Balta1701

Injuries are up over 20% this year compared to last year.

Yesterday's game thread is closed, but this is worth putting somewhere to keep an eye on. Lance Lynn has now had 5 starts this season. There should be substantial concern about his arm strength and losing velocity, and if this team does reach a point of selling this will be a major issue for suitors. He is currently averaging 92.1 mph on his 4 seam fastball this month. The last time Lynn had a month where he had an average fastball that low was in April of 2017, his first month back from Tommy John surgery, which makes this a pretty obvious issue to note. In 2017 through 2019, his fastball did improve month to month during the season, but 2021-2022 it did not. In 2018 and 2019, his fastball also improved during April, with a velocity >1 mph better at the end of April than at the start - that has not been the case here in 2023, in fact his first start had his best average fastball and his last start was down from that. His average fastball sat at 94 mph when he was really good in 2020-2021, it was 92.9 when he struggled more in 2022 coming back from injury. He is thus down basically a full 2 mph on his fastball, from league average to well below average, over the past 2 years. The other major factor in his down performance this year has been his walk rate, which has skyrocketed. That may well improve, but so far over the first 5 starts there's no sign that his fastball is improving.

I'm happy to volunteer as a person who said that Tony Larussa was awful and as you asked yesterday the #1 reason the White Sox lost to the Astros in 2021. I can also try to track down my "Rick Hahn is the worst GM in baseball" series from 2018 if it helps. The only way that he was an excuse for Rick Hahn also being awful is that Hahn should have resigned when LaRussa was hired. Saying that LaRussa was blamed for 100% of the problem last year in a thread started last year called "Fire Rick Hahn" is patently absurd, but it's the only way you folks can come back and defend dear Tony since you can't come back and justify walking guys with two strikes or any of the other crap he did. You had the worst possible coach, a guy who should never have been hired, combined with a GM who is completely inadequate at his job and who should have been fired 6 different times in his career. It's not surprising how quickly this all came crashing down.

Kenny Williams would not have been fired by most teams for 2007 and probably not for 2009.

Strider gave up a hit in the 8th. Interestingly Strider was a 4th round pick in the abbreviated 2020 draft. He signed for slot. The White Sox that year decided to go for Crochet and Jared Kelley in the first two rounds, which used overslot bonuses. They had to go cheap in rounds 3-5 to pay for that; so they decided against a strategy that could have found a player like Strider.

There are problems with LA though. 1. Gavin Lux will be back. While he can play some 2b, and they're experts at moving people around, they also did want to move him to SS. 2. The Dodgers clearly made a decision this year to save money and to give experience to younger players. They may very well not want to move their younger players right now. 3. The Dodgers got themselves down to a point where they're just $14 million or so over the Tax line according to Spotrac. I'm not sure if they will be factoring anything like an insurance payout (they have multiple guys out for the season), or any adjustments due to Bauer, but if they were, they might have a shot at getting out of the multi-year repeater luxury tax penalties. That could be super huge before Ohtani hits FA. They seemed to be very particular in the level they spent to last offseason, so I'm wondering if they're able to count something that puts them under. They may very well not be adding any money this July.

“Hard to unwise(?) this stuff” doesn’t seem to fit with a guy like Benintendi coming in and dialing the ground balls up to 11 though. One alternative is that their new hitting coaches sold Hahn on the idea that ground balls would be even more valuable with the new rules and that sounded to him like the great idea he was already ready to hear.

So if the white Sox were trading for him, you’d think he’s worth both Montgomery and Colas? Ha.

Define decent. Assiming he’s mostly healthy after this injury to July, is Tim going to bring back a top 50 in the game prospect? Naw. Could he bring back a top 100 prospect or a guy who is close to being one, someone who would be a top 5 guy in the White Sox system? Maybe.

Their highest paid, 3rd highest paid, and 7th highest paid players are currently on the IL.

I think we definitely heard of a lot of people in that department being let go.

While I can’t prove this, I think there’s pretty good reason to think they dramatically cut their marketing budget over the last 2 years. I’ve gotten the impression of significant cuts to the ticket sales staff in particular. We’ve definitely heard that suggested here. The White Sox used to be over the top in recruiting new fans and took advantage of every opportunity they could to grow their fan base even if it was only one person, they would always take any good press they could get. I no longer get that impression. I don’t think this is Brooks being bad at anything, I think he is now trying to manage a staff that is too small and too cheap to do the job the staff wants to do and is assigned to do. So, for example, when Clevinger wants to use “Gold digger” to come out to, everyone in the marketing department is so overworked that there’s no one who has the time and focus to tell them how bad of an idea that is.

I’m going to join the crew of not complaining about then adding players to Charlotte, that’s normal and it’s good for them to have veterans and win ballgames. There’s nothing abnormal about that. It’s the idea that the White Sox are unusually weak or banged up that has bothered me for a couple years now because it’s never been true. It just seems like it because of the lack of depth. Guys like this are fine to help in the minors. That doesn’t excuse the big league mess.

Tampa Bay currently has three starting pitchers and three of their relievers on the IL, plus they lost the guy drafted right after Burger on top of that. The White Sox have 3 relievers, 2 starting position players, and one backup on the IL. That’s why both of these teams are struggling so badly and why they’re so evenly matched right now, no one could overcome these numbers of injuries.

You can say I was. The White Sox had a genuine issue with the 8th inning and LaRussa had no idea how to handle a bullpen. They were going to get out managed by everyone in a playoff series, the only way to have a chance was to have a bullpen good enough to be idiot proof. They definitely could have used 2 strong relievers at that point. My biggest mistake was failing to look beyond the first line of Kimbrel’s B-R page. He had a great ERA, but his BABIP and HR/FB rates were both career lows, so if you looked down the list at all you realized his first half was luck and he was going to give up a lot more homers and hits in the 2nd half. I was actually pissed at myself when I looked down that table in mid August while wondering what had happened. I do take some solace in the fact that a multi-millionaire GM didn’t look any more into his B-R page than I did.

Yes that’s right, Elvis Andrus is your lead off hitter. .217/.286/.261/.547.

IIRC Texas wanted a ton for him at that point, like Robert or something that was ridiculous.

“Hahn, Grifol retained for 2024.”

Since adding guys from the scrap heap to fill the holes on this roster and turning over the coaching staff has worked out so great, do it again with the same people.

There was zero reason to structure “youre not a music producer!”’s deal with a mutual option unless they counted that money as deferred onto their next years budget. Benintendi’s salary is $16.5 million in 2024 because they backloaded it. They couldn’t afford to pay $12 million to Clevinger, $15 million to Benintendi in 2023. While they can always backload things onto 2025 again, they will be dumpster diving for any positions they try to fill if they continue to think they are competing. It will be more of it than in 2023.

The big ones are the young guys, Benintendi (they are paying him $8 million this year so they already backloaded 1/2 of his 2023 contract) and Clevinger, where they used a mutual option to delay $4 million.

Lynn is a $18 million team option. So you have $30 million to spend, and you spent $18 million on Lynn alone. You have $2 million to spend on every other player you sign. Rick Hahn is always excellent at this type of work.

Next offseason, the White Sox will have to replace 3 starting pitchers, 2 relievers (one good), their starting catcher, and their bench, just to tread water. Thanks to backloading deals they might have only $20 or $30 million to spend on those spots. Do you trust Rick Hahn to have any success at solving that riddle?