Chicago White Sox

What’s your beef with Sheets buddy?

So no left-handing hitting is ok?

I’m 100% out on Conforto to the Sox after Stone’s comment and the Haseley trade. I think SP is probably the priority right now for Hahn with backup catcher a secondary consideration.

Glad the market finally heated once April hit!

Sheets is untouchable at the moment, but there are plenty of other pieces that I think would be of interest. If a trade for Manaea gets done, I’m expecting one of Burger, Popeye, or Ramos + one of Dalquist or Thompson + Adolfo or filler piece.

But we’re talking about the quality of the offseason, not the quality of the team itself. No one is disputing the latter. The problem is when your GM spends $46M on free agents / Craig Kimbrel and barely moves the needle in terms of improvement. If outside “experts” want to ignore that point, then their grades are fairly meaningless IMO.

Or we’re a lot closer to the needs of the team than whoever completed those grades. Let me ask you this, what score would you give our offseason?

What’s crazy to me is we’re essentially paying Joe Kelly $8.5M to pitch ~60 low to medium leverage innings (assuming Kimbrel isn’t moved) while we’re paying Harrison $5.5M to provide 400+ plate appearances and be our starting 2B. Imagine leveraging those Kelly dollars for a more impactful 2B like Escobar and a legit backup C.

So a few weeks backs I said I’d give the offseason a C-. But upon further review, I’d have to score this a clear D. I just can’t get over the fact we picked up Kimbrel’s option (and appear to be keeping him at the moment) and then signed two high paid setup man. The bullpen was a legit area of need, but it’s apparent Hahn went overboard there and left other key areas unaddressed despite having a fairly large budget to work with. Also, below is a comparison of projected 2022 fWAR by group and a comparison vs. 2021 actual results. While the positional group is expected to be better, it’s almost entirely driven by full seasons and/or improvement from Grandal, Robert, Eloy, Vaughn & Sheets. Adding a quality 2B alone would have pushed up the projected net gain even further and increased my offseason rating by a full grade. At this point I’d be ecstatic with us acquiring a solid backup catcher that can provide above replacement level production. On the pitching side, forecasts have us much weaker than last year. I personally think these pitching projections are way too conservative and that the gap will end up being much closer, but losing Rodon’s 4.9 win season really hurts. Adding someone like Sean Manaea would go a long way to strengthening the pitching staff and would push my offseason score up a full grade assuming it’s done at a reasonable price. Group | 2022 | 2021 | B/(W) Positional: 27.1 | 25.2 | +1.9 Starters: 14.7 | 19.3 | -4.6 Relievers: 5.3 | 7.8 | -2.5 Total: 47.1 | 52.3 | -5.2

Oh I don’t like Ruiz at all and don’t expect him to survive the season with the Sox, but just expect Romy or Lambert to provide a bigger impact given the lack of talent or depth ahead of them.

Keep moving them goal posts brother

Alright guys, we are officially nine days from Opening Day. While there is still technically time to make more moves, it’s a very real possibility that the roster we have in place now is the one we’re going to rock to start. As such, how would you score the moves below? Free Agents: RHP Kendell Graveman - 3/$24M RHP Joe Kelly - 2/$17M UT Leury Garcia - 3/$16.5M UT Josh Harrison - 1/$5.5M RHP Vince Velasquez - 1/$3M C Nick Ciuffo - Minor League Deal RHP Kyle Crick - Minor League Deal Trades: RHP McKinley Moore to Phillies for OF Adam Haseley Options: Picked up RHP Craig Kimbrel’s option for $16M Qualifying Offers: Declined to offer QO to LHP Carlos Rodon Waivers: Claimed LHP Yoan Aybar from the Yankees

Guys, if we need a minor league reliever to “save our season”, then something has gone terribly wrong with the $50M bullpen. I think Romy is probably the best answer, followed by Burger & Lambert.

This isn’t very hard. You literally just said that Tampa Bay knows that relief pitchers should be cheap, but ignore the fact they actively pursued one of the most expensive relievers in the game last trade deadline. I’m not arguing anything here, just pointing out that your claim isn’t true.

Trust me I want a RF too, but unfortunately after La Russa’s comments they don’t think we need one.

Wait, are you arguing that Kimbrel’s $16M salary is cheap? Because if not, we certainly haven’t covered this subject.

Exactly. Good move independent of the failure to address RF / left-handed hitting.

This is a depth move and nothing more. With Rutherford being useless and Adolfo nearing his end with the organization, the Sox desperately needed an OF with options they could stash in AAA. I’ve been pining for Conforto more than anyone, but this has very little to do with us not filling a legit major league need. Do people actually prefer not having an extra OF at AAA or are they upset about losing a 23.7 year old relief prospect that’s ranked near the bottom of the worst system’s top 30?

So much of this post is wrong.

This is just an embarrassing post

Hadn’t seen that Blake was getting DFA yet, but makes total sense upgrade from to Haseley at this price as a pure depth move.

Given the options, this is a great pickup for the price. At a bare minimum, he should replace Rutherford as the primary OF depth piece at AAA.

The Rays tried trading for Kimbrel last trade deadline.

It’s a potentially great rotation on paper, but there are three caveats: Keuchel is a complete wild card. He’s only two years removed from a 5th place AL Cy Young finish, but is coming off a bad season (and horrible second half) with continued regression in his K rate. A return to 2020 form isn’t happening, but can Dallas give us solid #5 numbers? Again, the stuff continues to get worse each and every year, but if he’s limited to two times through the order I think it’s very possible. However, if he does improve, he should in theory be limited to 159 innings next year to prevent his 2023 option from vesting, although that’s 100% dependent on Tony and he’s shown little regard to future season impacts. Kopech’s ceiling is “best starting pitcher in baseball” and he flashed very well last year (2.97 FIP | 93rd percentile xwOBA) in a 69 inning sample. However, durability will be the main question for him as he didn’t get as many innings last year as planned (partially due to a hamstring injury) and basically missed the entire 2019 & 2020 seasons due to TJS & COVID. His career high in innings is ~140 from back in 2018 and that seems to be on the high-end of the range of outcomes for this year. And it’s very possible that even if healthy, he wears down towards the end of the season and starts to lose his effectiveness. To me, he will need to managed very carefully if we have any hopes of him playing any sort of impactful playoff role next year. We have amazingly little SP depth. Right now, Lopez and Velasquez are our #6 & #7 starters respectively. The former was on the brink of a DFA last year and the latter actually was DFA last year. With Stiever out to the start the season, that only leaves Lambert in AAA & Bilous in AA as viable options on the 40 man roster. If we have any injury bad luck with our rotation, this lack of SP depth could prove highly problematic.

Honestly, it also reminds me when Ozzie wanted to dump Thome in exchange for a rotating DH and Jerry told KW to make it happen.