Chicago White Sox

My god no. Why are we spending that much money on a backup infielder when the guys in front of him are Yoan, Timmy, & Madrigal? His defense will be vastly underutilized. And no one goes from non-tender to “good trade chip” when you slice $1-2M off their annual salary and then lock in three years.

He was the 15th ranked pitcher by fWAR this past season. If he’s ordinary, then there aren’t a lot of unique pitchers out there.

100% agree.

?

I’d be incredibly disappointed if our offseason was signing two of that second group.

I didn’t see this posted anywhere, but it’s from a Bruce article from yesterday: https://670thescore.radio.com/jose-abreu-important-free-agent-white-sox

You haven’t received a response because you are a legit crazy person.

Where did the Buster & Passan 7/$175M rumors come from? And are you saying they didn’t have Merkin come out and claim the Sox’s offer had not changed?

Great post Jimmy. I do agree that Jerry is the bigger problem and KW/Hahn have made it pretty clear they wanted to rebuild earlier but Jerry wanted to keep going for it (despite not providing them with a sufficient budget to do so). It’s no doubt tough to run a high end operation with the restrictions Jerry puts in place. Regarding Machado, are you suggesting that Reinsdorf wouldn’t let them go beyond 8/$250M? That has always been my assumption and why our front office decided to add his friends. Also, what kind of decisions is KW still making? Is he actually interfering that much with the day to day stuff?

Last offseason should be a textbook of what not to do when negotiating huge contracts. They basically convinced the Padres to jump in by publicizing their low-ball offer and were overly cocky for no apparent reason.

Some of these are very fair points, but ultimately Hahn is the primary day-to-day decision maker and therefore he should be the most accountable for our recent failures. I think way too often KW is treated as the boogie man by Hahn supporters and to me that’s bullshit. Also, there is no doubt he made three quality trades to kick off the rebuild and Robert looks like he will be the real deal, but after those four moves it’s pretty sad how little he’s been able to accomplish over the last three seasons. And yes, I get he ran out of trade chips, but our recent drafts have very been underwhelming outside of top five picks, our LatAm operation a complete non-factor, we continue to struggle at player development, and worst of all I have seen very little creativity in terms of using major league roster spots. Most rebuilds end up with a diamond in the rough or two and we have almost nothing to show in that regard, because we wasted a fuckton of at-bats on guys like Yolmer & Engel that simply don’t move the needle. Because of all these factors, our margin of error is razor thin and we need to hit a home run in free agency for this rebuild to be successful. So yeah, while I can appreciate his good moves, I simply can’t ignore the position the bad ones have put us in.

It’s not him, but not really looking to call out the specific person. It was more about the reasoning for creating this thread, as I was surprised Rick still had vocal supporters and wanted to see if they felt as strongly about him after seeing all the facts laid in front of them.

Moncada & Giolito are scheduled to be free agents after the 2023 season and for now the next four years represent the primary window (obviously subject to change). For Hahn to reach a .500 record by the end of this stretch, the Sox would have to average exactly 100 wins over the next four seasons. I hope Hahn plans to spends some serious cash this offseason, because he’s got his work out for him!

First off, there is no guarantee when Jose will retire. He’s 32 years old and could theoretically play another five years (whether with us or not) and that would go beyond Yoan’s team control. Regardless, Moncada might not want to commit to an organization that say’s they love his mentor but then refuse to commit to him beyond a QO. My point is keeping José happy may be a way to keep Moncada happy. I would say with the utmost confidence that José leaving this offseason would be upsetting to Yoan, so it’s not that outlandish to think his future with the team could impact Moncada’s willingness to stick around.

I will say this. If giving Abreu three years is the cost to indirectly get Moncada to agree to a pre-FA extension then it’s simply the price of doing business. If that’s not a consideration then this is just straight up dumb. I love José and would be fine with him back on a 2/$28M deal (like MLBTR predicted), but otherwise I’d force him to accept the QO and see where things stand next year.

There are some positives, but certain things really stand out. 1) The free agent track record is beyond atrocious outside of Abreu. SoxMachine has a detailed article on this if anyone is interested, but let’s just say diving into the detail doesn’t change much. Lot’s of wasted money on immaterial signings. 2) His pre-FA extension track record has been fantastic, but the Jimenez deal seems far away the most player friendly (only bought out one FA year) and is hopefully not a sign of things to come. 3) His “sell” trades have been solid for the most part, with the three core “rebuild” moves really standing out. 4) The “buy” moves are plagued by the disastrous Shields trade and to a lesser extent by the questionable Samardzija trade. I was a big Semien fan but no one thought he’d end up being this good, but Shark was a total and only under one year of control. 5) Our return so far on the international slot bonus we’ve traded away has been poor, with Burr, Frare, & Schryver are only hopes left of realizing any value 6) Look at our draft record under Hahn, I identified only four guys who amassed over 1 fWAR and two guys who are currently top 100 prospects (both of which were top 5 overall picks). We simply haven’t done much outside of the first round and the early returns from the 2015 to 2017 draft aren’t promising. 7) Our LatAm operations has been a total disaster with only guy who has achieved over 1 fWAR (who we traded away before he even played for us) and one top 100 prospect. Outside of those two, the only prospect I’m aware of that has reached AA is Micker Adolfo and there are only a handful of other guys that would be considered top 30 system talents. We’ve also decided to stop spending our full pool this year because “Marco didn’t like anyone”. ? Ultimately a lot of the failures above come from poor player development. While I’m not 100% in agreement in Driveline’s study, there is no doubt we are amongst the worst in baseball when it comes to player development and it appears we are still well behind the curve when it comes to leveraging analytics, Trackman data, and other innovations when developing our minor leaguers.

