Sooooo.....who are you selling?

[GREEDY]

4 minutes ago, ChiSox59 said:

You’re not signing a reliever as good as Hendriks and probably not Graveman, both under control past 22. You’d also be selling Lynn at much less than peak value with 2023 control as well. I don’t see any scenario this FO punts 2023. 

If you are personally bullish on those three guys vs their contracts then I guess you don't sell them.  I feel all three are close to properly paid and if I could gain a Top 25 I'd do it.  

When the union decided once again not to fight for pre-arb players, and they still make 10% of what bad vets on 1 year deals earn... I believe that once again put onus on the system, of which the White Sox have the worst in baseball.  They must fight to add depth anyway they can.  

[ChiSox59]

4 minutes ago, GREEDY said:

If you are personally bullish on those three guys vs their contracts then I guess you don't sell them.  I feel all three are close to properly paid and if I could gain a Top 25 I'd do it.  

When the union decided once again not to fight for pre-arb players, and they still make 10% of what bad vets on 1 year deals earn... I believe that once again put onus on the system, of which the White Sox have the worst in baseball.  They must fight to add depth anyway they can.  

By top 25 you mean top 25 in our org? Il gonna need more than that to trade those guys. 

[reiks12]

Cueto stock is rising

[Balta1701]

4 hours ago, ChiSox59 said:

You’re not signing a reliever as good as Hendriks and probably not Graveman, both under control past 22. You’d also be selling Lynn at much less than peak value with 2023 control as well. I don’t see any scenario this FO punts 2023. 

Gravemann is 70th in WAR and 51st in ERA out of the bullpen. He’s good but he’s certainly not irreplaceable. 

[TheFutureIsNear]

2 hours ago, Balta1701 said:

Gravemann is 70th in WAR and 51st in ERA out of the bullpen. He’s good but he’s certainly not irreplaceable. 

I think there will be at least a handful of teams that would be happy to trade for Graveman to fill their 8th inning role…not saying we would get a great/top prospect. But with now bad our farm system is I wouldn’t be shocked if we can get a guy that is close to a top 5 prospect for us 

[Balta1701]

8 minutes ago, TheFutureIsNear said:

I think there will be at least a handful of teams that would be happy to trade for Graveman to fill their 8th inning role…not saying we would get a great/top prospect. But with now bad our farm system is I wouldn’t be shocked if we can get a guy that is close to a top 5 prospect for us 

I think that is entirely reasonable, possibly with a second piece.

[GREEDY]

7 hours ago, ChiSox59 said:

By top 25 you mean top 25 in our org? Il gonna need more than that to trade those guys. 

You are right, my bad, I definitely wasn't just generalizing the equivalent of a "usable" prospect, not a throwaway. 

To be precise I mean a top 14.7 prospect for our organization, top 25 for an average system, top 30 from a top system.  

 

[TheFutureIsNear]

7 minutes ago, GREEDY said:

You are right, my bad, I definitely wasn't just generalizing the equivalent of a "usable" prospect, not a throwaway. 

To be precise I mean a top 14.7 prospect for our organization, top 25 for an average system, top 30 from a top system.  

 

Can you honestly name 15 prospects you care about in our system? I don’t think it will take much selling to add to our awful system 

[Balta1701]

One other thing worth adding here. There's a potentially serious salary issue here that the White Sox have to think about in advance.

Assuming Pollock picks up his option, the White Sox have $137.5 million guaranteed next year. They have a bunch of arbitration guys - Giolito (arb-3), Lopez (arb 3), Engel (arb 3), Kopech (arb -1), Cease (arb-1) all have a good chance of being picked up. Those 5 together - roughly $25 million probably isn't a bad estimate, maybe you cut Engel but then you still need someone to replace him? On top of that, Foster, Ruiz, McGuire, Lambert, and Mendick are also all first year arb-guys - some of them probably get cut loose, but there's at least a few million more if they keep any of them.

If they decide to give $20 million to Abreu for another year, or if they have to make a payroll cut because they lose out on playoff revenues and ticket sales associated with having playoff games to sell tickets for...that leaves them dangerously close to declaring the team is on the field. 

[maxjusttyped]

1 hour ago, Balta1701 said:

One other thing worth adding here. There's a potentially serious salary issue here that the White Sox have to think about in advance.

Assuming Pollock picks up his option, the White Sox have $137.5 million guaranteed next year. They have a bunch of arbitration guys - Giolito (arb-3), Lopez (arb 3), Engel (arb 3), Kopech (arb -1), Cease (arb-1) all have a good chance of being picked up. Those 5 together - roughly $25 million probably isn't a bad estimate, maybe you cut Engel but then you still need someone to replace him? On top of that, Foster, Ruiz, McGuire, Lambert, and Mendick are also all first year arb-guys - some of them probably get cut loose, but there's at least a few million more if they keep any of them.

If they decide to give $20 million to Abreu for another year, or if they have to make a payroll cut because they lose out on playoff revenues and ticket sales associated with having playoff games to sell tickets for...that leaves them dangerously close to declaring the team is on the field. 

