Chicago White Sox

What do you mean by self made men? Are you suggesting all the owners made their billions on their own? Right off the back I can tell you that Papa Ricketts bought his kids the Cubs, Hal Steinbrenner, Carl Pohlad, & Christopher Ilitch inherited their teams from their fathers, and many other owners’ wealth that allowed them to purchase their teams in the first place was driven by inheritance and/or family business opportunities including the Montfort brothers, Edward Rogers, John Fisher, Charles Johnson, John Middleton, & Larry Dolan. Many of your heroes don’t deserve to be billionaires based on their own personal accomplishments.

Do you still get your credit back from last season if you cancel?

Couple of things here. I think adding a left-handed power bat is critical to help us in the post-season not necessarily to get us there. Come October we will be facing tough RHPs and we’ve seen our guys get exploited by them far too frequently to ignore the need. In terms of where we add said player, I’m open to anything but the current holes are in RF & 2B. Just seems unlikely to free up a different spot to add a left-handed bat and I don’t see us investing heavily in 2B when the position can be addressed fairly cheaply. As such, that leaves RF as the best place to acquire said player. On the pitching side of things, I love our 1-2-3 from a regular season perspective (Giolito, Lynn, & Cease were all top 20 in fWAR last year), but I do wish one of them could step up and be a true ace come October. Unfortunately given our poor farm system and an unwillingness to go beyond five years for free agent pitchers, it’s going to be challenging to address that issue right now (and realistically there are no aces left in free agency anyways). The bigger concern at the moment is the back-end of the rotation. I was pretty pissed last year with how Kopech was used and it’s going to limit how many innings he can throw this year. If you have had four studs in front of him and enough depth behind him, I think you’d be fine with him giving us 140 innings as our #5 this year. The problem is that our #4 starter is Dallas Keuchel who is coming off a terrible year and whose stuff has been declining for multiple seasons. Is it possible he rebounds? Sure, but I really don’t want to bank on it. To be honest, the only way I see us missing the playoffs is if a couple of our big three starters get injured and suddenly we’re relying on Keuchel, Kopech, Lopez, and one of Lambert / Stiever to keep us afloat. We need another arm we can count on, even if that forces Keuchel to a long-reliever role. We also need another starter that can be counted on for the playoffs and that can’t be Kopech due to his innings limits. We aren’t going to be able to replace Rodon, but we definitely need to add a #3 type if we’re serious about winning next year.

Just amazing that we wait a decade for a competitive team and we run into COVID and some labor bullshit. If I were the players, I’d explore the possibility of starting their own league. While it would certainly be near impossible to pull off in a short period of time, it would basically show the owners they are nothing but a source of capital and with time they could be replaced. As stupid at that may sound, the owners believe they have all the leverage because the players don’t have another source of income. Even a half-baked threat might force them to concede a little bit to avoid opening up that rabbit hole.

Really? My wife is a huge Cubs fan and always thought Bryant was kind of a tool. She was a much bigger fan of Rizzo & Baez.

Oh don’t get me wrong, I think Bryant is the better player and his versatility plays a big part in that. But given the weakness of the AL Central, I’m placing a greater value on who the better fit is come October and I think Conforto solves more problems than Bryant does in RF. That being said, I obviously wouldn’t complain if they signed Kris instead, but I agree the economics probably make this a moot point since Michael will come on a discount.

That’s a fair point. I guess I’m envisioning a scenario where Abreu is gone after this season and Sheets splits 1B & DH with Vaughn, but perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself there.

Manaea + Kemp would be a good alternative to Bassitt & Miller. I’m not super excited about giving up Sheets (he looked legit to me), but it could be selling high depending on what our pro scouts think. Regardless, the A’s definitely seem like a trade partner in the coming weeks.

Conforto is the better hitter against RHP and that’s our biggest weakness. He’s also a better defensive RF. Given the expected costs, give me Conforto hands down.

