KW to Toronto?

[chitownsportsfan]

Yep.

 

Still worth taking the shot, IMO.

 

And you are getting a bit ridiculous trying to prove your point that you despise everyone and everything to do with this organization currently.

 

Yes I diverge with Balta on this point. Were some sacrifices to long term depth made in order to go "all in" this winter? Yes. Where they crippling? Hell no.

 

The Sox weren't wrong, they are close. They were just wrong on internal improvement from Avi, 2B and weren't counting on Ramirez having a -1 WAR season. I don't blame them that much they took a shot and came up short and it's not like they traded Anderson or Rodon to try and do it or added 400 million in payroll like the Red Sox.

 

Hindsight is 20/20.

[Bigsoxhurt35]

I too disagree with Balta although I understand his point. Semien wasn't going to be anything special, Phegley is a backup catcher. Bassit is solid but wont be anything more than a back end starter. It was worth the shot. You gota take chances and sometimes they work sometimes they do not. I hope they take some more this offseason. This team needs a jolt. I want to see a new coaching staff and add Puig in the offseason.

[GreatScott82]

Then they should be trading their best mlb assets to further that goal, because otherwise you are wasting them on mediocre, meaningless seasons.

 

There are 3 paths to go down at this juncture:

 

1) Recognize you have Sale/Abreu/Rodon and push all your chips into the middle and try to win over the next few years. Trade anything from the minor leagues that isn't bolted down to try and take advantage of the elite talent you have currently on the big league roster;

2) Continue building from the ground up, recognizing that you need to develop position players to balance out the young pitching you've been developing. Hope you can do this quickly enough to find a window before Sale/Abreu/Rodon leave via FA or their skills begin to erode; and

3) Balance the present with the future, recognizing you have elite talent on the roster now, but not enough. Move assets deemed not part of your "future" to bring in assets that can contribute now or in the near future.

 

It's pretty clear that our FO chose the third path.

 

The risk of taking the path you're advocating for is that by the time this all comes together, you may have wasted Sale and Abreu's best years, and some of Rodon's best years. At some point, you've got to recognize what you've got and give these guys an opportunity to make the postseason.

This was well written. I appreciate your input. I am indeed advocating for a farm system build up. However, this can be accelerated with the trades of your most desirable assets- Sale or Abreu or even both. Or you can try to accelerate this by dealing off the 2nd level of assets in Melky or Quintana. If you trade off your 2nd level of assets and keep Sale and Abreu, you are definitely hoping you can bring back MLB ready positional guys who can contribute as early as 2016. My issue with this route is that we may be in fact waisting the prime years of both Sale and Abreu and will just continue to be mediocre. The White Sox as they currently stand are essentially in baseball hell. What I mean by this is that they have limited assets coming up from the farm system and they have aging veterans under performing. I really have zero faith that this team can compete next year with the current constructed roster or with the guys they plan on promoting from the minors in 2016: (Anderson, E. Johnson, M. Johnson, Thompson, Montas etc..) It will likely take a full season to truly assess their progress at the MLB level. At best they will likely win 75 games. That pretty much means it will be yet another season wiped away for Sale and Abreu. Hence stuck in baseball hell.

 

With all of this said- upper management needs to pick on a direction and stick to it. This season pretty much exemplifies that this team was not yet ready to truly compete for a division title. As excited as we were to 'compete again', we just were not ready to do that yet. Eaton, Garcia still have work to do. Micah Johnson needs to learn how to play defense and they identified the fact that they need upgrades at SS AND C. In order to let players like Micah Johnson and Tim Anderson figure it out at the MLB ready, we must be patient.

 

My hope is that they sell off assets in attempt to accelerate position player depth development. Give it two more seasons to develop, trade for and draft prospects before they truly go for it. If the fear is that Sale and Abreu will be washed up by 2018, then maybe they should consider selling high early rather than later.... Because if they do choose the route of prospect patience, development and farm system growth- they should be pretty darn close by 2018. No more middle ground, they need to choose a direction and go with it. If Hahn is truly a fan of 'sustained success', then this is the path to explore.

[OmarComing25]

I disagree that we have a bunch of "aging veterans". That applies to Alexei and LaRoche and that's it, and Alexei could be gone after this season (and LaRoche the next). Maybe Melky but that's stretching the definition of aging because he's hardly that old. We don't have any crippling contracts either. The Tigers define "baseball hell", we do not.

