Balta1701

His last HR was June 16. He has 1 home run over the last 2 months. For any other franchise I would say that the org should be unhappy with Colas, his approach at the plate is terrible. But it’s also the approach the White Sox seem to want.

Eloy has a sub .800 OPS. He has a poor, white Sox style approach at the plate, hitting tons of ground balls and swinging wildly outside the zone. This performance is absolutely a problem. It’s not good at all. Atlanta’s backup catcher is outperforming this. We suck because Eloy is not a good DH and he’s a terrible OF. For some reason there is a community of people who accuse anyone of hating Eloy if they don’t imagine that he’s putting up the same numbers that they fantasize he’s putting up. People who say they wouldnt trade him for a top prospect because he might hit 40 homers (he won’t) or who compare him to Frank Thomas. Am I hating on Eloy because I don’t respect it and am angered when people compare him to one of the best hitters I’ve ever seen? Or because I’ve watched baseball and a slow guy grounding into double plays and not doing enough to offset it counts to me as a bad player? Fine, I’ll take that. Call me names and cheer for your 67 win team all you want.

Guys…guys…someone we can convert into middle relief to help our 2024 bullpen is the obvious answer.

if they wanted to make a mechanical change to help with that, it would have cost them precious middle relief innings while he worked on it.

You mean the kind of thing you try to get better at in the minor leagues while also building up innings?

Well first of all Lopez is a free agent so even joking about him having an important role change for next year confuses me when he wasn’t listed as a guy to be extended.

Huh?

Your so-called superstar players/superstar upsides have .776 and .738 OPS numbers this year and both have well over 1000 career plate appearances. The Atlanta Braves appear to be performing at Eloy's level or better with 8 of their 9 regular starters and their backup catcher.

That would be 30-35 the rest of the way?

Even if you went for it, it’s easier said than done. Only about 2 teams actually have the talent to afford Robert with the heats of control he has, and it’s entirely possible they won’t pay the price we would want. They wouldn’t wind up with a top flight system if they had to take less to move Robert, and it takes two to tango.

Meanwhile the hitting coaches: ”you took a pitch that means you owe me 40 sit-ups”

This is correct, because of Robert. If he traded everyone other than Robert I’m guessing around number 15?

That’s very short sighted and you should look at the full window of performance.

If we are being honest, a “tied for 4th in the AL/5th by tiebreakers and a “3rd place in the AL” finish, with the latter helped by a very weak rest of the AL Central…really not that impressive for the amount of losing involved.

I'm totally game with recognizing that Rick Hahn has had 11 seasons and a record well below .500 and he's the only GM who has lasted more than 10 years in all of MLB without winning a World Series and firing him based on all that. Not just firing him from his job I should add, also firing him by catapult. The performance window is super long and very clear.

What's actually ironic is that Eloy Jiménez has had 9 runners advance on him out of 21 chances. This totals...43%.

Hendriks also has a long term elbow injury. The inflammation he’s has the last two years is probably related to this. Now some might have questioned whether it was a good idea to bring a guy with a long term elbow injury back from cancer treatment with about a month of rehab and only 5 innings of minor league work and that the player was almost guaranteed to get hurt again after someone decided things like that, but the White Sox know that is the true path to success. You don’t hold a GM job for 11 years unless you’re making good decisions like this.

If we are thinking long term, this is an opportunity to take advantage of. The White Sox desperately need talent, but they have open big league spots. Clear some of the awful money on the payroll this year, as much as you can. Sign 4 or 5 pitchers. A couple $5 million for 1 year swingmen, a couple $10 million 1 year starters. Some of them will be bad or hurt, but hopefully some of them will be tradeable at the deadline next year. They won’t bring back top 100 players with 2 months of control, but they will bring back useful pieces. Do this 2 or 3 years in a row, and combined with trading valuable guys like Cease and improved drafting, now you have a roster that is actually in good shape.

Like I said, maybe they could try just acting like professionals themselves and see what happens. It would definitely be new for this franchise.

Can you still option a guy who has already had an arbitration contract?

That’s ok. Everyone can already see it. That way would be a subtle but competent call out of his players and his staff, acknowledging that they haven’t done their best and there are things they could do to be better and smarter.

I just realized it’s your thread’s one year birthday next week.

And being stuck in the bullpen when he desperately needed to get innings in a minor league rotation. Don’t let management off the hook for this. When you take a guy who hasn’t thrown a pitch in 2.5 years and who needed innings to build up his control pre injury, and you throw him 60 innings in the bullpen; injury and control struggles was the likely result. But of course, Rick got 4 months of middle relief.