Chicago White Sox

Who is everyone mad at? Trying to follow along through the box score, but must have missed some big f*** ups.

Embarrassing we still can’t spend all our international bonus pool money. The entire org is a fucking joke.

Or can try to build a team but add a couple stars in free agency. And when the Ishbia’s take over, they will be one of the richest ownership groups in baseball and will be able to make some bold splashes.

The Sox aren’t a revenue receiving team, so pretty big difference there. But regardless, this s%*# shouldn’t be allowed. I’m all for the big market clubs subsidizing the small market clubs if there isn’t a hard salary cap, but those dollars need to be reinvested into the org and not lining the owner’s pockets.

Well thankfully trades are only based on the fWAR of players for like 40 games and nothing else.

I mean, Robert’s career .203 ISO would rank 40th overall amongst qualified hitters right now and his .278 ISO in 2023 would rank 14th this year. You may think his 2023 ISO is flukey, but we’re talking about a guy with 92% percentile bat speed and 97% percentile Max EV. The dude is a legit power hitter who just happens to play CF. His game power may not always be super elite, but let’s not pretend he’s not well above average overall.

We aren’t dealing with a reasonable person unfortunately. Robert certainly has his flows, but if somebody feels power is one of them then they are an objective person.

Great news on Bonemer.

I’m certainly saying he was a questionable pick with the benefit of hindsight, but he was a smallish, right handed 1B-only type at the time with minimal physical projection left. His plate discipline was very good in college and has completely tanked since entering professional ball, which I think skipping most minor league development didn’t help. Throw questions about his drive and his willingness to change and I just don’t see what the point of throwing him out there everyday. He’s clearly had some bad batted ball luck, but he’s sitting at -1 wins on the season. I’d send him to AAA in a heartbeat, but not sure we can at this point without his consent due to service time. We should have done this earlier when we had the chance and a bit more control, but alas it feels like the chance of turning Andrew into anything of value is slim to none.

I didn’t realize that Vaughn’s bat speed is so bad. It’s bottom 25% percentile amongst major leaguers. Like why are we wasting our time on him? He can’t run, he can’t field, he still chases like crazy, he still doesn’t draw walks, and he has really bad raw power for a 1B (even worse than I realized). I get the Sox probably wanted to give Fulmer a chance to work with him, but Vaughn pretty much lacks all tools & skills you’d like to see in a 1B. He was a questionable draft pick to begin with who wasn’t given enough in the minors to develop proper plate discipline and who lacks both the will and intelligence to overcome his physical limitations and development shortcomings. Cut bait on this loser ASAP and give those at-bats to literally anyone else.

Vaughn apparently is both dumb and lazy as he also doesn’t believe in using analytics to help change his swing & approach. I think I actually dislike him more than the other big busts from the prior rebuild like Yoan & Eloy.

We traded him?

Five days after this post and Robert is already at an 93 wRC+. The dude who cares more about being right than a White Sox player succeeding is hopefully about to eat a fuckton of crow.

Yup, let’s ignore Jerry going down to Springfield and pitching the 78 stadium deal to our state government.

Which again shows you’d rather have him flop than return to form

And three days later and he’s already halfway there. Hopefully once he gets there these obnoxious updates will stop.

You say this and then take away the Laugh emoji! I’m constitutionally allowed to laugh at trey’s batshit crazy posts and you can’t stop me!

It’s absolutely wild how you have created a false set of realities to cope with the org’s desire to build a new stadium at the 78 site. It’s totally ok if it upsets you, but to outright lie and build a fake narrative that you continually tell others to believe is the definition of insanity.

You’re right, the pick is to play a key role in Johnson’s offense and will likely eat into Kmet’s target share. But that doesn’t mean the two can’t coexist and that doesn’t mean Kmet’s ability as a pass catcher will go to waste. Ultimately, Cole is still a good blocking TE and will get a ton of snaps. Maybe it’s somewhat inefficient to pay him $12.5M for that role, but it’s not like he’s going to be riding pine because of the addition of Loveland. I know you’re not suggesting that, but that’s perception of others when they say “we already have a TE”.

Again, their “2nd tight end” was a blocking TE who got 600 snaps while LaPorta got nearly 1,000 snaps as the move TE. Both roles are needed in Johnson’s offense. If you think Kmet is overkill as the inline TE with some receiving ability, then he can always be traded in the future to free up additional cap space and be replaced with a pure blocking TE. But Kmet is not a move TE / big slot player like Loveland is. These are more or less effectively different positions.

We don’t need another blocking TE, so not sure why you continue to ignore scheme and personnel in this. Loveland is going to be our #3 receiver and being a big slot will create mismatches and put opposing teams in a position of weakness somewhere. You highlight LaPorta’s numbers falling, but the Lions’ offense was the best in the NFL and Jameson Williams finally blew up and the RBs combined for like 800 yards. Is Amon St. Brown suddenly not as good as he was because he got less targets? Defenses can’t effectively guard an offense full of weapons and sometimes it’s the next tier of players who benefit the most from a stats perspective.

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?