CaliSoxFanViaSWside

But even with a normal amount of injuries the bench sucks. That's why people wanted Duvall or Andrus or Iglesias or Lowe. Colas could stay healthy but struggle. 2nd base could struggle. Grandal might be done even if healthy and Moncada as usual is a mystery. Clevinger could not be good, Kopech and Giolito too. No closer so the BP could be a mess.

Not if the 6 starters all go 5 or 6 innings max especially without Hendricks. And u will have games where they go less innings if they get roughed up .Who is the long man then ? Can't be one of the 6 starters if they are preparing for their next start especially if they just got done pitching a day or 2 ago .

The trouble with a 6 man rotation is that all 6 are starting pitchers and one is going to have to go to the pen eventually or sporadically at times. Hard to have starters go to the pen since the routine for preparation is different and u cant carry an extra pitcher and leave the bench with 3 guys . You need at least 4 position players as your bench.

Thanks I was actually surprised that while I was trying to figure out how to get the picture I took to fit that someone else would beat me to it. I had to crop and recrop that pic to finally get Soxtalk to accept it from my phone. I almost never use my phone to post yet alone post with a picture which is why you see the previous post that kind of introduces the one you eventually saw. It was a 1st attempt and I didn't like how it came out. I thought of giving you an ultra vague answer like a pretend insider would with a wink wink nudge nudge or let you try to figure out what IANAI means ( I am not an insider ). But it really only took a second to know I would just tell you the truth.

Only a mod can do that.

@Quin Changed it to the longer title.

To be fair there still is a lot of skepticism about Colas being ready since he only had the 1 year in the minors. Not from me of course I love the kid and think he'll do very well offensively and defensively. He's got a real nice arm and base runners will think twice about running on him unlike last year where everyone and their mother ran on Sox OFers. He'll get tested early on that I think and when he guns a few runners down they'll take him seriously.

The link someone, maybe you, left earlier on the Baseball America link of Signees. I know it was 7 but I checked again and it was 8 with the last name added being Ysalla. Then I went to Badler's Instagram looked in his pictures of the signees and stole the picture from that.

When I see a post like this mention names about who failed and don't see the name Reinsdorf , I laugh. He is the root, the rest are branches. He hands are in everything the Sox fail at. Sure Hahn's taken a lot of hits but those hits are build into dealing in a very limited range of what he can do since Jerry is pulling the strings of his puppets. Rinse and repeat !

A blind man could've predicted Lopez was going to be traded because the Marlins have a ton of pitching and no hitting and he's been in rumors since the season ended . Chisholm isn't going anywhere.

He can't trade for anyone. He won't give up prospects, not because he won't, but because he'd get back salary and the Sox aren't taking on any more salary. And he can't trade equal amounts of salary without taking a main piece away from the team and the takers for Grandal or Moncada have to be non existent. You can trade a reliever ,I suppose, along with a prospect but who are you going to get back that's any good ? And the BP already took a huge blow with the loss of Hendriks.

White Sox sign RHP Fabian Ysalla from Venezuela. No idea of money or age.

I guess you missed this part of the article. From August 1 onwards, he posted a 2.43 ERA backed by a 3.27 FIP and a 3.31 xFIP across 12 starts. His 62 ERA- was ninth best in the majors during that time period, and his strikeout-to-walk ratio went from a good 4.9 to an elite 8.3. 12 starts since August 1st. On July 16th his ERA was 7.50 he brought it down to 3.99 in his last 12 starts. His those last 4 starts his ERA started at 3.99 and remained at 3.99. But sure go ahead and concentrate on the last 4 I guess. BTW only 3 of those 6 runs against the Guardians was earned. His previous start against the Guardians just 5 days earlier was 6.1 IP and 2 earned runs which the Sox won. He had not great games in 3 of the 12 games started since Aug 1st. In the other 9 games he gave up 2 ER twice, 1 ER 4 times, and 0 ER twice. But keep doing the contrarian thing with me and taking 2 bad games out of his last 4 to make things look worse.

see post below

He could be better than ever in 2023. He looked really sharp at the end of the year and that was when he was still in the process of perfecting the pitch. The more he gets comfortable with it he'll be even better. I expect Cease and him to be a formidable 1-2 punch at the top of the rotation.

