The 'no-trade' white sox scenario

[bmags]

This is probably a thread for caulfield. I couldn't sleep (because I'm old now) and started thinking about how I liked the trade and some of our prospects but how little of it matters if we can't find and develop position players through our organic channels (draft, intl budget, waivers, rule 5, stuff you get regardless of anything).

Then I started thinking about to prove that point, had we just kept all our star players whom we acquired that way, it would be an incredible rotation. Then I started to think twice, and came up with this scenario to even SEE if that was true and realized there was a fun alt-world.

Our Alt-world: We have a still annoying owner who puts strong guard rails on how we can operate. He loves the yankees from when he grew up in the bronx as a kid, but not the winning as much as just having the same players every year. He runs the white sox with the following rules: he spends, but ONLY on retaining talent. And he'll spend big. BUT - he does not believe in trades. He got swindled on a baseball card trade at 11 and thinks its hogwash. 

Do we sign FA? I don't know i just want to see this team in this scenario.

Starting Rotation:
- Chris Sale (6.4 fWAR)
- Garrett Crochet (4.7 fWAR)
- Chris Bassitt (2.2 fWAR)
- Carlos Rodon (1.7 fWAR)
- Jose Quintana (I consider waiver acquisitions still organic) (1.0 fWAR) - Jonathan Cannon technically had more fWAR, but QUintana pitched 175 innings so I'm gonna keep that young whipper snapper on the backburner.

If you are thinking What about Cease? Lopez? Montas? you need to re-read my long-ass paragraph about our fake owner that I came up with. 

So that is 16 fWAR. That'd be tied with Philadelphia for 3rd most WAR in the league in 2024 and second behind the Royals.

Alright, now let's see what I got for lineups
C - Carlos Perez (I'm gonna give him -1.0 fWAR for season?)
1B - Andrew Vaughn (-0.2 fWAR)
2B - I don't know what to do here, I feel like it's fair to say we'd have had a terrible Madrigal year but am going to give us 0.2 fWAR for Romy
SS - Marcus Semien (4.2 fWAR)
3B - Jake Burger (I'm gonna remove -.4 fWAR for having to play him at 3rd, but he'll be a 1.0 fWAR guy)
LF - Fernando Tatis Jr. (3.2 fWAR)
CF - Luis Robert (0.5 fWAR)
RF - Alex Call (1.2 fWAR) - gd did not realize Alex Call had a better year than Robert omfg
DH - Ok we all know this would be a terrible Jose Abreu year, but I"m just gonna say we'd get 0 war here i'm assuming it'd be Sheets?

Ok Total Position Player fWAR is a GENEROUS 9.1. That would have put us...25th. (LMAO we had -6.1 fwar on position players this year jesus christ)

So 25.1 fWAR between pitching and hitting, not yet bullpen because that seems super hard. I'm just gonna give us 3.1 since that's middle of the pack. We did not have a dominant closer drafted I think? WHo knows.
 

Anyway we'd still be the 10th worst team.

I don't really remember anymore why I did this but the alex call thing alone was worth it. But...yeah you gotta...you gotta get more hitting. This whole "Develop pitchers to trade for hitters" thing isn't enough.

 

[Bob Sacamano]

That's fun. I started digging down another rabbit hole last year where I reviewed the payroll from season to season to see what the Sox spent on wastefully that year instead of if they had signed Harper or Machado (starting with 2019).

It was frustrating and I quit after a couple of seasons because I didn't even need to pick out who we wasted money on the first couple of years. They would have just easily fit and been well below luxury tax.

[Quin]

White Sox: We don't hit the ball good.

[bmags]

9 minutes ago, Bob Sacamano said:

That's fun. I started digging down another rabbit hole last year where I reviewed the payroll from season to season to see what the Sox spent on wastefully that year instead of if they had signed Harper or Machado (starting with 2019).

It was frustrating and I quit after a couple of seasons because I didn't even need to pick out who we wasted money on the first couple of years. They would have just easily fit and been well below luxury tax.

That was so infuriating because I think few of us even expected the sox to get up to 190M in 2021 and the % of payroll going to those guys was still fine. INstead they spent more on players who on the aggregate did less. Oh well. 

