Balta1701

Fulmer was still on the MLB.com top 100 list in early 2017, I checked. He was brought up by Rick Hahn in 2016 from AA because Hahn needed someone to save his bullpen. Moncada spent most of a year in AAA. He was called up because Frazier was traded, and showed by 2018 that this was an aggressive promotion since he hadn't figured out how to handle the strike zone. Lopez spent several years in the White Sox's minors and couldn't figure out how to have success until he was moved to the bullpen. Eloy spent so long in the White Sox minor league system that he wrote an article saying "I'm Ready" for the Players Tribune. Kopech spent 1.5 seasons in the White Sox minor leagues prior to his callup. The White Sox absolutely had plenty of time to put these guys in position for success. It's not all Getz, Hahn absolutely screwed with these guys, but this is a bloody ton of talent - to get so little long term success out of them is an indictment of the entire development system.

I agree it's unfair to pin it all on Getz. Most of that, frankly, I pin on Hahn, who was awful. However, it is a blatant, obvious, consistent, and undeniable record of developmental failure. This record would absolutely have meant that no other team in MLB would hire him for the same position, let alone promoted him. At the very least, there is reason for skepticism until proven otherwise, and this record should follow him around for the next few years. If the White Sox in 2027 have a 70 win big league team and a bottom 15 system, the previous failures at development would definitely be a relevant part of his record and would justify tossing him overboard. If multiple guys break out and this team is back to 88 wins, then the more recent success would be more important than the previous failures.

Chris Getz took over as director of White Sox player development in 2017 according to his Wikipedia page. At the time, the White Sox had the #1 system in baseball, including up to 10 top-100 prospects as per the mid-2017 MLB.com rankings. That was then supplemented by top 5 draft picks in 2018 and 2019 and a top 15 pick in 2020, as well as all of the other draft rounds. This should have been an absolutely enormous batch of talent to develop. We look back at guys like Kopech, Eloy, Moncada, Lopez, Fuller, Rutherford, Collins with skepticism now, but a big portion of that is that they did not develop as well as guys ranked this highly should.

Yes, Dylan Cease had a down year last year and this significantly affected his value as he looks like a very inconsistent pitcher. The question is what drove that downturn last year and whether it is fixable - there was a velocity drop, his slider was hit much harder with the velocity drop, but he still had dominant stuff available, multiple metrics tracked that and people here were stressing that the whole offseason as they tried to justify true top returns for him. If people believed that, then there's a very strong case for holding him and expecting him to be substantially better in 2024 because the stuff was there to produce a much more valuable pitcher at the deadline.

Wheeler signed an extension last week. An additional $126 million over the 3 year period 25-27. He will not be a free agent, your list is out of date. https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/zack-wheeler-extension-phillies-ace-agrees-to-three-year-126-million-deal-ahead-of-free-agency/

But you can say that about how many of the other NRIs the White Sox have already? Is Wilson a vastly better pitcher than them? Maybe, his contact numbers are good, but that's also small sample sizes in Petco park, with a high walk rate. This is a narrow improvement over the other options on paper. If BABIP isn't his friend this year then he's a non-tender candidate next offseason rather than a flip candidate at the deadline.

Santos had a better walk rate and a .337 BABIP. Santos was also quite a bit better at keeping the ball in the ballpark. Pretty distinct pitchers.

Flexen had an ERA over 6 last year, Soroka's success was prior to 2 achilles surgeries, and Fedde was in a different country last year. There's potential here, but the last MLB season for each of those three guys together adds up to -2.1 rWAR. It could absolutely wind up better than this, but it could wind up the worst rotation we've ever seen.

Signing veterans that waste money in rebuilding years and shortly thereafter complaining about payroll limits is definitely a White Sox thing. But again, we'll see, I'm not going to guess what they will do next offseason, too many variables. Attendance is going to be a disaster this season. Their needs next offseason are a big function of how effective their coaches and development are this year, with health on top of that. Definitely possible to see them cutting payroll further, signing more vetz, and having a $90 million payroll next year just as much as it is to see this being their payroll low.

Spotrac has them at $125 million to fill out a roster, but that's also without guys like Pillar, Moustakas, so it will probably go over $130 million when you add in those guys and a few people shuttle back and forth to the IL. Possible some could be traded off of that early in the year. Will they spend less than that next year? Reinsdorf has complained about losing money in 2020, and then supported extra high payrolls in 2022-2023 with teams that had declining fan support. Is it unbelievable that he would try to do some profit-taking next year with an extra low payroll? We will see.

