Chicago White Sox

That’s true, but the control issue still remains. The pitching staff is literally a house of cards and is gong to collapse by next year. If Anderson was playing at a superstar level and Eloy was putting up a +130 wRC+ I could see a case to roll the dice, but nearly everyone is underperforming or hurt. Just feels like there is something substantially broken in the clubhouse and I don’t see if working itself out this year with Grifol at helm. Given that it sounds like it will be a seller’s market, especially for pitching, we should go hog wild and sell everything with limited control that we can.

In terms of actions, here’s what I’d like to see happen immediately: Trade all rental-ish type players: Gioltio, Lynn, Clevinger, Graveman, Kelly, Lopez, Middleton, & Grandal Seriously explore a Tim Anderson trade and see if you can get 75% on the dollar (probably unlikely, but worth looking into) Release Andrus and give Sosa or Romy the 2B job the rest of the way DL Moncada for an extended period of time and let Burger handle 3B Demote Vaughn to Charlotte temporarily (have him focus on elevating the ball while clawing back a year of control) and let Eloy / Sheets cover 1B/DH Call up Colas and let him play RF the rest of the way even if he struggles Make Santos the closer and see if we can turn into a valuable asset Call up any arms with a pulse and be prepared for routine blowouts After the trade deadline, fire Rick Hahn (I’d do now if possible) and make KW interim GM for a couple of months. Pursue a GM from a quality organization in the off-season and offer him a President of Baseball Ops title. Mike Chernoff would be my top target. Once a replacement is had, force KW to resign and then clean fucking house. Getz, Haber, KW Jr. etc should all go (Paddy can stay for now). Grifol and his entire coaching staff should also go. Start afresh with a new GM and manager selected by the new front office. Immediately start modernizing the scouting, player development, and conditioning functions. Don’t rush things by drafting high floor college players. Let this thing bottom out and hope you can string together several drafts of high ceiling talent. Build this organization the right way from the bottom up and hope the end product is a team can regularly dominate the worst division in major sports. This is really not that hard if we are willing to go external and do things the right way.

As the title suggests, it’s officially time to blow this team the f*** up. This group of players is an absolute joke and even if we somehow lucked our way into the playoffs (which won’t happen) this team would be as dangerous as a butter knife come October. In terms of production, our positional group is 28th in fWAR sitting at a cool 3.3. If you take out our superstar CF (3.3), our slap happy LF (0.8), and a 27 year old rookie DH (0.8), we’d have -1.6 fWAR. That’s fucking incredible. Tim Anderson has gone from being a legit superstar SS to one of the worst regulars in baseball. Dude is now 30 and 1 1/2 years from free agency with what appears to be serious personal issues to boot. Beyond that, the roster is filled with DHs who have stagnated or regressed offensively. Eloy has gone from a 144 wRC+ in 2022 to a 99 in 2023. The coaching staff can’t seem to figure how to get Vaughn above a 110ish level wRC+ despite him having the talent for more. Sheets has gotten 184 PAs and is putting up a 94 wRC+ while continuing to factor into the RF mix. After that you simply have a group old (Grandal), bad (Zavala), old/bad (Andrus), or chronically injured players (Moncada). 2B & RF continue to problem areas for us and this off-season we will enter no viable catching options. To say things are bleak is a massive fucking understatement. The pitching staff has been better, but is still below average (22nd in fWAR at 5.8) and is filled with veterans with minimal control. Giolito (1.7) & Clevinger (0.7) are both free agents after the year and Lynn (0.8) only has a $19M team option remaining. What is even more problematic though is that Cease & Kopech are only controllable through 2025. The former is now represented by Boras, which means he is as good as gone the day he hits free agency. The ladder has been a massive disappointment and not even worthy of a potential extension at this point. Behind them we have absolutely nothing at AAA because Hahn has done such a bang up job creating a pipeline of talent. As for the bullpen, it’s pretty much Santos and a bunch of aging veterans. As should be painfully obvious to all of us, this pitching staff is going to be a disaster as soon as next year whether we sell at the deadline or not. Unfortunately, the reality is we’re going to need to rebuild and it’s going to be a long one given how bad Rick has done at building a minor league system. Again, it’s time to blow this team the f*** up and start from scratch. Specific actions I’d like to see taken will be in a follow-up post.

Gotta disagree here. Contracts were backloaded because otherwise they couldn’t fit those pieces in the 2023 payroll structure. Hahn fully expected to win this year.

Especially when they stated they wanted an experienced manager from a winning organization before hiring Grifol.

