Chicago White Sox

I think he’d be tough to acquire. Sonny Gray is still a name I could see happening. The Sox have liked him for a while now and the Reds appear to be open to moving him. Whether we can match up remains to be seen.

I mean, we do have a glut of corner guys and in a theoretical world we’d move one of them to fill other needs. I definitely wouldn’t give up Eloy though as we saw what he’s capable of when healthly in 2020 and it’s something truly special.

~$20M for a left-handed bat and ~$10M for a starting pitcher.

Dye wasn’t nearly as bad in 2005 as he was in later years, but regardless, having two shitty corner OFs would really hurt us. Robert’s range can help mitigate our challenges in LF, but he’s going to be overexposed if flanked by two poor defenders.

For what? I don’t want these guys getting cute and thinking they’re going to pull off a Carlos Lee 2.0 trade. Eloy has a chance to be a top 5 hitter in the league and we’d be selling super low by moving him right now.

The other concern with Madrigal was his clubhouse fit. There are rumors that he’s a bit of an oddball and rubbed some guys the wrong way. Harrison should be a big upgrade and is also likely a defensive improvement to some degree. Just sucks we’re paying $5M more for a guy who is massive downgrade offensively.

I think he’s got enough floor / versatility to avoid being DFAed down the road, but it’s a lot of money for a skill set we already have quite a bit of.

That’s good. Just not many options in free agency unfortunately.

Alright, thinking through where the roster currently stands, here are the goals I had in mind for us coming into the off-season: Improve left-handed balance of the lineup ⛔️ Acquire a #3 caliber or better starting pitcher ⛔️ Strengthen the right side of our bullpen ✅ Add power to the lineup where possible ⛔️ Add some sort of infielder to address 2B ✅ Enhance our team defense where possible ⚠️ Acquire backup catcher / add catching depth ⛔️ So far we have made four moves this offseason that will add ~$26.5M towards our 2022 payroll. Of the seven needs outlined above, we have only addressed two and a half of them. Assuming Kimbrel is eventually moved, our RH setup men coming into the offseason would have been Ruiz & Burr which is obviously a bit terrifying. As such, Graveman & Kelly were both essential additions and put us in a much better spot. Unfortunate we had to spend a combined ~$16.5M on them, but that’s what happens your system can’t pump out cheap relievers fast enough. Regardless, I’m very glad we made these moves. The problem I have is spending $11M combined on Leury & Harrison. Our biggest two needs heading into the offseason IMO was adding left-handed balance and acquiring a #3 caliber or better starter. Yes, we needed to address 2B and it didn’t have to be anything crazy, but it was one of two spots where we could have easily added a left-handed bat and instead we added another low power RH hitter, one who is somewhat redundant with a guy we already had in Leury. Given our broader needs, I’d much rather have Eduardo Escobar at 2B and use Romy Gonzalez as our utility guy for basically the same price or gone with Brad Miller as a cheaper 2B platoon option if wanted to keep Leury’s versatility. At this point, the success of the offseason will come down to two things. First we must offload Kimbrel’s salary and get something of value (reliever, catcher, etc.). Second, we must use those savings to sign Conforto. He adds left-handed balance, he adds power, and is a large improvement defensively over the Sheets/Vaughn combo in RF. If we have to pivot to Schwarber to address our left-handed balance and power needs, then our defensive upgrades are limited to 2B. Can we overcome that? Sure, but having a black hole in RF is far from ideal. The one piece of good news at the moment is the Sox seem determined to add another starting pitcher. Whether they have the ammo to acquire a legit #3 and one with more than a year of control remains to be seen, but it won’t be from a lack of trying and they will no doubt add some SP depth. I just pray they don’t go the scrapheap route here and add someone who can be impactful, even if only a rental.

Agree.

All good man! On your latter point, the Sox should add another reliever and in a perfect world a semi-young catcher who pushes Collins for the backup role (ideally via a Kimbrel trade). That being said, those additions need to be dirt cheap. Adding Tepera at this point would be a poor use of our limited payroll space.

I don’t think there is any chance they sign two expensive bats or trade both Sheets / Vaughn as that will put too much pressure on the long-term payroll. At this point, I think the best we can hope for is trade Kimbrel for whatever, use the salary relief to sign a left-handed power bat (Conforto / Schwarber), and a trade for a SP (Mannea, Montas, Gray, etc.).

This dude has proven to be a total fraud and probably is Orlando striving for attention again. I would not be giving this dude the time of day. At least NSC & Portillo’s have gotten something right in their time, even if their wells have long since dried up.

At this point trading Kimbrel only makes sense if we’re spending the savings on a RF. A good starter via trade can fit in the budget either way.

I’m eight hours late to the party, but this exactly the type of posted I needed after reading through nine pages of Harrison talk.

This is the problem. The Sox have no choice but to spend on the bullpen, but they shouldn’t be in this spot after spending a 1st round pick on Burdi and investing in a bunch of other relief prospects. This is a symptom of a failing minor league system.

So he must be bad forever given relievers never have bad two months stretches.

I think it’s really simple. Use cash to sign Conforto and use whatever trade assets you have to add a SP. if they don’t get that done (or something similar) I will be super critical. And if they can’t dump the whole Kimbrel contract (or get an important piece back). I will be critical of them. And I just ripped the Harrison signing and ripped the Leury signing earlier this offseason. Right now we are weaker than last year and I’m not happy, but I’m going to wait and see what we do before making any declarations. And in regard to the bullpen, we’d be in big trouble without Kelly & Graveman. These guys aren’t luxury items like Leury is IMO, they’re absolute necessities. Can’t go into a season with Hendriks, Bummer, Crochet, & four question marks. Hell, I still think we’re reliever light. If you want to rip Hahn, call him out for the lack of AAA arms that can gradually fill out the major league bullpen. Us spending a greater percentage of payroll space on the bullpen than desired is the side effect of a minor league system that’s not contributing.

They are trading Kimbrel which will open up more payroll space.

You think potentially getting a pre-arb reliever who hasn’t been good since 2019 represents a ton of surplus value?

Also, is this deal $4M base salary for 2022 + $1.5M buyout for 2023 = $5.5M. I still can’t wrap my head around how this dude got $5.5M otherwise.

Yeah, if this were to replace Mendick as the backup infielder it makes more sense, but still, all these ~$5M role players add up and are a poor use of our money when we have much bigger holes to address.

Hope you’re super excited about Colas or Cespedes when we get our asses beat up in the first round of the playoffs again thanks in part to shitty RF defense and a lack of LH power. There is no guarantee that Sheets comes anywhere close to replicating those numbers. And if you believe he can, then we should make him the primary DH, sign Conforto for RF, and trade Vaughn for a legit TOR starter.

And that’s the problem. We’re spending $11M on two guys who mostly do the same thing plus have a younger guy in Romy who mostly does the same thing. Like we can’t even combine Harrison & Leury to form a good 2B platoon. And now we have one less spot to address our weakness against RHP. I like the Kelly move, but this one is pretty frustrating.

Just getting to this thread, but I do not like this move in isolation. Harrison brings a nice glove, but his bat is too redundant with Leury’s. If we were going cheap, Brad Miller made a fuckton more sense.