Balta1701

Let me look up the Braves for you. Spencer Strider - made the team out of Spring Training. Was in a swingman role. His first start was on May 30. This kept his innings reasonable and gave him time to work into the role. Michael Harris Jr - made his debut on May 28. Grissom - called up on August 10. All 3 of these guys were given time during the year to work into their roles.

I think this conversation is coming up right now in large part because the insurance options and backup plans available are dwindling. I don't think anyone out there thought it was a grand idea for the White Sox to sign Nimmo and Benentendi while cutting payroll elsewhere to fit them in. However, if I play this out - Robert regularly has been injured the last 2 years. It would absolutely, 100% make sense to be proactive about resting him early in the year. You should absolutely, 100% expect that he will have a small muscle pull somewhere, and you should be proactive about putting him on the IL when that happens. On top of that, given that Colas is a rookie who isn't all that experienced at baseball in the US, who did move quickly, and who has never played more than 117 games in a season, could there be some serious benefit to giving him extra days off to stay fresh and extra days off to stay in the dugout and receive coaching and practice? Throwing in at least 20 offdays for Benintendi, haven't I just set up need for a guy who can competently play at least 100 games, including some time at CF? There are only a handful of options remaining who can do that. There are not competent options for this in the White Sox's organization right now, their backups are Reyes/Hamilton/a big boost for Cespedes. This is a point of discussion right now because there are now only a few competent options left and the White Sox haven't gotten one. It should continue being discussed until we see an actual fix.

How many of them were in their important role on opening day, rather than earning it during the season?

While I still cannot guess what the White Sox's payroll limit is, I continue to think it's worth pointing out that $5-$6 million for 1 more player puts them pretty much right onto last year's payroll. At some point, there may be an additional reason why they're not getting these done - all of Duvall, Segura, an extra catcher, and an extra swingman pitcher might make sense for this roster, but they may not be able to afford it.

It is entirely possible that this happens. But what team is going to give you a useful contributor and take on $9 million in salary because they are so certain that it will? Literally none. As with Kimbrel last year, you could take a bad contract back if you could find one, but no team is giving you a valuable big league level guy with several years of affordable control for a guy who is effectively worthless.

Yes, I would expect a normal shortstop to fall off a little if they didn’t practice shortstop every day. This is why true gold glove shortstops pretty often stay at shortstop for the first part of their careers and only become utility guys later when they’re bats aren’t good enough or they lose a step at SS, because strong defense there is really useful. No one is asking a guy like Leury to be a gold glove shortstop, you’re asking him to not be so bad that he costs you every game he plays. For Anderson in particular- hell I have no idea what went on with him at SS last year, there were weeks when it looked like he’d never played the position before.

Of course not. Leury Garcia has a career .644 OPS. Luis Robert has a career .808 OPS. Your utility guy needs to be "good enough that he doesn't cost you the game".

I'd be only half surprised if they brought in someone like Andrus or Harrison, but either of them seem a notable downgrade and less likely to be successful rotation players.

It would be difficult for me, is that what you're going with here? I think there are a whole lot of players who could do that, but they're good enough at their current positions that you don't want them to. Could Tim Anderson do that? Probably. If he had a couple months to work on outfield, could he be at least as good as Pollock in the OF? Probably. He doesn't have the frame for 1b or for catcher, but anywhere else? Sure. With enough practice, could Robert play everywhere other than C and maybe SS? Heck, there's a decent chance that this time next year I'll be saying that Robert has to be moved out of CF. With most guys who have the physical tools to do this, you want them working specifically on one position to try to be excellent at one position rather than good at several. There are probably about as many guys who are truly elite at being utility guys as there are who are truly elite at other positions.

Doesn't the White Sox/Bulls ownership group own a large share of NBC Sports Chicago already?

If you brought in a "Segura" right now, your bench on opening day is probably something like Seby, Romy, Leury, and Hamilton/Reyes, with Sosa starting in AAA (or swap Sosa and Romy depending on who has a good spring training). Out of Segura, Moncada, and Anderson, you probably plan on 0 of them getting 600 plate appearances, hell there's a good chance one of them is hurt before the team breaks camp. Leury hasn't exactly been the paragon of health either, last year he is another guy who probably should have gotten an IL stint to try to heal up. If Sosa was putting up a .850 OPS at Charlotte for the first few weeks and we were handling this well, it wouldn't be long before he was up either to fill in for an injury or because someone was struggling. Compared to last year, if people are struggling with the bat and dealing with a minor nagging injury, it would make way more sense to put them on the IL for 2 weeks to let them rest and do some strength training rather than playing them every day and hoping they can play through it. Having a guy who was as bad as Leury on the roster isn't ideal, but at least there's several backup plans - hopefully one of them would work well enough.

