chw42

I can see what their thought process was. They went into the year thinking a fully healthy lineup was pretty good at least 1-7. If they can have a hit parade going through that, they'd score a lot of runs and it'd be less feast or famine. In reality, we got maybe 4 hitters doing well in the lineup and the rest was near or below replacement level. This ends up with a few of the 4 guys doing well hitting singles and the rest of the lineup stranding them on base. This is how we end up with a team that has trouble scoring more than 4 runs. They might be able to score 3 runs consistently, but probably not much more than that. I actually think a change in the ball should encourage teams to pull the ball more. Hard hit balls to CF don't travel as far and have been the biggest victims of the deadened ball. Pulled home runs require less distance and thus less exit velocity and a bigger variation in launch angle. You'd basically have to hit a ball over 100 MPH with a launch angle around 30 to hit a ball out of CF. If you pull the ball, you can probably get it out with an LA between 20-38 with an exit velocity as low as 95.

Yeah both fly ball heavy pitchers in that park is not a recipe for success.

Yeah, too bad he knew where it was when he decided to drink and drive. TWICE.

I decided to take a look at our batted ball profiles compared to the ML average and if our middle-opposite field hitting approach is actually causing some of the power decline we've seen with the team in 2022. Here's what I found. Name Pull Pull wOBA Pull GB% Pull GB wOBA Pull FB% Pull FB wOBA Pull LA Pull EV Pull Pitch Center Center wOBA Center GB% Center GB wOBA Center FB% Center FB wOBA Center LA Center EV Center Pitch Oppo Oppo wOBA Oppo GB% Oppo GB wOBA Oppo FB% Oppo FB wOBA Oppo LA Oppo EV Oppo Pitch League Average 37.80% 0.426 54.80% 0.177 18.10% 0.876 6.1 89.9 87.9 37% 0.317 46.50% 0.214 25.45% 0.311 9.5 88.9 89 25.10% 0.324 22% 0.401 37.90% 0.226 26 84.7 90 White Sox 35.30% 0.382 59.60% 0.172 13.68% 0.781 2.4 89.8 87.2 37.25% 0.325 48.10% 0.221 24.40% 0.348 8.5 89.7 88.6 27.43% 0.352 25.30% 0.464 36.50% 0.198 23.2 85.7 89.4 Andrew Vaughn 29.79% 0.491 54.80% 0.231 13.70% 1.158 3.1 91.1 86.6 38.36% 0.363 56.38% 0.257 19.15% 0.672 4.4 93.9 87.9 31.83% 0.329 30.77% 0.332 32.05% 0.187 17.4 89.3 89 Luis Robert 35.50% 0.531 63.22% 0.269 10.35% 1.287 -1.5 90.9 88 36.33% 0.372 50.56% 0.315 20.22% 0.344 6.4 89.6 88.5 28.16% 0.306 20.29% 0.406 37.68% 0.306 28.6 86.1 88.8 Eloy Jimenez 34.62% 0.541 50% 0.197 27.78% 1.239 8.8 97.2 88.7 48.10% 0.298 64% 0.276 16% 0.221 -1.4 91.4 88.2 17.31% 0.098 44.44% 0 44.44% 0 13.3 89.8 92.1 Tim Anderson 30.13% 0.251 77.78% 0.158 4.17% 0 -7.3 86.3 87.2 38.91% 0.355 60.22% 0.205 16.13% 0.359 -0.1 89.5 88.3 30.96% 0.501 27.03% 0.587 32.43% 0.381 17.6 88.7 88.6 A.J. Pollock 44.40% 0.342 56.04% 0.069 10.99% 0.708 1.9 89.4 87.2 32.68% 0.283 44.78% 0.295 26.86% 0.049 13.4 89 88.4 22.93% 0.302 10.64% 0.354 38.30% 0.304 36.6 85.2 89.6 I'm sure if you've read this forum a lot, you've seen a handful of posters constantly complaining that the White Sox don't pull the ball in the air enough. The reason for that is because on average, pulled fly balls get you a .876 wOBA. That's pretty much as good as hitting a line drive. Hitting the ball up the middle and to the opposite field give you far worse results than pulling the ball, as seen by the .317 and .324 wOBA when hitting the ball to center and the opposite field. There is one caveat to pulling the ball though: you'll hit a lot of grounders since you'll probably roll over on pitches more often with that approach, as seen by the near 55% ground ball percentage when pulling the ball. This is far higher than a batted ball in any other direction. Pull-heavy teams might tend to be less consistent offensively, but when they do hit their share of fly balls in the air, they're heavily rewarded. The teams that tend to pull the ball more tend to hit more home runs. The White Sox, in all their infinite wisdom, have gone away from the league trend and are 24th in the league in home runs and 27th in ISO despite having multiple guys in the lineup with massive raw power. They do however, lead the league in singles. When you look at the way the Sox hit, a couple of things really stand out. They don't pull the ball as much and when they do, the results kind of aren't there with the team as a whole. They pull the ball on the ground more than the league and hit way less fly balls than the league. so even though the league is having success pulling the ball, the Sox are not. They are better than league average when hitting to the opposite field and to center. So you might be able