Balta1701

Could it be that he was working with people in KC who had a "hit the ball on the ground" philosophy, and that Grifol was among them?

Well as of now the White Sox are shown by Fangraphs with 79 OF home runs last year. I do think they're counting Eloy's full total in that, if you drop those where he was DH out then they're at 68.

50 home runs out of an outfield would have been 26th in baseball last year.

Or to put it another way, this was a 100 win team that had a bunch of injuries during the regular season that knocked down their win total. A comparable Cardinals roster in 2005 had the best run differential in baseball. While they were lucky to make the playoffs, they were clearly a competitive roster when mostly assembled because they made game 7 of the NLCS or farther in the 2 previous years. The Cardinals record showed 83 wins. That same roster though was a 100 win roster, and they played like it once they got to the playoffs. It would have been just as reasonable for them to win the title in 2005 had they not gotten unlucky against the Astros.

Yes, 2006 Cardinals. Won 83 games. 2005 Cardinals won 100 games. Had a pretty epic NLCS against the Astros, pretty sure one baseball still hasn't come down. Same franchise also was in the 2004 World Series. But hey, totally luck there, they weren't a well built, regularly competitive team, right? And that was before the real modern "Superteam" era began, to my eyes. That started with the successful rebuilds of the Royals, Cubs, and Astros.

Which 2 are you thinking of as the examples of this? 2010, 2012, 2014 - Giants. Clearly can't be a random hot team, they won 3 times in 5 years. 2013, 2018 - Red Sox. 2015 - Royals - were in the world series the year before, had one of the top systems in baseball before those 2 world series runs. 2016 - Cubs - won 103 games, made the playoffs 5 straight years. 2017, 2022 Astros - had a little help in 2017, but have made the ALCS like 6 straight years now. 2019 - Nationals - were a wild card team, but made the playoffs 5 times in 8 years and never finished worse than 2nd in their division in an 8 year stretch. 2020 - Dodgers. 2021 - Braves. Have won the NL East 5 straight seasons following a 4 year rebuild. I am struggling to see any one of these teams as sneaking into the playoffs as a wild card and winning as a "hot team". Every single one of them has had a record of consistency around when they were winning the title. The shortest competitive stretch of any of these champs was the Royals and they made 2 straight world series appearances.

I think that adding players, adding money, and winding up with a 63 win team should definitely be considered a potentially fireable offense. That is a totally clear signal that a guy had no idea what was going on, he failed at some of the most basic duties of a GM - having a good idea what his team was, and wow, same problems 10 years later! Who woulda guessed. Overly Harsh? Maybe, but a 63 win season when you think you're supposed to be competitive is a huge indictment of the guy in charge. Not every team is going to fire the GM after that, but I always thought that at least half of them would have. He extended his manager's contract after that 63 win season. He should have been stopped before he made things worse.

That is part of it. Another part of it is that the White Sox kept screaming they were competitive, even adding salary at the trade deadline. They had an outfield that was a mess down the stretch, Robert couldn't swing a bat, Vaughn could barely move, catching a fly ball was almost out of the question. If Colas was so close to ready that he'll be good to go by day 1 of the season this year, and they truly believed that they were competitive last August and September, they needed the help. If all he could do was catch the ball decently in the OF, he couldn't be worse than 1 handed Luis Robert at the plate.

The big "addition" in the 2013 offseason was Jeff Keppinger, followed by Conor Gillaspie to try to fill the 3b hole they struggled with the previous season. Overpaying a utility guy and trying to use them to fill holes that should be filled by starters on your so-called competitive team? Why Rick Hahn would never do that. Nope. Definitely wouldn't acquire Gordon Beckham and Emilio Bonifacio to fill the 3b hole in 2015 left after trading away Semien, nor would he go with Micah Johnson and Yolmer Sanchez at 2b. Totally out of character for Rick Hahn, that must have been Kenny's fault, Rick Hahn never tries to use backups to fill starting positions. Rick Hahn also wouldn't dare try to patch infield holes with an over the hill Jimmy Rollins, Brett Lawrie, and Austin Jackson in 2016. That's just not the kind of thing he would do, those must have been forced by Reinsdorf. The rotating door of right fielders? That was all enforced by the scouting department, Rick Hahn definitely didn't bring in Adam Eaton in 2021 that kind of signing is totally not like him. Leury Garcia and Josh Harrison signed for $20 million to take over the 2b position? That was totally LaRussa, you can't ever find another example of Rick Hahn bringing in backups and utility guys to try to fill starting positions.

