Why Do KW/RH Get to Keep Their Jobs?

[Jose Abreu]

I'd love to see one of Hahn or KW gone, preferably KW, just so things can be simple enough to allow the team to have a clear direction.

 

That said, not to be picky, but I really had no issue with the Rollins signing. Anderson was definitely not ready yet, and no one can pretend they knew Saladino would be as good as he's been. It was a signing that made sense at the time, and wasn't a big deal.

It just seemed to me as another "hey, we're trying to contend, but let's start this declining veteran at shortstop!" type of move. And you can look back at my posts, I was constantly advocating for starting Saladino. Sure, I didn't think he'd be this good of a hitter, but for defensive purposes alone, it could have worked out.

[Hatchetman]

. And you can look back at my posts, I was constantly advocating for starting Saladino. Sure, I didn't think he'd be this good of a hitter, but for defensive purposes alone, it could have worked out.

 

A lot of us were saying the same thing.

[Swingandalongonetoleft]

 

 

 

[Dick Allen]

A lot of us were saying the same thing.

And Saladino couldn't stay healthy either.

[SCCWS]

i was and in some way very critical of the sox FO as anyone.

 

but i still thought back then, getting Shields was a good gamble. who would have known that JS would have produce as he did.

 

pls think back, many posters were not happy at the way the sox was going into the season, esp in the SP dept.

 

i just hoped they, the owners learned from their mistake.

 

now the BIG QUESTION is, are the sox going to be buyers or sellers????

 

 

Boston media wrote a week before the White Sox trade that the Red Sox backed off Shields because they thought he could not survive in a hitter's park and his fastball had lost 2-3 mph.

[Lip Man 1]

One of the columnists at the Tribune had this to say this morning and it's also a valid point in my opinion:

 

"The onus is now on Hahn, the architect of this mess. And fortunately for Renteria, Hahn will make sure pitching coach for life Don Cooper is calling the shots on the pitching side.

 

Despite fine seasons by Sale and Jose Quintana, the Sox are 14th in the majors in pitching this year, just as they were last year. They were 20th in 2013, and 27th in 2014.

 

Cooper has never been on the hot seat, for reasons unknown.

 

Sox fans deserve better. They've put up with a lot of nonsense the last few years, and no one seems to take responsibility."

 

Mark

 

 

 

 

 

[southsider2k5]

One of the columnists at the Tribune had this to say this morning and it's also a valid point in my opinion:

 

"The onus is now on Hahn, the architect of this mess. And fortunately for Renteria, Hahn will make sure pitching coach for life Don Cooper is calling the shots on the pitching side.

 

Despite fine seasons by Sale and Jose Quintana, the Sox are 14th in the majors in pitching this year, just as they were last year. They were 20th in 2013, and 27th in 2014.

 

Cooper has never been on the hot seat, for reasons unknown.

 

Sox fans deserve better. They've put up with a lot of nonsense the last few years, and no one seems to take responsibility."

 

Mark

 

Do you blame Cooper for Shields and Danks?

[Eminor3rd]

Speaking of Desmond, he basically was Jimmy Rollins in the second half. He would have helped the first half, but his second half collapse would most assuredly not led the Sox to the playoffs, and Robin would be blamed for a choke.

 

That may be true, but it wouldn't change the fact that it still would have been a good, defensible gamble, and one that would have fit into the strategy laid out in the first half of the offseason.

[CanOfCorn]

One of the columnists at the Tribune had this to say this morning and it's also a valid point in my opinion:

 

"The onus is now on Hahn, the architect of this mess. And fortunately for Renteria, Hahn will make sure pitching coach for life Don Cooper is calling the shots on the pitching side.

 

Despite fine seasons by Sale and Jose Quintana, the Sox are 14th in the majors in pitching this year, just as they were last year. They were 20th in 2013, and 27th in 2014.

 

Cooper has never been on the hot seat, for reasons unknown.