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/02/mlb-free-agent-sluggers-brad-miller-overlooked.html Great article on Brad Miller and while not related to the Sox specifically, it’s easy to see how he’d be a great fit for us at 2B on what should be a really cheap deal. If we were able to land him & Conforto, here’s how our lineups could look against RHP & LHP respectively. The numbers in parentheses reflect each player’s wRC+ vs. RHP or LHP over the past three seasons. Anderson, SS (118) | Anderson, SS (151) Moncada, 3B# (129) | Robert, CF (184) Abreu, 1B (118) | Abreu, 1B (159) Conforto, RF* (138) | Jimenez, LF (99) Jimenez, LF (124) | Grandal, C# (152) Robert, CF (117) | Vaughn, DH (155) Grandal, C# (124) | Moncada, 3B# (110) Vaughn, DH (68) | Conforto, RF* (97) Miller, 2B* (127) | Garcia, 2B# (106) Sprinkle Sheets in at DH against tough righties (143) and Engel in RF against tough lefties (108) and you arguably have the lineup in baseball.

Keith Law mentioned in his White Sox prospect rankings that Ramos was dealing with shoulder issues last year. While the comment was used to rationalize why he didn’t play much 3B, I’m sure it impacted his hitting to some extent as well. Incredibly productive season for the kid and I expect him to start cracking too 100 lists next year and challenge Montgomery, Kath, & Vera for the #1 spot in the system.

Alright, I'm going to bump this thread in hopes of a CBA being agreed to in the next week. From my perspective, I think the Sox will have five priorities heading into part two of the offseason: Add a left-handed power bat, preferably one that can play a solid RF Acquire a #3 type SP via trade, likely on a one-year deal to limit cost Sign or trade for a cheap 2B, possibly one who can platoon with Leury Trade Kimbrel for salary relief and major league depth / role players Sign a decent reliever to fill-in behind Hendriks, Bummer, & Graveman With those focus areas identified, here's how I could see Hahn addressing them. As I've stated numerous times, Michael Conforto is a perfect fit for this roster as he's elite against RHP (our biggest weakness on the positional side) and is more or less average in RF (a massive upgrade from Vaugh / Sheets though). He should without question be the number one priority when a CBA is agreed to and I truly believe he ends up on the South Side. To round out the lineup, I'd go ahead and sign Brad Miller to a cheap deal to be the strong side of a 2B platoon with Leury. Miller posted a 123 wRC+ against righties last year and has been solid at 2B from an advanced metrics perspective. Combine him and Leury and I think you can easily get two wins out of the position for dirt cheap. From there, the focus turns to the rotation. The challenge addressing this need is twofold. First, free agency is running out of quality options. The only two guys I'd argue are #3 starters or better are Kershaw & Rodon. Both have serious health concerns and we already passed on the opportunity to lock Carlos in via a QO. As such, that pretty much forces us to go the trade route unless we're willing to bank on a guy whose stuff continues to regress each year (Keuchel) and a guy who will be on an innings limit (Kopech) to cover 40% of our rotational needs. The problem here is we have the worst farm system in baseball. I'd love to go out and acquire Sonny Gray, but we don't have the pieces to get such a deal done unless we absorb a bad contract (say Moustakas) or are willing to give up Vaughn. That basically leaves guys who are on one year deals with rebuilding clubs. The A's have a couple of these guys and I really think Bassitt could be had for a package built around Burger & Dalquist. Finally, the Craig Kimbrel situation has to be addressed. I supported the trade at the time, but it was an unmitigated disaster in hindsight. However, the reality is we need to move on (we simply can't afford both him & Hendriks) and recoup whatever value we can, even though it will certainly be less than what we gave up. I still see the Phillies as the likely landing spot here. In terms of return, I'd expect us to get a couple of major league role players. The main piece I could see happening is Rafael Marchan, a 23 year old, defensive oriented switch-hitting catcher who can immediately challenge Collins for the backup spot behind Grandal. A second piece that seems possible is Jose Alvarado, a 26 year old, left-handed reliever with big stuff but who has struggled with control the past couple years. He's definitely a project but one worth seeing if a change of scenery with Katz can unlock his 2018 form (2.27 FIP | 2.1 fWAR). I know many here would be disappointed with that return while others will think it's unrealistic, but it feels about right to me given the Phillies' desperate need for a closer. Regardless, moving Kimbrel requires us to add a reliever IMO and I think bringing back Tepera makes the most sense. His age and lack of track record should keep the price reasonable and he showed some serious stones in game 3 against the Astros. Make these moves and I think we've got as strong of a roster as any team in baseball.