to say that the middle-out approach the organization teaches is working. Especially when the Sox get a gaudy .464 wOBA on ground balls to the opposite field. The only problem with it is that ground balls to the opposite field usually only get you singles. And the Sox as a whole don't have enough consistent hitters to link singles together to score runs. Which is why you often see the team have 6-8 hits and have like 1 or 2 runs. It sure seems like the Sox and Menechino thought they had found some kind of market inefficiency by hitting the ball to the opposite field, but in reality, they've just managed to get a bunch of hits while not scoring enough runs. You'd also think this middle-out approach would help in situations where the bases are loaded, but that obviously hasn't been the case this year. In general, the team is doing what the Sox and Menechino are preaching in terms of hitting philosophy, but the results simply are not there because the approach only works if you have a lineup full of consistent hitters. That's something that the Sox simply do not have at this point. That being said, it doesn't have to be that way. The Sox don't have the same type of hitter all across the lineup. This middle-out hitting approach benefits some guys while it's seriously hurting others who could be helping this team score a lot more runs. One guy who benefits from the middle-out approach is Tim Anderson. As you might have guessed, he is a monster when he hits the ball the other way. And he hits the ball the other way a lot more than just about everyone on the team. However, his hitting approach basically makes him useless when he pulls the ball. He puts it on the ground a staggering 78% of the time when he pulls and he doesn't have a hit yet on a pulled fly ball this year because he's only pulled the ball in the air 4 times all year. You read that right, 4 times. Sometimes you have to wonder why teams even bother playing a LFer when he's up. The funniest part is that a decent amount of those pulled grounders are probably when the Sox had the bases loaded. TA's numbers this year aren't bad, but something still makes me think that his swing/approach are kind of broken at the moment. On the opposite end, we have AJ Pollock, who pulls the ball a lot. But his timing is so bad that he just ends up rolling over quite a bit. That's why he has a .069 wOBA on pulled grounders. Nobody really hits well on them, but .069 is something else. Then we get to the 3 guys who I think this middle-out approach is really hurting. When Luis Robert, Andrew Vaughn, and Eloy Jimenez pull the ball, they get results. When your wOBA is over 1.000 when you pull the ball in the air, you should really think about doing it more. What's worse is that for guys like Vaughn, hitting to the opposite field isn't really working. He hits opposite field more than Tim Anderson, but only has a .332 wOBA to show for it. Luis Robert's numbers look ok when he does go opposite field, but he's also popped the ball up a ton when going that way (14 times) and it looks like he's making contact for the sake of making contact. Even in advantaged counts. So he ends up looking like a slap hitter when he looks like Mike Trout when he pulls the ball. Eloy has always had good opposite field power, but that was before MLB decided to deaden the balls even more. In a small sample this year, he has yet to get a hit on an opposite field fly ball. The majority of his power has come when he has pulled the ball. One thing to look at is the pitch velocity that these opposite field hits occur on. Outside of Eloy (small sample), all these guys are hitting pitches slower than the ML average to the opposite field. That tells me that this isn't a timing issue or that they can't pull high velocity. It just tells me that they're doing this on purpose. And if you really think about it, it doesn't make a ton of sense. Why would you sell out the power on the team for some extra singles when the league is doing the opposite and having success? It almost feels like the Sox want to be different for the sake of being different. The problem is that the approach is clearly not working. They're getting out-homered at home and even when they had a mostly healthy team in the playoffs last year, they ended up putting weak balls in play just to make contact. They probably aren't going to make a change at hitting coach this year, but I hope they do something about this in the off-season. As is, they're probably ruining some of these young hitters' careers by having them do something that isn't actually productive. TLDR: Fire Menechino

Gotta hope the Pirates had a scout in Birmingham yesterday.

