Can the White Sox right the ship without making any major moves?

[Snopek]

29 minutes ago, ChiSox59 said:

The careers of those players say it’s likely they do better ROS; not unlikely. 

Yeah, I have a much better feeling about the underperforming players getting back/closer to their norms than I do about the health stuff.

[chw42]

If the guys come back healthy and produce like they can, probably. 

Does that seem likely? No. 

[Balta1701]

Here's one that I think has been missed. 

Has it seemed to anyone else like the White Sox have had an insane number of ground ball and bloop singles lately? Well, they have. As of right now, the White Sox have a BABIP of .366 in June. This is not only the highest in baseball in June, if that number were to hold, it would be the highest monthly BABIP in baseball since the Colorado Rockies in July of 2017. Notably, that's Colorado - a place where the ballpark tends to elevate BABIP. It is 0.045 higher than the next highest team in June - Torotno at .321. 

While the White Sox have been a traditionally high BABIP team, this number is so high that it seems like it must come down. They previously reached .362 in September/October of 2019, but in 4 of the other 6 months that year their BABIP was in the range .310-.330, and the other month it was .343. 

Furthermore - that 2019 team had an ISO (isolated slugging) of .195 - which during their highest BABIP month was 10th in MLB. Overall that year they had a .153 ISO, so the team's BABIP shot up during the month when they were hitting more extra base hits.

The White Sox have a .132 ISO in June - good for 3rd worst in baseball, only Oakland and Detroit are slugging worse this month. They aren't getting extra hits by bouncing things off the wall. The White Sox's offense right now is literally "all singles, all the time, at a rate that seems difficult to sustain."

Tim Anderson is admittedly incredible at hitting singles the other way, as is Vaughn apparently, but good golly this seems way out of whack. All these extra hits have balanced out April and May, but as of right now their batting average and their expected batting average are nearly identical, as is the case with most of the league. It's hard to see how they can keep having this many weak hits fall going forward. 

[CentralChamps21]

11 minutes ago, Balta1701 said:

Here's one that I think has been missed. 

Has it seemed to anyone else like the White Sox have had an insane number of ground ball and bloop singles lately? Well, they have. As of right now, the White Sox have a BABIP of .366 in June. This is not only the highest in baseball in June, if that number were to hold, it would be the highest monthly BABIP in baseball since the Colorado Rockies in July of 2017. Notably, that's Colorado - a place where the ballpark tends to elevate BABIP. It is 0.045 higher than the next highest team in June - Torotno at .321. 

While the White Sox have been a traditionally high BABIP team, this number is so high that it seems like it must come down. They previously reached .362 in September/October of 2019, but in 4 of the other 6 months that year their BABIP was in the range .310-.330, and the other month it was .343. 

Furthermore - that 2019 team had an ISO (isolated slugging) of .195 - which during their highest BABIP month was 10th in MLB. Overall that year they had a .153 ISO, so the team's BABIP shot up during the month when they were hitting more extra base hits.

The White Sox have a .132 ISO in June - good for 3rd worst in baseball, only Oakland and Detroit are slugging worse this month. They aren't getting extra hits by bouncing things off the wall. The White Sox's offense right now is literally "all singles, all the time, at a rate that seems difficult to sustain."

Tim Anderson is admittedly incredible at hitting singles the other way, as is Vaughn apparently, but good golly this seems way out of whack. All these extra hits have balanced out April and May, but as of right now their batting average and their expected batting average are nearly identical, as is the case with most of the league. It's hard to see how they can keep having this many weak hits fall going forward. 

It's a very weird dynamic. The Sox have a very high BABIP, yet also have a lower AVG than xAVG, which is the opposite of what you'd expect. As the BABIP has gone up recently, the gap between xAVG and AVG has narrowed, but xAVG is still 5 points higher. It's like they're simultaneously having a lot of good luck on some batted balls and a lot of bad luck on others.

Also of note, xSLG is 61 points lower than SLG, so the bad luck on hard hit balls is hurting more than the good luck on all those ground balls is helping.

[pcq]

This is the best rebuild since The Three Stooges were free agents!!

[Balta1701]

21 minutes ago, CentralChamps21 said:

It's a very weird dynamic. The Sox have a very high BABIP, yet also have a lower AVG than xAVG, which is the opposite of what you'd expect. As the BABIP has gone up recently, the gap between xAVG and AVG has narrowed, but xAVG is still 5 points higher. It's like they're simultaneously having a lot of good luck on some batted balls and a lot of bad luck on others.

Also of note, xSLG is 61 points lower than SLG, so the bad luck on hard hit balls is hurting more than the good luck on all those ground balls is helping.

That is true across the entire league though. Right now, across the entire league, xAVG is 0.012 (12 points) higher than actual batting average - there's your ball effect, a significant offset between those numbers. The White Sox's actual batting average is therefore better than you'd expect based on the league's offensive performance this year.

League wide, xSLUG is 44 points higher than SLG, again likely your dead ball effect. I'm ok with believing that bad weather cost them a few HR early in the year and that explains the rest of why the White Sox's slugging is low, but that shouldn't be mattering right now in June, they're just not hitting balls that can be extra base hits. Either they're hard on the ground or they're not hard enough.