I think you just laid out a pretty compelling argument for trading Lynn or Lucas for a cost controlled SP, assuming Jerry is going to treat the luxury tax as a hard cap.

[ron883]

[Balta1701]

7 hours ago, maxjusttyped said:

I think you just laid out a pretty compelling argument for trading Lynn or Lucas for a cost controlled SP, assuming Jerry is going to treat the luxury tax as a hard cap.

Why would another team do that? They have a decent cost controlled pitcher, but want to give this pitcher up for a guy making either $10 or $18 million next year, who is also a free agent soon, who also either struggled a ton or was injured this year? 

[hi8is]

I would say Maynard but he already sold his soul to make a record, you dip shitted fuck wad.

[Tnetennba]

9 minutes ago, hi8is said:

I would say Maynard but he already sold his soul to make a record, you dip shitted fuck wad.

He sold out before you ever heard his name after all 

[Tnetennba]

Can we sell TLR & Menechino for a bag of magic beans??

[caulfield12]

https://theathletic.com/3408198/2022/07/08/mlb-trade-starting-pitcher-angels-white-sox/?source=freeweeklyemail&campaign=602288

Behind a paywall.  documents recent setbacks with Mahle and Montas putting a damper on the market, other teams possibly selling like Sox or Angels.

Giolito, Lynn, Cueto, Thor all come to mind.

[maxjusttyped]

7 hours ago, Balta1701 said:

Why would another team do that? They have a decent cost controlled pitcher, but want to give this pitcher up for a guy making either $10 or $18 million next year, who is also a free agent soon, who also either struggled a ton or was injured this year? 

no one on the Sox has any trade value. you're right. never mind then.

[ChiSox59]

10 minutes ago, maxjusttyped said:

no one on the Sox has any trade value. you're right. never mind then.

Balta said Gio was a salary dump like a week ago. Spent all offseason promising everyone Sox couldn’t trade Kimbrel without eating most of his contract. He’s gonna take the most negative stance on trade value possible on all Sox. 

Of course teams would trade for Gio and Lynn. They’d be extremely sought after if put on the market. They won’t be on the trade market tho. 

[maxjusttyped]

54 minutes ago, ChiSox59 said:

Balta said Gio was a salary dump like a week ago. Spent all offseason promising everyone Sox couldn’t trade Kimbrel without eating most of his contract. He’s gonna take the most negative stance on trade value possible on all Sox. 

Of course teams would trade for Gio and Lynn. They’d be extremely sought after if put on the market. They won’t be on the trade market tho. 

Of course they would. No team is going to look at 27 innings in Lynn's case or 82 with Lucas where their ERA's are inflated and act as if that's who these pitchers are now. Their multi year track record of very good production still matters & so does the fact both guys are running xFIPs right in line with where they were at last season. There is inevitable positive regression coming for both of them.

Maybe Balta would say yes to this, but does anyone seriously think there are contenders who would trade more for Cueto than Lynn or Lucas because he's on a cheaper contract and has had a lower ERA for a 10 start stretch? That seems to be where the type of thinking that says Lynn, Lucas & Hendriks all have minimal or no trade value leads you to.

Edited July 10, 2022 by maxjusttyped

[Jack Parkman]

48 minutes ago, maxjusttyped said:

Maybe Balta would say yes to this, but does anyone seriously think there are contenders who would trade more for Cueto than Lynn or Lucas because he's on a cheaper contract and has had a lower ERA for a 10 start stretch? That seems to be where the type of thinking that says Lynn, Lucas & Hendriks all have minimal or no trade value leads you to.

That's exactly correct. 

Look at DRA- from BP rather than FIP or xFIP. It's a better metric. 

Edited July 10, 2022 by Jack Parkman

[caulfield12]

The argument about Hendriks all centers on his batty contract, tax implications, etc.

 

But if you want to look at "minor" trades, look at Adames last year and the Mariners going 11-1 after acquiring Carlos Santana, and 16 out of their last 19. He just won the third game in less than a week with another go-ahead homer.

Edited July 10, 2022 by caulfield12

[maxjusttyped]

1 hour ago, Jack Parkman said:

That's exactly correct. 

Look at DRA- from BP rather than FIP or xFIP. It's a better metric. 

There is more that goes into evaluating players and projecting their future performance than 3 months worth of performances. You won't find a projection system anywhere that has Lucas, Lynn & Cueto as remotely close in RoS value.

[Balta1701]

53 minutes ago, maxjusttyped said:

There is more that goes into evaluating players and projecting their future performance than 3 months worth of performances. You won't find a projection system anywhere that has Lucas, Lynn & Cueto as remotely close in RoS value.

 

4 hours ago, ChiSox59 said:

Balta said Gio was a salary dump like a week ago. Spent all offseason promising everyone Sox couldn’t trade Kimbrel without eating most of his contract. He’s gonna take the most negative stance on trade value possible on all Sox. 

