loveland should be taken at #10 is a different debate, but the role he plays is critical for the offense Ben Johnson wants to run.

First off, Johnson runs 12 personnel a ton and will be using two TE’s on the regular. Second, Loveland is a different type of player than Kmet. Cole is much more of a traditional inline TE whose priority is blocking, whereas Colston is a true move TE whose priority is receiving. The reality is Loveland is basically a big slot receiver and takes away snaps from whomever our #3 WR is. Both him and Kmet will be on the field at the same time a lot and having both gives Johnson tons of opportunities to create mismatches for opposing defenses, especially since Kmet is not a pure blocking TEs. Whether that’s worthy of the #10 pick I don’t know, but I keep seeing people saying “why did we take a TE, we already have one” and that’s really missing the point of the pick. Also, I don’t think you can look at past drafts and say this pick is too early because so and so went in a certain spot. It’s very clear that the NFL is rethinking the value of move TEs. Historically, TE’s have taken a long time to develop at the NFL level, but a lot of the more recent move TEs selected have produced within one or two years. LaPorta and McBride were both 2nd round picks that had quick success and Bowers was a mid 1st round who immediately set records a rookie. Given the type of impact these players are having, it’s only natural for the position to move up in terms of draft value. Again, whether that means taking Loveland at #10 in a bad draft makes sense is still up for debate, but I don’t think anchoring off past draft tendencies doesn’t make sense in this case.

Who was trading up and for what? I don’t get how you can make these claims without being the war room or at least seeing other movements in that range. It’s fine if you

Why?

Definitely feels like the opposite is going to happen. Vegas thinks we’re trading up to 5 to get Jeanty.

Lol…it’s amazing how badly you want him to fail.

Vargas has looked off-balanced every at-bat I’ve been able to watch. Glad the hitting coaches are working with him to fix that issue.

I am one who will always acknowledge the impact that small sample sizes can have on an individual’s numbers, but the stats for this lineup are fucking ridiculous. Six players below a .600 OPS, four below .500, two below .400, and one below .300. It’s 100% unacceptable to have this many guys performing so bad at once and a sign that we are doing something wrong behind the scenes.

It’s immensely frustrating that all three of Meidroth, Quero, & Baldwin are on the bench (yes I know Chase is injured). Like what are we even doing.

Dear god…no reason to partake today

Someone actually said this?

Wasting this much time and resource on Clevinger is absolute insanity to me.

Just based on sheer luck, we should be better than last year. I mean, it’s almost impossible to be that bad again. And yet here we are, nearly an 1/8 of the way through the season and we are on pace for 34 wins. I still think that we end up above 41 wins, but good god the optics will be terrible if we don’t. I mean, this is what Jerry said after last season. How could he keep Getz after another all time loss record?

If this team sets the loss record again, then Getz needs to be fired full stop.

His swing is fucked up which I called out by highlighting a groundball + popup rate that’s 24% points above his career average. But why should I expect that to be permanent? It’s been literally 60 plate appearances. Baseball players adjust all the time…especially ones with track records of success. Also, not sure where you came up with this idea he’s missing in the zone all the time this year as both his zone contact rate and whiff rate are below his career averages. It’s very clear to me that you are looking for reasons to write him off at this point.

You’re literally drawing conclusions based on 316 plate appearances: Y20-Y23: PA = 1,519 | 5.3% BB % | 25.2% K % | .221 ISO | .334 BABIP | 125 wRC+ Y24 (1H): PA = 179 | 10.1% BB % | 31.8 K % | .255 ISO | .290 BABIP | 123 wRC+ Y24 (2H): PA = 246 | 4.1% BB % | 34.1% K % | .086 ISO | .322 BABIP | 56 wRC+ Y25 (YTD): PA = 70 | 11.4% BB % | 27.1% K % | .068 ISO | .175 BABIP | 33 wRC+ Robert was legit awesome through the All-Star game of last year. He clearly was awful during the 2H of last season, but there are many reasons for that which have been highlighted plenty of times. In particular, it’s 100% clear his health was a major contributor and we can see that by his the reductions in bat speed and sprint speed last year. However, if you look at his underlying metrics so far this year you will see improvements (including chase rate). The BABIP is ridiculously low (which will normalize) and the power has been terrible despite his elite bat speed being back to normal, but as I have pointed out he hasn’t been squaring up on the ball at all. His groundball and popup rates are up a combined 24% points vs. his career rates and 26% points vs. last year. That’s the definition of abnormal and a completely different problem from last year. Do you really think that rate is going to stick? Additionally, Robert routinely struggles in April. His career wRC+ is 82 in April vs. a combined 120 for all other months. As such, there is zero reason to overreact to a slow start from him as long as he is healthy. Again, you have decided Robert is a fundamentally different player now (and a terrible one at that) because of 316 bad plate appearances. It’s absolutely wild.

My point is someone would give up something for him, even if it’s just a couple of lottery tickets. I don’t see any realistic case where we we’d decline Robert’s option unless he suffers a major injury and that’s lingering heading into the offseason.

Zero chance…big market clubs would take him in a heartbeat if he was free

I’ll be honest, I am starting to lose the little bit of hope I had that Getz wasn’t the shitty Farm Director that he appeared to be and that his failures were a result of being held back by KW & Hahn. I have no doubt that he’s made some structural improvements to the org, but ultimately you have to be able to marry the data and technology and turn it into meaningful actions to drive real change and I am currently unconvinced he knows how to do that.

It’s our only hope unfortunately

We need Ishbia to take over ASAP and clear fucking house

Dear god…I really fucking hate this team

How the f*** do we have a .160 BABIP? Have we hit the ball hard at all or are we just slapping it around?

We doing one today or have reached the point of none of us no longer caring.

Last two seasons? He put 4.9 fWAR two seasons ago? Unless you are calling 60 plate appearances in April a “season”…