Eminor3rd

Slightly smaller, slightly tackier

Old, but relevant because against MLB hitters:

I’m in the minority, but at this point I’m almost more interested in the wbc than the MLB. Nothing intentional or penal like Ron or anything, I just think the sox have so consistently done things that make me feel negative for so many years in a row now, my lizard brain is just finally deciding to try to move on. I’m also a little drunk right now so I might regret saying this.

Looks like the posting is official.

Stone Garrett used to be a bit of a stick. EDIT: Hold up, he's coming off 27 games of 131 wRC+ for the Dbacks. Couldn't find spot or a taker?

Ahh, former Rakuten Golden Eagle, JT Chargois. Wondered what happened to him.

I think the Sox can put a package together. Rays love getting high quantities of very young very risky prospects with upside because they’re so good at identifying and developing them. Even the Sox have guys like that. But if Lowe is available (every Ray is every year, who am I kidding), I think a lot of teams would be interested in trying to buy low, meaning the price probably won’t actually be low. The fit makes sense, but I don’t know if it makes sense for the Sox to blow everything they have to spend on it.

Cubs just released Jason Heyward. Uh-oh

The team "on paper" going into 2023 isn't going to look better than the team "on paper" looked going into 2022. The best we can hope for is patching a couple holes with randoms and (hopefully) some shuffling of value from positions of depth to positions of weakness via trade. Then we roll the dice again and hope for healthy, productive season from the underperformers from last year.

I’m not saying he isn’t a net positive, I’m saying there are many other places on the diamond you can choose to invest to get that kind of offense, and you can focus on defense at C and get production that the white Sox haven’t seen. Playing time is a zero sum game, but production isn’t. Maybe @bmags is right and they don’t make the playoffs in 2021 without Grandals bat, but the option when designing the roster wasn’t necessarily “have it or don’t”. What if they had a high end bat instead of a black hole in RF? What if then they got much better production on the other side of the ball at C? It’s easier to buy a bat in RF than one at C, but you can’t get what the C provides on defense anywhere else. A more productive duo at those spots may have made so they not only made the playoffs in 2021 but also didn’t get embarrassed in them.

I'm here, 100%. At this stage of my fandom, I want literally nothing out of the C slot but excellent defense and the confidence of the pitching staff. Offense is bonus, and if you get a Realmuto, congrats on winning the lottery. But that type of guy is too expensive to buy and too hard to try to develop. This is why I disliked the Grandal signing the moment it happened. I assumed he was going to hit (and he generally has), but Grandal has always seemed like the prototypical example of the edge case where analytics fails you because you don't recognize that the value a player provides is often mostly CORRELATED with the things you can measure, as opposed to literally represented in those things. For example, catchers that are elite framers and have great arms aren't valuable only because of those two characteristics, but because guys with those characteristics tend to also be great blockers, game callers, and leaders. If you find an anomaly like Grandal, where he has the two things you can measure but every pitcher he's worked with hates him, and you know he can't block a ball in the dirt -- well there's a reason that the Sox were able to get him at the price they wanted to pay. Smarter organizations know how to interpret the numbers; they know what they say AND what they don't say. Rick Hahn seems like he just finally signed up for a FanGraphs paid membership and an intern gave him a StatCast login, and he's playing around for the first time, having to get things horribly wrong in order to learn how to make them right.

I'm trying to imagine what would be going on in KW/Hahn-land that would have them considering this. Given the scenario where the Sox are trying to reduce payroll, this move only really makes sense if they are planning to trade Vaughn for Murphy, let Abreu walk, and move Grandal to 1b. If you then don't sign any OF, you put Sheets in RF until Colas usurps him? That all makes a certain kind of sick, depressing logical sense for someone wanting to shuffle deck chairs while being cheap, and so I find it plausible for the White Sox braintrust.

Reds just dumped Mike Minor? AJ Pollock?

The lack of flexibility is the result of the poor resource management a few of us have been bitching about for the last three years. This is what was always going to happen: the Sox were going to hit a wall where they simply aren’t able to meaningfully modify the team. They have lost their ability to optimize given new information. In a league whose high-level metagame plays so much like a set of hedges and probabilities, this is obviously a terrible place to be, and belies an embarrassingly poor sense of strategy/level of understanding the game you’re playing. But what Hahn is saying now isn’t dumb or bad, it’s just fatalistic. There are no more “moves” to make. All that’s left is to hope for the best. They can still win, they have the talent to do so — but they need some s%*# to break their way. It’s not unlike finding yourself overcommitted to a mediocre hand in poker. Everyone else still has moves, the Sox just have to hope that the cards they need are on the river.

