Chicago White Sox

There is suddenly some real smoke that the Sox may be exploring trades for controllable starting pitchers. First, we had this series of tweets from our raBBit: Next, fathom posted this little nugget that he heard from a Steve Stone interview yesterday: Now, the foodies have jumped on the bandwagon with these tweets:

Please convince Friedman to make you GM so we can make this trade.

That’s assuming everyone is healthy which is probably not realistic coming off last season and not what we should be planning for IMO.

He’d already be on the Sox if that were the case.

Where has this been said? I probably missed it.

Other than budgets, roster spots, and the development of our young arms.

The problem is we can’t afford to trade these guys and manage to have enough depth now that Dunning is gone. Right now we still need to add a starter, so including Cease or Kopech in a package for one has us still short one. Plus we’d be selling low on both guys. I just can’t see it in all honesty...at least after the Lynn trade.

I totally get what you’re saying, although I don’t agree they’re as close you think they are. That being said, all else being equal, yeah I’d rather spend money than trade our prospects. I do think Musgrove is far more interesting than the free agents willing to take a 1/$10Mish deal though.

I would take Musgrove. 1) Three years younger. 2) Has recently put up a 170 inning season (Smyly hasn’t since 2016) and is less likely to tire out over the course of a full season. 3) Better xwOBA in small sample that was 2020 (.268 vs .287). 4) Solid xwOBA in larger sample that was 2019 (.312) while Smyly really struggled (probably due recovering from his injury, but still somewhat a red flag). 5) Higher spin rates / more movement on his breaking balls. I actually think Smyly is a pretty fascinating buy low guy, but I’d definitely have more confidence in Musgrove.

It has everything to do with ERA. This is one of the maddening debates I have ever witnessed on this board. FIP is an estimate of what a pitcher’s ERA would be independent of fielding, luck, and sequencing (i.e. the things they control). If you think there are other variables that a pitcher can control (implying that FIP is incomplete), that’s a different argument. However, saying FIP has nothing to do with ERA or can’t be compared to it is 100% wrong. That’s literally its entire purpose.

If the price is right...hopefully!

Sounds like his future is in the bullpen

100% depends on the price for Musgrove. To be honest, I’m a little worried they spend most of their money on Hendriks and then trade for a cheap C tier starter like Brault. I really want to land Hendriks, but not at the expense of a decent 4th starter.

That includes about $4.6M in pro-rated signing bonuses. Not sure how they account for those internally since they are non-cash at this point, but that would further limit our spending ability if they include them in their $135M to $140M payroll target.

Moving on from FIP, what’s your breaking point on a Joe Musgrove trade? Who’s willing to do something Thompson + Beard + Adolfo? If yes, how much further would you be willing to go?

Which is why balls in play are excluded from the equation.

Wasn’t last year at $130M? If it weren’t for the pandemic, I’d expect us to be $150M+, so it doesn’t really feel all that outlandish.

Exactly...FIP is literally a theoretical ERA independent of fielding and luck. HRs, BBs, & Ks are simply the drivers / inputs used to generate a theoretical ERA given their correlation with run prevention. It’s really pretty straight forward and I can’t believe it’s even be debated.

Appreciate the back & forth, but I’m done going down this rabbit hole and highly recommend you spend more time thinking through this and how multi-variable equations in general work. Like just read the link I sent you and hopefully it will all click at some point, because right now you’re completely off-base.

Hmm...that solves part of the gap, but not sure what the remaining difference would be then. I’m using spotrac for what it’s worth. https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/chicago-white-sox/payroll/

Really? Let’s just hope they don’t trade for a closer if they miss out on Hendriks. Way too many quality relievers are available for likely reasonable prices.

Are you including dead money / buy-outs and allocated signing bonuses?

Clearly you’re punking me at this point, so I’ll simply say you’re wrong and leave it at that to avoid me further disrupting the thread.

Which is terrifying. At least our existing core is pretty damn good and Lynn & Hendriks should be quality additions. Any frustration I have is more around a lack of killer instinct from Jerry when he already has a cheap core in place and could really make a statement with a small amount of money.

They are both trying to measure earned runs per nine innings (one actual, the other theoretical) and are 100% intended to be compared!?!