[chitownsportsfan]

I too disagree with Balta although I understand his point. Semien wasn't going to be anything special, Phegley is a backup catcher. Bassit is solid but wont be anything more than a back end starter. It was worth the shot. You gota take chances and sometimes they work sometimes they do not. I hope they take some more this offseason. This team needs a jolt. I want to see a new coaching staff and add Puig in the offseason.

 

New coaching staff would be great. As often said, if you're not gonna be good, at least be entertaining. New staff will bring the latter, and maybe some more of the former.

[greg775]

The White Sox went with the middle ground - trying to compete without giving up their best long-term assets, but while sacrificing some depth and money.

 

In the process they utterly failed.

 

The end result is they have absolutely moved closer to wasting Sale and Abreu's best seasons, because they just wasted one of them at the very least. That's what you said the risk was of slowly trying to develop assets, and they did exactly that while trying to find "near future" assets.

 

I think that's a very strong message from 2015. They spent a lot of assets on this season, got incredibly lucky with health, like unbelievably lucky with the health of their lineup, and they've barely improved from 2014.

 

They have absolutely increased the chances of wasting their best years because they just wasted one.

Good post. I agree.

 

They still have Robertson/Melky/Duke locked up for '16 and '17 and Robertson for '18. I don't think it is fair to write these assets off as useless because the team will not win this year. And yet you are, and have been, for the last several months.

Duke is just another guy and he's trending downward IMO. He's a waste. Melky isn't totally worthless but he has no power and we need power at that position in the Cell. He's pretty ordinary at best. Robertson is a wasted commodity. He has great stuff but our team isn't a contender and doesn't need him. Sox have a ton of holes to even get to be a .500 team.

[Lip Man 1]

Someone mentioned the Tigers and being in contract hell but they failed to mention

 

The Tigers also:

 

Won the division or made the playoffs four years in a row

Went to the World Series twice

Have an owner with more money than God.

 

What does he care about the size and length of those deals? He'll just go out and spend more to replace those guys.

 

From Detroit's standpoint based on the results I have to think they feel it was completely worth it.

 

Mark

 

[chitownsportsfan]

Good post. I agree.

 

 

Duke is just another guy and he's trending downward IMO. He's a waste. Melky isn't totally worthless but he has no power and we need power at that position in the Cell. He's pretty ordinary at best. Robertson is a wasted commodity. He has great stuff but our team isn't a contender and doesn't need him. Sox have a ton of holes to even get to be a .500 team.

 

Duke and Melky are average players. The Sox need more average players and they found two last offseason.

 

I will keep repeating this over and over and over again: the team Hahn inherited from the MLB roster on all the way to Kannapolis WAS ARGUABLY THE WORST IN ALL OF MLB.

 

The team had half a dozen holes on the MLB position player roster, some of them smoking craters. The farm was in shambles, the international efforts were lagging and the overall position of the club was bottom 1/4, at best.

 

 

[Y2Jimmy0]

Someone mentioned the Tigers and being in contract hell but they failed to mention

 

The Tigers also:

 

Won the division or made the playoffs four years in a row

Went to the World Series twice

Have an owner with more money than God.

 

What does he care about the size and length of those deals? He'll just go out and spend more to replace those guys.

 

From Detroit's standpoint based on the results I have to think they feel it was completely worth it.

 

Mark

 

 

They also have the 32nd ranked farm system in major league baseball

[chitownsportsfan]

They also have the 32nd ranked farm system in major league baseball

 

Someone over at BTF (might have been Walt) did an analysis showing how much the FA market has changed on a cost per WAR basis and on how much WAR is typically available in an offseason compared to say 2002, when teams like the Yankees could easily outbid everyone else and set up a winning team almost solely based on FA (ignore for a second all the home grown talent they had it's just an example).

 

Now, even the rich teams like Boston are founding it nearly impossible to simply buy enough WAR in the offseason to make a good, winning team.

 

The Tigers are absolutely f***ed. Even if the contracts of Miggy, JV, and V-Mart were magically lifted from their shoulders there aren't enough premium FA anymore to sign to replace them. And even if there were, because of the winner's curse, they couldn't afford to sign more than one or two at most. And then they'd still have to get 30 some odd WAR from guys they already have on the team.