Alright, recently a poster who shall remain nameless called Rick Hahn "a very smart guy" and expressed optimism in his ability to take us to the next level. As such, I thought it would be fitting to summarize Rick's tenure as GM (both the good & the bad) and see what people really think. If I'm missing anything of substance below, please let me know as I'm trying to be objective here as possible. With that said here we go: ▪ Duration: 7 seasons (2013 to 2019) ▪ W/L Record: 491-642 (.433 winning %) ▪ Playoff Appearances: Zero ▪ Winning Seasons: Zero ▪ Avg Central Finish: 4.0 (3rd x 1, 4th x 5, 5th x 1) ▪ Free Agency: $256M for 20 bWAR ($13M / win) │ Abreu = $68M for 21 bWAR │All Others = $188M for -1 bWAR (per SoxMachine) ▪ Extensions: Sale = 7/$60M (3 FA years) │ Quainta = 7/$44M (2 FA years) │ Eaton = 7/$44M (3 FA years) │ Anderson = 8/$52M (2 FA years) │ Jimenez = 8/$78M (1 FA year) ▪ Sell Trades: Hector Santiago & Brandon Jacobs for Adam Eaton │ Addison Read for Matt Davidson │ Jake Peavy for Avi Garcia, Frankie Montas, Clueluis Rondon, & J.B. Wendelken │ Gordon Beckham for Yency Almonte │ Zach Duke for Charlie Tilson │ Chris Sale for Yoan Moncada, Michael Kopech, Luis Basabe, & Victor Diaz │ Adam Eaton for Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo Lopez, & Dane Dunning │ Jose Quintana for Eloy Jimenez, Dylan Cease, Matt Rose, & Bryant Flete │ Anthony Swarzak for Ryan Cordell │ David Robertson, Tommy Kahnle, & Todd Frazier for Blake Rutherford, Ian Clarkin, & Tito Polo ▪ Buy Trades: Marcus Semien, Chris Bassitt, Josh Phegley, & Rangel Ravelo for Jeff Samardzija │ Yency Almonte for Tommy Kahnle │ Zack Erwin & J.B. Wendelken for Brett Lawrie │ Trayce Thompson, Frankie Montas, & Micah Johnson for Todd Frazier │ Erik Johnson & Fernando Tatis Jr for James Shields │ Justin Yurchak for Manny Banuelos │ Omar Narvaez for Alex Colome │ Yordi Rosario for Ivan Nova │ Alex for Yonder Alonso ▪ Bonus Slot Trades: Alex Katz for $756k in Bonus Slot │Undisclosed Bonus Slot for Ryan Burr │ $500k in Bonus Slot for Thyago Vieira │ $1.3M* in Bonus Slot for Yeyson Yrizarri │ $1.5M in Bonus Slot for Caleb Frare │ $1M* in Bonus Slot for Hunter Schryver │ Undisclosed bonus slot for Ricardo Pinto │$1M in Bonus Slot for Nate Jones' $1.25M buyout, Ray Castro, & Joseph Jarneski │ $250k in Bonus Slot for Wellington Castillo's $500k buyout & Jonah McReynolds ▪ Misc Moves: Non-tendered Tyler Flowers (2015) │ Selected Jimmy Cordero off waivers (2019) ▪ Drafting: Tim Anderson = 7.8 fWAR (2013/01) │ Carlos Rodon = 6.9 fWAR (2014/01) │ Jace Fry = 1.2 fWAR (2014/03) │ Aaron Bummer = 1.6 fWAR (2014/19) │ Nick Madrigal = Top 100 Prospect (2018/01) │ Andrew Vaughn = Top 100 Prospect (2019/01) ▪ LatAm Signings: Fernando Tatis Jr = 3.6 fWAR (2015 class) │ Luis Robert = Top 100 Prospect (2017 class) ▪ Player Dev Rank: 30th / -$350M in value generated (per Driveline)

They no doubt botched it last year. Let’s just hope they learned their lesson that with true stars they will wait it out until their price is reached.

Agreed...no more negotiating through the media. The #1 benefit we have is no one actually considers us a real threat to land the true impact guys. Therefore, move in the shadows and pounce when the time is right. You just might be able to catch one of these other teams off-guard and come out successful. Again, I’m not optimistic they’ll pursue the elite guys, but that’s the approach I would take if I was going to make a run.

Which would be incredibly smart. No reason to hype things up until you actually get shit done. I remain skeptical they’ll make a legit run at the Cole or Strasburg given the years / Boras factor, but fuck would that be a tremendous surprise. That being said, I’ll take stealth mode and be happy with Grandal and Wheeler being the big additons.

Lester would be a better example, although he hasn’t fallen off a cliff.

Hahn already said they won’t.

I definitely think they’re going stealth mode after last offseason’s failures.

His point is with free agency you pay up front for the wins and accept the pain in the later years. The problem is Heyward didn’t contribute much to that 2016 World Series championship and has more or less been a flop of a signing, so it’s really not example of that.

That one win season from Heyward was definitely the reason for that World Series win. Without that epic game 7 speech, the Cubs ultimately choke.