Greg Hibbard

This was a terrible two weeks, with Wheeler balking at our top offer, the Ozuna non signing, and then Strasburg and Cole setting a literally impossible FA market. Everyone here is a little on edge lately because of it. I don’t blame the fanbase for being completely broken by a team that has changed direction a lot recently, proven absolutely nothing, and has had the same cast of characters for years at the top... who are now facing the biggest Sox playoff drought in 40 years. During 2020, we will probably have our best record in the last 9 years. Even without upgrades, it’s not hard to imagine this team, settling into its own, might be ready to be an 83 game winner...As is. Which is not done. Career years are certainly possible with some of these emerging stars. Imagine if Eloy is a 45-50 home run hitter? What if Madrigal hits .350 with an OBA of .410? We just don’t know. We have a ton of young talent, and there are still other upgrades out there. I still think we are a #2-#3 pitcher away from being potentially a division winner. I think people need to keep in mind that as of December 2018 literally no one expected either Giolito or Moncada to take that huge of a step forward- but they did. And now we take it for granted...imagine if that were to happen for Lopez and Madrigal this season. lets try not to tear each other to pieces during this brutal process

Agreed on the pedigree. Regarding the age, we non-tendered Avi when he was 27, and I think we can all agree that was because of the pricetag more than anything else.

I was just joking with a friend about this. This guy is literally the same guy as Avi. The difference? 5 million saved a year and a half later. We're such cheapskates.

I'm coming around to the idea that having a 0.5-1 WAR RF in Mazara may be fine, as long as that guy's floor basically is his ceiling. If we're getting 20 HR, 25 2b, .261/.328/.442/.770, so be it. With all of the production we are projected to get elsewhere, that should hopefully be fine.

The offseason day-to-day of wafer-thin rumor tweets designed to generate traffic is honestly just really exhausting.

After Abreu moves to DH, his defensive liabilities will no longer take away from WAR. Assuming the last half of his contract is almost entirely played at DH, is it much of a stretch to get to 6 total WAR?

I would be very interested to hear what critics of this deal think Jose’s numbers need to be over this contract to justify it

As long as Jerry looks at it as “Jose’s money lives outside of whatever salary cap we are targeting” I’m good with this. I really love Abreu and always have.

Thank you - haven't poured through the whole thread yet

Abreu at C? I want some of what you're smoking ? (I know you didn't mean that)

Does this make Collins the odd man out? If McCann is playing DH and 1B some, Abreu is our primary 1B with some DH, and Grandal is our primary catcher, it seems like Collins is on the block. Especially with Vaughn on the fast track

I predict 3/$36 I do not think that is a bad deal for the Sox.

How can the last 7 years be a “trend”? Comparing 2013 to 2018 seems just weird

I still think Machado is overvalued for the contract he got, especially with respect to the actual numbers he put up. If he put up an wRC+ of 108 for the Sox people would have calling for Hahn’s head regardless of Machado’s defense. As for sustained winning, correct me if I’m wrong, but the 23 season period of 1990-2012, although it only produced one championship and a handful of playoff appearances, the Sox had an average winning percentage of .526 - an 85 win season average during that entire era. I can’t recall the exact placing but I think they are the 6th or 7th best winning percentage over those years. I know someone will undoubtedly post the graph condemning this team as the worst franchise in pro sports because of their lack of success at winning titles, but that 23 season era bought them a little bit of equity with me. If this rebuild goes nowhere, I think it’s open season, but in my eyes the organization generally was doing things right for a while and had a few bad seasons.

2013-2016 were very, very different approaches than 2017-present. They didn’t fire the GM but they went in a completely different direction. I appreciate all the work that went into the original post, but adding up all the raw numbers from two completely different approaches (and two different cultures) feels wildly disingenuous to me. Tim Anderson, Yoan Moncada, Lucas Giolito, James McCann, Eloy Jimenez, and Luis Robert appear to be excellent acquisitions. The jury is out on Nick Madrigal, Zach Collins, and Andrew Vaughn. The 2017-present era feels much more like the 2011-2014 Astros to me. No it’s not a perfect analog, but the White Sox have been largely intentionally signing stopgap players waiting for key pieces to develop. I don’t think RH is a great GM but I do think based on the line we chose in late 2016 we need to see this through, and it still looks very promising to me based on the 6-7 really good young core pieces we have.

for those mentioning he’s potentially overpaid- so what? Our cheap ass organization finally shelled out some money? Great. Reinsdorf has billions. I know many of you feel there is some theoretical ceiling For payroll but somehow I feel as though Jose lives outside of that idea for the front office.

1 year at $18 seems ideal for both sides. Jose gets way more money than he would on the open market and the Sox get him for the 1 year they really need him and not the 2-3 he desires.

What the Sox will probably do should not inform the discussion on what the Sox should do....both in terms of draft picks and financial offers. The Sox should offer whatever it takes to get both pitchers, and win a goddamned World Series. The White Sox make a mint every year on merchandising and television rights ,and are consistently rated an extremely profitable and valuable franchise. Whether they would spend $300 or $400 million on these two pitchers is absolutely arbitrary to their long term bottom line, even if the last three years of both are not great. Fine, we might suck in 2025. Who cares. Our window is 2020-2023. Get them done.

If Machado had a 109 OPS+ / 3.1 WAR year after signing a 300 million contract with the Sox, people would be calling for his head.

Yolmer has got to be gone. I want Mendick instead. Leury makes a ton of sense as a super Util as we have one more year of control.

Why is Moncada's bWAR (4.1, the same as Tim's) and fWAR (5.4, 1.7 above Tim's 3.7) so strikingly different? Does Fangraphs rate defense that much more!?

Glad I decided not to go tonight

Lol

With Anderson, the thing that concerns me more than his defense is his low walk total. I think part of it is his style, as he is a very aggressive hitter and is not often ahead in counts. However, I'm apprehensive that whenever he has a slump his OBP is going to plummet to an abysmal level. Can you imagine a half-year where he's hitting .230 with a .250 OBP? That wouldn't be good. I love Tim though, and I'm really glad he's part of our team for the next several years. He's one of my favorite players.

What are his xFIP splits first half / second half? Edit: I looked it up. 5.74 first half/4.95 Second Half. Second half doesn't seem TOO horrible...