The more I look at free agent lists, the more I think the White Sox end up with Mitch Haniger.

Sounds like got halfway through that answer before he realized he wasn't supposed to tell us Abreu is a goner.

Yeah, but I don't think this version of the Sox is in "eat money" mode. I actually wouldn't hate Merrifield. I think he'd be reasonably priced given he's begun to decline, but he's still a solid player. I like Colas but I think it's silly to expect him to ready to stick full-time, so an option where you hedge against him not being ready but can easily adjust if he is ready, I think, makes some sense. I'd like them to aim higher too, but with all of the best trade chips as pieces of the current roster and without much money to spend, I think he have to resign ourselves to the fact that the core players need to look like stars again for us to get the bulk of the production we're going to need to see. In that scenario, high-floor complementary pieces can be good targets. I continue to believe that average-above average depth is underrated, particularly by the White Sox.

Maybe, but I gotta think it more likely means a lot more Gavin Sheets. I have a feeling they’re relying on saving that Abreu money

Now it means they have to get another OF. I doubt they can do better with $8m, hopefully it inspires them to spend a bit more.

Yeah, he's the man right now. He basically just had the NPB equivalent of Aaron Judge's season, but he's 22. He won the triple crown while breaking Sadaharu Oh's single season HR record for a Japanese player (actual NPB record is 60 by Wladimir Balantien). He just set an entirely new bar for NPB hitters. He won't be available for a few years at least, we'll see if he somehow still has room to grow.

Yeah, you’re right. It would make the team better but I just can’t see them getting it done. They clearly don’t have much of a presence in the Pacific Rim, and they probably want to spend their money on more veteran relievers.

Yes, he’s better than Eloy at LF. I’m guessing, though, that the Sox wouldn’t be able to get both Conforto and Yoshida. Could definitely be plausible to alternate Yoshida/Eloy in LF/DH, start the season with Pollock/Sheets in RF and have Colas take over eventually. Yoshida has played RF before, but that was more to find a place to stick Adam Jones and/or Yutaro Sugimoto than because he actually fit out there.

I’m a Masataka Yoshida fanboi. I think he’s been THE most complete hitter in that league for the past five years (rivaled for a couple years by Tomoya Mori and the enigmatic Yuki Yanagita, and now overtaken this year with Murakami’s breakout, though I think Yoshida is still a better contact hitter). He’s one of the handful of guys I’ve seen where I feel like I can tell just from watching that the bat speed is better than those around him. He blends an extremely polished approach with a noticeably athletic swing — he finds a way to get the barrel on a lot of different types of pitches in the zone, even when he’s fooled on velo. He’s very strong, and is known for staying in excellent physical condition. The Buffaloes sell inflatable Masataka Yoshida-branded dumbbells at the ballpark. He never seems to break 30 homers, but it’s more because he’s lasering doubles off the wall all the time; the raw power is there (he won the home run derby a couple years ago), his approach/bat path is just more mature versatile than a typical slugger. BUT Despite the strength and athleticism of his hands, he’s relatively slow and is not a good outfielder. He’s undersized, and started to become somewhat injury prone as of late. And, he’s 30 now, and it’s just proven to be really difficult for hitters past their mid-20s to make the transition to the States. I think he definitely has better bat-to-ball skills (hands/bat speed) than Seiya, but Seiya is better in every other way (speed, defense, overall athleticism). The Sox could use the left-handed bat in the OF, but this is yet another 40 defender who you can’t find DH at bats for because of Grandal/Eloy/etc. I think he’s gonna hit, but it’s hard to imagine it’ll be enough to be a star, especially given the moderate defensive liability. Believe me, there’s almost nothing I want more than to be able to buy a Yoshida Sox jersey, but I think the Sox would be better off with a true RF this year.

I believe the White Sox are signaling that they plan on investing in ways to make their current guys better rather than investing in new guys to replace their current guys. Very likely too little too late, but that's what I'm guessing.