Baseball

Series Recap: Sox Swept By Braves – GTS

By Andy Jonathan 1509 0

BOX SCORES

Game 1: Sox 7 – Braves 10

Game 2: Sox 5 – Braves 11

Game 3: Sox 3 – Braves 5

 

 

The pitching woes continue for the Sox, who faced their 3rd legitimate offensive juggernaut in a row this weekend, with predictable results. Giolito fared the best, though he was completely done in by 2 home runs, both coming from Young Christian Slater lookalike Freddie Freeman. Nova couldn’t go more than 4 innings, and Lopez backslid by not making it out of the 3rd. In a microcosm, none of this means anything really. Nova isn’t gonna be here next year, Lopez had one bad start after a string of solid ones and Lucas Giolito still went 6 while striking out 7. The offense wasn’t as putrid this series so that’s an improvement I guess. None of that makes it any easier to watch, however.

This last month of the season is going to be some 6 pack viewing for Sox fans, as in it’s gonna take a 6 pack of at least Bass Ale to get you through some of these games. Expect to see a lot more Carson Fulmer and Manny Banuelos, both of whom made their triumphant returns today. Jon Jay has gone back on the MIA list with season ending surgery on his hip, likely ending his tenure with the White Sox and ensuring his lasting contribution to the team being convincing Manny Machado that, yes, San Diego is nicer in the winter than Chicago. With Rick Hahn‘s steadfast refusal to call up Luis Robert from AAA, other than watching Moncada, Anderson and Giolito string out the remainder of their time there isn’t much here to lure people out to The Down Arrow in September. I’m sure Zack Collins will be here, but Renteria wouldn’t give him playing time over AJ Fucking Reed back in July so forgive me if my excitement is somewhat tempered. There’s a lot to be excited about this team, but right now it’s hard to see the forest for the trees.

Bullets, please.

 

BURN IT DOWN

–Lucas Giolito looked pretty good except for the 2 shitty changeups he threw to Freddie Freeman. He even made up for the first ones by knocking in his first career RBIs by smoking a single in the gap off Julio Teheran in the 2nd inning. Probably would’ve been a double for pretty much anyone else on the team but Lucas was blessed with the same type of speed that I was, namely “none.” Which is completely fine, because if you’re expecting your AL-based starting pitcher to challenge the arm of Future Legend Ronald Acuna Jr then you were fucked before word go. Giolito pitched 173 innings last year, and after today he will be sitting on 162. Should be no reason he couldn’t hit 200 this year, leaving him completely stretched out for next season’s hopeful contention.

-Eloy had some hits this weekend, which is a good sign for his timing (which has been shit since his last IL stint). What isn’t the best sign is that they were all singles. Eloy has now gone 10 games without an extra base hit, which is definitely cause for a second look. James Fegan had an excellent article the other day questioning whether or not he might need to adjust his batting stance in the off-season, basically implying that his crouched stance might be affecting his ability to catch up to fastballs up in the zone. Hitting coach Todd Steverson has had luck with Moncada and Anderson in the past few springs and I feel there’s no reason Eloy can’t have the same success. He just has to stay healthy, so as to not have to start from scratch every few weeks.

-The Sox bullpen wasn’t any better than the starters this weekend, with Aaron Bummer and Big Boss Ross being particularly putrid. Bummer has already thrown 20 more innings than ever before in his career and that might be getting to him as more and more walks have started to creep into his stat line. Fortunately Manny Banuelos and Carson Fulmer are here to lighten the load. I haven’t totally given up on Fulmer, and think that he could still be a valuable piece going forward. If that’s the case, now would be the optimal time to show it.

-I’m not a huge fan of Renteria’s management style to begin with, and watching him do it in a National League park is even worse. When I run for president next year on a “Designated Hitters For All” platform next year, don’t be surprised if I win in a landslide.

-Next up is the Indians, who desperately need to take this series from the Sox. I’m sincerely hoping they can play spoiler and ruin September for Cleveland before the Browns take over in October. “Keep Cleveland Depressed” is also one of my many main campaign platforms.