 

You can't build a team through FA anymore you have to rely on drafting and scouting and trades. It's a fools errand to even try which is why you see teams like the Astros and Cubs having so much success without big payrolls. You don't need a big payroll to compete anymore and in fact it may often be a detriment as it eats into your money available for scouting, development, intentional FA, etc.

[SCCWS]

I too disagree with Balta although I understand his point. Semien wasn't going to be anything special, Phegley is a backup catcher. Bassit is solid but wont be anything more than a back end starter. It was worth the shot. You gota take chances and sometimes they work sometimes they do not. I hope they take some more this offseason. This team needs a jolt. I want to see a new coaching staff and add Puig in the offseason.

 

Actually I think you are giving the front office too much credit. Did they think Semien wasn't going to be anything special but thought Micah was?? You say Phegley is a backup which he may be on many teams. But he also may be a starter over Flowers based on their performance this year. I want a new front office which probably would result in a new coaching staff. I feel less confident now that the people assembling a better team can really judge talent. They left spring training thinking 2B and 3B was acceptable??? They thought a bench of Shuck, Boni, Gordon and Soto was acceptable considering the talent available in Charlotte? I think this was a .500 team on paper that is struggling to meet that due to poor seasons by a few key guys. But they also got lucky on the injury side.

 

[southsider2k5]

Someone mentioned the Tigers and being in contract hell but they failed to mention

 

The Tigers also:

 

Won the division or made the playoffs four years in a row

Went to the World Series twice

Have an owner with more money than God.

 

What does he care about the size and length of those deals? He'll just go out and spend more to replace those guys.

 

From Detroit's standpoint based on the results I have to think they feel it was completely worth it.

 

Mark

 

The irony is the Tigers are going through the past peak of the cycle. They are a few years away from being where the White Sox were in 2013, except with a ton more bad contracts. I know Dave Dombrowski is supposed to be a genius, but he left a cesspool of a twin disaster in Detroit of bad contracts and no farm system at all.

[Jerksticks]

I'm so proud of where we are now and where we are headed. I'm still in awe the way KW & RH flipped cores in a matter of like a season. Remember our aging expensive BS team just 2 years ago? All gone now, no real money on the books looking ahead, great young talent performing at the MLB level and a farm system that is starting to look RRRREALLY good. The Sox flipped the core so well that we actually had a shot at the playoffs this year! f***ing incredible job. I can't wait for the next few years as it will only get stronger.

 

Kneel to your masters Kenny & Rick.

[LittleHurt05]

They also have the 32nd ranked farm system in major league baseball

 

I'd happily take the worst farm system for 4 straight division titles.

[LDF]

The White Sox went with the middle ground - trying to compete without giving up their best long-term assets, but while sacrificing some depth and money.

 

In the process they utterly failed.

 

The end result is they have absolutely moved closer to wasting Sale and Abreu's best seasons, because they just wasted one of them at the very least. That's what you said the risk was of slowly trying to develop assets, and they did exactly that while trying to find "near future" assets.

 

I think that's a very strong message from 2015. They spent a lot of assets on this season, got incredibly lucky with health, like unbelievably lucky with the health of their lineup, and they've barely improved from 2014.

 

They have absolutely increased the chances of wasting their best years because they just wasted one.

 

it was not like the FO went out and randomly went into this season without a idea. they had an idea but as usual they went out and did about with what he assume would work. then they stop the rebuild.

 

the rest is what the sox wanted and always have done, they hope for the best result with very little done or invested.

[LDF]

Someone over at BTF (might have been Walt) did an analysis showing how much the FA market has changed on a cost per WAR basis and on how much WAR is typically available in an offseason compared to say 2002, when teams like the Yankees could easily outbid everyone else and set up a winning team almost solely based on FA (ignore for a second all the home grown talent they had it's just an example).

 

Now, even the rich teams like Boston are founding it nearly impossible to simply buy enough WAR in the offseason to make a good, winning team.