 

Sox fans deserve better. They've put up with a lot of nonsense the last few years, and no one seems to take responsibility."

 

Mark

 

Rodon got better as the year went on. So did Miggy Gonzalez. Jus' sayin'.

[oldsox]

i was and in some way very critical of the sox FO as anyone.

 

but i still thought back then, getting Shields was a good gamble. who would have known that JS would have produce as he did.

 

pls think back, many posters were not happy at the way the sox was going into the season, esp in the SP dept.

 

i just hoped they, the owners learned from their mistake.

 

now the BIG QUESTION is, are the sox going to be buyers or sellers????

LDF: Where have you been?

[GreenSox]

One of the columnists at the Tribune had this to say this morning and it's also a valid point in my opinion:

 

"The onus is now on Hahn, the architect of this mess. And fortunately for Renteria, Hahn will make sure pitching coach for life Don Cooper is calling the shots on the pitching side.

 

Despite fine seasons by Sale and Jose Quintana, the Sox are 14th in the majors in pitching this year, just as they were last year. They were 20th in 2013, and 27th in 2014.

 

Cooper has never been on the hot seat, for reasons unknown.

 

Sox fans deserve better. They've put up with a lot of nonsense the last few years, and no one seems to take responsibility."

 

Mark

That was well-said!

 

Rodon was the #3 pick in the draft...he should be effective. The bullpen has been a bunch of nothing outside of Jones and a high priced free agent. As the article said, Cooper is "pitching coach for life" and Hahn certainly won't change that.

 

 

And then some people point to improvement in the farm. Then we should expect to see at least rankings in the middle teens after 4 years of Rick Hahn's work. The mid 20s are far more likely.

 

And then the Shields trade - terrible overpay even if Shields had been pitching decently; and when Hahn says such a decline in performance is "unprecedented" he showed a complete lack of awareness about reality.

 

Hahn has the degrees, the looks, and he talks intelligently. But the results say that he's woefully over his head as GM.

Edited October 3, 2016 by GreenSox

[soxforlife05]

If the Sox were successful, FO decisions wouldn't be slammed.

 

End of story.

 

Go back and look at the Shields thread. There was plenty of opposition to the move at the time.

 

I said Latos and Gonzalez were both better than Shields.

[caulfield12]

In all fairness, PTAC has been arguing that Rodon would struggle with inconsistency since the day he was drafted. That has played out to form...tantalizing talent, so-so results.

 

Danks and Shields? Robertson and Duke? Latos was miraculously a Cy Young candidate his first four starts and at worst held down the fort. Those all seem to be veterans whose performance is less related to the pitching coach than a number of other issues.

 

Cooper is credited with Sale and Q, and Rodon/Fulmer were expected by many to magically be as good...well, just because Cooper/Sale/Q, right?

 

So isn't that more on the scouting than the pitching coach or even the manager?

 

On the plus side, you have the Miguel Gonzalez success story and Nathan Jones being at least serviceable, and that wasn't a given coming off two major injuries. That said, Jones as a closer has disaster written all over it, but Robertson didn't inspire much confidence the second half and is much more highly paid.

 

Erik Johnson? Tyler Danish? Beck? Sometimes over the past 2-3 seasons our farm system has been so bad that somebody had to be thrust into prospect status without fully meriting it, but do we "blame" Don Cooper for those guys?

 

Would even the great Leo Mazzone or Dave Duncan have turned some of those names, like Jacob Turner, Ynoa, Purke, Kanhle, into a world-class bullpen? Not to mention Cooper got a lot more out of Jennings, Petricka and Putnam than nearly anyone expected.

 

Trust your eyes. Other than Rodon copying Sale's formula for going at 80-85% in the early innings to conserve himself, it's hard to find anything obvious to criticize with the pitching staff. If you look at Sale, Q, Rodon and Gonzalez as an aggregate group of starters, they're much better than league average.

