chw42

Pham seems like he's kind of an asshole to have in the clubhouse.

Not really. I looked it up earlier and he maybe gets 3-5 more hits.

They are definitely shopping him. The Sox are currently at a $182 million payroll and they still have 2B, 4th OFer, and possibly another catcher as spots they need to fill. The Benintendi signing makes that pretty clear. However, if they're willing to either salary dump Graveman or Kelly, I'd be ok with that too.

What else do the Jays have that's MLB-ready that we would want?

His contract actually looks reasonable now if you believe his peripherals over his actual pitching performance last year. Let's hope the teams that are interested didn't watch him pitch last year. Cause when he didn't have it, he was unwatchable.

Those teams must have saw his FIP in the low 3s and thought last year was an aberration. I think if Kelly stays healthy this year (not that likely), he could rebound very well. He was quite unlucky last year and I think the injury was messing with his ability to control his sinker.

Nimmo's the better player, but Benintendi has a better chance of being useful by the end of this contract. I can't imagine a 37 year old Nimmo being useful.

Nimmo was obviously the best move they could have made, but that deal was also twice the value of this one. Jerry ain't paying that.

Jack would have hated us signing Aaron Judge if Jerry actually decided to shell out the money. I feel like there's no pleasing some people. On here, on Reddit, on Twitter, all I saw was that the Sox weren't gonna sign anyone significant. There was a post on the baseball subreddit about the White Sox doing absolutely nothing like 2 days ago. The White Sox subreddit was full of people shitting on the team for not doing anything. Now they actually spend some money on a fairly reasonable deal to acquire someone who can help with the team's deficiencies and all of a sudden it's too much money or the player isn't good enough.

Not all of those guys played in Kansas City. That park + the humidor + dead ball meant nobody was hitting homers last year.

I don't really disagree considering how often Jansen is injured.

I could see them trying to get Biggio along with Jansen.

lol come on man, Eaton was 32 when we signed him the 2nd time around. Benintendi will be that age when this contract is over.

lmao they'd rather pay him his money to go away.

The Sox were supposedly in on Murphy.

You joke, but I brought up Benintendi when we hired Grifol.

FWIW, while Benintendi was not great playing in Yankee stadium, his peripheral statcast numbers looked pretty good. He had an expected slash line of .253/.387/.449 while his actual slash line was .212/.354/.365 (this is actually an above average wRC+). His BABIP in that small sample was .212 so it's safe to say that when it normalizes over a larger sample, you're looking at numbers much closer to the expected slash line.

I'm pretty sure I saw Twins fans lamenting the Twins for being cheap and not signing Benintendi for a few extra million per year. The grass is always greener on the other side, I guess.

Relax, he played 16 games in Yankee stadium.

Haniger got 3 and $44 million, but he's also 3 years older. I think Benintendi is also a much better fit for the team than Haniger. The deal is absolutely fair in this market and the 5 year commitment isn't that big of a deal for a guy that's only 28.

If they were willing to trade for Kimbrel, I'm not sure what's stopping them from trading for Hendriks.

Any chance the Rays want Hendriks?

We haven't had a solid left handed hitter in the lineup since Adam Eaton the first time around (if you're not counting switch hitters). Yes, Benintendi's ceiling is fairly low. He's not exciting. But this lineup badly needed a stable and consistent left handed hitter and that is exactly what Benintendi is. The upside to him is that his offensive numbers were depressed by Kaufmann stadium. His wRC+ on the road these last 2 seasons were 123 and 131. His ISO on the road in 2021 was over .200. Move him to Guaranteed Rate for half the season and I wouldn't be surprised if he put up 25 homers next year. Did they overpay? Probably. Is Benintendi an impact player? No. But only Aaron Judge or one of the top SSs would have been if Yoan and Grandal don't bounce back. The team's potential is still gonna depend on at least one of those guys to not be a corpse next year at the plate.

I totally forgot that Benintendi had a hamate bone injury. Apparently he had the surgery before to get it removed and then it grew back and got broken again? You gotta hope that's not a recurring issue.

I think we need to thank AJ Pollock for declining his free $8 million. Without that, I doubt this deal happens.