Eminor3rd

Yeah, he's the man right now. He basically just had the NPB equivalent of Aaron Judge's season, but he's 22. He won the triple crown while breaking Sadaharu Oh's single season HR record for a Japanese player (actual NPB record is 60 by Wladimir Balantien). He just set an entirely new bar for NPB hitters. He won't be available for a few years at least, we'll see if he somehow still has room to grow.

Yeah, you’re right. It would make the team better but I just can’t see them getting it done. They clearly don’t have much of a presence in the Pacific Rim, and they probably want to spend their money on more veteran relievers.

Yes, he’s better than Eloy at LF. I’m guessing, though, that the Sox wouldn’t be able to get both Conforto and Yoshida. Could definitely be plausible to alternate Yoshida/Eloy in LF/DH, start the season with Pollock/Sheets in RF and have Colas take over eventually. Yoshida has played RF before, but that was more to find a place to stick Adam Jones and/or Yutaro Sugimoto than because he actually fit out there.

I’m a Masataka Yoshida fanboi. I think he’s been THE most complete hitter in that league for the past five years (rivaled for a couple years by Tomoya Mori and the enigmatic Yuki Yanagita, and now overtaken this year with Murakami’s breakout, though I think Yoshida is still a better contact hitter). He’s one of the handful of guys I’ve seen where I feel like I can tell just from watching that the bat speed is better than those around him. He blends an extremely polished approach with a noticeably athletic swing — he finds a way to get the barrel on a lot of different types of pitches in the zone, even when he’s fooled on velo. He’s very strong, and is known for staying in excellent physical condition. The Buffaloes sell inflatable Masataka Yoshida-branded dumbbells at the ballpark. He never seems to break 30 homers, but it’s more because he’s lasering doubles off the wall all the time; the raw power is there (he won the home run derby a couple years ago), his approach/bat path is just more mature versatile than a typical slugger. BUT Despite the strength and athleticism of his hands, he’s relatively slow and is not a good outfielder. He’s undersized, and started to become somewhat injury prone as of late. And, he’s 30 now, and it’s just proven to be really difficult for hitters past their mid-20s to make the transition to the States. I think he definitely has better bat-to-ball skills (hands/bat speed) than Seiya, but Seiya is better in every other way (speed, defense, overall athleticism). The Sox could use the left-handed bat in the OF, but this is yet another 40 defender who you can’t find DH at bats for because of Grandal/Eloy/etc. I think he’s gonna hit, but it’s hard to imagine it’ll be enough to be a star, especially given the moderate defensive liability. Believe me, there’s almost nothing I want more than to be able to buy a Yoshida Sox jersey, but I think the Sox would be better off with a true RF this year.

I believe the White Sox are signaling that they plan on investing in ways to make their current guys better rather than investing in new guys to replace their current guys. Very likely too little too late, but that's what I'm guessing.

One thing to note: from reading a few of the standard American blogger scouts accounts, it seems like consensus is that the slider is worse than my opinion above.

Yeah I thought him being kind of a dick was common knowledge. I remember when I first heard about it and was much younger, it made me feel a little upset. But now that I'm older... I don't know, I was kind of a douche when I was younger, too. I think we all hope we get better as we age, and even if we fail at that, we all hope people don't hold it against us when evaluating our work/other parts of our lives and person. Frank being a dick is actually baked into his performance legacy in some way -- to the extent that any lack of clubhouse harmony may have affected his numbers, and to the extent that his actions may have negatively affected his chance to win through his teammates -- and so I feel pretty damn comfortable evaluating his career through those numbers. Both the things he achieved AND the things he didn't.

Dude was a STICK though. I mean come on

greg is back, baby

Baseball ops data team typically works longer hours in the offseason than in-season, interestingly enough.

This can’t be over-emphasized. Having a $190M+ payroll with almost literally no depth is a CHOICE. It’s an inexplicably, embarrassingly bad one, but you can’t blame bad luck for that s%*#.

This has truly become the most embarrassing franchise.

Yeah, they’ve been known to manipulate service time, too (most recently with Yuki Yanagita). Also, I don’t know if you remember but Colas had to sue to be let out of his contract, claiming they misrepresented the terms. He essentially just left Japan and signed somewhere else, and the Hawks really only settled with him because he refused to come back to the country.