[Texsox]

3 hours ago, Snopek said:

Yeah, I have a much better feeling about the underperforming players getting back/closer to their norms than I do about the health stuff.

I think you're being very accurate with your assessment.

[Chimpton]

12 hours ago, pcq said:

This is the best rebuild since The Three Stooges were free agents!!

Sign them up!

[Tnetennba]

Every day we see further evidence of the organisational rot.  Whatever concept of ‘righting the ship’ you might have should be tossed out the window.  Playing well enough to make a Wild Card game would be a mere band-aid.  Once again the White Sox way of doing things has failed miserably, but they keep on keeping on because that is their MO.  Nothing new under the sun for this org. 

[Harold's Leg Lift]

The roster is grossly top heavy.  The team is setup to have the stars carry them and too many of them are either hurt or severely underperformimg so they're relying on far too many bad players to not be bad.  Just look at the top 12 players in WAR on Baseball Reference. No Eloy, Moncada, Grandal, Pollock, Giolito or Lynn.  Instead you have Johnny Cueto, Adam Engel, Kendall Graveman, Reese McGuire and Reynaldo Lopez (good lord).  There were plenty of moves to be made to improve the roster but instead Hahn decided to sit on his hands and wait for the stars to return and save the day.  Meanwhile the days keep getting crossed off and the losses keep piling up.      

[CentralChamps21]

1 hour ago, Harold's Leg Lift said:

The roster is grossly top heavy.  The team is setup to have the stars carry them and too many of them are either hurt or severely underperformimg so they're relying on far too many bad players to not be bad.  Just look at the top 12 players in WAR on Baseball Reference. No Eloy, Moncada, Grandal, Pollock, Giolito or Lynn.  Instead you have Johnny Cueto, Adam Engel, Kendall Graveman, Reese McGuire and Reynaldo Lopez (good lord).  There were plenty of moves to be made to improve the roster but instead Hahn decided to sit on his hands and wait for the stars to return and save the day.  Meanwhile the days keep getting crossed off and the losses keep piling up.      

The bad/lack of moves happened in the offseason. Once the injuries piled up, I became more and more comfortable with just punting this season and gearing up for next year.

If there's a top player with 2+ years of team control that can be acquired, sure, go for it, but don't waste resources on anybody who's a FA after this season.

[Chicago White Sox]

21 hours ago, ChiSox59 said:

The careers of those players say it’s likely they do better ROS; not unlikely. 

Yup, just a question of how much.

[GradMc]

On 6/24/2022 at 8:17 AM, Highland said:

Some forget that Hoyt, Bannister, and Dotson were unhittable the second half of the season. And these guys were able to throw complete games, especially Hoyt. If Hoyt was ahead by one in the ninth, the game was over. To top this off there was Britt Burns and the veteran Jerry Koosman. There is no comparison between 1983 and 2022. The 1983 team won 99 games. The 2022 team is not going to get near that.

Thank you

[GreenSox]

8 hours ago, Harold's Leg Lift said:

The roster is grossly top heavy.       

It is in the sense that the bottom is terrible, mostly due to FO decisions.  And then, of course, with the #30 farm system, and what talent there is resides in the low minors, there is no internal help to be had.  Anything they do to try to fix it until the offseason will be counterproductive.

[vilehoopster]

Making moves or not making moves: none of that will matter as long as LaRussa is manager. I think a large percentage of the team has become so disheartened and dissatisfied by his bizarre moves and lineups that they are just going through the motions.
 

The Sox team had to show up this morning knowing they needed to play well and win today. And to show up for a must-win game and see Anderson sitting. You know a ton of them had to be thinking, “WTF, what else can this crazy old Fuck do to stick it up our ass?” 

So staying the same or making a move will not matter as long as LaRussa stays manager.

[WBWSF]

You can't expect to win many games when 4 and sometimes 5 of your hitters in the lineup can't hit. Driving to the game today i heard Bruce Levine say that the team is going to add pitching  at the trading deadline. If this team doesn't get some more hitting this is going to be a lost season.  Maybe management thinks it will get better when Moncada, Eloy and Grandal come back. By the time all 3 of them come back this team might be out of first place by 10 games.

[chitownsportsfan]

[Dick Allen]

They basically admit they, even with a full roster aren't good enough to win a championship.  I heard on the telecast Saturday Steve saying how warm it was when the bats were clicking. If it has to be pushing 100 degrees for them to hit, how would that work out in October?

[Highland]

On 6/25/2022 at 8:36 AM, Tnetennba said:

Every day we see further evidence of the organisational rot.  Whatever concept of ‘righting the ship’ you might have should be tossed out the window.  Playing well enough to make a Wild Card game would be a mere band-aid.  Once again the White Sox way of doing things has failed miserably, but they keep on keeping on because that is their MO.  Nothing new under the sun for this org. 

This sums up things well. At the moment, I don't have faith that this organization can turn things around. It started with the LaRussa hiring and has snowballed. Some big things will have to happen this upcoming off season, and I am not counting on those big things happening.

[Leonard Zelig]

Is replacing the manager considered a major move?