But it’s extremely believable because we hear it so often. I had a running gag in 2015-2016 of adding a ™️ logo to the phase “The GMs decisions can’t be Rick Hahn’s fault” because we heard so often that every bad decision must be the fault of someone else. How convenient is it that all last offseason we heard about how Hahn was carefully weighing the spectacular offers he got for Kimbrel and that letting Rodon walk was the smart move? Then suddenly both of those have backfired and then it leaks that Hahn had nothing to do with those decisions? The GM can’t hire the coach, all the player decisions are forced on him, but he doesn’t resign? Super convenient. I will believe Joe Kelly was pushed for hard by LaRussa because he was personally out there bragging about the signing at the time it happened. Leaks in hindsight about bad moves not being the fault of the GM from the same people who were saying what awesome decisions they were at the time? That could totally come from the GM.

If you were Rick Hahn and you spent 1/3 of your day reading mean tweets about you, wouldn’t you leak that it was all someone else’s fault no matter what the reality was?

Burdi.

Crochet and Burger are positive also. They offset the negative performances by Vaughn, Collins, and Fulmer.

quickly done in my head they're at 0.2 fWAR. I might have a rounding error in there.

Well now I wonder how that looks in fWAR.

By "tarred, feathered, and ridden out of town on a rail" I assume you mean "nothing will happen and he will be in exactly the same position next November."

Yeah, but they still don't have replacements for most of those guys. They have 2 starting pitchers under contract, they could easily blow that $75 million on rebuilding their rotation before even worrying about the bullpen or position players. At the very least, I'm allowed to be nervous that they win 84 games this year with Benintendi and then have like 3 versions of cueto crewing their rotation next year.

Not mad. A bit concerned about the long term plan as they already are looking at being worse after 2023 once they lose a couple of starting pitchers, if they have the same spending limitations next year then it will be even harder than this year. But otherwise, at least they filled the OF hole.

What's actually ironic is there is a Star Trek character named Tendi.

This is probably Benentendi's best chance in his career at a multi year contract that generates a lifetime of wealth for him and his family. I would strongly bet that he will take the biggest contract offer he receives. I doubt that would be from someone who doesn't think they can compete right now, but look if the Rockies decided they wanted him and wanted to pay the most, he's moving to Denver.

Frankly, no. They maneuver around contracts and often let better players go after they become too expensive. The Astros, for example, have allowed Correa, Cole, and Verlander to walk as free agents. None of them were traded to create room for anyone. I can't think of the Astros moving any lesser players in trades because of someone they wanted to sign. The Braves added an expensive 1b - after their 1b, Freeman, was hitting free agency. I can't think of any examples of the Braves trading away a guy in order to clear room for a free agent signing. The only guy being paid $10 million I can think of that the Dodgers traded away was AJ Pollock. The Nationals let Harper walk and that was their path to a title. Can you give an example of a team that did something like what you're describing? Trading away a cost controlled player to sign a more expensive player at the same position?

No, they really wouldn't. A forward thinking team would recognize that their best chance to win is right now because they have multiple guys about to hit free agency in the next 2 years and Tim Anderson playing at his best contributes to winning right now, but they have a hole in the outfield. While it won't be cheap, they therefore either need to spend prospect talent to bring in an outfielder they can afford, or they need to adjust their budget enough to go after the outfielder who could have put them over the top. Competitive teams don't commonly give away guys they think will be MLB contributors in the next 1-2 years, even if they're blocked. If a guy can contribute this year, they're going to hold onto him and use his contribution this year. They give away prospects who, even if they're highly ranked, will probably take a couple years to grow into high quality MLB players. You can likely get that in exchange for Anderson, but that is a rebuilding type move.

I want someone who wants to make more money! The White Sox are in the 3rd biggest media market in the country and they’re a minor player in the entertainment business there. Their ballpark is only 60% full and their ad sales are often niche businesses (US Cellular? Guaranteed Rate?) Their franchise value is inflated by the media market being present, but it’s completely underutilized. I don’t think they need to be stupid about spending, but at the same time there’s substantial money being left on the table by how they run the team. There’s no reason why this franchise cant grow from 15th to 9th in MLB franchise value over the next decade if it is run well and regularly competitive, and that would be worth a billion dollars or more to a new ownership group.