Jake

One thing's for sure, the best way to truly show your ass as a GM is to go into buyer mode

Frazier/Kahnle/Robertson trade as worst in Sox history??? The trade was by no means good, seeing as the Sox netted zero value out of it. But Kahnle accumulated 1.7 WAR/>4.00 ERA in 110ish innings before reaching free agency after the deal. Frazier was playing just okay on an expiring deal. Robo pitched well before reaching free agency but was on a market value deal, thus making it hard to get any surplus trade value out of him. There was just not much downside risk for the Sox in that trade because of the positions of the players they traded and their contract situations. Semien, Bassitt, and Phegley for Samardzija is SO MUCH worse it's not even funny, and I haven't even brought the Tatis situation into play yet since at least the Sox can say that nobody thought Tatis was going to be that good back then.

For the record, I am in agreement that it seems like STL does bafflingly well in this deal which suggests to me the Sox may have left something on the table. That said, it is not striking me as a trade that we will be looking back years from now as shockingly bad. Partly because the only real downside for the Sox is opportunity cost which we can never never truly quantify, but also just that my assessment is there's some chance the Sox clearly end up "winning" it by some measure despite the fact it looks like they could have gotten more.

I can't filter by PCL/IL, but of all AAA hitters who have seen as many pitches as him, he's tied for 8th (with Addison Barger) out of 292 qualified players. Below are those who have a higher xwOBA than him (Dingler is at .403, Vargas at .382).

The lesson I've learned of the past 6 or so years of White Sox baseball is that maybe you can't just go out and easily sign 2 WAR players on the cheap. And that's not 100% a Hahn/Reinsdorf/etc. criticism, FWIW...the guys reaching free agency as of late really stink with a few exceptions

For the Dodgers, I think they are just seeing him as likely far superior to their in-house alternatives at multiple positions where they're dealing with injuries — and they have good reason to be thinking a lot about the short term right now.

Well the Statcast data looks similar to the back of the baseball card, which seems to show in the past he didn't hit well enough. I guess I don't see anything so conclusive about the future. Nothing jumping out that screams "fatal flaw" to me at least with the bat. Good contact tool, seems to have good at bats, keeps the ball off the ground. Just not doing enough damage. No, he's probably not someone with a perennial all-star ceiling but the Sox also need guys who are just decent. If Vargas averages 2 WAR per season until he reaches free agency that is an awesome outcome IMO. And that's not just grading on a curve for the Sox, that's any team. Winners are made out of assembling a critical mass of solid players. And by the way, the guy we traded is a 31 year old with 4.1 career WAR and a 3.77 xERA in his breakout season...which might have informed the thinking of competing GMs.

Oh boy, let me see this Statcast data that shows Vargas will be unable to hit in the future. So far all I see is Statcast data showing he's gotten basically exactly what he's deserved so far in MLB (which, to be fair, is not much) and Statcast data showing he was almost the best hitter in all of AAA.

Presumably the Sox are coming out way ahead in terms of money spent though, so if they spent a half mill to drop 10 mill in salary, they still saved money (this is not an endorsement of making salary-shedding deals, just doing some accounting)

I'd happily trade Oscar Colas for Vargas too, seeing as at no time would the Dodgers have dreamed of considering such a deal

Easy enough to agree that Vargas doesn't have a ton of upside, which makes it easier for a team like the Dodgers to trade him rather than continue playing him out of position in hopes that he realizes his potential as "solid major leaguer." The Sox, on the other hand, are in a situation in which they need to gather as many "solid major leaguer" guys as possible and it's worth it to let a guy play in hopes of realizing that kind of potential. And the total value over the next 5ish years of a decent MLB player is pretty meaningful, if he can manage it. And the downside for the Sox is nothing besides the unlikely hypothetical that Erick Fedde could have landed you a superstar instead. As far as Sosa is concerned, I don't think he's shown as much with the bat as Vargas but I also think it's probably foolish to give up on him too. I have been a little concerned about his attitude/mental approach but it's hard to read those things at distance.

I'd have been happy to get anything for those guys, honestly, and would have assumed it would have been more along the lines of a too-old, mediocre-results A-ball pitcher or hard throwing but young A-ball reliever.

This is all adjusted for in the metric! Plus, half the players he's compared to are in the same PCL.

FWIW, Vargas's AAA xWOBA this season is .382 (note that AAA xwOBA are almost always lower than the actual wOBA). No Sox AAA player with as many at bats has had a season above .345 since tracking began in 2022 (and that player is 2024 Rafael Ortega...). Only 7 AAA players in 2024 have a higher xwOBA than Vargas this year and among that group is Kyle Manzardo and James Wood. The kid hits AAA pitching no matter how you want to spin it.

Well we don't have to denigrate his minor league numbers just because he was replacement level in the majors. His league-adjusted AAA stats have been fantastic. I've been around long enough to know that this is no promise of MLB production, but his sub-MLB track record is what it is: very strong.

Well Pham is the exception to the "don't move if you don't win the deal" but the point is well-taken that there was no requirement to move Fedde although I can sympathize with feeling like you want to get him out of here before he goes back to pitching like Erick Fedde.

Incorrect, it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 450 plate appearances. And about .650 OPS

Lot of negativity on Miguel Vargas for a 24 year old with less than a year of MLB experience, not-that-horrible production in MLB, and fantastic minor league production

I don't think it's fair to say Vargas is much like Getz at all. Getz was a glove-first, **extremely low-power** hitter who didn't draw many walks or strike out much and was a decent runner. Vargas isn't a home run hitter but has put up above average power numbers everywhere he's been, draws a lot of walks, and is held back by his glove more than anything else.

Somehow, every time I check Colson Montgomery's stats, he's just stuck at 92 wRC+. Very hard season to interpret for him. Not a disaster, but he's really treading water.

Honestly this article gives me the impression that Jerry is funding TLR's travel and expenses while giving the possibly mistaken impression that he is occasionally listened to when he shares his views. I think they are just letting an old man hang around the ballpark because that's what he loves to do

I think Colas should focus on getting his OPS above .800 in AAA before we melt down about which level he's assigned to.

Eloy has had some bad batted ball luck this season so I don't think he's played as bad as it looks in the box score. He's a MLB-quality hitter, this Sox team needs him around from the standpoint of someone who wants the team to not be the worst in franchise history.

I would say it still doesn't make much sense that we traded Burger. And the main way it could have made sense was if we realized we were getting a steal, which we clearly weren't. I hope Eder turns out okay, but it looks like his stuff immediately regressed and he started flirting with the yips. We're slicing and dicing his in-season splits in May just to get his ERA under 5.

I'm finding the evidence of a "surge" in TJS to be mixed. Cherry-picked example from a month ago: Although in the longer term, obviously there are more Tommy Johns than, say, 15 years ago. I still can't help but wonder how much of this is related to more players getting the surgery rather than retire and how much is that, generally, we're coddling injury-prone pitchers all the way to the majors. "Coddling" sounds pejorative but I really mean it as a description — are we protecting guys so much that rather than flame out as a 16 year old, they make it to pro ball before the inevitable strikes? I don't know.