 

The problem is including Danks, Shields, Erik Johnson, Danish and Latos...they were so bad, especially Shields...who was 2011 Dunn/2015 LaRoche on the pitching side, that their numbers are skewed by so many guys who didn't even belong on a competitive big league roster. And even there, some adjustments were suggested and worked temporarily, or he would have cratered completely and been forced to the DL. For whatever reason, he was serviceable for almost ten starts there in the middle, although the peripherals would largely point to the same "luck" Latos enjoyed his first four starts.

 

Or just calculate war/$ for the offense vs. the pitching staff.

Edited October 3, 2016 by caulfield12

[Lip Man 1]

I found this comment from Rick interesting when reading the recap story of the press conference today:

 

"You saw this last offseason -- at the end -- we made a couple of smaller moves as a means of trying to plug our holes, some of which panned out better than others," Hahn said. "If we were a little more aggressive, perhaps, from a standpoint of a full measure as opposed to arguably a half-measure in a certain scenario, then conceivably, the results would have been different."

 

Mark

 

 

[iamshack]

That may be true, but it wouldn't change the fact that it still would have been a good, defensible gamble, and one that would have fit into the strategy laid out in the first half of the offseason.

Honestly, I hated the Shields mess, but other than that, these signings people are complaining about really had very little impact on the course of the season. Rollins/Latos...they were not players who made a significant impact either way. The catching solution was pretty rotten, but most people on here seemed to think it was a great idea. Flowers was not a loss that anyone mourned.

 

So we should have signed Desmond...but honestly, how was anyone to know he would have the best first half of his career?

 

Our issues are a lack of position player development and a failure to establish a winning culture at the mlb level. I don't fault the FO as much as I do the coaching staff and Mr. Bell.

[caulfield12]

I found this comment from Rick interesting when reading the recap story of the press conference today:

 

"You saw this last offseason -- at the end -- we made a couple of smaller moves as a means of trying to plug our holes, some of which panned out better than others," Hahn said. "If we were a little more aggressive, perhaps, from a standpoint of a full measure as opposed to arguably a half-measure in a certain scenario, then conceivably, the results would have been different."

 

Mark

 

Referring here to Fowler and Desmond rather than Jackson...

[Jose Abreu]

I found this comment from Rick interesting when reading the recap story of the press conference today:

 

"You saw this last offseason -- at the end -- we made a couple of smaller moves as a means of trying to plug our holes, some of which panned out better than others," Hahn said. "If we were a little more aggressive, perhaps, from a standpoint of a full measure as opposed to arguably a half-measure in a certain scenario, then conceivably, the results would have been different."

 

Mark

Hahn's lawyer-ish, beating-around-the-bush method of talking is really unnecessary at times

Edited October 4, 2016 by Jose Abreu

[Balta1701]

I found this comment from Rick interesting when reading the recap story of the press conference today:

 

"You saw this last offseason -- at the end -- we made a couple of smaller moves as a means of trying to plug our holes, some of which panned out better than others," Hahn said. "If we were a little more aggressive, perhaps, from a standpoint of a full measure as opposed to arguably a half-measure in a certain scenario, then conceivably, the results would have been different."

 

Mark

"One big name player is the difference between winning 76 and 89 games".

 

The Rick Hahn era summed up right there.

[Eminor3rd]

Honestly, I hated the Shields mess, but other than that, these signings people are complaining about really had very little impact on the course of the season. Rollins/Latos...they were not players who made a significant impact either way. The catching solution was pretty rotten, but most people on here seemed to think it was a great idea. Flowers was not a loss that anyone mourned.

 

So we should have signed Desmond...but honestly, how was anyone to know he would have the best first half of his career?

 

Our issues are a lack of position player development and a failure to establish a winning culture at the mlb level. I don't fault the FO as much as I do the coaching staff and Mr. Bell.

