Balta1701

I’m not going to begrudge him not immediately having back surgery, you outline why quite well. I still Question the White Sox rushing him back after only 6 weeks while he also needed to rehab the hamstring and then trading away a catcher and taking on salary to clear his big league roster spot when his back was in such rough shape.

They traded away McCann last night.

He wouldn’t be, they literally just cleared a role for him. But on the last page we have people suggesting Liam for Escobar and Alvarez and saying “boy I don’t want to give up Eloy” in a concept for the number one prospect in baseball. It’s ludicrous. It’s like Me writing that the Sox should trade Joe Kelly and Luis Robert to the Astros for Ryan Pressly and that’s fair because closers have super value now and look the Astros are even taking on a contract. There needs to be more laughter and less “but Eloy!”

I mean, so is any proposal of Eloy + Hendriks getting you back the number 1 prospect in baseball, let alone throwing in McNeil, but I figured that was the point.

I never said it would make sense, only that it would balance.

The insiders continue to say that they expect to play the young guys, Sosa and Gonzalez, at 2b.

Well I got it to balance.

No. First, you’re being messed up by injuries and platoons and defensive replacements. If a team platoons two guys who are way better fielders than Benintendi, those fielders won’t qualify and no one will vote for them for gold gloves because they only played 500 innings. In Benintendi’s best season by UZR, there Royals were only top 5 for team UZR from LF because teams did this and passed them. Second, in 2021, the 16th team had a 0 UZR. So average UZR around the league was basically zero. Benintendi was basically that, in person form, in 2022. Third, the advanced stats don’t all agree. Benintendi’s gold glove season was his best recent UZR season, but his statcast based OAA was actually below average. Then in 2022, his UZR dropped but his OAA didn’t. Overall for him, the stats basically wander around the median, and I took this into account when saying he’s an average defender. They are good enough to say “the White Sox were awful” and everything agrees on that. They aren’t good enough to say “this guy is 3% better than average” to that level of specificity. So overall you’re getting the same story. a guy who played the whole season the last couple years (yay), and whose defense wandered around the average for all LF around the league. Maybe a little better, maybe a little worse, but difficult to say at that level of precision. That did make him a unique player as not many people played 140 games in LF while being decent, but he did.

Pretty sure my old rule of “as soon as it seems complicated nothing will actually be happening and everything else is made up by fans” rule now applies.

3/$48 from the Giants and then fail a physical and wind up with the Mets?

Insider fight!

I agree that it's not a strategy I would have supported if I was at the top of the Union, but it sure seems clear that given the choice between pushing for a cap and floor that were reasonable and tied to revenue and the strategy of letting things float, they went with the one where there's a risk of their revenue share going down. Maybe they're worried that baseball ownership will simply find too many ways to classify money coming in as something other than revenue. Or they'd just Joel Osteen it into the walls behind their bathroom. Somehow that seems a reasonable fear for some of these guys.

While the concept of a cap and floor that the owners passed around wasn't a serious proposal (the White Sox would be well over the cap right now, that's how big the salary limits were), if I had to pick which side was going to be more ardently opposed to a cap and floor it will always be the Union. They have fought so hard to keep this league uncapped that I'm not sure what it would take to get them on board with the concept, and frankly - the Union is ok with what the Mets are doing. Not only are the Mets spending wildly, but they're forcing other teams to keep up with them, and even with all that it doesn't even guarantee they will win their division.

Since he left Boston, his arm has come in at about -1 on "Runs above average" each year, so a tiny hint below average. HE was above average earlier in his career but that was in Boston where "The Monster" definitely influences where you're throwing from. Eloy, for comparison, last year was -0.5 - in 1/4 as many innings. Andrew Vaughn was somehow worse, -1.5 in 330 innings - so on pace for -5 runs above average on a full season in LF. Basically everything you ask about this guy the answer is something along the lines of "He's been about average".

This was reported by Bruce Levine. Jerry Reinsdorf could be holding one of Rick Hahn's kids hostage until he cuts the payroll and Hahn would have still told Levine "Of course we don't need to cut payroll to afford Benintendi". You can't publicly go out and say "Of course we need to cut payroll now".

I'm sure someone else can bring up some really bad examples of gold gloves being given out, that's always fun so I'll leave that to someone else. But here's the remarkable thing - there were 2 qualified left fielders in the AL in 2021. Benintendi and Lourdes Gurriel. Benintendi was the better of those 2 fielders. No one else played more than 810 innings in LF in 2021. Credit where it's due for staying healthy, but you can just as readily call that the "Better than Lourdes Gurriel at fielding" award. The 4th most innings played in LF in the 2021 AL was actually Andrew freaking Vaughn. So in other words, he is an ok fielder who actually stayed healthy through 2021 and got a Gold Glove by one step above "Default". You will note that the White Sox could absolutely use a guy who "plays 140 games" at pretty much any position in the lineup, but I don't have to pretend that he's been anything other than an average OF. I also do have to acknowledge that "average LF" is a monstrous upgrade compared to what the White Sox have been throwing out there.

The year when his Outs Above Average was 0?

Yes. It's that big of a difference. I think the White Sox and Astros played the whole series with the Happy Fun Ball, then MLB decided to use the different ball for the first few games of the next series, then changed back. Maybe they thought the Astros offense could be slowed down by the dead ball? Houston had the best performing lineup in baseball in 2021.

Abso-freaking-lutely. Go look at the box score for that Red Sox/Astros series. I bet you can pick the games out.

If that happens, then MLB gets talked about on sports radio more, people reference the Cardinals all the time, and so on. That's not a disaster for MLB. Win your bloody division, I have no problem with that being a straightforward path to the playoffs.

We should also keep in mind that the ball almost certainly played a role in that.

I'm not rewriting it but here's the list of managerial disasters your memory edited out from that series.

He's never been a clearly above average defender, he's just about adequate. Maybe a smidge below average earlier in his career but that was when he was dealing with the Monster. He's not likely to be substantially above average. He has a .351 career OBP, but it has bounced between .324 in 2021 and .373 last year depending on his approach at the plate and BABIP. Steamer projection has him at .335 next year. Both of those would be significant boosts for the White Sox out of their OF, but both of those would miss what you just requested.

They had according to FG the best pitching staff in baseball. That always counts for something. Since then they let their best pitcher walk as a free agent, one guy got old/had a knee break down, their most effective reliever got a little less effective, and Giolito had whatever the hell that was. Big difference.

The 2021 Astros were beatable enough that the Braves beat them. We had a serious lineup weakness in that they could throw righties against us to beat the White Sox’s righties, but that team was beatable. From there they added Verlander and upgraded their bullpen, plus Javier and Valdez grew up into stars, so yeah in 2022 they were just better.