As always, thanks for supporting Sox Machine. Let's proceed.
Why aren't the Sox interested in Carlos Rodon?
-- RayHerbert
Money and years.
...
...
...
I could leave it at that, but I think the reported Lucas Giolito extension offer shows that the Sox are still extremely uncomfortable in handing out pitching contracts longer than four years. Dallas Keuchel signed for three, the Lance Lynn trade/extension guaranteed only a second and third year, and Michael Kopech/Dylan Cease were acquired with all years of control remaining. Even looking at the bullpen, the White Sox only acquired Liam Hendriks after giving themselves an out after three years.
You could also argue that the White Sox have no interest in signing any player beyond four years, although José Abreu turned his six-year gamble into a glorious nine-year run. I feel like there's limited capital to urge the White Sox to spend money before you're truly asking the impossible, so I choose to use it it on position players, because at least Abreu is an outstanding precedent. For pitchers, John Danks got five years, and nobody liked how that ended.
These are dark times. You've always been good about reminding us that our problems as White Sox fans are not unique to us. Frustrating franchises making poor decisions are everywhere. That being said, it seems that we are in a bad spot. Which franchises do you think are still worse than the Sox when contemplated on the whole? Pirates? Reds? Orioles? Are there more than five that you can think of? Just looking for some level headed analysis on the depth of our pain. Thank you as always for your companionship on this journey. I'm a much smarter baseball fan and consumer of White Sox baseball thanks to you.
-- Matthew M.
Here's how I'd arrange it:
Definitely worse: Pirates, Reds, A's, Rockies
Worse for now: Royals, Tigers, Marlins
Same, or not clearly better: Twins, Angels, Orioles, Nationals.
The Sox make a dozen teams in that boat, so it could be worse. The problem is that the good teams are getting better, as Josh explained on Monday's show.
Fortunately, three of those teams are in the AL Central, and the Guardians are only one tier ahead because of the way ownership has suppressed fan enthusiasm. I still think about what the White Sox season ticket base would look like if they had Cleveland's run of success. I don't think the White Sox think about it.
These next questions all fall under a similar theme:
Once considered an outfield target who would fall to the White Sox financial aspirational level, it seems even Andrew Benintendi is going to be priced beyond what they’re willing to pay. Is even a guy like Joey Gallo going to be attainable at this rate, or is Victor Reyes about as high as they’re likely to aim?
-- Trooper Galactus
Given the White Sox apparent financial restraints are there any moves in FA or trade that are realistic and might move the needle? How would you fill out the rest of the roster given Reindorfs lack of willingness to spend?
-- orajestad9
With the extra $30M from Apple, can't the Sox take a couple 1 year fliers on players?
-- Doug W.
The idea I keep coming back to this winter is that this is an incredibly high-leverage offseason. The simplest solution would be to go big (Brandon Nimmo made the most sense to me), and let the rest of the payroll melt off the books if it all goes incredibly wrong.
If that's not an option, it gets a whole lot tougher. The three paths are:
Sign for adequacy ... but if they rush to sign Joey Gallo, that might be a terrible use of $10 million when $10 million is a chunk of their biggest bullet.
Trade for upside ... but if they trade Colson Montgomery or Bryan Ramos or whoever else is cheap and projectable for Brian Reynolds, that makes it harder to supply a new roster if an overhaul is truly needed.
Trade for adequacy ... but whenever they try to acquire a 2 WAR player (let's say Max Kepler this year), they get a 0.3 WAR player instead.
When you look at it this way, it's not surprising that Rick Hahn has failed to act. Every decision is inherently fraught that there's going to be a natural urge to hope something better comes along. The problem is that the White Sox are natural procrastinators even in lower-leverage periods, so this is a deadly combination.
So who y'all rooting for as your second team this year, since the main team is hibernating?
-- Rob L.
I don't think I have a second team, but I have found myself rooting for White Sox Sliding Doors scenarios. I want Bryce Harper, Manny Machado and their teams to continue succeeding to make it abundantly clear how much the White Sox screwed that up. I wouldn't mind seeing a Rangers revival to justify the Corey Seager/Marcus Semien/Jacob deGrom spree. because offseason fun counts as entertainment. It's fun to see the Mariners supplying some real optimism in Seattle, which is probably the liveliest fan base with Oakland being abandoned. Those are the teams I'm drawn to right now, and we'll throw in Toronto to cover the AL East.