[bmags]

9 minutes ago, Bob Sacamano said:

That's fun. I started digging down another rabbit hole last year where I reviewed the payroll from season to season to see what the Sox spent on wastefully that year instead of if they had signed Harper or Machado (starting with 2019).

It was frustrating and I quit after a couple of seasons because I didn't even need to pick out who we wasted money on the first couple of years. They would have just easily fit and been well below luxury tax.

That was so infuriating because I think few of us even expected the sox to get up to 190M in 2021 and the % of payroll going to those guys was still fine. INstead they spent more on players who on the aggregate did less. Oh well. 

[Quin]

3 minutes ago, bmags said:

That was so infuriating because I think few of us even expected the sox to get up to 190M in 2021 and the % of payroll going to those guys was still fine. INstead they spent more on players who on the aggregate did less. Oh well. 

I just replaced my old laptop after having to get a part fixed for like, the fifth time. Over time it's motherboard had been replaced, hard drives upgraded, RAM added, etc., but it was still beginning to show age. The last two things were a hard drive just disconnecting internally and some keys coming loose. The repair guy was like "maybe it's time to get a new computer?"

So yeah, I got a new computer instead of trying to constantly prop up the old one. JR's philosophy would be to keep maintaining the old laptop.

[southsider2k5]

3 minutes ago, Quin said:

I just replaced my old laptop after having to get a part fixed for like, the fifth time. Over time it's motherboard had been replaced, hard drives upgraded, RAM added, etc., but it was still beginning to show age. The last two things were a hard drive just disconnecting internally and some keys coming loose. The repair guy was like "maybe it's time to get a new computer?"

So yeah, I got a new computer instead of trying to constantly prop up the old one. JR's philosophy would be to keep maintaining the old laptop.

Laptop?  Can we get him to throw out the abacus? 

[bmags]

9 minutes ago, Quin said:

I just replaced my old laptop after having to get a part fixed for like, the fifth time. Over time it's motherboard had been replaced, hard drives upgraded, RAM added, etc., but it was still beginning to show age. The last two things were a hard drive just disconnecting internally and some keys coming loose. The repair guy was like "maybe it's time to get a new computer?"

So yeah, I got a new computer instead of trying to constantly prop up the old one. JR's philosophy would be to keep maintaining the old laptop.

"You used to tell me 2GB ram was what was needed, now you are saying 8GB? sounds like scam. Never satisfied!"

[caulfield12]

I’m putting Robert down for at least 3 fWAR and Tatis for 4.5…closer to norms.

Bullpen you only have Daniel Hudson, Bummer, Ian Hamilton, Foster off the top of my head.

20 minutes ago, bmags said:

That was so infuriating because I think few of us even expected the sox to get up to 190M in 2021 and the % of payroll going to those guys was still fine. INstead they spent more on players who on the aggregate did less. Oh well. 

It’s basically Grandal Keuchel Steak and Potatoes Hendriks Kimbrel vet relievers like Kelly/Graveman Benintendi…

[WhiteSox2023]

1 hour ago, southsider2k5 said:

Laptop?  Can we get him to throw out the abacus? 

Actually, I heard JR just issued some slightly used TI-83 calculators to the Sox data analytics team.  A school near GRate recently upgraded to TI-84 calculators so Jerry got a great deal on their old TI-83’s.

[bmags]

8 minutes ago, caulfield12 said:

I’m putting Robert down for at least 3 fWAR and Tatis for 4.5…closer to norms.

Bullpen you only have Daniel Hudson, Bummer, Ian Hamilton, Foster off the top of my head.

It’s basically Grandal Keuchel Steak and Potatoes Hendriks Kimbrel vet relievers like Kelly/Graveman Benintendi…

well, we got an insane Sale year so it wouldn't really bump too much in any direction. I don't know that an all white sox team makes more playoffs than the one we had. That said, if you do the fantasy version of 2021 you'd have

Tatis - 6.8 fWAR
Semien - 6 fWAR
Anderson - 4.3 fWAR
Robert - 3.5 fWAR
Abreu - 2.8 fWAR
Narvaez - 2.8 fWAR
Eduardo Escobar - 2.5 fWAR

28.9 with some negatives contrasting it. But pitchers would be led by Rodon (5fWAR). No dunning to support it.