While the White Sox have lost the first two games of their trip to Kansas City by a combined score of 13-2, the Sox Machine/From the 108 Road Trip went 3-0 on Saturday with a successful combination of a group tour of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, a pregame meetup featuring a Scott Carroll cameo, and an easy jaunt to and from Kauffman Stadium courtesy of Bus Driver Duane under the best weather I can remember experiencing in a Missouri July.
Thanks to everybody who came, and remember that Pittsburgh is the plan one year from now.
You'll notice I didn't mention the baseball. That's what the rest of this mailbag is for. Enjoy.
Do you think Getz being so new in the job, along with his promise of a quick turnaround as part of getting the job, will lead to hesitancy trading the players that would most likely give him the highest return?
-- ALEC S.
James: “Quick turnaround” has given way to “quick as possible turnaround” for a few months now, and it’s clearly meant more in the way that the plumber replacing all of your pipes promises you his guys are working as fast as they can. Wanting it to go faster doesn’t reduce the work requirements. Given the value, potential size of returns and kinks in the profiles (innings restrictions, injury) for trading Garrett Crochet and Luis Robert Jr., I could see those two not coming together by the deadline for whatever reason. But I don’t think there’s any real hesitancy to raze the current product.
Where you would see a “quick turnaround” instinct, is seeking prospects in trade who are within a year or two of debuting, rather than something like the package of international teenagers that the Cubs received for Yu Darvish. They mainly sought players Double-A or higher in the Dylan Cease talks and even that package ideally mixed development ceiling in Jairo Iriarte, with stability in Drew Thorpe, who to hear him tell it, might have had more consistent stuff last year and has been making small tweaks to restore his 2023 mechanics.
Jim: I think "promise of a quick turnaround" was a product of Jerry Reinsdorf's detached brand of arrogance, because even if that's how Getz sold it to Reinsdorf in order to get the job, Reinsdorf had the responsibility to ask the same question everybody else did at the time: "How, exactly?" Followed by a "No, really." to emphasize incredulity. The way Getz has conducted himself since suggests no false hope about the quality of what he inherited, so it's best to judge him from actions at this point.
Does the Senzel signing reflect anticipation that lots of players get moved and they will need bodies on the team, an acknowledgment that AAA infielders aren’t ready to debut, or both?
Also, what kind of timeline do you think Smith is on? Does it mirror Schultz’s? Do you think they debut simultaneously or in consecutive years?-- ANDREW S.
James: I’d lean more bodies, especially since his outfield experience allows him to provide depth when Tommy Pham departs. Colson Montgomery and Bryan Ramos don’t look ready, but Senzel needs to fill a more immediate need than just playing out the last six weeks if those two are still floundering.
Smith has pulled off three straight seasons of innings loads greater than anything Schultz had shouldered before this year, so it’s hard to say they’re mirroring each other’s progression. But Schultz is dominating enough to suspect he could earn his debut next year and his workload is managed with such intention to wonder what role he’d pitch in if he did. It’s hard to see him throwing more than 120 innings next season. However that’s right around what Jonathan Cannon threw in his first professional season in the Sox system after three years of SEC ball. Smith has more potential to blow away lower levels, but we don’t know when his transition from two-pitch to four-pitch pitcher begins, or how quickly it will play yet.
Crochet and Fedde are frontline starters out of nowhere. Pham has been really good. Korey Lee and Sheets had hot starts to the season. How is this team on pace to lose 117 games despite this and how much worse will it get if they trade their best 3 to 5 players before the deadline? Signing a guy like Senzel isn’t exactly encouraging that they have options waiting in their system.
-- TROOPER GALACTUS
James: The best hitter listed here has a 103 wRC+ entering the weekend. That the best offensive stories have been such mild successes speaks to a league-worst offense that averages 3.19 runs per game. At their current pace, they would be the worst offense MLB has seen since the 2013 Marlins. The decline over the past three years of White Sox offense has made this less of a jarring transition to its desensitized viewers, but this is a uniquely uncompetitive offense.