 

The issue was that they made some high profile investments in talent to the end of creating an immediate winner, but left some gaping holes on the roster despite the fact that there were affordable (in a relative sense) solutions readily available to fill those exact holes. Desmond was an obvious one, but the three elite OFers (and arguably Dexter Fowler) were another. Yes, the prices that the Sox would have had to pay would have been greater than what teams ultimately got them for, but aside from Upton, all of them were signed for substantially less than market norms would have suggested. So, if you're going to dump real talent for 2 years of Frazier and 2 years of Lawrie, if you're going to replace your internally popular catcher with a aging, short-term platoon (which, theoretically, should have been a substantial short-term improvement), why not also take low-hanging fruit and finish the job?

 

Alone, Rollins/Latos/Jackson were not bad signings -- they were shots in the dark to try to find bouncebacks, and good teams find tremendous value out of those types of diamonds in the rough every season. The issue was that they were signed to be relied upon, when there were CLEARLY better and more reliable options available. And while those options were substantially more expensive, they were available for great deals in terms of recent market history.

Edited October 4, 2016 by Eminor3rd

[Eminor3rd]

"One big name player is the difference between winning 76 and 89 games".

 

The Rick Hahn era summed up right there.

 

One big name player may not be worth 13 wins, but it certainly could have been worth 5 wins. Most of the rest, unfortunately, could have been made up if player's did what they were expected to do. We expected two more wins each out of Frazier and Abreu, for example, and probably 1.5 out of the catching tandem. Maybe another win out of Lawrie.

 

The fact that guys disappointed shouldn't shock anyone -- it happens all the time. Our guys simply didn't get it done. There's always a winner and a loser, and you can end up losing even if your team had the talent to win. The center of the evaluation of the FO, IMO, should be on whether or not the team even had enough talent to win in the first place. I think Hahn DID come into spring training one or two good players short, and I think many of us agree that was obvious even without the benefit of hindsight. TO me, that's just Hahn admitting that he f***ed up settling for Rollins/Jackson instead of Desmond/Cespedes. And I think he's right. It may still not have been enough given down years from a few guys, but it probably would have been a team that legitimately had a shot.

[southsider2k5]

The issue was that they made some high profile investments in talent to the end of creating an immediate winner, but left some gaping holes on the roster despite the fact that there were affordable (in a relative sense) solutions readily available to fill those exact holes. Desmond was an obvious one, but the three elite OFers (and arguably Dexter Fowler) were another. Yes, the prices that the Sox would have had to pay would have been greater than what teams ultimately got them for, but aside from Upton, all of them were signed for substantially less than market norms would have suggested. So, if you're going to dump real talent for 2 years of Frazier and 2 years of Lawrie, if you're going to replace your internally popular catcher with a aging, short-term platoon (which, theoretically, should have been a substantial short-term improvement), why not also take low-hanging fruit and finish the job?

 

Alone, Rollins/Latos/Jackson were not bad signings -- they were shots in the dark to try to find bouncebacks, and good teams find tremendous value out of those types of diamonds in the rough every season. The issue was that they were signed to be relied upon, when there were CLEARLY better and more reliable options available. And while those options were substantially more expensive, they were available for great deals in terms of recent market history.

 

It is funny that Rollins/Latos/Jackson gets brought out, but Miguel Gonzalez is never included in that, despite the fact he was the exact same sort of signing. The difference is that he worked out so it doesn't fit.

[Balta1701]

It is funny that Rollins/Latos/Jackson gets brought out, but Miguel Gonzalez is never included in that, despite the fact he was the exact same sort of signing. The difference is that he worked out so it doesn't fit.

My job of course now is to note is how flawed this approach is at building a contender even when you have an example of a player where it worked. It's great for a rebuilding team. You have 5-6 slots on your team that are open and staffed by players who aren't big league quality. You try to bring in 5-6 guys hoping that a few of them will work out - most of the time you will get unlucky. Most of the times you try to sign someone they will underperform - Avila, Jackson, Navarro, Latos. One of the 5-6 signings winds up working out and you're stuck in August complaining about how many slots on your team are taken up by guys who don't belong in the big leagues.