Has Trump back-tracked yet?

I didn’t threaten to move to Nashville…I actually fucking did it. And trust me, going to a Sounds games is not anywhere near as rewarding as going to a Sox game.

Ramos finally getting the love he deserves!

I think RF and SP should be the priority. I think a 2B should be added, but we don’t need to blow a huge chunk of resources on the position.

I refuse to get too concerned over a fight between millionaires and billionaires, but it’s very clear if the MLB wasn’t basically a monopoly the players would get paid more. There isn’t really much of a debate that the owners were getting more than their fair share of the pie under the previous CBA and aren’t negotiating in good faith. And it’s that latter point that bothers me, because it doesn’t seem like the players are asking for all that much and yet the owners are willing to fuck over their customer base to claim a couple ten million more dollars here or there. Hopefully the owners will cave a bit last second, because we should all be enraged if they cost us baseball games because they refuse to concede any ground to the players.

Great post and we all that know deep playoff runs are super lucrative. And while I think the owners are totally full of shit in terms of the profitability of owning teams in general, this is not the “gotcha” moment Passan thanks it is IMO.

OIBDA is basically EBITDA so Passan’s take is not quite accurate.

IMO, Stiever & Lambert have both been victims of health and lost development time during the pandemic. Stiever in particular went from A+ to the major league mini-camp when the pandemic hit. I get they’re getting up there in age (especially Lambert), but posted great K rates in AAA last and I truly believe there is untapped potential there. I wouldn’t call them “great” back-end depth by any means but I think they’re fine for where they should be sitting in the pecking order (#8 & #9 type guys).

The upper minors lack high-end SP depth, but there is actually quite a bit of backend type guys. I still believe Stiever & Lambert can be contributors at the major league leave and McClure & Bilous are semi-interesting. For as weak of a system as we have, I can live with those guys as our #8 & #9 starters. The gap between them and Lopez unfortunately and that likely has to be addressed via trade & free agency.

Fair point, but how many owners are abusing the revenue sharing system? Seems like that’s got to be less than 10. Other than that, I think it’s mostly stuff they will ultimately agree to in some fashion other than a hard cap (but that’s due to the players).

I’m going to be honest, but the CBT is not the problem. In fact, the game desperately needs a hard cap to improve parity. Set it at $240M or something and then have it grow based on some economic factor each year. At the same time, there are ways to get the cheap teams to spend more. I really don’t like the idea of expanded playoffs, but it should encourage less tanking. Same goes for a draft lottery and increasing the minimum salary for pre-arb players. But what I’d really like to see is a major shakeup to revenue sharing and to force recipients to actually spend what they receive on player payroll. It’s complete bullshit that some owners are pocketing that shit. With those tweaks I think you have something that would work for the players with minimal impact to the owners. And most importantly, you should have a game with much better parity.

What I like about the system is it’s a lot younger than it’s ever been. While no one is a top 100 prospect type just yet, there are a dozen or so guys that have that kind of ceiling in their range of outcomes. Obviously the vast majority of them will never reach their full potential, but the system can improve in a hurry even if a handful take a big step forward this coming season.

It’s really the only card they have so hopefully it gets things moving. The fact the owners plan to negotiate daily next week is also a good sign.