Balta1701

I don't know where to share this.

Kenny Williams Jr.

Financially I think they’re in 90s Cubs mode. Anyone who cares one bit about the product on the field will be dumping their packages. The only people left are businesses, probably a few scalpers who have great spots, and people who do this every year and don’t want to stop. That group is probably pretty insensitive to price.

Andrew Vaughn, last 6 games of August: .227/.227/.409/.636. .222 BABIP. Andrew Vaughn, first 6 games of September: .348/.348/.652/1.000. .316 BABIP. He's coming around finally, it's a super long trend of...6 solid games! (By the way, his last walk was August 18. He has 2 walks since the start of August. 3 since the start of July. Yuck. I mean, wowza that's bad.).

Because that's been systematically our complaint the last 5 years, the White Sox use their computers too much and need more people who go with their guts.

At this point, unless I was willing to send Kopech down, yeah I'd try him in the bullpen next year too. If he gets off to a good start in the pen, that's a tradeable asset at the deadline and people would pay for that.

Well here's the problem. The White Sox's 46% save conversion rate is really quite bad, but if they saved 20 of those games, that would be EXCEPTIONAL. Right now, the top save percentage in MLB is the Red Sox, who have saved 40 of 53 for a 75% clip. If the White Sox actually saved 43 of 50 games, they would be converting saves at an 86% clip, vastly better than any other team in baseball. Last year, with Hendriks most of the year, they saved 48/71 - their bullpen outperformed a lot, and they converted at a 67% clip. You're not just talking about Hendriks there, you're talking about Hendricks being as good as he's ever been and also everyone in the bullpen being absolutely excellent.

I kinda wish I could believe the bolded, I'm pretty sure they stopped caring about that several years ago too.

Naw, he's just that unprepared. The best answer he has to anything is some version of "We'll figure it out in time" because he genuinely hasn't had time to work through these things, and in many ways he's not expected to, he's supposed to give appropriate deference to Reinsdorf making the decisions that he wants to make.

Naw, they've got a good amount of money to spend and have several decent prospects to trade. This roster is still awful, but they can get themselves up to a 65-70 win team on paper and that will be enough to convince some people that they've done a great job and are set up to compete in the Central (If people talked themselves into the 2023 white sox being competitive, they'll believe the same thing next year).

Try a Brewers game?

I'm trying to figure out whether Cease or Kopech has improved.

They’re in KC?

Dude, 2022, Robert. Wrist.

I'm more worried that they are determined to trade for Salvador Perez, and as a "Face of the Franchise" type guy the Royals will make the White Sox pay more in prospects than he's actually worth based on his contract and performance.

If you are having a hard time believing he was using, here's the spin rates. I could remove the X-Axis and you could literally pinpoint the exact day that the sticky stuff checks started. Cease and Lynn show similar drops, literally on the exact same series.

I mean, the biggest difference is that in the middle of 2021 his power changeup with the insane movement lost the insane movement. For a long time there, he was effectively successful as a fastball changeup pitcher because that changeup would break so hard it was unhittable. Once the sticky stuff ban was in place, that's the specific pitch he lost,. I still remember this one from the start of 2021, this changeup to finish the at bat was mind boggling. That was both his strikeout pitch and it was the one that made the high fastball effective.

3 fWAR pitcher this year so far so will probably finish over 3.5, 6 fWAR last year, going to average nearly 200 innings/year over a 3 year period since the pandemic, maybe his stuff has gotten worse this year and I haven't checked that? With how many teams need pitching, I can't imagine him going cheap unless something happens soon.

The one out of this that made me raise an eyebrow was Nola because he clearly is going to get a multi-year, 9 figure deal.

The big question is going to be how much long term damage they do while trying.

The fact that it was so weird is why putting him in the bullpen in 2021 was such a high risk move. He clearly benefited from building up innings in 2017 and 2018 as his control improved with extra work. Then, when we had the chance to get him more work in 2021, we declined. The possible downside of that was a guy who couldn’t find control, and that’s exactly what we have now.

I’m going to bet they spend more money replacing Zavala this offseason and get less production.