Enjoyed Josh’s explanation on 670 the score on the state of free agency. I don’t like it but I’m accepting the logic that the White Sox are only interested in budget friendly free agents like Clevinger. Assuming the trade market is dead, what dirty bargain bin basement hand me down unwashed stinky penny pinching free agent would the Sox be willing to pay for in their budget? Looking at handedness as a need, are free agent lefties such as Adam Frazier and Ben Gamel more realistic or is that even too high of standards.
-- Thomas S.
I picked Adam Frazier as my big White Sox free agent signing in our pick 'em podcast, so I'm going to stick with him. It started as snark, but then I talked myself into actually meaning it.
How can the White Sox front office look in the mirror and tell themselves they are acting like a contender?
-- William T.
If you believe that they actually believe they're doing a good job, as opposed to cashing checks while treating the hot stove season as a spectator sport because it's way easier than working, than I'd point to a couple of heuristics. Here's where I'll break out my copy of Thinking, Fast and Slow and point to Chapter 23 (The Outside View), which covers the planning fallacy and optimistic bias. In short:
Overly optimistic forecasts of the outcome of projects are found everywhere. Amos [Tversky] and [Daniel Kahneman] coined the term planning fallacy to describe plans and forecasts that:
*are unrealistically close to best-case scenarios
*could be improved by consulting the statistics of similar cases
But while there's a natural tendency to believe in one's own abilities, it's not always a benign accident of dreaming too hard:
Errors in the initial budget are not always innocent. The authors of unrealistic plans are often driven by the desire to get the plan approved -- whether by their superiors or by a client -- supported by the knowledge that projects are rarely abandoned unfinished merely because of overruns in costs or completion times. In such cases, the greatest responsibility for avoiding the planning fallacy lies with the decision makers who approve the plan. If they do not recognize the need for an outside view, they commit a planning fallacy.
Unlike infrastructure improvements or other capital projects, baseball is a zero-sum game with hard deadlines for the season, though, so the product has to take the field before it's fully realized.
Will Colas be the starting RF in 2023?
-- Matt
I wish the answer was "no," but I'm expecting it to be "yes," especially since the Sox have left field to think about as well. Were Eloy Jiménez a lock for everyday left field play, there might be ways to scratch out an adequate right field solution through patches. If both corners need shoring up, Colás is the best internal bet to do it on its own.
What do you think is the expiration date for the current White Sox ownership? Isn’t there a ticking clock with the Stadium lease agreement up in about five or six years? Wouldn’t Reinsdorf want to sell this team well before that happens so to give the new ownership some bargaining power? Looking for some hope here.
-- Terrence S.
The White Sox's lease for Guaranteed Rate Field runs through 2029, with an option to extend it through 2030, so if the White Sox are planning some exploratory move to a new site in a diversified real-estate plan that so many teams are doing these days, you'd think you'd hear about something within the next couple years. Right now, the only word is that the White Sox are removing eight rows of seats in the upper deck along the left-field line that will presumably better connect the ballpark to the skyline.
Right now, I think the big business decision lying ahead of Reinsdorf is the future of NBC Sports Chicago, which doesn't seem like it'll be a thing after October 2024. If the Sox can somehow pivot to an enviable streaming deal with the Bulls and Blackhawks, that could transform the value of the Sox on its own, especially since so many other teams are on their own right now with no takes for their RSNs. (That would also anchor the White Sox's value as specific to Chicago, for those who fear a relocation to another city.)
I've been thinking about joining my local curling club. How did you get into curling? How often are you able to get out on the ice now that you have the baby at home? To tie this back into white sox business, who do you think would be the best curler on the current 40 man?
-- Tim B.
I got into curling through a coworker, who suggested I go to Albany Curling Club open house one October. I was out of town, but he suggested it again next January, and I took him up on it. ACC offered half-price memberships for the first year and provided all the equipment necessary to get started, so I joined two leagues. If you play twice a week in your first year, you'll see all the improvement you'll need to keep going. Even once a week is fine, but twice a week makes it click way faster, in my experience.
