September 16, 2025Sep 16 6 hours ago, nrockway said: Why is this necessarily a career year? It's pretty much his first full season as a regular. He's 25 and gotten better every year. There are some big holes in his game, he's being especially exposed lately, but who's to say it's insurmountable? He's a BA guy with some actual power. If he could be somehow close to league average in BB/chase, or even like 30th percentile, he's an .800 ops hitter easy. That's a big ask. I'm not sure if there's any precedent for it. Defensively, Fangraphs is still grading him akin to Ozzie Albies, Gleyber Torres, far better than Jackson Holliday, Jonathan India, about 7 times better than Brandon Lowe. Somehow Luke Keaschall has compiled as much negative WAR in half the inning played at second. Brooks Lee has almost twice as much negative WAR in one-third the innings played at second. His bad defense is mega overstated. He's just not as good defensively as Chase. Chase has maybe turned a corner on his hitting but he hasn't proven to be better over the course of a season. If you watch almost all the games, day in and day out, he's just not very good defensively...no matter where you stick him. Sometimes they are purely physical mistakes, at other times, simply baseball IQ issues. The history of the White Sox fixing below average players defensively while they're still with the organization, it's a list you can count the numbers over the last twenty years with just one hand. All of this wouldn't matter so much if the Sox had 5-6 very solid defenders at other positions, but that's just not the case heading into 2026.
September 18, 2025Sep 18 On 9/16/2025 at 2:25 PM, chitownsportsfan said: He's really intent on fishing below 100 wrC+. Whatever. “Fishing” is an apt descriptor given the way he is swinging at everything within 4 feet of the plate right now
September 18, 2025Sep 18 Is there an invention yet where we can merge Sosa and Meidroth together and have 1 solid 2B?
September 18, 2025Sep 18 4 hours ago, TheFutureIsNear said: Is there an invention yet where we can merge Sosa and Meidroth together and have 1 solid 2B? Fu...sion...HAH! IYKYK. That's about as nerdy as I get.
September 20, 2025Sep 20 Hope for Lenyn. Never realized what a chase machine Naylor is. 7th percentile this season and .805 OPS. 4th percentile in 2023 with .843 OPS. Like, if our guy can be at a similar rate, he's simply a really good hitter. Their profiles are pretty similar except Sosa makes better contact and hits the ball harder. And Naylor K's a lot less. Sosa has more HRs this season in fewer ABs. Edited September 20, 2025Sep 20 by nrockway
September 24, 2025Sep 24 Semi-interesting crop of players circled in blue. Bryce Harper, Hunter Goodman, Bo Bichette, Jeremy Peña in the close cluster. Josh Naylor, Julio Rodriguez Jackson Chourio just below (in order of OPS). PCA and Salvy are the two guys above the trend line with higher chase rates than Sosa! Goodman and Peña specifically strike me as interesting comps. Sosa will not walk like Harper (12 BB% vs 3.4%; 87th vs 1st percentile). Not a BABIP merchant like Bichette (.342 this season, 339 on his career). https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/hunter-goodman-696100?stats=statcast-r-hitting-mlb https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/jeremy-pena-665161?stats=statcast-r-hitting-mlb https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/lenyn-sosa-672820?stats=statcast-r-hitting-mlb Reasonably similar statcast profiles. The two guys made moderate improvements to their chase/bb% (and some BABIP improvement, possibly unsustainable) from previous seasons and elevated from .645/.702 OPSers to up near .840 this year. (121 OPS+ for Goodman, Rockies player, vs Peña's 131). I think Sosa is arguably as powerful as Goodman with better contact skills. More powerful than Peña and maybe a slightly worse contact hitter. I think there's a clear path for Sosa to be above that trend line and OPS above .800, be a reasonably effective first baseman/DH who can hit 25+ HRs if he simply stops striking out on junk out of the zone. More walks, less Ks, better contact if pitchers have to be throw at him around the zone. Peña and Goodman still chase a lot but nonetheless made pretty big improvements to their command of the strike zone over last year. Peña went from 4th percentile BB% to 26th, why couldn't Sosa do the same? Why couldn't he bat .280 and OBP .330 and make corresponding improvements to his SLG and ISO?
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.