Balta1701

I can mentally excuse Hahn being an idiot and not doing a quality background check last year. I'm not sure its true, but that's how they presented it. Signing one of these guys willingly would make me seriously consider whether that's it, that they think I'm not the kind of fan they want, and other people I consider toxic are their real market.

You're completely right. This won't just affect the White Sox, it will affect any trade market for him. We saw it this year, he was pitching well enough for someone to absorb a portion of his salary, and no one wanted him at all. There might be a level of performance where this doesn't matter, where he's literally the best pitcher in the AL in the first half, but outside of that, if he's good but not great, at best you're lucky if someone will take him at all. You can't expect that giving him 100 innings in the first half is likely to strengthen your system, we have seen that in both the deadline and the offseason. Michael Lorenzen on an $8 million a year deal is more likely to be tradeable than Clevinger on a $2 million a year deal, and I am totally fine with that.

I can think of a couple specific ones.

Nobody wanted him last year either, regardless of the White Sox throwing in money. No one wants him now. The market is speaking clearly, you cannot get anything back for him. There are far more tradeable options.

I could absolutely see them dropping into the 50s. They are terrible on paper, they might have a lower OBP than last year's terrible OBP, and regardless of how "high character" some of these guys are supposed to be, I have no confidence in their coaching staff. But, it's baseball, random luck does things. The White Sox had fewer WAR and a worse run differential than the Royals last year, but finished ahead of the Royals by quite a bit, because the Royals last year dramatically underperformed. If they came out with 65 wins I wouldn't be surprised, if they came out with 55 wins I wouldn't be surprised, if they came out with 75 wins I might be impressed by the coaching staff and GM because I'd guess that took improvement from some of the young guys.

They've clearly picked a set of directions to take this offseason, some of which is positive (they didn't trade for Perez! No long term horrible deals!) some of these are questionable (spending decent money on their Vetz, trading away guys like Mena for reasons we don't get, blinking on this trade rather than trying to maximize the return). Like it or not, Getz brought in no success at all in his last job and clearly failed upwards. He doesn't have a record that gives any reason to have a confidence in him, so if a deal looks questionable on paper, we're going to write those questions now. We cannot tell how he is going to work based on the returns so far, they might have nailed this trade and wound up with several good players. If they did, the heat will vanish and he will get compliments. If they did not, then the only reason there won't be heat on him is that they'll be down to precisely 23 remaining people in the Chicago area who care any more.

While the OBP part is nice, this part is the big concern. The bat needs to develop to be elite if he's going to drop to a corner outfield spot.

They traded away $100 in value to get back $10 in those trades. They traded away $10 in value to get back $5 in value this time. Your argument: "You complain whether they take back $10 or trade away $10, you have to like one of those."

I was on the record saying if Getz held him and something went wrong, I was ok with that risk unless the offers were great right now. This has more in it than the Brewers deal for Burns, but it definitely doesn't make us look at the White Sox's future any differently. We were demanding a deal that would reshape this organization, giving it top level talent, and they didn't get that. They are desperate enough to find that type of talent that I think it was worth gambling on Cease's performance to try to get it.

Yes he did, because Getz blinked and took the best available offer rather than waiting into the season to see if Cease could build value by performing better than he did in a disappointing 2023.

They gave up 2 MVP candidates, an all star pitcher, and another pitcher who had a decent year or two, plus a backup catcher in trades over an 18 month period. There was some serious talent in that system, not well recognized though.

Looks like you're right he has 3 options. Am I thinking of the guy who came from Arizona with that?

Aren't arbitration type contracts non-guaranteed still?

2014-2016 was them "signing guys and hoping for the best"? No it wasn't, it was them emptying the system constantly because they thought they were 1 player away.

https://allchgo.com/fixing-michael-kopech-white-sox-turn-to-new-front-office-hire-brian-bannister-for-one-of-offseasons-top-priorities/ https://soxmachine.com/2024/02/brian-bannister-white-sox-michael-kopech/

Trust Bannister and Barfield and Getz. They said they can fix Kopech, they have earned the trust you just showed in them.

The guy we traded him for has already been assigned to minor league camp and is burning his last option while also occupying a 40 man roster spot on a team with a boatload of available NRIs who could fill that roster spot. As of now, yes, that is stupid. Churn the bottom of your roster when you have a team this bad, don't give up guys you have control over who could still be moved to the bullpen in the minors to grab bullpen pieces who clog roster spots and can't even make the big league team out of spring training. The only way that makes sense is oh hey, Horn appears to have solid off speed stuff, if Barfield and Bannister like him maybe they can make him a valuable reliever this year. Trust Barfield and Bannister, they know what they're doing.

The Cubs also got 7.4 fWAR out of him. His baseball-reference numbers were worse than this, but giving up more long-term as a premium for getting better right now when your team just won a World Series is sorta the expectation in those deals.

The problem is that we’ve had multiple “In Getz and Bannister and Barfield we trust” moves already this season. Why was it ok to give up on Thompson? Why was it ok to give up on Mena? Well Barfield knows the Arizona system and they’re getting rid of guys they don’t like, in Barfield and Bannister we trust. The return from the Padres seemed light, and the biggest piece only just made AA, but in Barfield and Bannister we trust. Barfield said he’s looking forward to working with Kopech and getting him right. In Barfield we trust? We are making moves that people can’t justify other than by saying the new leadership team we brought in will make things work, but here’s a first strike against them. Why should I trust their evaluation on Mena if they couldn’t make progress with Kopech after saying they could?

I would rather fill the roster spot with someone who actually has the ability to be tradeable. No one is trading for either of those guys, you will be wasting innings on them and wasting roster spots on them when they will provide you nothing long-term. Pillar and Maldonado have a better chance of being traded than those guys do.

I mean, did we get what we wanted out of the Quintana deal even remotely? A couple decent years of Cease and basically a bust in Eloy? But, even with that, had they not traded Cease don't they likely end up with 20+, and that's with 1 guy about to have his options turned down at the end of the year.

What we do know is that Barfield I believe was specifically on record with how this was a guy he was going to work with and wanted to fix.

I mean, "put all the prospects in the bullpen" was also very much a Rick Hahn thing too.

Cease is probably going to put up ~7 over the next 2 years right? With a ceiling higher than that? Getting 15 out of these guys when we have added 22 years of control total seems a little low. If one guy is an all star caliber player then he's putting up 4-5 WAR in a year, if two guys are average starters they're putting up 2.5-3 rWAR per year. Are you just counting "Excess WAR" beyond what is paid for? If I'm counting total over their entire time with the White Sox I'd have to hope we could pull off 20+.