Balta1701

I will bet you any amount of money that he will not sign with the Indians.

Just from a baseball perspective, you don’t want to hand a new coach this task to deal with when you’re already counting on him to fix about a dozen other issues.

If Lowe is that cheap, you probably don’t want him. The Rays would only give him away for scraps if they believed his back was permanently f***ed.

I’m just joining in on being tired of that misspelling.

Colas.

What I find interesting is that after Machado signed with San Diego, KW and Hahn went on the radio screaming that they'd offered more money. Once they said they had offered $310 but with 2 team options, everyone realized they were bullshitting their fans by saying they had offered more money because of the team options. Then, a year later, they leaked that they had offered Wheeler more money, but this time didn't leak what the contract details were. Because they didn't say what the contract offer was, people have just repeated the mantra that they offered more money than Philly without skepticism - but they literally said the same thing about Machado, and when they said that about Machado it was bullshit. There is plenty of reason to think that they put out the same bullshit story about Wheeler that they put out about their wonderful offer to Machado, they said the same thing both times.

There were two team options for years 9-10. Team options for a guys’ aged 37 and 38 seasons are, on paper, very unlikely to be picked up. Any responsible agent would tell their player that, the White Sox’s offer was the guaranteed money, nothing more. On top of that, San Diego offered the player option after year 5, which if he stays healthy seems highly likely to be used this year to get a few tens of millions more added onto his deal.

I think they signed him because they desperately needed Of help and he was the best available that they could afford. I don’t think they were going to say “nope he might only hit 8 home runs we should go for someone else because that’s the thing we prioritize.”

If I’m doing the math on buyouts the same way they are, they’re just over $5 million under last year’s’ payroll. Duvall probably pushes them a bit past last years payroll, Conforto a lot past.

I can’t see it being worse either, but Fangraphs had them as the 28th ranked defense as a team last year so there’s not much room to be worse. Being out of the bottom 10 really does require that LaRussa had a huge influence on them being that bad. It can happen, the well coached 2012 White Sox were 6th in defense, the 2013 White Sox were 23rd in defense with basically the same players because their coach quit. We are seeing the same test.

I’m pretty sure people here said all those moves were bad.

So here’s the counterpoint. The White Sox have absolutely upgraded defense at their corner OF spots. However, they have likely downgraded defense at 2b since Harrison was a solid defender and have possibly downgraded at 1b having lost Abreu. McGuire also graded as a solid catcher. Finally, Elvis Andrus graded as better than Anderson at SS. They cleared out their worst defender but moved him to a different position. They are better at 2 positions where they were godawful but have worse defense at 3 or 4 other positions, on paper. But, Moncada missed a ton of time. Robert was a mess, I have heard like 4 excuses for why he was so much worse and will totally be better next year but he wasn’t a good CF last year. Anderson was vastly worse than his career performance defensively because of all the errors. If the excuses for Robert are true and he hasn’t lost a step due to that serious injury so next year will be a lot better, and Anderson can have better focus next year, that is at least as important as the OF upgrades. If everything goes right this still isn’t a great defense, I see one plus defender at 3b. But if Robert gets back to good the OF becomes solid, If Anderson isn’t bad the If is decent and the defense is slightly above average. If Anderson still struggles, Robert’s leg is a problem that doesn’t recover, and the young guys are average or worse instead of good, then the downside is still a poor defense. On top of that, the bench looks like a mess. Maybe a bit better than last year overall, but not pretty to watch. Like most things, the defense improvement relies largely on the problem having been almost entirely bad coaching. If that’s the case, fixing the coaching staff makes them solid. Which is possible, but hard to assess the likelihood.

Joe Kelly will be somewhat better if he stays healthy the entire season. I totally buy that. We saw a better version of him with the Dodgers, he put up a 2.67 ERA over 2020 and 2021. However, that’s as with a .243 BABIP. Same effect we saw last year going the other way. Since he became a reliever full time, he has a .302 BABIP and a 3.96 ERA. I think that’s a plausible median for him, if healthy. He could be that; he could be better, he could be worse, but that’s a decent guess. But, he also turns 35 this year and I absolutely think some of his issues last year were coming back too quickly from injury without a full training period. You should be legitimately surprised if he has no injury issues next year. That’s the wild card that suggests a worse number next year based on how much injury seemed to affect him in 2022.

So here’s my version of the math. As far as I can tell the White Sox budget this different from Spotrac, as long as they don’t hit the tax. When they have a buyout, Spotrac counts it as the previous year, but I think the White Sox count it for the next year. Otherwise I can’t find any reason for them to defer part of Clevinger’s deal until a buyout. So let’s assume that’s how they do the budgets - they count buyouts on the next season. If that’s true, then it means the buyouts for Harrison and Pollock don’t count for 2022, they count for 2023. And Clevinger’s buyout doesn’t count for 2023, it counts for 2024. If I’ve got that right, then they read the 2022 payroll as just over $190 million. $15 million on top of that for benefits. If I move the buyouts to 2023, and use the MLBTR estimates for arbitration amounts, then I have them about $162 million starting the offseason. $8 million for Clevinger takes them to $170 million, and today takes them to $185 million. There’s potentially a million or two difference in arb numbers and minor league contracts I can’t count yet. As of right now, their payroll in this count is about $5 million less than 2022. Their first round pick will cost them a little over $1 million more as well. Probably they count that too. So generously $5 million below last years’ payroll today, potentially a little less.

On paper now they’re a .500 team again right now with a solid bullpen as potentially the strongest part of the team. Ceiling above that and floor below that both plausible. If Hendriks goes, they aren’t.

Nimmo has a better chance of being dynamic this year and also can play a legit CF, which the White Sox do need whether we like it or not. Nimmo has a career OBP 30 points higher. But on the White Sox budget, this is decent.

I still don’t believe in the team at all, but if you did this is the second best fit move they could have made this offseason.

But I was told that right-center field was a dead zone last year!

As a relevant reminder, coming off of a severe leg injury in 2021, Robert was no longer an elite defensive CF last year. Whether that carries over I offer no guarantees, but it is definitely relevant to that discussion.

His arm showed up as a strength when he was playing the smaller OF in Boston, and slipped into "slight weakness" last year. however, Eloy gave up as many runs throwing in 200 innings as Benintendi gave up in 1100 innings, so his arm comes off as nothing you will gawk at but nothing where you will think "this is awful" as we had with Eloy.

He is a little inconsistent and not all the metrics agree from year to year. However, the last 2 years he has had a positive UZR, a positive DRS, and an OAA of 0. Prior to that, UZR didn't like him in 2018-2020 and OAA and DRS didn't like him in 2019 - however none of those were the kinds of deep chasms that the White Sox saw from their corner OFs last year. In general, I get the impression of a guy who has become a stable if unspectacular fielder who won't carry you to wins based on his defense but who won't embarrass himself out there even if he's struggling with something that year.

Melky Cabrera? Todd Frazier? Adam LaRoche? Jeff Samardzija?

But you're counting 25 from Robert which he isn't going to get to if the bench has to play 250 plate appearances for him.

Jimmy (poster here) has a generally pretty well known and believable connection. This got a separate thread because he backed up the initial twitter rumor.

Well of course, because excluding Vaughn or Sheets from the "outfield HR totals" last year because they weren't the opening day corner outfielders wouldn't make much sense.