I'm down to one league night a week now with Nashville Curling Club, but that's because my wife also curls (that's how we met), so we alternate league nights to save on babysitters. That said, I still average two nights a week because I teach curling. NCC is unique because the club doesn't own its ice, but instead rents it from Tee Line, which is a curling facility/sports bar owned by one of the ex-NFL players who started curling after his football career. If anybody is ever in Nashville and wants to go curling instead of honky-tonking, let me know. (I'm also working on a Chicago-area curling lesson for members of Sox Machine's Veterans Committee.)
I'd say Dylan Cease would be best curler if he has any comfort with ice/winter sports, just because there is some overlap with pitching (repeating mechanics), yoga (flexibility) and disc golf (same idea of community and competition). If he isn't, then Jonathan Stiever is from Wisconsin, so I'll go with him.
Your thoughts on the entirely underwhelming off-season moves by the Sox, last year and thus far this year, have been well-stated and. very clear -- thanks for this -- but do you think that it is still possible that the Sox have a plan targeting some skilled, positive additions to the roster -- some players who are not bidding-war candidates, but who may complement the talent (however unrealized) on the current roster? Someone commented that just having our current roster play to their potential would the equivalent of a huge trade -- what are your thoughts about the possibility that our current roster with some additions just might be successful -- without the acquisition of a 60-million dollar player?
-- MoSox
I think the White Sox have a plan, but it reminds me of the Mike Tyson quote about plans, in that everybody has one until they get punched in the mouth. Rick Hahn often only seems to have one idea about shoring up the White Sox, and it's never profound.
I'm holding off on any sweeping criticisms of the White Sox's offseason because it really only does take one or two targeted moves to change the complexion of the lineup. It's just difficult to remain quiet about it because the White Sox's inactivity confirms all priors.
I think the biggest problem I have in believing the White Sox have that extra gear is that there hasn't -- and won't -- be a thorough public reckoning over how the White Sox wasted last year due to the unforced error of hiring/sticking with Tony La Russa. Everybody on the White Sox has to talk around it because of how poorly it would reflect on Reinsdorf, but if they're capable of committing and committing to such an unforced error, it makes it so much harder to trust that smaller stupid things won't trip them up.
And when they talk around it, it results in euphemisms about all the players who have so much to prove. Which is valid, but you know who always has something to prove? Players who might not be good. Danny Mendick always had something to prove on the White Sox. Seby Zavala and Carlos Pérez have something to prove. When it's Luis Robert, Eloy Jiménez, Tim Anderson, Yasmani Grandal, Lucas Giolito, Lance Lynn, Michael Kopech, and on and on and on ... that's a lot!
If a manager who features standard-grade software and firmware updates in Pedro Grifol is really all the White Sox need to channel proper energy, it'll be such a colossal condemnation of 2022. I'd gladly take that, as hilariously infuriating as it would be. The alternative is worse.
But let's end on a happier note.
If you were voting, who would be on your Hall of Fame ballot this year?
-- SoxOdyssey2031
Guys I would feel good about voting for: Scott Rolen, Mark Buehrle, Todd Helton.
Then it gets weird. I can talk myself into Andruw Jones because his candidacy strikes me as a cross between Bill Mazeroski (credible candidate for best ever defender at his position) and Chase Utley (his career is basically an excellent 10-year run), except it feels different and negligent that Jones was mostly done after age 30 instead of 36 like Utley. Should it? Probably not.
Carlos Beltran would be an easy pick for me were it not for the Astros stuff. But he lost his job managing the Mets and hasn't been considered for a similar post since, so you could argue that he's the one guy in the franchise who has served his time.
I think I can get there with Andy Pettitte, because 275 regular season + postseason wins, and the PED stuff happened before the crackdown. It feels disingenuous to vote for Buehrle on similar merits when Pettitte threw a season-plus of postseason innings. I think I'm also aboard on Gary Sheffield because it's hard to separate him from Vladimir Guerrero. Guerrero was a little more special and supernatural, but Sheffield was memorable in his own right.
That gets me to seven, and then you get to the guys who were dumb enough to fail PED tests after the testing crackdown happened. Maybe it shouldn't matter, but if Barry Bonds isn't in the Hall of Fame (and I would've voted for him), it's weird to have A-Rod and Manny Ramirez there, who weren't as good and also guiltier. So I think I'm content to leave it there, but keep an open mind as ballots come and go.
