Dominikk85

I meant somewhat healthy of course. Every team will have some DL trips but if you miss several guys for a month plus or even half a season it is going to get tough. If the sox top5-6 hitters play 130+ games each and the top3 starters make 26+ starts the sox should be in good shape.

The team mostly needs health. Except for DH this team has a great starting lineup but not much depth in both hitting and starting pitching. So with giolito, lynn, moncada, eloy and robert out it not really a great team. There are other concerns like the occasional TLR managerial gaffes and age and slow start of abreu but if this team is healthy they should be fine and win the division again pretty easily. They just need to be healthy because there is no depth in the upper minors and also because their 5th, 6th and 7th starters are really bad and if they turn into 3, 4 and 5 it doesn't look good.

There definitely is a trend towards trying to assemble lower K lineups. Yes, that approach has failed in the past and teams trying that have been outslugged but when you assemble a low K team that is still above average in power you get a great offense. You don't want slap hitters with no pop in the modern game but the ideal thing is having low k hitters who can slug the ball but those are of course not easy to find and if you buy them very expensive

I don't agree. Yes there are some high strikeout, high walk types like peak adam Dunn but generally about 2/3rd to 3/4 of on base events are hits and the more balls you put in play the higher the chance you get a hit. Yes, typically the best obp guys are not super low k slap guys who hit 4 homers a year like madrigal because fear of pitchers plays a role too and pitchers will rather throw 3 pitches middle middle than walking a slap hitter but still most of the best obp guys tend to be good average/below average K guys. 2021 obp leaders/k rate Juan soto 14.2 Harper 22.4 Vlad 15.8 Freeman 15.4 Reynolds 18.4 Only 6 out of the top30 obp guys had an above average (23.2%) k rate There are a few exeptions to that who have mediocre average and super high walks but that is rare. It is true that you don't want super low k slap guys with minimal power but generally a good k/bb rate is still a good thing. I think the sox offense will be good, they also some bad batted ball luck plus the cold weather.

Maybe the umpire feels bad about the randy pitch and kinda made up for it. Shouldn't be that way but maybe he was a bit hesitant to call another close one against the rays

Eno said with oblique strains you can usually double what they say, i. E when a player has an oblique strain an it is usually more like 4 weeks rather than 2

Vaughn and sheets really shouldn't be on the same roster. They are essentially the same player type (1b,DH who can play an OF corner in a pinch), just one is left handed and the other one right handed.

Don't rush giolito back. The other teams in the division are improved but still only projected for around 500, sox can afford to rest him a little longer and make sure it is fully healed. Eno sarris said in a podcast that he likely will miss 4-5 starts and that is fine as long he is healthy in the summer

That would be a bad deal for the As. I think the As would either want an established young mlb player (like vaughn) or a top50 prospect which the sox do not have. I think there is no chance for a deal, this is a sellers market with the expanded playoffs and if the sox don't want to give up one of their young mlb players they are not getting montas. Sheets and burger don't really have much value as backup corner guys. I'm fine with the sox rotation staying like it is. They have no depth but their top4-5 is good, they just need to hope for health here.

In the modern game it's position players. Run prevention and run scoring is about equally as important but SPs only pitch like 60% of the innings in today's game, plus pitching is only like 80% of run prevention with the rest being defense which is done by position players. But of course without a strong rotation it still is very hard to win especially since a BP can only take so much and even a good pen will blow up if 2 or more starters regularly have to get lifted before the 5th.

He is a good framer because his workouts have made his wrists really strong:)

I like it. Mcguire can't hit but collins didn't hit either and he also wasn't a real catcher, all he was was a high strikeout platoon DH who could take a walk. Sox really only need a backup who can hit over .220 and play decent defense.

Mariners simply got lucky, their pythagorean record had them at 76 wins. There really is nothing to learn from that, you could of course find things they did well but that is nothing really predictive for the future. Mariners might be good this year though if some of their prospects do well.

Win projections are always a bit conservative and have smaller spreads than real life results. I think a big reason is that they don't consider deadline moves. The worse teams are giving up at the deadline and trade away good players for prospects. And good teams are getting rid of prospects and get good players. That means that in the second half good teams will be better than at the start of the season and the bottom teams will be worse. So a projected 90 win team then will probably win 93 and the projected 70 win team will tank and only win 66.

