Balta1701

Yes, Tony LaRussa.

Hell with this political stuff cleared out, this thread is history come on.

They even got a hot dog reference this is gold. Make this person the GM.

Detroits gonna be pretty hung over tomorrow.

The one where I bothered looking at his numbers was a game against the Royals. He imploded against the Os in his next start. He opened against the Mariners. His good starts were Seattle, Detroit, Colorado, Miami, Minnesota, and KC.

Different fight, not worth having here. The problem here is that people believed his 7 starts were great without looking at the BABIP line or peripherals and convinced themselves he could keep something up based on a true fluke. He needs to be a different pitcher. Maybe he can be, but right now he was really bad.

If he stays healthy for 2 years he might make 3x that.

Over those solid 7 starts he had a .156 BABIP. He had an ERA of 5.5 with a .200 BABIP. He had a 5.08 K/9. No qualified starter in MLB had a K/9 under 6.33, and out of the bottom guys almost all of them have ERAs in the high 4s. He doesn’t make up for this with exceptional control or high numbers of ground balls. He had a handful of good starts based on luck, but his profile is of a guy with an ERA in the high 5s right now if he were to pitch enough for fluky things to average out. Maybe he figures this out with more work, but he didn’t improve on this at all during the year, in his last 17.2 innings he struck out 7, so his K rate was getting worse. The guy we saw in 2024 will not be a tolerable starter. Maybe he adds a pitch. Maybe he adds velocity. Maybe he figures out how to strike people out with work. Maybe his control improves. Maybe you move him to the bullpen and he picks up velocity. But 7 solid starts based entirely on a .150 BABIP would only fool Rick Hahn into thinking it was real. Right now he is not a starter.

As of right now I’m not remotely convinced that Thorpe is a starter. Thorpe was not a guy who could be a successful starter with what I saw this year. He might come back stronger next year or add a pitch or something like that, but not the guy I’ve seen so far. I will give you Smith and Noah as potentially solid starters if they avoid the surgery

One thing I didn’t appreciate as much until this round of articles. When a guy like Ohtani or Soto or Wheeler hits the market, they are hitting the market because their teams could absolutely afford them back, but they’re likely to get more money than the team has to spend. These are the QO guys, a team would be happy bring them back if the contracts work out. But when a guy like Grandal, Lynn, Keuchel, Graveman, Clevinger becomes available, that’s a guy almost any team could re-sign if they wanted. The Dodgers could absolutely have kept Grandal, the Astros could have kept Graveman, the Padres could have kept Clevinger, the Rangers didn’t have to trade Lynn (maybe he’s the worst example here but this will stick). In other words, if you have payroll limit, you are getting guys teams could easily afford and don’t want. One reason why a team might not want a guy back is they think they’re about to fall off a cliff. I figured this out a while ago, it’s why so many White Sox FA signing faceplant, the White Sox are selectively getting guys who teams think are about to fall apart because that gets Reinsdorf his discount. But it turns out there’s another reason a team might let someone go - they’re just assholes. If your team is willing to sign free agents but only the cheapest ones, you get a double toxic combination - guys who are likely to fall apart and guys that teams want gone because they’re assholes.

Which part am I supposed to argue with? Robert and Moncada weren't actually hurt? The White Sox did not actually go 1-8 with a -30 run differential?

Like regardless of what you think of the way the abuse case was handled, he's generally thought of as an asshole around the whole league. Back in June I was listening to Houston sports radio at night and they were talking about pitchers who could be available at the deadline, one of them brought up Clevinger, the other guy asked where he wound up this year, the first guy said the White Sox, the second guy said some version of "serves him right, dirtbag." I laughed.

There's a good chance he outlasts Chris Getz.

Mike Clevinger was brought back by choice and paid a premium over what any other team would pay for the pleasure of it.

If you read this, it’s clear that JR thinks things went bad because Tony isn’t managing any more.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/41416529/mlb-2024-chicago-white-sox-121-losses-all-record-worst-team-history-moments

Just think about how bad the Angels are for playing him, and what it says that the white sox are currently 27 games worse.

They seemed to make it clear they were moving Ramos to the OF.

That s***s loud

Vaughn is in his first arb year this year and is making $3.25 million. He was healthy this year so even though he stank, a reasonable arb raise puts him to like $4.5 or $5 million. He’s no longer cheap.

Do we still do this?