Balta1701

Naw, it's 100% mandatory that they add several starters. They literally don't have the warm bodies. This is the case regardless of what they think they're going to accomplish next offseason.

F*** man, you said Joe Kelly was league average, dude put up -0.2 rWAR with the White Sox, he wasn't even replacement level! By that standard, Ethan Katz did a great job on me, while posting here I produced 0.0 rWAR for the White Sox this year.

If I had to guess what they will do - they'll add a handful of cheap but tolerable pieces elsewhere while pretending these guys are way better than they are, then declare themselves loudly to be competitive for the Central - exactly like they did this year.

Are you happy with the seasons by Kopech, Cease, Kelly, Lynn, Giolito, Lopez?

So your problem with Vaughn is that his RBI production isn't good enough for even an average 1b, that's a fair complaint.

I don't know how it happened, but someone managed to make them more aggressive, more ground ball focused, and less power focused than they were on those things in 2022, when they were really quite bad at all of them.

Without baserunners you don't score. Vaughn's personal OBP would have come in 20th among 1b around baseball, the White Sox as a whole at 1b came in 23rd. The White Sox's 80 RBIs from 1b were good for 20th best in baseball. Their 20 home runs were good for 25th in baseball. Oakland got more HR from their 1b than the White Sox did.

If that's the case, the end result is: Eloy has 1 guaranteed year of money remaining in 2024, at $13.8 million, with a $3 million buyout for 2025. Play him for next year, trade him if you have a better use for the money or someone gives you something of value for him close to the deadline, and if not you can have him removed from the roster by 2025. Vaughn will probably make $2-3 million next year and he's not blocking anyone. That is minor money for him even if he's a 1 WAR player next year. There is no good reason not to give him another shot for that money. It may be reasonable to non-tender him after 2024, as his salary will ballon to $4-$5 million in his 2nd arbitration year, and that might be more than he's worth by that point. If he's slightly better, you can still hold onto him for that money.

The other part you didn't add is that they are all super aggressive. Eloy's walk rate this year was back down to where it was during his rookie year, so he's not getting on base. Vaughn's walk rate was bad and it got worse during the year, he had a 2 month period from July to August where he had 3 walks. There is some reason to believe that decent coaching could help these guys improve, but the White Sox are specifically picking coaches who want their guys to hit the ball on the ground and be aggressive, so you see that as a reason why these guys are bad, the White Sox want them to do this. I do think there's a decent chance someone would take on most of Eloy's contract if you were trying to clear the money. I would be ok with clearing that deal, but it's not a big move that improves them. Vaughn will be in his first arbitration season this year. There's no good reason to move him yet, he'll get paid like $2 million, his trade value is zero, and there's no one around pushing for 1b. For a rebuilding team with no real path to competing like the White Sox, there's no reason not to hold onto him for 1 more year, even if he has a 1/100 shot of breaking out, that's better than the chances you'd have if you played Sheets there.

I think they already decided that they did nothing wrong, the problem was just a couple of people (Hahn and Williams) but they don't need to make any fundamental changes, they need to keep doing things the way they have been doing, just with a few minor tweaks.

Was this therapeutic?

I would much rather staff a bullpen with a dozen guys like this than go out and spend $30 million on 3 veterans. Probably about the same odds of finding 1 or 2 good relievers, as long as you don't care about the games you lose, which I don't.

I mean, the 61 win White Sox, with the fewest wins across their entire system in all of MLB, should also not be adding one of the highest paid 34 year old catchers in the game anyway given that at best it would be a short term assist to an awful team, let alone any comment about his OBP, but it's clear that they're at least still considering this.

Minor league reliever, hasn't started more than a game or two since 2017. TJS in 2018. Pitched 2 big league innings last year with an ERA of 13.5. Walked away from baseball after 2021 for a year for mental health reasons, got some press when he was called up last year. https://www.si.com/mlb/2023/07/19/rangers-pitcher-alex-speas-debut-coaching-youth-baseball https://www.wfaa.com/article/sports/mlb/rangers/texas-rangers-alex-speas-pitcher-reliever-tampa-bay-rays/287-8b6a5030-3af5-4ae4-8b21-02ff3fd7e344 Stats: https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=speas-000ale

He's not a free agent, he's under the Royals control for 2 years. They would need to trade for him. The Royals, reportedly, had multiple suitors interested in Perez at the trade deadline, and they are in a strong budgetary position. They are likely to be adding some salary this offseason rather than subtracting, with only $50 million or so committed and an average payroll higher than that every year. They have only a little bad money, and that's for a player they already bought out. And unlike Baltimore, Oakland, Pittsburgh, Florida - they haven't ever reduced their payroll to the $30 million-ish levels that those teams do when they're openly disrespecting their fanbase, which would be the case if they dumped Perez's contract. With all that together, I find it unlikely that they will be motivated to give him away for free or to just give away his contract without a prospect or player in return, they could absolutely hold him until the trade deadline or longer if they didn't receive a solid return for him.

They were in the bottom 1/3 of the league in ratings last year. That's a 40% drop off from already below average.

Except we know he's apparently dumb enough to think that Salvador Perez can be a key part of a strong 2024 White Sox team and worth acquiring.

He does have a second restraining order filed against him from his time in Cleveland that was only uncovered after the first one because the person in that incident didn't file charges.

I really have no problem with them getting rid of Roquan, other than Mack he's the one traded away. I'm counting Edmunds, Edwards, Ngakoue, Billings, Walker, and Cole as defensive free agents signed by the Bears this year. One of them is a backup sure, but that's over $30 million in 2023 cap space on new defensive additions. I've said before I'm not expecting perfection out of this team, or even an elite defense. They are the second worst scoring defense and would be the worst if not for literally 1 game played by the Broncos. They are the 6th worst defense in yards/game, 4th worst in passing yards/game. Their ongoing streak of 25+point games is easy to note. Are they getting sufficient production out of this spending?

This was the problem last offseason. They were already held together by duct tape and hope in 2022, they acted like a team that was 1 or 2 players away because to act otherwise was an admission of defeat. But, they weren't 1 or 2 players away, and the end result of that is a multi-year deal with Benintendi - not the worst thing ever, but a classic setback type move when you can't accept where your team is. "Can't accept where your team is" is also a succinct description of an owner declaring they need to "Win soon" and that they "owed it to the fans to not conduct a GM search".

I mean, literally this puts Vaughn and Sheets both as potential OF starters again, and I kinda agree with the idea that neither of them should ever, ever, ever start in the OF again.

And even if they were, is it a good idea? They are already close to their payroll limit. If they spent another $25 million a year on Swanson, where does that money come from? Last year they signed Benintendi and Clevinger and had to backload both of those deals already, they basically spent $25 million total the entire offseason by doing so. Would they have gone into this season with a $210 million payroll that is only a few million from the luxury tax, and would they have all of a sudden been well over .500 from signing Swanson?

They can just promote internally without conducting professional interviews. As long as the guy tells you he'll be good at the job and that there's nothing to fix, he's worth hiring, that's the rule we used for the GM.