Blah blah more stuff about what they should've done before the rebuild. These things need to be implemented throughout the system not just the White Sox with people at all levels who are capable of doing the same thing and exchanging info with the new guy while learning from his expertise . This new guy will be over loaded if he's trying to do this for every player at every level. Same goes for biomechanics ,super slo-mo analysis and everything else that goes into making your minor league system better. Improve players from the ground up, not just at the top when getting players to make changes is a lot harder I know the Rodon situation has been played out but they did abuse him in the 1st half in 2021. Just way too many innings for a guy who hadn't pitched significant innings in a while in the 1st 2-3 months of the season. He wilted down the stretch which was to be expected since the beginning of the season. But he's such a horse that he pitched through the tired arm and into the playoffs but he wasn't close to as effective which led to everyone thinking he was injured again. I think keeping Cease healthy so he can be effective down the stretch in a close race and into the playoffs should always be the most important goal. It should be allowed once in a while to go 7 and 8 innings once a month just for endurance . I wouldn't keep a starter in that long in back to back games no matter how good he is pitching. Rest, recuperate, stay strong. In the grand scheme of things, while a pitcher of course want's a no hitter ,it is a team game and staying healthy is what helps the team most and ultimately helps the player have a lengthier , healthier career . This has been evident throughout the window when we can't get the best young players the Sox traded for to stay on the field. Availability is still the best ability.

I'm extremely encouraged about how Colas did in his 1st year after so much rust and once again switching cultures . What he accomplished is nothing short of amazing .Sosa could end up being very good as can Ramos and Rodriguez. But that's less than a handful of guys and the chances that 3 of the 4 of them can contribute on the MLB level isn't that high. That fact that it's only 4 that are in the level you mentioned can also be seen as discouraging when the IFA can make or break teams. Cleveland is on the rise because of it and Houston has crushed the IFA market. Maybe you count more than 4 like Romy or some I am missing. There is strength in numbers and the numbers will never add up when you field only 1 DSL team and showing disdain for minor league players and the whole system of development of giving them the best available tools to succeed is the Reinsdorfian way. It is not a nurturing environment to enable getting the best out of these young men when so many of them are like fish out of water when they come stateside.

I don't know about better results until some guys actually play with the Sox and play well. I think there's initial excitement about some guys recently that give us the impression that they are doing better but that dies down when these guys fizzle. Everyone liked the pitcher Norge Vera but he has an incredibly long journey ahead of him. But yes extremely shortsighted but when the bottom line rules every decision in order to increase profits for investors . Jr's shortsightedness is deliberate so you can't call it shortsighted. JR isn't a dummy. He's knows extra money in key areas can be more beneficial to winning but that's not his concern. Perhaps he thinks that he doesn't get enough credit for keeping the Sox in Chicago and all us fans should be kissing his ass instead of whining about how cheap he is. He's actually pretty lucky. He escapes a lot of criticism because the popular media can't say anything bad about him because they are afraid of him hurting their careers. No one would dare say on TV what we all know to be true when you do a historical deep dive on JR's practices. Hahn,KW, they can shuffle the deck chairs among minor league player coordinators, trainers, coaches, managers and they all get the brunt of blame year in and year out because, yes, in the short term some of them have been very incompetent but the over riding factor is JR creates incompetency when he expects people to do their jobs with one hand tied behind their backs.

You overlooked JR and the answer to why less of anything dealing with the Sox is always Reinsdorf. We have 2 recent examples of it right in front of our noses and yet we have some on the board still bringing up Wilder and preferring Leury over Andrus and being fine with Marisnick as the 4th OF and talking about sunk costs. The Sox one have 1 DSL team when the clear majority of MLB teams have 2. With a large IFA class you can't roster and play and develop that many guys. If you draft 20-25 guys a year instead of 10 that's an extra 10-15 guys. Over 5 years its an extra 50-75 guys that can become a superstar . And there are plenty of example of guys who signed for a pittance in the IFA market that have become stars in MLB. Reinsdorf always wants to sink as little as possible into developing minor league talent. That's just the way it is. On the 26 man roster he sets a hard cap of what they will spend with no regard to going the extra mile to insure the team is capable of handling key injuries. Winning isn't the priority . If it was they'd be investing more in the minors, player development and the 26 man roster. Duvall is a perfect example. He's 34 and we keep hearing excuses from water carriers that oh well Duvall went where he can play the most. BS.He's 34 and the opportunity to earn more guaranteed money is always the key incentive when you have people to support for many many more years of their lives . Even people who have made millions of dollars cannot afford to give up $2M extra when they may have grown accustomed to their big houses and living the life of a rich baseball player. When the well runs try before you turn 40 that extra money means so much more than being a starter. Contracts with incentives are all well and good but a team controls your playing time and your ability to reach those incentives as do injuries. The whole reason Andrus got DFA'd was because the A's didn't want him getting AB's to guarantee him more money. It's Reinsdorf, it's always been Reinsdorf ,so expect less not more. It's not Paddy it's Reinsdorf.

