Chicago White Sox

Hadn’t seen that Blake was getting DFA yet, but makes total sense upgrade from to Haseley at this price as a pure depth move.

Given the options, this is a great pickup for the price. At a bare minimum, he should replace Rutherford as the primary OF depth piece at AAA.

The Rays tried trading for Kimbrel last trade deadline.

It’s a potentially great rotation on paper, but there are three caveats: Keuchel is a complete wild card. He’s only two years removed from a 5th place AL Cy Young finish, but is coming off a bad season (and horrible second half) with continued regression in his K rate. A return to 2020 form isn’t happening, but can Dallas give us solid #5 numbers? Again, the stuff continues to get worse each and every year, but if he’s limited to two times through the order I think it’s very possible. However, if he does improve, he should in theory be limited to 159 innings next year to prevent his 2023 option from vesting, although that’s 100% dependent on Tony and he’s shown little regard to future season impacts. Kopech’s ceiling is “best starting pitcher in baseball” and he flashed very well last year (2.97 FIP | 93rd percentile xwOBA) in a 69 inning sample. However, durability will be the main question for him as he didn’t get as many innings last year as planned (partially due to a hamstring injury) and basically missed the entire 2019 & 2020 seasons due to TJS & COVID. His career high in innings is ~140 from back in 2018 and that seems to be on the high-end of the range of outcomes for this year. And it’s very possible that even if healthy, he wears down towards the end of the season and starts to lose his effectiveness. To me, he will need to managed very carefully if we have any hopes of him playing any sort of impactful playoff role next year. We have amazingly little SP depth. Right now, Lopez and Velasquez are our #6 & #7 starters respectively. The former was on the brink of a DFA last year and the latter actually was DFA last year. With Stiever out to the start the season, that only leaves Lambert in AAA & Bilous in AA as viable options on the 40 man roster. If we have any injury bad luck with our rotation, this lack of SP depth could prove highly problematic.

Honestly, it also reminds me when Ozzie wanted to dump Thome in exchange for a rotating DH and Jerry told KW to make it happen.

Fair enough, just weird he’s pulled a total 180 vs. his stated intentions.

Is Hahn even our GM anymore? Like seriously, the way he’s deviated away from the plans he stated at his end of season presser remind of the extensive manager search that was supposed to happen when Ricky was fired. I think Tony may have assumed primary control over roster decisions.

I can’t even begin to estimate how much time & money I’ve invested in this franchise, yet a drunk, senile old man is able to question my fandom because I don’t want Leury Garcia as my everyday RF if Vaughn were out. Would love to channel my inner Pedro right now and send his ass rolling to the ground. (For the record, I’m only kidding and do not condone violence against senior citizens).

Not having HFA definitely hurt us and so did a complete lack of power and an ability to hit a quality RH starter. Tony isn’t good enough to overcome flawed roster construction.

Yup, would have been nice having HFA, but Tony forgot how to win for the last couple of months once the division was locked up.

Hey guess what Stone Pony, La Russa can have his players’ backs without ripping into the fanbase. Not that hard to do. And the scary part here is this is proof that Tony has significant influence over personnel decisions and that Hahn is basically an assistant GM. Our only hope to win a World Series now is our core being good enough and can stay healthy enough to overcome Tony’s incompetence.

Yeah, dude showed he knows how to win in the playoffs last October.

I can’t believe this clown is our manager…god save us all.

A year of control back would be amazing

Well this would be good news…hopefully your theories are correct

Luckily he’s already got one on the roster in Gavin Sheets ?

Sorry, I’d assume Eloy in LF and Micker at DH. Tony is going to let the vet play in the field on OF if I had to guess.

I’m assuming Rodriguez gets the start, but haven’t seen anything official.

So assuming Vaughn is out, what do you guys expect the Opening Day lineup to be? Here’s my guess: Legend, RF# Robert, CF Abreu, 1B Grandal, C# Jimenez, RF Moncada, 3B# Big Energy, 2B Adolfo, DH Mendick, SS

That’s because projections don’t know how to account for last year. Realistically, those systems are saying it’s a 50% chance he’s the 3.5 to 4 win guy from 2017 to 2020 and a 50% chance he’s the shit player from last year. The 2.2 fWAR projection is more or less a weighted average of those two possible outcomes. So again, you got to decide which version of Conforto you are going to get. Personally, I’m going to blame 2021 on a hamstring injury and assumes returns to form.

A dislocation requires immediate action, so I seriously doubt they would call it “right hip discomfort”.

Conforto was basically a 4 win player from 2017 to 2020. If people want to overreact to a bad 2021 season that’s fine, but let’s not ignore his track record and say he was an average player.

How long would Vaughn be out?

In what world is Conforto a “slightly above average” player?

Anyone got any theories on kind of hip injury this could be? I would recommend not googling Cody Ross if you want to avoid the worst case scenarios coming to mind.