1 hour ago, almagest said:

It was a really good team in the first half. They were only a little over .500 in the second half. They were flat-out bad in LF, RF, 2B and DH, especially once the Brian Goodwin magic wore off. They averaged .6 runs less per game in the second half. They only scored 6 total runs in the three games they lost in the ALDS.

I also think Kimbrel had a case of closer-brain.

Hendriks told TLR that he would be the "use me whenever we need the best reliever" guy and let Kimbrel close because he knew Kimbrel was weaker mentally. And TLR did the opposite.

1 hour ago, Look at Ray Ray Run said:

pal

😂

1 hour ago, Look at Ray Ray Run said:

Injuries? The Sox have lost outfielders that were already not reliable starters in the first place. They've lost one big league starter this year (Murakami). I think Periera might be pretty solid but he's certainly not a guaranteed high level starter. The 2021 team lost Eloy Jimenez and Luis Robert - two guys that were legit All-Stars in 2020. I love that I'm cherry picking stats by presenting you negative value players... which you implied were more prevalent on those teams because of the lack of depth. Which was 1000% factually wrong.

Youre comparing losing Brooks Baldwin and Everson Periera to losing Eloy and Robert at that time. It's hilarious.

Please spare me your "i miss" nonsense. My analysis is accurate and an actual representation of what happened and not a rewriting of history while pretending like you saw the bottom falling out in 2021.

By the way, ive had a ton of positive things on this team so please stop with the BS that im being negative. My posts are there for you to read pal.

Edit: Sorry, they lost 2 starters because of Teel but plenty were arguing that Quero was as good last year (obviously not me, as I'm team Teel!)

Five of the nine negative fWAR players you highlighted were guys planned to be on the Opening Day roster by design. Them sucking has nothing to do with our minor league depth. They have combined for -1.8 fWAR or 75% of the negative value of the nine players you referenced. Three of four true “depth” guys have less than 35 plate appearances each. Again, when I say your arguments ignore important context, these are both great examples of that.

Also, one of the four is Reese McGuire who was picked up off the street to fill in when Teel went down. He put up -0.2 fWAR across 34 total PA’s before being released and replaced by AAA catcher Drew Romo who has provided 0.4 fWAR since his call-up. As such, net value of the “next man up” at the catcher spot is a positive 0.2 fWAR. Not a huge benefit, but better than replacement level.

Two of the other guys are Kelenic & Rikuu. Clearly those guys failed to fill in for Hays & Pereira’s injuries in a positive manner. That being said, they were part of a broader OF depth strategy that included Peters (who has been a home run) and Montgomery (whose 0.3 fWAR has already offset the two negative guys), amongst others. Overall, we’ve been able to minimize the damage of losing Hays, Pereira, & Baldwin even if some individual pieces failed to do the job.

I could also cite Gonzalez coming up for Murakami and doing an admirable job as support of my argument. Before that call-up, Lamont Wade also was a depth piece in AAA who would have been an option to fill in.

This is obviously just looking at this year, but the points still hold. When time permits, I will look through the Hahn years to highlight specific examples of when a lack of depth hurt us. That being said, I’m sure it will fall on deaf ears as your points above continue to lack critical context to the debate at hand and are often moving the goalposts from the original point.

20 hours ago, DirtySox said:

I get they wouldn't have used it, but apparently Cleveland is. I hope it doesn't bite them in the ass.

Saying the last rebuild partly failed due to a lack of depth is not some controversial statement.

The 2021 team was in the middle of their window and had a top 10 payroll in MLB. Why is that the year being used to measure the 2026 team? They should have had more depth.

Besides, this "methodology" doesn't make any sense to me. What does counting players with negative WAR on each team tell you? Tanner Murray had -0.1 in 33 plate appearances and is no longer on the team. If he had 1 more hit and another stolen base or something, he could have had been in the positive. lol, ok.

14 minutes ago, Nardiwashere said:

Saying the last rebuild partly failed due to a lack of depth is not some controversial statement.

The 2021 team was in the middle of their window and had a top 10 payroll in MLB. Why is that the year being used to measure the 2026 team? They should have had more depth.

Besides, this "methodology" doesn't make any sense to me. What does counting players with negative WAR on each team tell you? Tanner Murray had -0.1 in 33 plate appearances and is no longer on the team. If he had 1 more hit and another stolen base or something, he could have had been in the positive. lol, ok.

And a guy with 0.1 WAR isn't all that much better than a guy with -0.1 WAR.

2021, a first baseman got the most starts in LF. No single player got more than 86 starts at 2B, LF, CF, RF or DH, so yeah, they were scrambling to fill positions. On top of that, there really wasn't any roster crunch conversation about where Jake Lamb would play when Eloy came back from injury.

13 hours ago, Look at Ray Ray Run said:

This "depth is so much better than the last team" narrative isn't true either. The Sox certainly have more PROSPECTS waiting in the wings on the position player side, but this team doesn't have more depth... The Sox have 9 players who have played and generated negative value for them on offense this year. In 2021, the Sox had 6 guys with negative value for the year and two of those guys (Eaton and Vaughn) were and are obviously viable big league starters. Vaughn has become one in Milwaukee and Eaton obviously was one. Additionally, the 2021 team had ONE pitcher produce negative WAR and it was -.1 while this team has already had 7 pitchers generate negative WAR

In total, the 2021 team with "no depth" had 7 guys on their roster not put up positive WAR. So far this team has 16 of those guys.

Can we please stop rewriting history?

That' kind of proves the point: they assembled sufficient depth to move on from the negative WAR guys. I think the only ones on the 26 man are Murphy and Gilbert (is he hurt again?) and they've each been sent down and recalled. So really he's done good job loading the upper minors with these fungible middle reliever types. He also had a smaller budget than 2021, but has hit on 2/3 main FA relievers (I include Hicks in that category as they took on his bad contract for 2 seasons) and Fedde and Kay have been acceptable.
That said, I think the org is light on young pitching. Awfully light.
And I agree with you on Jones.

Edited 9 hours ago9 hr by GreenSox

8 hours ago, GreenSox said:

That' kind of proves the point: they assembled sufficient depth to move on from the negative WAR guys. I think the only ones on the 26 man are Murphy and Gilbert (is he hurt again?) and they've each been sent down and recalled. So really he's done good job loading the upper minors with these fungible middle reliever types. He also had a smaller budget than 2021, but has hit on 2/3 main FA relievers (I include Hicks in that category as they took on his bad contract for 2 seasons) and Fedde and Kay have been acceptable.
That said, I think the org is light on young pitching. Awfully light.
And I agree with you on Jones.

I'm confused how that proves that? The majority of those negative arm pitchers are literally still on the team.

17 hours ago, Chicago White Sox said:

.

I could also cite Gonzalez coming up for Murakami and doing an admirable job as support of my argument. Before that call-up, Lamont Wade also was a depth piece in AAA who would have been an option to fill in.

This is obviously just looking at this year, but the points still hold. When time permits, I will look through the Hahn years to highlight specific examples of when a lack of depth hurt us. That being said, I’m sure it will fall on deaf ears as your points above continue to lack critical context to the debate at hand and are often moving the goalposts from the original point.

Andrew Vaughn being called up early to play LF.

Andrew Vaughn starting a game at 2B.

32 minutes ago, JoeC said:

Andrew Vaughn being called up early to play LF.

Andrew Vaughn starting a game at 2B.

Yup /thread