I'm not sure the injury can be blamed on playing the OF, everyone can get hurt but when it comes to multi position ability it is generally easier to adjust to a position to your left in the defensive spectrum. The defensive spectrum is considered DH-1b-LF-RF-3B-CF-2b-ss-c and generally switching to the left of the spectrum is much easier. There are exceptions of course and it is not linear but generally a SS can play all IF spots, a CF can play all OF spots and a first baseman can only play first and DH albeit there are exceptions to this too (bellinger for example).

Fangraphs https://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=Standings Sox 87 75 Twins 81 81 Indians 77 85 Tigers/royals 75/87 5th in AL Pecota https://www.baseballprospectus.com/standings/ Sox 91.5 Twins 85.6 Cle 77.6 Kc 69.4 Det 67.4 2nd in AL Both have sox 6 games ahead but pecota has them at more wins

It was Vaughn's first year and he lost 2020 so essentially he went from high A to MLB. Sure there was the alt site but it is not the same when you face the same pitchers over and over again. You don't make a top30 prospect a platoon in his second year unless you are the dodgers who platoon everybody. Let him figure out RHP in the majors, maybe sit him once a week against a very good righty. Depends on his situation of course but at keast the first two months play him 5 times a week at least.

Also I think the last 3 years with covid and the lockout was mentally extremely draining for many players

Or putin gets fed up and throws a nuke or bombs the chernobyl site. Hope that doesn't happen.

The indians didn't have any success drafting position players since 2013, they were actually much worse than the white Sox in that regard. They were better in drafting pitchers but much of that probably was their great pitching development. Where they have the sox beat is international non cuban signings, Sox have been extremely bad internationally except for the cuban players.

I'm still curious about the thought process of trading madrigal. Obviously they wanted kimbrel to help them to win now but hahn is not an idiot, if he thought madrigal was a cost controlled annual 3 war second baseman he wouldn't have made that trade. I think for some reason they must be very down on madrigal, maybe they think his medicals indicate his injury struggles will continue and he never will be a guy who regularly plays 145+ games a year.

After the first 10 picks or so there is a massive drop of in average value. http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2009/06/draft_picks_and.php Basically for a second rounder you expect less than 5 war, so basically a guy who is a utility guy for a couple years. You hope for more of course and some second rounders do become good players or even stars but the average outcome of a second rounder is probably danny mendick or adam engel. Hansen obviously was less than that, you would have at least expected that he makes it as a middle reliever to the majors for a couple years as a "floor" but it isn't a super unexpected outcome either, if the average second rounder has 4 war over his 6 control years and some are much better than some also have to be much worse.

I'm not sure burger will be able to play 2b full time but for his playing time it would be good if he became good enough at 2b so that he could play there occasionally. If he could play 1st, 3rd, second and maybe left field in a pinch (and of course DH) you could carry him kinda as a super utility guy albeit of course ideally you want your util guy to play short in a pinch too which definitely wouldn't work with burger. But generally more flexibility is better

The owners don't care about what he says and how popular he is. His job is to make the owners money. Yeah in theory you could say he hurts long term growth but owners are mostly old men who care about the value of their club in the next 5 years and not about the fans of 2040. That's why they all opted for contracting the minors, that move will cost the game some long term fans but brings money short term. However I do think there is a chance Manfred gets fired but that is only if owners a) lose money by having a lockout very long into the season b) are forced to sign a very player friendly cba to start the season. As long an owner friendly cba is signed to start the season in time his job is safe.

The results the last two years weren't ideal in the end but you have to admit the rebuilt went pretty quickly, just 3 years without playoffs (17,18,19) with only two of them being worst team in baseball type of years. That sucks too of course but if you compare it with the Orioles, pirates or Phillies a couple years ago who were tanking like 6 years before it got better (Orioles and pirates still not there yet) it could have been worse. Obviously having cost controlled assets like sale, quintana and Eaton made a big difference in jump starting the rebuild over the other teams who had nothing to trade but still in the end it went pretty well. Still a WS appearance is missing so far but considering the Sox were a mid 70s win team before the rebuild the cost of the rebuild wasn't that high.