Balta1701

So you were mocked for saying that Seby Zavala was a solid White Sox success when...they designated Seby Zavala for Assignment mid-season? That...seems like something you should be roundly mocked for as the White Sox seem to have laughed at you.

Let's play it out. What happens if Andrew Vaughn turns around his career and has a solid season. He's defensively limited, his base running is always going to be bad, even if he's putting up much stronger offensive numbers, Pete Alonso last year was a 2 fWAR first baseman bad on both of those categories. If Vaughn puts up a 1.3 fWAR first half, does he bring you a big strong return in a trade? That takes someone willing to pay for a slight 1b upgrade, which...eh? Next offseason, you have Naylor and Guerrero hitting free agency from that position in addition to anyone who signs a 1 year deal this year, so is there going to be a huge trade market for a guy who put up 0 WAR through 4 seasons of his career then had a peak 2 WAR season, who is then going to get paid $9 million or so on a 1 year deal and probably won't bring back a draft pick since you won't give him a QO? If he turns into a 2 WAR 1b for each of the next 2 years, the White Sox keep him and spend $15 million or so on him. Is that a good use of $15 million? Pushes them into competition for a playoff spot in 2025? 2026? If not, then he's a free agent, congratulations you've developed him into a tolerable 1b now he's going to go get $15 million a year on the FA market that the White sox probably won't pay. How is this a use of resources likely to make the White Sox better long term? Where is the value to them that they get for this money? Even potential value?

They all fit with it, but the tale of Omar Narvaez coming up with the White Sox, showing no progress defensively, going elsewhere, those teams saying "We can work with this guy" after the White Sox dumped him unceremoniously, and him turning into a good catcher within 2 or 3 years is pretty much the definition of it.

Tyler Flowers became an elite framer once he left the White Sox and went to an organization that cared about it. Kevan Smith wasn't a very good framer, and then was released by the White Sox in Hahn's 2018 purge of the roster's catchers. Seby Zavala was in fact a good framer, and it kept him as a reasonable backup catcher option. The White Sox, of course, non-tendered him midseason.

From a part time catcher, one hot streak is fine by me. What I’ve noticed from his numbers defensively is: 1. He has real promise controlling the running game, with elite pop time and above average accuracy so far. 2. There are two weaknesses in his game defensively. He’s poor at blocking the plate and awful at framing. 3. However, we have seen people on other teams get better at some of those with work, particularly framing. This hasn’t happened with White Sox young catchers though because they didn’t think of such things in the 1990s and that means it’s inappropriate to coach players on it. Is the new regime more open to working with him on improving pitch framing?

As the person who always wants guys to get more time in the minors…barring a terrible spring go ahead and bring Quero up. He checked every box I could have asked for last year as an outside viewer, and no one obviously complained about the stuff that isn’t in the stats.

Because the idea that someone could look at his 2024 and say “this went totally fine and as expected and raised zero concerns with me because it’s how I thought the season would go” is simply not believable.

If you can’t understand at least some disappointment in Montgomery after the season he just had, you’re being deliberately naive. He may well grab the starting SS spot next year, but we should not Rick Hahn this position and hand it to him until he proves he’s ready for it.

And by this logic his .710 OPS in 2024 at AAA says he should have been in MLB last year? I wonder how people would be talking about him if he played 400 PAs and put up like a sub .600 OPS and burned a year of control already.

If Colson Montgomery gets off to an incredible April, comes up mid-May, and wins Rookie of the Year, I promise to not be mad about his excellent performance. All that will mean is...if they want to keep him around for his career, Jerry Reinsdorf would have to pay a fair price for a guy his organization had developed in a few years. I will have zero sympathy for Reinsdorf crying that he's unable to pay a guy who has apparently come up and started winning awards contributing to his roster, in this setup where everything works that well.

The 2017 list appears to have been released on December 8, 2016. The trade to Boston appears to have been announced on December 6, 2016. So, while it is correct that he was not the number 16 prospect on the MLB.com list on the day of the trade, he was #16 two days later.

