Chicago White Sox

I’ve had this hunch for a while that Hahn is trying to straddle both competing for a championship while building up the farm system (evident by his failure of a trade deadline). As such, I fully expect him to trade for several cheap rentals and/or bounce-back type guys. If the Red Sox decide to move on from Alex Verdugo, I could see Hahn being highly interested. Same goes for a guy like Cavan Biggio, who could platoon with our internal options at 2B. Throw in a free agent SP in the Clevinger / Quintana price range and I think that’s your off-season.

I didn’t realize his defensive had plummeted that much. He played CF for the Mariners when he first came up.

Given we have two OFs our roster you decide to start Colas opening day, this is a trade we should have made even if just for depth.

Seems to be the official theme of the off-season

Makes Winker & Lewis more available. Would definitely be interested in the latter as our 4th OF if the price is reasonable.

I could see it happening, but I don’t see how it makes us better. Winker may rebound offensively but he is horrific defensively.

On today’s White Sox Talk Podcast episode, Chuck & Ryan had Jesse Rogers on as their guest and they did their off-season predictions. Here is a summary: Jesse: Giolito to Rays for prospects Kyle Gibson or Zach Eflin replaces Cueto Bounce-back guy like Adam Frazier or internal guys for 2B Sheets & Eloy together will get the playing time in LF & DH Michael Brantley signed to play RF (lol) Sox won’t add a FA with an AAV above $10 (agents not acting like the Sox will have money to spend) Chuck: Eloy to Rays for Brandon Lowe Clevinger replaces Cueto (Chuck points out that we almost acquired him in 2020 and that Mike has actual interest in playing in Chicago) Elvis Andrus brought back to play 2B Kevin Kiermaier or Micheal Brantley for LF Colas is the starting RF Ryan: Giolito to Blue Jays for Teoscar Hernandez Cueto resigned to fill back-of-rotation spot Cheap FA and/or internal guys for 2B Colas is the starting RF (reluctantly) Sox’s biggest FA signing will be a 2nd tier SP The tone of the show matched the pessimism of the predations. May god have mercy on our souls.

100% agree. I would be very unhappy if Hahn acquired him, but I could see Rick viewing it as a way to swap out a bad contract to fill a need.

Yup, kind of reminds me of Dallas Keuchel in that regard. We should stay very far away accordingly.

I think I found who will be Hahn’s Ivan Nova this off-season and that will be Marco Gonzales. Dude put up 183 innings of 0.1 fWAR ball last year, which is an incredibly impressive feat. Just seems like the type of innings eater that Hahn will covet to protect the staff and he can probably exchange a bad contact (Kelly or Leury) to get him. It’s got Rick Hahn special written all over it.

Fully agree. He was on fire before his hand injury and could easily see playing time this year. It’s such a bad take I wonder if Nelson was confusing him with Yogurt or something.

Beyond all the trash on the 40 man roster currently, the fact he ignored there are rebuilding clubs who happily carry a guy like Popeye on their major league roster for a year is mind boggling.

It’s a ton of money when we may only have $15M or so in payroll space to work with.

Josh Nelson on Twitter saying if he were GM he would not have not protected Popeye…???

He’s due $4M+ in arbitration…100% not worth that price.

I assume you mean Jerry which I fully agree is the bigger problem and why we are setup for failure. But I’d be far more optimistic that we could luck into a couple quality moves with a more competent GM.

Take with a massive grain of salt, but posting to hear how people would feel about such a move. Said he expects him to sign pretty soon and that a deal should be in the 2/$20M range. Has the Angels as the favorites though.

After listening to the latest White Sox Talk Podcast episode with Jon Morosi, I think I’ve lost all optimism for next year. The off-season they came up with was trading Giolito for Teoscar Hernandez and then resigning Cueto and signing Ross Stripling to complete the pitching staff. Don’t get me wrong, Teoscar is fine player, but I’d be super disappointed if that was our off-season. And honestly, it’s hard to expect much better with Rick Hahn making the trade. EDIT: And maybe Kevin Kiermaier and/or Adam Frazier.

Imagine if Jerry was actually a good businessman and was willing to bring in a quality front office person whose previous organization just won the World Series at the expense of the incumbent who has proven to be incapable of being a top tier major league GM. But alas, Jerry will stick with the same insular leadership group who has consistently failed to build a best in class organization and hope that a new leader in the dugout will solve all our problems.

May not be thread worthy as I’m not sure what role he is filling, but looks like he was a strength & conditioning coach for the Diamondbacks’ AA team last year.

At least he’s apparently doing something this offseason and going outside the organization for help has proven to work in the past.

The best part of Hahn saying we’ll need to trade to address our needs is him not accepting the reality that we don’t have much to trade. We literally couldn’t do anything at the trade deadline last year except acquire a reliever for our backup catcher. The previous deadline required us to trade our starting 2B and a major league reliever to improve our bullpen. The off-season before we had to trade major league starter to improve the rotation. I can’t wait until he signs a couple of non-impact free agents and then complains about how expensive the trade market was. It truly is amazing how incompetent the dude really is.

Technically $9M in cash this year ?

Can we please stop using BBTV as gospel? It’s a fun little tool, but their player valuations are very hit or miss. For example, Kopech is worth considerably more than how they value him.

The Sox need to make a call if they are in or they are out. If they are in, then Hahn needs to be willing to tap into the farm system in a way that will hurt to make up for Jerry being a cheap asshole. If they are out, then they need to start trading away pieces this off-season, with Anderson, Cease, Hendriks, & Giolito the first four guys who should be moved. Under an “in” scenario, I think you got to go get Bryan Reynolds. I absolutely despise the notion of giving up Montgomery, but there is no other realistic way to get there. You’d probably also have to give up Crochet and a third lesser piece to get to the finishing line, but it’s in the realm of possibility. After that, I’d go out and sign Syndrrgaard to a 2/$28M deal. I get the stuff wasn’t really there last year and probably never returns to what it once was, but he was also coming off two seasons without basically pitching. Despite that, he was a still an effective back of the rotation starter, is still relatively young, and offers more upside than guys in this range. Give him a chance to work with Katz and hope you can get #3 type production out of him. The two moves above result in $21M in additional payroll. I’m assuming that will cap us out financially, which means the last couple of moves need to be salary neutral. The first thing I’d do is swap Leury for Brad Miller. Both are coming off really bad seasons, but Leury is younger and probably offers more upside given. Might need to throw them $2M to $3M million to bridge part of the salary gap, but I’d be more than ok with that (anything above $1.5M would go towards 2024). With Pollock gone, we now need a 4th OF and preferably a RH one to take some pressure off of Colas. The guy I would target is Kyle Lewis who is coming off a very rough season and has lost a ton of luster. Not sure what he would cost at this point, but I’d throw out Mendick plus a C tier prospect. I’m not expecting his rookie year performance, but he’s an interesting buy low guy to provide some much needed OF depth. Finally, I’d look to move Jake Burger for the best SP depth or swingman option that I could find. David Martin is fine as our #6 starter, but there is not much else behind him. Not expecting a stud but anything is better than the garbage sitting at the bottom of 40 man roster. Ultimately, here is how the roster would shake out: Moncada, 3B# Anderson, SS Jimenez, DH Reynolds, LF* Vaughn, 1B Robert, CF Grandal, C# Colas, RF* Sosa, 2B IF: Miller* OF: Lewis UT: Gonzalez BC: Zavala Cease Lynn Kopech Thor Giolito CL: Hendricks SU: Graveman SU: Bummer* SU: Lopez MR: Kelly MR: Diekman* MR: Lambert LR: (Burger Trade) I think that team can compete if enough guys return to form.