The long-awaited SoftBank Hawks ace, Kodai Senga, is finally free. There's a TL;DR at the end. After begging his team to post him for at least five years to no avail, he used his domestic free agent leverage last offseason to get him an extension with opts outs every season, and after one year -- to absolutely no one's surprise -- he announced his intent to exercise promptly after the Hawks were eliminated from the playoffs. Senga is NOT the typical NPB import starter -- he's had the best raw stuff in Japan for most of the last decade, rivalled only by Ohtani and just recently by the 20-year old phenom Roki Sasaki. By contrast, his control is not strong. I've had a pleasure of watching a TON of his innings over the last five years, here's my personal breakdown: Summary: He's a 30-year old, mid-sized, true three-quarter right hander who bends the bill of his hat at nearly a 90-degree angle. Arsenal/Stuff: 4-Seam Fastball -- sits 96 - 100, has topped out at 102, and holds the velo well into the late innings. Legit MLB plus Slider -- very bendy, usually relatively hard, high-spin rate, two-plane slider. Gets strikes by locking guys up rather than by deceiving them, also likes to backdoor lefties with it. Think more like a Chris Sale-style slurvy thing rather than a Carlos Rodon-style late-breaker that drops out of the zone but looks like a fastball for the first half of it's trajectory. It's not as good of a pitch as either of those aforementioned comps, but I think it's a pitch that will be plus at times but often play down when he's not locating it. (NOTE: Sometimes he seems to try to throw it soft, maybe this counts as a cutter as I've seen people write that he has one over the years, but whatever it is he shouldn't do it because the slows his arm way down and it just doesn't move a ton, which I've always imagined should telegraph the pitch.) Splitter -- This is his best pitch, it even has a nickname: "The Ghost Fork." This is, effectively, your Rodon slider: goes straight until it gets like 50-60% there and then just abruptly shifts 30 degrees down with a bit of fade. Incredibly effective in conjunction with his hard fastball. MLB plus pitch. Curve -- It's a hard, tight breaking 12-6 that doesn't drop quite far enough to be a consistent swing-and-miss offering. This is effective as a show-me pitch, good for grabbing strike one and for the element of surprise 5-6 times a start, but it's not going to carry any of his appearances. Command/Control: Not good. It's not Nuke LaLoosh or anything, but he misses the glove as often as he hits it, and often by quite a bit. Early in his career he would meltdown occasionally with walks, but it's more "wild in the zone" these days. I'm am nothing even remotely close to qualified to diagnose mechanical issues, but if I was a betting man, I'd wager that a lot of his challenges stem from his pretty extreme "head whack." Notice how violently his head jerks as he starts his follow-through, especially on fastballs: He's crushed the NPB because his stuff has been overwhelming, and even though it's good even for MLB, it's a real question as to whether it'll be dominant enough to make up for the location issues, particularly if he's going to continue to be a starter. I will say, from what I've seen he very rarely HANGS anything, but his pitches frequently end up in places they should not. Health/Durability: He's been nicked up a bit the past few years, but the injuries have been scattered and the serious ones haven't been arm-related (though a couple have been shoulder-related, mostly earlier in his career). The most notable was a freak accident of years ago, he had started the year on the DL for some vague reason, and in what I want to say was his FIRST start back, he got drilled by a comebacker and landed awkwardly on his ankle, resulting in some kind of sprain or fracture that cost him like half the season. Doesn't seem to have had any long-term effect on his stuff. He holds his velo very deep in starts. I've seen him hit 100 in the 8th inning multiple times. Interestingly enough, he was somehow not drafted as an actual prospect (he was picked up as a "development squad player," which is essentially the MLB equivalent of an undrafted free agent) and began his career as a reliever, so he's got relatively fewer innings on his arm than the typical 30-year old NPB ace. Other Notes: For whatever it's worth: A couple years ago, Hawks broadcasts used to show spin rate on every pitch along with velo. It was amazing, and I hate that they stopped. But I used to compare his rates with what Statcast showed, and every pitch was comfortably above MLB average. I am legitimately worried about his control, but I can't help but think that if he fails as a starter, he could be a very safe bet as a high-leverage reliever because you so rarely see a starter's arsenal in that role these days Unlike a lot of NPB pitchers, he does NOT like to f*** around with breaking balls high in the zone. I think this is one of the things that helps him get away with the poor control. If he would have been posted at 26 or whatever when he originally started asking, he'd have been a $100-200m arm with no doubt. At 30 with a touch of injury-history, I think he's looking at a shorter deal but still with some real money because the spin and velo are legit. The arsenal isn't nearly as deep, but the stuff is every bit as good as Darvish/Ohtani when they came over. You never know, but I tend to doubt that there's much that can be done to substantially improve to location stuff, just given his age and the head-whack thing. If you only watch one video, watch this next one -- real good look at the splitter and a close-up of the head-whack at 1:22: TL;DR -- MLB #2 starter-level stuff/arsenal, 7th-inning reliever-style control. I think a LOT of teams will be in at 3 years/$45-60m because he's a very safe bet to be a contributor -- even if he can't start, he can almost certainly set-up or close -- but if some sees something they think they can fix that would improve his control, I wouldn't be shocked if they gave him up to 5 years. The White Sox will, unsurprisingly, not even kick the tires.

Freeing up money for Chapman.

After reading this article, I’m 100% sure that a multi-year deal for Chapman will be how to Sox will use all of their limited budget this offseason: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/10/aroldis-chapman-to-be-left-off-yankees-alds-roster-after-skipping-team-workout.html

TLR was one really bad decision in a long string of really bad decisions that have led to this $190m fringe contender of a roster. As the owner, what he owes fans most is to hold his staff responsible for their failures and to stop treating the organization as some sort of dust bowl-era family farm business that you’re born into and can never be fired from. His baseball operations/player development/scouting corp, from top to bottom, is simply not a competitive group. It’s inexcusable that it hasn’t been overhauled/replaced at this point. It’s insane.

Nothin. Haven’t been able to keep up with Korea the past couple years.

Literally anyone as long as the entire org changes too.

Lots of players get hurt, all the time. Good teams figured out you have to invest in dealing with that issue about 15 years ago. It’s part free agency, part player development, but it’s an investment that must be made and maintained. The past three years has been a case study on how to waste money gambling. Every significant move they made, big or small, was a risky proposition — and that’s why they were able to make the moves. Signing famous players as they reached the end of their primes, yes does technically add talent to the team, but when you are unwilling or unable to deal with the downside, you’re just torpedoing yourself. I've been among many who have been lambasted for being a doomsayer and too negative on this board for the past few offseasons, but I’m telling you, this s%*# looked bad AS it was happening. This does not require the benefit of hindsight. This roster has every appearance of having been assembled by someone who does not understand what they’re doing; it has some measure of flash, no substance. And it happened in an organizations that has built the most impressively nuclear-fallout proof echo chamber of coaching and player development anyone has ever seen. It’s just, it’s a train wreck. There no other company in America with so much money on the line, that would allow this to continue for so long. It’s total incompetence.

Yeah 12:10s f*** with all of us

My bad! Had to be at work early

Told you guys

A chronic inability/unwillingness to roster more than four actual starters at any given time.