This really isn't quite accurate, or at the least its missing important context. He was #67 on the 2016 offseason list, but then he pitched through the 2016 season and was traded after that season. On the list published in the 2016-2017 offseason, the offseason when he was traded, he was ranked #16 overall, one slot ahead of Rafael Devers. The list probably came out after the trade, but he threw 0 pitches in-between the trade and that list coming out. He was ranked "number 16" that offseason, and had the list come out before the trade, he would have been #16 on the MLB.com list, unless being traded to the White Sox changed his ranking somehow?

When they have a clearly ranked #1 system and it collapses like this...yeah. Figuring out how to get through to a guy who is his "own worst enemy" is part of that coaching thing.

Good thing we don't have the same people in charge of the minor leagues now.

One of those "I will go to my grave believing this" things about the White Sox on my list is that the White Sox completely demolished Kopech when they put him in the bullpen in 2021. He hadn't pitched since 2018, literally closing in on 3 years, and they put him in a role where he couldn't work on his control and he couldn't' work on his secondary stuff. His lack of control and lack of confidence in throwing his secondary stuff were basically his two biggest downfall issues. In 2018, we saw that he struggled with his control early in AAA, but he found a groove around June once he had thrown enough innings, but they learned nothing from that. Gotta have the relievers.

They were 100% clear that they held him down to limit his innings. They even got him on board with this right at the start of his career. Note the contrast between "open communication with your player about your plans for them" and "what do you mean the player says he doesn't want to pitch in the postseason I thought we had a good working relationship?". https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/41443457/paul-skenes-says-pirates-made-right-call-bringing-slowly

Jackson Merrill's .782 OPS was lower than Colson Montgomery's .710 OPS?

No, people aren't writing off Jackson Holliday, but there is legitimate concern over why he struggled so much in the big leagues. His 2024 performance was absolutely a reason to use one of his 3 option years in 2025. If he is actually good enough to earn a call-up in 2025 and sticks as a big league starter, then it shouldn't matter that you've burned an option because he will never go back down. If he comes up and stinks, by the time he's out of options at the end of 2027, you won't be crazy about giving him another shot anyway. Calling a guy up who isn’t succeeding at Charlotte or BHam because having to fix something or make a decision about the big league roster is tough and no one wants to do things that are challenging - welcome to Rick Hahn s%*#.

No. Baseball Savant is struggling to load right now so I can't copy graphs, but while his velocity stayed high, he was genuinely hit harder in the 2nd half. Just as an example, total exit velocity month by month: April: 87.6 May: 86.1 June: 88.8 July: 86.7 August: 91.0 September: 89.7 Expected wOBA: April: .252 May: .218 June: .257 July: .265 August: .377 September: .261 All of the months other than August that expected wOBA would be a performance in the top 10% of big league pitchers. His drop-off in August was real, not just luck as that would be factored out by xwOBA, as was the mostly-recovery in September.

I get that athletes are typically arrogant, but I definitely prefer honesty when I get it from management and I think I'd prefer it here too. "I know what I can do and I showed it off in the AFL. I understand my performance this year wasn't where I wanted it to be, so it's my job starting in March to come in ready and show the team the kind of player I can be. They'll make decisions like that, about when I come up and stuff like that, but I'm going to come in ready to dominate next year."

His career WaR right now is in the mid 50s, which is pretty low for a HoF starter. I wouldn’t call this open and shut if his career ended now.

Calling guys up based on artificial timetables and not because they earned it was a defining move of Rick Hahn’s GM career.

I did not expect to learn one of these details. https://bsky.app/profile/chgo-whitesox.bsky.social/post/3lbfpp2s3ws2x

I think that’s right, but I think we also didn’t hear those reports until like 9 months after it happened.

In 2022, both Moncada and Grandal were simply terrible. Moncada would have an occasional 5 hit day (really), and then the a week later he'd be back to 2 for his last 20 or something like that. It took until December until there was a report of "oh yeah both of them had major back injuries that they were playing through" report for us to know what was going on. Grandal even went on the IL for something like a Knee injury, but never did anything about the major back injury. That's for 2 big leaguers, we didn't learn the entire season why they were so bad. For a guy in Charlotte? Who is going to bother reporting that? Are any of the insiders these days going to leak something negative?