Jim: The White Sox have no peers when it comes to the combination of "having two of the league's best starting pitchers" and "losing at a 117-loss pace." The closest match I found was the 1919 Washington Nationals, but they were an ordinary kind of bad despite Walter Johnson's best efforts. It's partially because of the offense, and also because starting pitchers don't carry the load they used to. Crochet is no Big Train, and that's OK. On the other hand, it routinely amazes me how quickly the White Sox collapse as soon as a competent player leaves the game. It's like a Jenga tower exploding upon the removal of the second peg. You may never see anything like that again, at least from your local nine.
Over the next six months, the most impactful financial decision facing Jerry Reinsdorf whether he pays two managers in 2025?
-- MICHAEL B.
Jim: I think it's probably the regional sports network stuff. It feels a little worrisome that October is three months away, and there's precious little known about what CHSN is supposed to be, and that I have to pause to make sure I'm writing "CHSN" instead of "CHGO" because of how little I've seen it used in an official capacity. I'm sure there are some professional complications that require the Sox, Bulls and Blackhawks to fly under the radar a little bit (for instance, if they're not planning on continuing with current NBC Sports Chicago personalities), but given the instability that a bunch of teams are dealing with in the wake of the Bally Sports fallout, I'm assuming there's also a fair amount of seat-of-pants flying involved.
This is where I'll note that if you look up how much Pedro Grifol is paid, you get a comically wrong answer at the top of Google.
Bob Nightengale says Grifol is making $1 million, more or less, and that's not an amount that will keep Jerry up at night. Retaining Grifol is probably more about preventing the next White Sox manager from dealing with the godawful roster.
Josh/Jim/James: What names (bats?) would you ‘require’ to be in a return for deals from teams rumored to be targeting Crochet/Fedde/Robert to be considered acceptable?
-- MARK J.
James: I don’t know what level of mixture of prospect knowledge and self-confidence I would need to say what prospects I would require. I spent some time perusing the BA top-100 in response to this and had thoughts like Colt Emerson would be fun in a Mariners blockbuster because they have used two first-round draft picks on shortstops in recent years, and it would be ironic if a trade acquisition wound up being the one to stick at the position. Heston Kjerstad would be a good answer to who is going to hit all the homers on future Sox teams.
Jim: I'd add Coby Mayo for Baltimore. The Phillies don't have one bat that would carry a package for Robert, so you'd need some combination of Aidan Miller, Justin Crawford and Starlin Caba. Spencer Jones strikes me as a necessity in any Yankees package, except his strikeout problems are prominent enough that he'd be a scary guy to lead a return. When I read this Bob Nightengale report of the Yankees finally considering dealing him, I thought, "Oh, wow, how generous."
Understanding that this was a rebuilding year and the Sox weren't trying to compete, how does losing at a record setting pace influence your opinion of Getz?
-- MARK S.
Jim: It's a pretty bad first impression, if only because the flimsiness of the "raising the baseball IQ" platform was readily apparent and first-guessable. What we don't know about Getz is how much he believed it, because it was also the only way to positively spin the payroll cuts. He wasn't going to come out and say "This was the most respectable player we could afford," or "Change for change's sake, let's try it." So how else do you sell players who mostly seem happy to have the work?
The good news is that the pitching side looks promising. Brian Bannister's presence appears to be as advertised, although I'm guarding against the enviable spot he's found, where he's present enough to be credited with the successes, but removed enough from the everyday mess that Ethan Katz ends up taking the blame whenever disaster strikes (the Jake Eder sequence struck me as a little bit of a heat check). But as James explained above in a couple of different ways, any measurable progress is going to have to come from evaluating bats, so it's a big offseason for proving that.
I keep seeing scouting reports downplay Caleb Bonemer's ability to stick at short due to a lack of range & athleticism, which conjures an image in my head of a Lenyn Sosa-type. However, at his Perfect Game event he posted elite 60 yard dash/10 yard split times (better than Griffin, Rainer, Gillen) and solid IF velo. What in his projection seems to destine him for a corner?
-- BOBSQUAD
James: “Stiff” is the scouting pejorative most regularly thrown his way. Not in that he is a stiff, but lacks the fluidity and twitchiness typical of an up the middle defender, which also translates to his swing where he’s expected to be more of a power over hit guy who hits mistakes for long pull side home runs. Bonemer has spoken to some mechanical fixes he’s been making to counter the offensive reputation. But he’s already been moved to third at times on the showcase circuit, and neither he nor the White Sox speak like shortstop is viewed as a high-probability outcome.