Rick Hahn has proven time & time again he doesn’t know how to build a quality baseball organization. For the bulk of his tenure, minor leaguers either had to learn on their own and/or had different voices at different levels teaching them different things. There was no common philosophy from top to bottom. So it should not be surprising that guys come up underdeveloped and do not reflect the characteristics of some sort of central vision of how win at baseball. Jerry is a complete joke when it comes to signing premium free agents and maintaining a culture of accountability, but Hahn is an incompetent baseball executive who has shown that the rest of modern baseball is well ahead of him strategically.

Sell anything and everything with less than two years of control. It truly sucks that Hahn is the guy who will have to do the trading, but it’s better than praying we somehow make the playoffs and magically get hot come October. This team is simply too flawed offensively and lacks any real pitching depth for that to happen IMO. And that really sucks because this s%*# division is trying to gift us a playoff spot.

Zero chance the Sox move out of Chicago. The only question that matters at this time is when will the Reign of Rick Hahn end. Dude may have the worst resume of any major league sports GM with 10+ years of experience. I 100% get that Jerry is the root of the problem, but if they hired a qualified candidate from outside the organization (think Mike Chernoff), there would at least be some reason for hope.

Were any other MLB beat writers laid off or are we so much of a joke that we can’t be afforded one despite being in the third largest market?

I cancelled. This season has been tough to stomach, but I barely follow anything but Fegan’s coverage. Dude is the best in the business and if the Athletic doesn’t want to keep him then I don’t see a reason to keep paying them despite quality Bears coverage.

What was your favorite part of the Alberto era? Mine had to be that monster May we just had. Too bad he won’t be a part of our upcoming jumbo June though ?

Sell him if you can get 90 cents on the dollar. Otherwise hold and pray he rebuilds some value. Truly sad that most of the few interesting pieces we have are playing below expectations.

We currently have the third worst record in the MLB. I’d have to imagine our farm system is also bottom five. Imagine the incompetence required to have built such a s%*#-show of an organization from top to bottom. Fire this clown before the 4th of July, sell your rentals before the deadline, and then hire Mike Chernoff in the off-season to fix this mess. It really isn’t that hard even if it will take some time to self correct.

Losing out on Zack Wheeler and then pivoting to Dallas Keuchel to be our big pitching addition was a massive blow to the rebuild. Being afraid to sign impact talent and instead spreading the wealth across multiple B & C tier free agents (mainly relievers) was a waste of resources. Taking safe college corner bats and a 5’ 6” 2B at the top of the draft during the rebuild years resulted in a low ceiling farm. Failing to address 2B & RF year after year despite being obvious holes. Not being creative or aggressive enough and finding a way to add interesting depth to AAA, in particular, of the pitching kind.

Thankfully Rick has amassed substantial pitching depth in AAA.

For the record, I originally hated the hiring of Pedro Grifol as I thought a guy a bottom tier organization passed over for their own job told me all I needed to know. Then at his press conference he said all the right things and hired a semi interesting staff. I convinced myself that maybe he was going to be a good fit. It’s as clear as day now, though despite a horribly flawed roster, Grifol is not the man fit for the job. This team has quit and there doesn’t seem to be anything he can do to right the ship. I guess that’s what you get when go cheap and end up with an inexperienced guy despite being in the “middle” of your competitive window.

He’s basically the LF version of Nick Madrigal for 25x the annual cost

Update on Andrew Benintendi, the player Rick Hahn gave the largest contract to in franchise history to be the finishing touch on a “championship caliber” team: fWAR = -0.1 wRC+ = 69 OPS = .621 OBP = .309 ISO = .057 HRs = 0 xwOBA = 8th %tile OAA = 18th %tile I thoroughly look forward to the next 4 1/2 years of our slap hitting LF.

I really wonder how Rick Hahn sleeps at night. Like even the most incompetent assholes would step down if they were the architect of this failure. But Rick just keeps on chugging by blaming everyone else but himself. Dude must have a massive ego to be so blind to his own shortcomings. I can’t believe we’ve been stuck with this clown for 10 years.

If we finish bottom three after spending $180M in payroll, Reinsdorf may have no choice to fire Hahn. That takes a special type of bad and I don’t think even Jerry would tolerate despite his endless loyalty.

Bump

It’s very disappointing to me. He’s simply got to hit for more power. He’s sitting at 0 WAR right now as his 124 wRC+ is completely offset by the 1B positional adjustment and his below average defense.

Wow…the Rays just pulled a Sox

The Phillies

Still not sure which way I want this one to go…lol