Chicago White Sox

If they’re smart, they go out and add someone like Cease who is awesome but also inconsistent enough not to get an insane deal. Start the season with Smith, Burke, and either Martin or Cannon (they can battle in spring). 5th starter spot should go to Taylor with Vasil as his piggyback. We should commit to developing Taylor as a starter next year IMO, even if his innings will certainly be limited. I know Schultz has lost a little bit of shine, but my guess is he will force his way into the rotation by May. He should come in and replace the weak link in the rotation, with the loser moving into a long relief role and possibly even serving as Schultz’s piggyback. Thorpe, Adams, & Bush will need some minor league seasoning, but could all fill in come June or July. Hagen Smith and McDougle could also push for spots by the middle of the season. Going to be a lot of options come the second half of the season if guys stay healthy, which is obviously always a big wild card.

lol…Bob Nightengale is a riot.

Why play the actual games when we can just have projection systems simulate everything for us! Projection systems are obviously flawless, especially when it comes to young players.

Please explain how I am “setting myself up for disappointment”. This quality of than site has plummeted because half the posts are nothing but valueless drive-by’s or various iterations of “everything sucks so nothing can be good”. Maybe try contributing something of value using some data driven counterparts instead of this type of crap. White Sox record by month: April: 7-23 (.233) - 38 win pace May: 11-17 (.393) - 64 win pace June: 10-16 (.385) - 62 win pace July: 12-13 (.480) - 78 win pace YTD: 40-69 (.367) - 59 win pace Since May 33-46 (.418) - 68 win pace Weird how they have been much better since May. It’s almost like the talent level got better when we called up three former top 100 prospects and a kid who put up a 132 wRC+ last year in AAA. And despite your belief that Luis Robert is the worst player in all of baseball and should rot in hell for all eternity, his expected stats always suggested significant improvement was coming (something you refuse to accept to this day). Add in us getting rid of negative win players like Vaughn and Amaya and it’s not that hard to see this is a much better positional group than the one the season started with. So yeah, I think someone taking our YTD winning percentage and multiplying it by 162 and saying we are going to win 59 games is both lazy & stupid. As someone who tries to be balanced in their views, I would not assume this is a 78 win type team moving forward because of one really good month. There is a reason to believe some of the young starters will wear down and there will be some more cold streaks amongst the bats. But this looks like a ~70 win type team moving forward if Perez can come in and give us 75% of what Houser was doing.

White Sox’s results in July without Houser & Slater: Positional: 3.1 fWAR (16th overall) Pitching: 1.7 fWAR (tied for 19th) Literally a middle of the pack team for the month. I’d expect some regression as the young pitching wears down (hopefully Perez can help there though), but no chance would I take our YTD winning percentage and assume that sticks or gets worse the rest of the way. The positional group is simply much more talented and more seasoned (to some degree at least) than the one we started the year with.

What is a “leech” deal and how did you come across these terms?

How so?

Our 2024 payroll on OD was $142M or 18th overall in baseball. Yes, he cut the payroll after a historically bad season in year 2 of a rebuild and in absence of a local TV deal. There is zero objective reason to expect us to go backwards next year. Literally in our last rebuild the lowest our payroll ever got to was $72M. In today’s dollars, that would be a $92M payroll. And yet you think we will go below $78M next year despite us actually showing some signs of life due to our young players and despite Jerry rapidly approaching death’s door and likely wanting to watch semi competitive baseball in his remaining years. No idea why selling the team would result in further payroll cuts when a deal is already in place.

What’s 105+ losses referencing?

We have $40M in salary committed next year for an entire 26 man roster and that’s with Robert as our CF. There should be $40M to $50M to spend just to maintain our current payroll. Do you actually think we will go backwards in payroll next year?

#2 spot?

You think a team full of mostly youngsters is not going to get better?

Exactly my point in my last post you probably haven’t seen yet. But the lineup is mostly full and actually has some depth behind it. Doesn’t mean you couldn’t upgrade, but we’re not going out and signing 1.5 win players to block guys like Sosa, Vargas, etc. Pitching is a different story as I think it would be prudent to add a legit veteran SP (even if of the rebound variety) and some relievers, but I pray to god the org realizes now that allocating 30% of your payroll to the bullpen is a bad resource allocation strategy.

Right now, this is the projected positional group for next year: Lineup: 1B: Vargas 2B: Sosa SS: Meidroth 3B: C. Montgomery* LF: Benintendi* CF: Robert RF: Tauchman* DH: Quero CA: Teel* Bench: IF: Mead OF: Robertson* UT: Baldwin# BC: Lee Honestly, add one legit corner OF and move Benintendi to the bench / part time DH role and I’d be good with that lineup in a transition year. With further growth from the kids, it could be decent. Obviously I’d be open to other upgrades, but I’d probably give the kids one more year to see who takes steps. You also would have Ramos and possibly Antonacci as contingency plans at some point in the year. As for the bench, Robertson would move down to a AAA depth role with Andrew demoted. Mead competes with Vargas and Sosa at 1B & 2B respectively. Baldwin fills in everywhere and gets more playing time when there are injuries. Lee sits on the bench and dreams of one Teel / Quero get injured mid game so he can save the day. Honestly, I’m not sure any major upgrades are needed there. I just don’t see where you “spread the wealth” here.

So negativity for negativity sake…got it

How many holes do you see that they would spread it around on? They basically have a full lineup of positional players now in place. They can probably fill 4/5 of a rotation with ease. The bullpen certainly needs help, especially if Taylor ends up staying there. But realistically, they’d have like $45M to spend after Robert if they just want to maintain the current payroll.

Candidly speaking, they should add to the team this offseason. Too many young players on the roster now to throw away a full year of service time on all of them.

You really think we’re going to have a $40M payroll next year?

Again, go look at the free agent OF market and tell me who you’d like them to spend on money on.

His xwOBA is still .343 which is well above average.

Those should be the moves.

He’s got a s%*# arm…definitely a 2B/1B profile.

Sounds like you got the data…prove me wrong.

The OF market is brutal…is much better the following year.

What now??