The latter.

And this is not talked about enough either. When you talk about commitment to player development and investing in the international market it all starts here. This has been and always will be about money. 1 less team = drafting less players = spending less money. Instead of a bunch of under $50K signings and getting lucky once in a while that some pan out you get 10 guys and hope you can nurture them into good players. That well hasn't exactly been overflowing for the Sox in their pitiful history of getting young international talent to blossom. This has always been about JR controlling the purse strings.

This looking for a starters role is sooo overplayed in arguments by fans. Just because he went to a team where he might start the season as a starter doesn't mean he also didnt go to the place that offered him the most money. Money talks and bullshit walks. A 34 year with a chance to make extra millions when he may have people to support besides himself for many many more years is what talks and I'm hearing a lot of BS. The facts are that the Sox don't care about going the extra mile and every extra dollar on the payroll matters when you can't suck it up for $10M guaranteed for such a vital role. They have Adam Engel types all over this team in too many important spots ! Just a lot of excuses being made for the Chicago Cheap Sox.

I think he would've played plenty here. Colas hit LHP very well in the minors and he would still get the majority of AB's against RHP. Duvall probably would hit more HR's off of LHP than Colas would plus it's natural to expect Colas to struggle at times even though I think he'll be a stud but we thought that about Eloy, Robert and Moncada too and all of them came with a lot more fanfare than Colas. There's been a question about Colas' defense and it's been hard to get a true read on it but I read where he had 11 assists last year. That should tell everyone a lot about the strength and accuracy of his arm . Duvall also could've played all 3 OF positions and has a strong arm at least equal to if not better than Colas'. Now any time Robert, Benintendi or Colas need time off who can play OF and hit like Duvall ? He probably would've been playing 3 full games a week and the top Pinch Hitter off the bench and even more if someone gets hurt which they always do or Colas struggles more than I expect him to. If Duvall craved full time work as a starter and that was his biggest motivation then I understand his decision but more guaranteed money plus more incentives could've made him change his mind along with perhaps the Sox having a better chance to make the playoffs than the Red Sox do especially if Duvall had played an integral role here. But water under the bridge now.

The only one missing from this list so far is the Catcher from Venezuela Angelo Hernandez and I didn't see a $ figure for him. The 7 listed comes to $2,300,060 subtracted from $5,284,0000 = $2,983,940 - whatever Hernandez signed for. So far those 8 guys only I've seen multiple teams on the list with 20+ signings including the Guardians. So far looks as though the Sox have signed the least amount of players. Some teams have 2 DSL teams is that correct ? So they can keep and play more guys. If you only have 1 team it's hard to make a lot of signings. How many teams have 2 DSL teams if I am right about that ?

We've had 3 years of Robert and Eloy together and not once did they even come close playing well at the same time or 130+ games. One year was the Covid season of 2020 even though they both played in most of the 60 games it was Robert's rookie year and he did great in the field but didn't play to his potential like he did in 2021, which incidentally was Eloy's worst year and they both missed significant time that season. You'd think after 3 years the Sox would take a quality CF/OF backup seriously. Training staffs can only do so much to prevent injuries. OFer's are diving and battling walls constantly and I doubt the training staff could've done much about Robert's weird dizzy spells last year. A little power from the bench from a backup OF who is likely to get a lot of PT would be really nice too. I have little doubt Colas and Benintendi will have nice seasons and that Eloy won't play the OF that much but counting on Robert to play a full season and other injuries in the OF is expecting too much.