Jose Abreu

Thank you. I always see the "everything went wrong last year and they still won 81 games" line, but I couldn't disagree with it more. Had Cueto and Andrus not shown up and played like it was 2011, last year's team probably wins more like 72 games. Elvis Andrus was a 7.5 fWAR/162 player for the White Sox last year. Things like that don't happen in a year where "everything goes wrong," and the true worst case scenario for this team is accordingly much lower than 81 wins

Sosa would absolutely have trade value, probably more than Rodriguez

Thanks. Regardless, given the lack of money and available players at this point, I don't see an actual move coming beyond MiLB deals/AAAA types. Hope I'm wrong

Not sure how they're going to do anything with no money left. Even if they eventually are able to get out of having to pay Clevinger, wouldn't the whole investigative process take months (at least)? Didn't Bauer's take nearly two years?

Isn't June of 2021 when the team was 43-25 (the best record in baseball) and all the (healthy) core players were having good to great seasons?

Colas

I think that's less of an issue of the stat itself and more people just not realizing that it's a positional adjustment that makes catchers look more valuable defensively/them not realizing that the "Def" stat next to WAR isn't dWAR. Sanchez ranked 18th out of 30 defensively among catchers with 600+ innings, which seems fair since he did make a few tangible improvements last year

https://www.mlb.com/video/grifol-talks-managing-white-sox 7:40 mark of this video is when the question starts, 8:10 is when he says La Russa will be around at Spring Training. This video is a month and a half old so I'm assuming that's where the tweet came from

Because Grifol has already confirmed it

I think they would have let him back, but he would not have come back, given his comments in his final conference about how the fan pressure might have led him to leave regardless

I’d assume so, I think it was from a radio interview. My comment above is from 12/1 so it was probably from the week before

Pretty sure Grifol revealed this in an interview last month

Tremendous article. One overlooked part: I've been begging for them to get those machines for years. I really think they'll work wonders for guys like Robert when it comes to laying off high-spin sliders out of the zone

A Varsho-Kiermaier-Springer outfielder is the best in baseball (defensively at least) without a doubt. 2 gold glove-level CFs and an above average (arguably well-above average depending on the metric) Springer

Are you saying Teoscar and Varsho are similar value players?

What's so bad about it? Relatively inactive, sure, but Vazquez is a nice fit for them and Gallo has been very comparable to Benintendi (slightly better than Beni overall, but worse lately) on a holistic (WAR) basis throughout his career

Unless I've missed something substantive, I've always thought this was just a narrative spread by people who don't like the way he plays. Nobody has ever said anything negative about him like they have with someone like Josh Donaldson. And speaking of which, the way Grandal stood up for Anderson during that weekend makes him seem like a good teammate if anything

I'm sorry

It really seems like the main reason he's down on the Sox as even contending for a wild card (aside from the 2B situation) is that he thinks Gavin Sheets is the primary DH

It's honestly been kind of weird. Literally every time a player has signed a contract worth $75 million or more this offseason, it's as if there's a scheduled Keith Law tweet 3 hours later talking about how it's such a bad decision. I know it's not his intention, but it comes off as overzealous ownership support. I generally like him too, but it feels to me like he just hasn't adjusted to the new market.

I bet they salary dump him and then he has a great year. He actually had some pretty terrible batted ball luck last season

I'm guessing 5/80 (16 AAV). From what I've read, a fifth year is what was needed from teams to separate themselves

Can a pro-Benintendi person convince me that he's a good defender aside from the gold glove? Trying to talk myself into this

I believe that he stepped down due to health issues, but it's also notable that in his final press conference, he admitted that the fan discontentment might have led him to step down regardless