Balta1701

I 100% believe that if Tony LaRussa was medically capable of managing the White Sox he would be managing the White Sox right now, and I also believe they'd be a couple games worse than they are right now because his choices go beyond baffling to the point of "doing stupid things because I have to prove I'm smarter than everyone else". What exactly knocked him out last year, something internal or a continued problem with substances, I don't know, but he'd be here right now if it wasn't for that.

Here is a plot this year of K/9 on the X axis and BABIP on the Y-Axis. If your statement was true, then there should be a negative correlation here. There is not, these two properties are effectively uncorrelated (R2 = 0.0085 for a linear fit). However, the White Sox's .263 BABIP for the last 2 months - that would very much stand out as it is lower than any other value on that plot. The story is very much clear, the White Sox's pitching struggled for the first month, because they had generally bad luck. They have been above average for the following 2 months, because they were particularly lucky. It has balanced out them being a somewhat below average staff overall with average luck, because they are a somewhat below average staff overall.

Your three choices are: 1. Rick Hahn leads a rebuild. 2. Rick Han leads a retooling. 3. You find another team/another sport to cheer for. These are the orders of leader Reindsorf. No other options are acceptable.

Do you want Hahn trying to retool a 4th place roster in the offseason with limited resources to spend? As much grief as he has gotten for the last couple years, nothing he has done has been as damaging as his retooling attempts.

Since May 1, they have a 3.63 ERA which is the 4th best in baseball over that stretch. However, this is driven by the fact that their .263 BABIP over that stretch is the best in baseball. Given that their defense is bad and their ground ball rates are low, this should be read as an unsustainable number. Their strand rate is also pretty high - this is simply a lucky stretch for them. It probably balances out their bad April, but it also won’t last the whole season. Their FIP numbers for this stretch alone are in the middle of the league. They have been lucky since May 1. They were somewhat unlucky before that. Overall they’re still not very good.

The hitting coach has been here 3 months. Yes things are clearly worse under this staff, but who hired these hitting coaches?

Kris Bryant has 5 years and $131 million remaining on his deal - after this season. Youd be taking on $140 million if you traded for him at the deadline. Moncada and Eloy have about $42 million remaining after August 1. I am too lazy to look up Palmquist but I struggle to think he’s worth $100 million.

Didn’t they win a game 2 weeks ago on a wild pitch that bounced off the umpire? Kinda seems like winning games on wild pitches is a 50/50 strategy.

This is a real good bullpen? Their ERA is 24th in baseball. They’re probably average if Hendriks were here?

Don’t worry, we won’t extend our CF.

Yes, 28th baseball. But, this pitching staff isn’t good either. They’re bad, just not awful. Picking windows where they are all the way up to tolerable and saying “if they could avoid the losing streaks” ignores how unavoidable those losing streaks are with a roster this weak and with this little depth. Last years team was 16 over if it wasn’t for the two 8 game losing streaks!

The White Sox are 23rd in MLB in pitching fWAR.

They have addressed it. Their coaches realized their guys weren't swinging aggressively enough, so they had them swing more aggressively. It took work to get past the Royals to lead the league in this.

But this does show you how “he didn’t play baseball and wasn’t a scout” isn’t the biggest problem with Hahn.

I would agree with this. If there’s one thing we’ve consistently said about this franchise, it is no longer running very well. You have strikes outdoors by the food workers, massive turnover in the ticket sales staff, the marketing staff can’t even figure out that having Clevinger come out to the song “gold digger” is a bad idea, they signed Clevinger with an insufficient background check, they had a completely unnecessary contract fight with their main play by play broadcaster and are set up to run him out of town, they tried to cover up a coach’s DUI, there’s plenty more. None of these affect the team on the field directly but they have all fed into the dissatisfaction, and anger coming at the franchise.

Honestly, I’m completely ok with this. If you wanted to do this the right way, saving every cent possible now is important. If you can clear out Anderson and Eloys contracts now, do so. Holding onto them runs the risk that you will be stuck paying for next year when they’re hurt or struggling worse, and I don’t really care if they’re better next year because this team isn’t good enough for one or two people improving to do anything other than offset the things they lost to FA.

Last year the Cardinals acquired Quintana. He was super cheap financially and on a one year deal. It cost them a reliever (Oviedo) and their number 10 prospect, who would probably be number 5 in our system. The Yankees gave up their number 5, Number 10, number 20, and number 21 prospects for Montas, but he had two years of control remaining. The first is probably a closer comp for Giolito.

They are a bottom 3 team in the AL right now. They are a bottom 5 system in MLB and they have a bunch of salary on the books next year already, very little to spend. They have zero path to being better the next several years. They can bury their heads in the sand and insist that things will be better, but that will just extend the pain.

To be fair, those two were also awful. Alberto was one of the worst white Sox players this year.

Bottom of the season so far was 14 games under .500. We’re back to 13 games under. Exactly back to April 30, day after the losing streak ended.

They fundamentally believe that taking too many pitches is a mistake. This has been a consistent theme since Rick Hahn started hiring hitting coaches. You have to attach pitchers aggressively, that’s their goal.

Well someone has to make a game thread because something interesting is happening. Tim Anderson is now at 2b, presumably to clear playing time for their long-term solution at SS, Elvis Andrus.

No one is disagreeing with this and some of us were warning of this all the way back to 2018, when the minor league system had a really bad year. That doesn't mean the system wasn't super strong in 2017-2018 after the trades. They worked! They set us up well, they just failed in all the steps around it.

Haven't we seen plenty of baseball lifers struggle at the GM role, and guys who didn't have any experience with playing or scouting baseball have success? Andrew Friedman comes to mind as his wikipedia page suggests that he only played a little baseball in college and then went on to work for BearStearns once he graduated. Being able to scout players yourself is only one part of the job. Understanding making deals, understanding how to surround yourself with good people, managing risk, understanding your financial situation, managing outreach and marketing, these are all tasks that don't necessarily require you to be able to personally scout baseball players. Many of these are business tasks and management tasks.