Balta1701

You are correct I will not be able to get enough value back in the trades I have to make to fully rebuild this roster. It will take trades and additional drafting and development. That doesn’t change the right decision. Barring a miracle turnaround, they will need to clear out bad money and get what they can for players. In a lot of cases this will take eating some money. They will have to cut payroll next year, there is no reasonable path to getting better while doing that, so a reset is the only option. Lynn, Grandal, Kelly, someone might take them if the Sox eat most but not all of their remaining contract. Any savings you get is worth it. Moncada, Eloy, Graveman, Benintendi - if you have to take a loss on them and get nothing back, but you clear out a good portion of their remaining deal, do it. You remove the risk of having to pay their full deal from your roster. Anderson, Hendriks if he comes back, maybe Lopez, Cease - might not bring you back everything you want for them, but you can’t risk deciding to hold them and then having them get hurt or struggle. They will bring back things of variable value, do the best you can and get it done. It’s going to be unpleasant but cleaning up a mess always is. A large portion of next years payroll will basically be dead money. It still has to be done.

Challenge with that is Oakland is legitimately worse and their fan base is literally losing the whole ball club.

I know there won’t be a lot of people, but what are the chances of a “Fire Rick Hahn” chant this season?

He had to, they banned having that stuff on your hand.

It’s going to be redundant but what exactly is there for us to talk about that isn’t redundant? A shitshow that a whole bunch of us saw coming for almost there exactly correct reasons can only provoke so many statements.

I see no evidence of this offensively. They are more aggressive than last year. They are taking fewer walks than last year. They swing out of the zone more than last year. Their launch angle is lower than last year. Nothing is trending better.

Last years White Sox were bad. They were held together by Hendriks, Cease, and miracles of finding Cueto and Andrus and having them be way better than one could ever have believed. This years’ White Sox were clearly worse coming into the year, some people just didn’t want to see that. Without the miracles, a worse roster is performing worse.

One important point that should have been understood this offseason - this team is way worse than the 2022 White Sox finished on paper, unless you had lots of guys suddenly break out. Guys may not have contributed at the same level this year, but they lost Cueto, Abreu, and Harrison to free agency, they traded McGuire, they got unbelievably lucky contributions from Zavala and Andrus in terms of home run rates, and they had an excellent record in 1 run games, which I will even in part credit to effective bullpen usage by the manager if you want. If you count up WAR, the "Stuff that they will struggle to replace" was well over 10 wins! By pythagorean record, they were a 3rd place team last year, they should have finished about 5 games under .500, and that was with all that ridiculous stuff. Feel free to credit the manager for that. This team needed to replace all those guys, and the only people brought in from outside were Clevinger and Benintendi. All the rest of the ground had to be made up internally. This roster is missing all those pieces, and losing Hendriks with no replacement is the icing on the cake when you can argue he was the 3rd most important player on the White Sox last year. If you didn't get guys breaking out, there was a clear and easy path to a 70 win team or worse just by the roster.

Last year I gave up. In many ways the bullpen use was better than in 2021, but when Leury was batting 3rd in the middle of April there was no point. I still don't know what the Hell was with that first 8 game losing streak in April. Sure Leury being put at the top of the order contributed, but that didn't make Anderson and Abreu and the rest of the infield seemingly forget how to field for a week, and that was at the same time as they played the Leury game. Without knowing what the Hell happened there, I just shrugged and said blah, this is a mess. The other big one last year was the "2 strike walks" that were just so blatant. I can still probably track down the playoff ones. That's seared into the brain.

Out of the big league roster, here's the guys who probably shouldn't be traded and why. Robert: There's no strong reason to believe that any team will give up the kind of value he would return if he did break out, and there's no pressing financial reason to move him any time soon. A true breakout season would make him worth a fortune, and it costs only $20 million or so to keep him for this year and next year. Sosa, Colas, Romy Gonzalez: All are pre-arbitration. Each of them could be allowed several years to see if they turn into an actual solid big leaguer. None of them have performed well enough that they would have substantial trade value right now, and there's no financial reason to trade them. Zavala, Perez: Same thing, the White Sox have a pair of young catchers, no strong motivation to move them either financially or for a return. Vaughn: is still pre-arbitration this year. Has not yet broken out with the bat to the point you'd hope he would. No strong reason to move him for another year. Burger: Limited big league experience, but definitely hits the ball hard. Could have potential to develop into a valuable DH, unlikely to be a good fielder. Multiple pre-arb years remaining, so again, no reason for the White Sox to move this player. Gavin Sheets: Ugh, maybe, he has a minor league option remaining for now so I guess I'm not pushing to get rid of him, but that does give us 2 1b and a DH in Burger. Eventually he seems like a guy who will be released after running out of options, but I guess there's no harm in holding onto that. Kopech: On pace to be paid about $4-5 million next year. Has the potential to be worth more than that, this is a small expense to pay to hold onto a player with breakout potential for 1 more year. I don't know when, but at some point we have to start mentioning bullpen for him again. Jimmy Lambert: Sure, why not. Someone does have to pitch and he's not expensive, I doubt anyone gives up anything of value for him at least this year. Gregory Santos: Sure why not, plenty of pre-arbitration time for him. Maybe if he has an incredible next 3 months, someone will overpay for him in July, but it seems much more likely that you'd want to hold him until at least next July.

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.