I saw Tony La Russa during the winter meetings in Nashville last week, although at first I thought it was merely somebody who looked an awful lot like the Tony La Russa from 10 years ago.
So this part of Daryl Van Schouwen's story about La Russa's return to the White Sox is true:
“People said, ‘You look so much better’ and I say, ‘I must have looked like [bleep] all those months,’ ” La Russa told the Sun-Times this week. “But I’m feeling better and stronger every day. So good news.”
Stepping away from the everyday stress of an MLB manager's life to attend to a pacemaker problem and cancer will do that.
As for the rest of the story, there's no way to tell. That's not a reflection of the quality of Van Schouwen's reporting, but the honesty or awareness of the people involved.
La Russa says his job as senior advisor is "putting my two cents in" with regards to how to instill core values and habits in the team, but says he doesn't have any pull in high-level decisions. That could be how La Russa sees it, but we have no way of knowing whether Jerry Reinsdorf overappreciates his input.
As for Pedro Grifol, he says he welcomes La Russa's presence as a sounding board, but he slathers compliments on anybody who keeps him employed (the next person he doesn't describe as "brilliant" should feel like a real dolt).
So who knows? The hope is that the Chris Getz administration has the ability to humor La Russa if necessary while going about its business attempting to modernize the front office, but since Reinsdorf loves himself tangled chains of command that repeatedly result in conflict between decision-makers who lack the authority to resolve it, you have to brace for more tension.
Given the way Grifol bombed in his first season, multiple people have asked me whether La Russa's return is now a secret success, but it continues to be a mistake for numerous reasons, starting with the fact that his presence automatically makes Reinsdorf more detectable in day-to-day matters. That's the last thing anybody should want.
Reinsdorf also ignored the reason why the late-seventies are comfortably within the range of "retirement age," because it's simply harder to physically withstand the rigors of work. It probably speaks to La Russa's gravitas that the Sox finished .500 with a team that disintegrated the following year, but his inability to make it through that second season left the Sox in a precarious position to reverse the slide, and that opened the door for Grifol to finish the job.
Spare Parts
This is the rare headline that defies Betteridge's Law, because ultimately Chuck Garfien and Ryan McGuffey settle on, "He was the wrong guy for the job." There's an interview with Grifol in the middle of it, but it runs into the same problem as all the others: When asked what Grifol specifically could've done better in 2023, he mostly lists problems with the team, which is answering the question he wanted to be asked.
The Dodgers have reportedly agreed to send Ryan Pepiot and Jonny Deluca to the Rays for Tyler Glasnow and Manuel Margot, contingent upon the Glasnow agreeing to a contract extension with Los Angeles. That reduces the Dodgers' need for an impact starter, but given that Glasnow has never thrown more than 120 innings in a season, they still might seek more reliable sources of quantity, which Dylan Cease represents. We'll revisit this idea if the Dodgers land Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
Jack Flaherty's season resembled that of high school teammate Lucas Giolito, in the sense that both provided decent pitching for their original teams in 2023 ...
- Flaherty: 7-6, 4.43 ERA over 20 starts, 109.2 innings
- Giolito: 6-6, 3.79 ERA over 21 starts, 121 innings
... but struggled immensely after trades.
- Flaherty: 1-3, 6.75 ERA over 9 games, 34.2 innings
- Giolito: 2-9, 6.96 ERA over 12 starts, 63.1 innings
Giolito has been far more durable in recent years, so this probably represents a floor for whatever he signs for 2024.
Mahle, who underwent Tommy John surgery in May and is expected to miss the first half of the season, signed for $22 million, with $5 million more possible in bonuses.
I think Fedde's a more compelling use of a roster spot than Flaherty or Mahle, especially for the money. He talked to reporters on Thursday after his contract was made official, and he says his last season in Washington was hampered by suboptimal health in spring training. He spent the whole season behind the 8-ball, and that inspired him to revisit his conditioning, and he successfully used the KBO as a more forgiving environment for righting himself.