 

When you need to fill 1-2 spots, you have some probability of getting lucky overall. You go out and sign Desmond and he puts up a 3 WAR season (note - this is solid, but still not like stealing an MVP for nothing). You hold onto Fowler and he puts up a dominant season. But in both of those cases these were basically the last guy on that team - the Cubs were, last offseason, in a position where if Fowler put up a 2 WAR season they were still solid on paper because Heyward in RF and Schwarber in LF were going to put up strong numbers, and if they didn't they had enough depth to make up for that. They got lucky on Fowler but they were able to do that because they didn't have to gamble on filling 5-6 positions this way.

 

Finding these guys is a great rebuilding strategy. You sign 5-6 guys off the scrap heap and if 1-2 of them have great seasons then you have an asset you can get a draft pick for, or an asset you can trade at the deadline, or even hold onto if they have multiple years of control remaining. But when you are trying to build 40% of your competitive lineup/rotation with those guys, you better know how you're going to win if 33% of your starting lineup is gone by the end of may.

[GreenSox]

Speaking of Desmond, he basically was Jimmy Rollins in the second half. He would have helped the first half, but his second half collapse would most assuredly not led the Sox to the playoffs, and Robin would be blamed for a choke.

It's hard for me to lament not signing Desmond. He was awful in 2015. It was a wish and a prayer that he would turn it around this year.

One good half, bad second half. Looks like a guy Hahn will zero in on this offseason.

The mistakes were wasting money on Latos, Rollins, Shields, and the 2 catchers (Hahn managed to downgrade from Flowers). Add all that money up and what do you get?

Edited October 5, 2016 by GreenSox

[Eminor3rd]

It is funny that Rollins/Latos/Jackson gets brought out, but Miguel Gonzalez is never included in that, despite the fact he was the exact same sort of signing. The difference is that he worked out so it doesn't fit.

 

Well, that's kind of the point: 1 in 4 worked out. And that's totally fine with reclamation projects -- you throw a bunch at the wall and when one works, it justifies the cost of the most that didn't. But that's a building strategy, not an immediate contention strategy. My issue isn't with either strategy, it's that Hahn seemed to have gone half one way and half the other, which is a recipe for doing neither particularly well.

[Eminor3rd]

My job of course now is to note is how flawed this approach is at building a contender even when you have an example of a player where it worked. It's great for a rebuilding team. You have 5-6 slots on your team that are open and staffed by players who aren't big league quality. You try to bring in 5-6 guys hoping that a few of them will work out - most of the time you will get unlucky. Most of the times you try to sign someone they will underperform - Avila, Jackson, Navarro, Latos. One of the 5-6 signings winds up working out and you're stuck in August complaining about how many slots on your team are taken up by guys who don't belong in the big leagues.

 

When you need to fill 1-2 spots, you have some probability of getting lucky overall. You go out and sign Desmond and he puts up a 3 WAR season (note - this is solid, but still not like stealing an MVP for nothing). You hold onto Fowler and he puts up a dominant season. But in both of those cases these were basically the last guy on that team - the Cubs were, last offseason, in a position where if Fowler put up a 2 WAR season they were still solid on paper because Heyward in RF and Schwarber in LF were going to put up strong numbers, and if they didn't they had enough depth to make up for that. They got lucky on Fowler but they were able to do that because they didn't have to gamble on filling 5-6 positions this way.

 

Finding these guys is a great rebuilding strategy. You sign 5-6 guys off the scrap heap and if 1-2 of them have great seasons then you have an asset you can get a draft pick for, or an asset you can trade at the deadline, or even hold onto if they have multiple years of control remaining. But when you are trying to build 40% of your competitive lineup/rotation with those guys, you better know how you're going to win if 33% of your starting lineup is gone by the end of may.

 

Ahh, should have read this before my last post.