 

The Tigers are absolutely f***ed. Even if the contracts of Miggy, JV, and V-Mart were magically lifted from their shoulders there aren't enough premium FA anymore to sign to replace them. And even if there were, because of the winner's curse, they couldn't afford to sign more than one or two at most. And then they'd still have to get 30 some odd WAR from guys they already have on the team.

 

You can't build a team through FA anymore you have to rely on drafting and scouting and trades. It's a fools errand to even try which is why you see teams like the Astros and Cubs having so much success without big payrolls. You don't need a big payroll to compete anymore and in fact it may often be a detriment as it eats into your money available for scouting, development, intentional FA, etc.

 

you make a great point there. the sox went out and spent for the DH position, they spent what i think is a nice salary, 13+/- mil.... but look at what that got the team, an old retread and still the team was very lucky with the length of the contract.

 

there has to be luck in that, selecting the right FA.

[southsider2k5]

I'd happily take the worst farm system for 4 straight division titles.

 

We had two division titles in four years, including a world series title. It didn't keep people showing up then, and it sure isn't helping now.

[Balta1701]

We had two division titles in four years, including a world series title. It didn't keep people showing up then, and it sure isn't helping now.

In 2008 they still drew >30k a game. That's pretty unfair.

[iamshack]

I'm so proud of where we are now and where we are headed. I'm still in awe the way KW & RH flipped cores in a matter of like a season. Remember our aging expensive BS team just 2 years ago? All gone now, no real money on the books looking ahead, great young talent performing at the MLB level and a farm system that is starting to look RRRREALLY good. The Sox flipped the core so well that we actually had a shot at the playoffs this year! f***ing incredible job. I can't wait for the next few years as it will only get stronger.

 

Kneel to your masters Kenny & Rick.

I agree.

 

One thing people seem to fail to recognize in regards to this FO is their ability to keep us out of situations where we literally have no chance to compete for long stretches of time.

 

I have a difficult time getting on Kenny, and to a lesser extent Rick Hahn (because of his limited experience as GM), for the rosters they've constructed. I have felt like for a number of years we fielded a roster that was as good or better than most other teams in the division (I recognize Detroit's dominance recently), but the players on the field just didn't get it done. I understand that excuse gets tired the longer the paper roster doesn't match up with the results on the field, but I still believe it is a valid consideration.

 

Maybe I don't know as much as I think I know and that is why the rosters have generally appeared very competitive to me.

 

However, if one looks at the recent history of baseball there are only a handful of teams that have been able to build sustained success better than the White Sox have. On the contrary, there are a whole LOT of organizations that have fared worse.

 

I struggle to so quickly dismiss this FO because of those reasons.

[Hatchetman]

Sustained success?? What on earth are you talking about?

[LittleHurt05]

I agree.

 

One thing people seem to fail to recognize in regards to this FO is their ability to keep us out of situations where we literally have no chance to compete for long stretches of time.

 

I have a difficult time getting on Kenny, and to a lesser extent Rick Hahn (because of his limited experience as GM), for the rosters they've constructed. I have felt like for a number of years we fielded a roster that was as good or better than most other teams in the division (I recognize Detroit's dominance recently), but the players on the field just didn't get it done. I understand that excuse gets tired the longer the paper roster doesn't match up with the results on the field, but I still believe it is a valid consideration.

 

Maybe I don't know as much as I think I know and that is why the rosters have generally appeared very competitive to me.

 

However, if one looks at the recent history of baseball there are only a handful of teams that have been able to build sustained success better than the White Sox have. On the contrary, there are a whole LOT of organizations that have fared worse.

 

I struggle to so quickly dismiss this FO because of those reasons.

 

2 playoff berths in nearly 15 years is sustained success??? I realize there are several teams with less than that, but that's not something to hang your hat on, especially given that the Sox have had a much higher payroll that most of those other teams.

[OmarComing25]

They also have the 32nd ranked farm system in major league baseball

Their farm system is so bad it's ranked behind two teams that don't even exist.

[iamshack]

Sustained success?? What on earth are you talking about?

We have the 10th most wins in baseball since 2000.

[LittleHurt05]

We have the 10th most wins in baseball since 2000.

 

And around the 18th most playoff appearances

[iamshack]

And around the 18th most playoff appearances

That is why I went out of my way to mention my impression of the rosters and not just the result of the on field play. I clearly pointed out the disparity I see there.