Of course teams would trade for Gio and Lynn. They’d be extremely sought after if put on the market. They won’t be on the trade market tho. 

Lynn is coming off major knee surgery, missed 3 months, isn’t in the best shape anyway, his fastball is down 1.2 mph over last year, he’s giving up his highest exit velocity of the statcast era, and his numbers show the results of this boiling down to an expected ERA near 4. His velocity is also not trending upwards over his first 5 games. On top of that, he’s owed $27 million for the next year and a half, whereas he was owed $9 million over 1 year when Dunning was traded for him.

By the end of the year perhaps he pitches himself back to significant value, but right now both Cueto and Lynn have expected ERAs around 4 (4.08 vs 3.9) and one of them is owed $2 million while the other is owed $27 million. Lynn will currently not return anything of substantial value to the white Sox other than salary relief, certainly nothing that makes them better next year than Lynn could. Cueto won’t return a star by any stretch of the imagination, but he’s cheap enough for any team to go after him, and anything that is returned for him makes the 2023 white Sox better than the nothing they get if they hold him and he departs as a FA.

Lucas might be starting to trend in the right direction, but his overall stats are genuinely bad. His expected wOBA right now is identical to where it was in 2018. Maybe by the end of the year this improves substantially as that started to happen over his 2 games prior to this last one, but I’m not giving anything of value based on those two games - again at least nothing that could have the same value to the White Sox as Lucas next year. For me that latter part is key - my goal is not to sell off this team but to try to put them in a better spot for next year.

And yes please brag for us about how Craig Kimbrel is the dominant force you spent the offseason saying he was, and I was totally wrong calling him a middling reliever. Clearly I can’t scout pitching as everyone agrees that picking up his option was 100% the right move as you said all along. I would love to hear more of your discussion of why Kimbrel is awesome and that was a great move at every step just like you said.

[maxjusttyped]

4 minutes ago, Balta1701 said:

 

Lynn is coming off major knee surgery, missed 3 months, isn’t in the best shape anyway, his fastball is down 1.2 mph over last year, he’s giving up his highest exit velocity of the statcast era, and his numbers show the results of this boiling down to an expected ERA near 4. His velocity is also not trending upwards over his first 5 games. On top of that, he’s owed $27 million for the next year and a half, whereas he was owed $9 million over 1 year when Dunning was traded for him.

By the end of the year perhaps he pitches himself back to significant value, but right now both Cueto and Lynn have expected ERAs around 4 (4.08 vs 3.9) and one of them is owed $2 million while the other is owed $27 million. Lynn will currently not return anything of substantial value to the white Sox other than salary relief, certainly nothing that makes them better next year than Lynn could. Cueto won’t return a star by any stretch of the imagination, but he’s cheap enough for any team to go after him, and anything that is returned for him makes the 2023 white Sox better than the nothing they get if they hold him and he departs as a FA.

Lucas might be starting to trend in the right direction, but his overall stats are genuinely bad. His expected wOBA right now is identical to where it was in 2018. Maybe by the end of the year this improves substantially as that started to happen over his 2 games prior to this last one, but I’m not giving anything of value based on those two games - again at least nothing that could have the same value to the White Sox as Lucas next year. For me that latter part is key - my goal is not to sell off this team but to try to put them in a better spot for next year.

And yes please brag for us about how Craig Kimbrel is the dominant force you spent the offseason saying he was, and I was totally wrong calling him a middling reliever. Clearly I can’t scout pitching as everyone agrees that picking up his option was 100% the right move as you said all along. I would love to hear more of your discussion of why Kimbrel is awesome and that was a great move at every step just like you said.

I think you are putting far too much weight on the predictiveness of contact quality against (xWOBA, exit velocity etc) for pitchers. The Bat/The BatX typically comes out as the best projection system out there in the attempts I've seen to quantify such things. The creator of it put this tweet out in April referencing the predictiveness of these types of metrics for pitchers. Every study I've read that's attempted to look at these metrics for pitchers reach the same conclusion, it's all noise. Particularly so when you're dealing with a 27 inning sample for Lynn and an 82 inning sample size for Lucas. What they're allowing in terms of quality of contact isn't predictive whatsoever and means nothing.

[Balta1701]

Just now, maxjusttyped said:

I think you are putting far too much weight on the predictiveness of contact quality against (xWOBA, exit velocity etc) for pitchers. The Bat/The BatX typically comes out as the best projection system out there in the attempts I've seen to quantify such things. The creator of it put this tweet out in April referencing the predictiveness of these types of metrics for pitchers. Every study I've read that's attempted to look at these metrics for pitchers reach the same conclusion, it's all noise. Particularly so when you're dealing with a 27 inning sample for Lynn and an 82 inning sample size for Lucas. What they're allowing in terms of quality of contact isn't predictive whatsoever and means nothing.

Would you say that Lance Lynn can lose 1.2 mph off his fastball without it affecting his performance at all?