I don't care if he's blocked..."giving away a guy with 4 years of team control remaining for a $9 million dollar reliever with only a limited amount of control remaining when your team is closing in on the end of a rebuilding process but not likely to compete for your division next year" is something that only Rick Hahn would do.

1. Note that you said yourself that the Sox needed a bench piece here as a backup plan. They have poor backup plans at basically every spot in their org right now - Infield, Outfield, Starting pitching. When people are looking at guys like Segura, they are looking for backup plans and rotation players. Even if you acquired a guy like that, there are almost certainly several hundred ABs for a guy like Sosa. 2. You have to admit this isn’t a long track record. He has 1 solid season at AA and above. That is absolutely moving him fast. He could have success doing so, but I couldn’t find myself outraged at all if someone said they wanted him to at least spend a couple more months at AAA before coming up. 247 decent AAA plate appearances is a solid start but you can’t tell me that there’s no possible benefit to him having more time there. 3. There’s little leeway here. This is a team that struggled offensively and defensively last year and lost its best offensive producer to FA. On defense, his spot was held last year by a guy who was pretty good defensively, which gave him some value even if his offense wasn’t good. None of what you have shown me establishes that this guy is going to immediately be an offensive force in the big leagues. If he isn’t, there’s little margin for error, production from 2b has already been assumed by people expecting this team to be above .500. If he is a really good hitter 2 years from now, that doesn’t help a team that is basically all in for this year.

Please give me something of value for my expensive player who was garbage last year!

Leury Garcia did not hit third and second in the middle of an 8 game (or whatever it was) losing streak because of injuries. Guys like Reese McGuire and Josh Harrison didn't DH because of injuries. People who were at the time performing better than those guys got shafted by that manager for reasons we still don't understand. Leury somehow always, always, always got the benefit of the doubt with the manager repeatedly saying he was swinging the bat better and that's why he got favorable treatment, but no one else got that same treatment.

Does anyone on the inside talk about that lease and plans for what is going to happen when it runs out?

So Davante Adams is repeatedly out there today saying that he came to LV to play with Carr. https://www.instagram.com/p/CmvRY_SrCqJ/ Tons of cap space available on the Bears and a clear need at the WR position, possible match there?

Leury Garcia: -1.1 WAR. Jake Burger: 0.3 WAR. It's certainly possible that the White Sox can get 2 WAR from Lenyn and Romy, but it's also entirely possible that those guys could be good players long term and struggle this year for whatever reason and give you less than that. It's also entirely possible that Moncada could benefit from having a legitimate backup to give him some rest, as could Anderson who hit the IL twice last year, and those guys could benefit from having a more reliable veteran in the rotation with them, allowing them to get like 300 or 400 plate appearances each rather than being counted on as full time regular rotation players. If one of them gets off to a bad start for their first 100 plate appearances, or Moncada or Anderson pull a muscle early in the season, what exactly is the backup plan?

What's actually interesting is that Chapman was in trade discussions that offseason before the domestic violence allegations came out, he was nearly dealt to the Dodgers - in a deal that reportedly did not include any of the Dodgers top 50 in the MLB prospects at the time, and might instead have included 1 top-100 guy and another outside piece. At least one old article described the return as "fairly light". Eventually, once the Domestic Violence allegations were out, he was dealt to the Yankees for a package containing 2 guys who were in the Yankees top 10 and 2 guys not listed in their top 30.

If you’re talking about a top 50 prospect and a second starting pitcher in the top 100, you think Cleveland wouldn’t get in on a deal like that? You think the Dodgers wouldn’t get a far more reasonable and realistic price for a Daniel Bard? The Tigers for a Gregory Soto?

No I don’t find it surprising. 1. The Dodgers have clearly figured out that it benefits them substantially to have enough depth to rest people and use platoons at multiple positions. They have done this for years. 2. The kinds of packages people are envisioning for Hendriks, like that one, remain such massive overpays that not only should the Dodgers not do it, but if they did they’d have other teams offering up closers that no one thought were available.

The same guy was a +1 OAA player in a much larger season in 2021, and there was no change in his sprint speed from year to year. I have no knowledge of what his injury was, but clearly 2022 was vastly different than previous seasons.