We were wrong on Cease's value around the league because as a whole we were saying that Cease would have a top of the rotation pitcher value and if they didn't get that return they had the option to hold him until the deadline, in the hopes that he could replicate much of his 2022 performance. In the end, the league did not value him as a TOR pitcher, but Getz passed on the option to hold him until the deadline in favor of taking the best deal they could get. If their scouting and development has improved this could still be a good gamble given the players who came back, but this staff currently has zero track record and we can come up with many reasons for skepticism until they do.

To say this a harsher way, this is also writing that the White Sox gave a large discount on Cease because they weren't confident that he could be a top of the rotation pitcher in 2024 and believed it likely that 2022 was a fluke.

This is because he has a career BABIP of .223. League wide that was .297. The Padres, interestingly enough, had a very low BABIP - so is a lot of that a combination of luck and a big ballpark?

A 29 year old reliever with a career 4.33 FIP in 2 seasons who has slightly better ERA than that thanks to Petco park is most definitely filler. It's 40 man roster fluff.

Over the last 2 years, DeJong combined for just over 600 PAs and a .587 OPS. Anderson last year was .582. I’ll accept “a little bit of defense”, but DeJong is basically 2023 Anderson with the bat at this stage in his career.

While this is true, it's also pretty obvious that this guy was included much more due to the 40 man roster slots needed than anything else. The White Sox, however, spent the entire offseason loading up on Meh caliber pitchers who could take 40 man roster spots and who they would hope to be able to flip, so it's not like they had no options if they didn't get this guy back. This just changes which meh caliber relievers they bring north with them.

Yeah, weird how that started in June of 2021. I wonder what changed to make spin rates on his pitches and movement on his pitches different starting on or about June 15 of 2021. This is a totally relevant example because no one can possibly point me to a rule change that dramatically affected Lucas Giolito's pitches that started on June 15, 2021.

Hmm, do I like this trade more or less if they're 4 or 5 years away from contention? They didn't go all-in to get win now guys, that's positive. But if they are 4-5 years away from contending, then in terms of a Cease trade, that reduces the impact that would have happened if they kept Cease and he got hurt. Out of the pitchers in this deal you have to figure 1 gets hurt anyway. Yeah, if you think they're 5 years away from competing, then you should hold Cease until the deadline and try to maximize his value with a great first half. I've talked myself into it while writing this.

While this is fair...they're not obviously better off than they were on the day Rick Hahn was fired. The payroll space was cleared by Rick Hahn, most of the supplementary talent in the system was acquired by Rick Hahn, their #4-ish prospect was acquired by Getz for a guy that Hahn was unwilling to trade. They clearly had payroll space for 2024 and 2025 thanks to the work of Rick Hahn. They haven't done the typical Hahn offseason thing and made things worse, and Getz deserves credit for not doing obviously stupid things. But in terms of payroll, they've spent comparatively a lot of money on Fedde, Lopez, Maldonado, Pillar, Moustakas, DeJong, and their bullpen. It's not long term commitments, but it's like $20 million+ assuming the obvious vetz make the team, which is at least half of a 2019Hahn. Literally every bit of success from here on out depends on the handful of new development guys they brought in being better than the last ones, and Grifol and Katz being suddenly good at developing big league players, because there's nothing here without that.

Fine but then we can't give Getz credit for his hard working culture for bringing in white guys who played for the Royals.

Giolito's fastball last year as his arm was breaking down still averaged 93.1 mph.

I like Keith Law but here's why Keith Law sucks. That's...kinda like this trade? It's not terrible but here's a laundry list of obvious reasons why it sucks.

1. As of right now, I think the White Sox got more value for Lance Lynn and Joe Kelly than they got for Cease. They got more potential and far-away depth for Cease, so this could turn around if their development guys are good, but the Lynn return is way closer to the big leagues and there's a lot of value in that. The market was absolutely better in July last year than what this trade returned. 2. The other part is what you expect from Dylan Cease. If Dylan Cease has an ERA of 2.2 for the Padres in July, and they're out of the race at the time, the Padres will get more trading Cease than they gave up now. If Dylan Cease has an ERA of 4.1 in July, then this would be a high value trade for him. Cease's 2023 dramatically reduced his value, and the White Sox weren't willing to risk another bad season against the value of a reward. The Padres were.

Your argument is way too close to Keith Law hates the White Sox. You have rejected his analysis to say that this guy is a hard worker because you don't like Keith Law. Bull.

I'd call that Karma for Santos.