I don't think we need any more catchers lol. I think we're gonna have to run with Grandal.

JDM got traded to the Diamondbacks in 2017 near the trade deadline. La Russa resigned after 2017. So there is an overlap. Martinez was an absolute monster for them in 2017 so that might actually be one of the best trades under La Russa's tenure. La Russa got hired by Boston in November of 2017 and Martinez signed with Boston in February of 2018. I'm not sure if there's a correlation, but I'm sure Tony being there didn't hurt. Either way, Martinez is a hell of a hitter. His decrease in power numbers this year are a bit concerning, but his overall numbers are similar to what they were last year. He's only DH'd this year, so I'm not sure he'd be a good guy to play in RF unless you really needed to. He also played LF a lot in Fenway, which is probably one of the easiest LFs to cover in baseball.

This team is just hard to predict. You'd think they would play well against all these sub-500 teams, but they've been absolutely ass at home so you can't even put a bunch of stock in them winning home-series against teams like the Tigers and Royals. Sure, they should win those series, but you just never know. The only in-division team that they seem to play well against is Detroit. Even Kansas City gives them trouble. I have way more confidence in them beating teams on the road than I do at home. Which is the exact opposite situation from last season.

Yeah I think he's decent, but he hasn't produced much this year.

@ Colorado (2) : 1-1 Oakland (3): 2-1 Kansas City (3): 2-1 @ Texas (4): 2-2 @ Kansas City (4): 3-1 Detroit (3): 2-1 12-7

I'm not sure if the Giants are gonna be sellers. Maybe if they don't win any games in the next week. But it would be so White Sox to trade for Joc when they could have had him for $7 million in the off-season.

The whole idea of being a push hitter just simply does not work for certain hitters. Jose Ramirez went from MVP candidate to near replacement level because he stopped trying to pull the ball in the 2nd half of 2018 and the first half of 2019. Vaughn, Eloy, and Robert are all seemingly suffering from similar problems. They look amazing when they pull the ball but more often than not end up sacrificing power for contact when they look to hit the ball the other way. Mostly fastballs too. On the other hand, Tim Anderson is at his best when he does push the ball the other way. As he ends up rolling over more often than not when he pulls the ball.

They probably shouldn't play him at 2B unless they really have to.

I mean we've seen it first hand and that was when the guy was still in this prime. I'd be hesitant to trade for Cubs relievers after the Kimbrel debacle last year. The Cubs clearly have some sort of way of fixing up relievers that other teams don't. Robertson was trash with the Rays last year and the Cubs turned him into a valuable reliever at 37 somehow.

Crochet is probably our best chip for him. I wouldn't want to trade Vera, Montgomery, or Colas for him. If the cost really is that high I'd rather they get Naquin.

I'm sure Bell and Happ will require similar trade packages. Happ might have one more year of control but Bell is easily the 2nd best bat available for trade after Soto. I'd rather they get a real outfielder instead of another corner infielder posing as an OFer.

Bell is probably worse than Sheets in RF. Realistically, he's a DH.

How long till Colas gets promoted to Charlotte?

They've mastered losing the first 2 games of a 4 game set and then winning the last 2 to salvage a split.

They play the Sox and Twins very tough. They play like shit against everyone else.

Liam's stuff wasn't all there today. Just hoping it's cause he also threw a bunch of pitches yesterday and not a precursor to more elbow issues.

The guy gets as many bullshit hits as Jake Burger. Maybe more.

Another Guardians hit on a high fastball.

The whole team would be on the IL if we did that.

Well I'd argue that had Madrigal stayed healthy he'd be probably be as good as Kwan. Madrigal seems to have better bat to ball skills but Kwan has way better plate discipline. Kwan staying healthy is probably the biggest difference.