-In other news, AEW’s All Out PPV was Saturday night. I was there at the Sears Center and had a blast, even with Dad Bod Chris Jericho winning the title. Should give AEW some nice momentum heading into their television debut in a few weeks, unless one of the Young Bucks died last night, which is highly possible.

Baseball

Twins Spotlight: Farming For WAR

By Andy Jonathan 1284 0

I sincerely hate the Minnesota Twins, but I have to give them credit where it’s due. In an age where the way you build an MLB team has changed completely from buying through free agency to building through youth and farm systems they’ve managed to land at the forefront of that particular revolution. It’s hard to say if they read the tea leaves correctly 5 years ago and just kept doing what they were doing, or if they just lucked into this by being cheap everywhere but their scouting, but either way it’s working out at an annoyingly high level.

Just looking at their current roster (which as of today still leads the league in team slugging percentage) it’s chock full of home-grown talent that includes the following on offense: Miguel Sano, Max Kepler, Eddie Rosario, Jorge Polanco, Byron Buxton, Mitch Garver and Jake Cave. The total WAR of that science lab creation of slugging so far this season is 17.1.  In comparison to the WAR generated by the homegrown talent of the White Sox offense (which is 27th of 30 in the league for slugging) is merely 9.3 (Eloy, Abreu, Moncada, Anderson, Yolmer and Engel). That’s not a very sightly set of stats for the Sox offense, and it paints the Twins in a pretty impressive light. HOWEVER! If you go back to the same group of players for the Twins last season, you get….9.7 WAR from those guys combined. Take those numbers and add in the fact that the Twins were 78-84 last season makes the differences between the Sox and the Twins a little easier to swallow, and maybe even adds a slight feeling of hope in there.

So you have the 2019 White Sox, who are pretty close to what the 2018 Twins were: Some high level prospects with a ton of talent and not a lot of major league experience combined with an untested pitching staff and shitty hydra for a 5th starter. Does that mean the Sox will lead the league in slugging next year? Probably not, but it provides a little insight into just how much time in the oven baking a professional team takes. It’s been forever since the Sox had to create a contender this way, so fans can be forgiven if they’ve forgotten how this type of rebuild goes. You’d have to go back to the early 2000s to find a team that was as built from the bottom up as this one is now.  Just look at this chart that shows top 10 Sox minor league prospects from the past decade (as decided by MLB.com). Be warned, it’s not a pretty sight.

Hahahaha Trayce Thompson and Courtney Hawkins…good times, good times. That chart before the 2017 time frame is like looking directly into the Ark of the Covenant, except when you look into the Ark your head explodes so you don’t have to see a list with Jared Mitchell in the top 5 prospects anymore. Things after 2017 start to look much, much better (unless your name is Carson Fulmer), and resembles an actual major league farm system.

Now look at the same chart, but for the Twins:

God dammit I fucking hate them.

If there were a blueprint for how to build an MLB team through quality scouting and franchise-wide patience, it would look exactly like that. Even the guys who aren’t with the Twins anymore are pretty quality. Aaron Hicks, Oswaldo Arcia and Ben Revere were/are all serviceable MLB players (In the case of Hicks, a little more than “serviceable”). In addition to that, they still have 2 top 20 ranked prospects in Royce Lewis and Alex Kirilloff sitting in AAA waiting for their chance. The Twins think so highly of both these players that they passed at legit chances to upgrade their struggling starting rotation a few weeks ago because teams were sniffing around those two.

The Twins have always done it this way, ever since Terry Ryan took over as GM for them back in 1995. He engineered many of the Twins teams that I absolutely despised in the early 2000s by using the “New England Patriots” method of shipping off players just before they were due to get paid for younger, cheaper talent. He snagged Johan Santana off the Marlins in the Rule 5 draft. He traded eventual Sox Legend AJ Pierzynski to the Giants for Joe Nathan, Francisco Liriano and Boof Bonser (best fake name ever). He also increased the money the franchise spent on scouting for the first time in decades. Ryan stayed with the Twins until 2016 when Thad Levine was hired away from the Indians after their loss to the Cubs in the World Series. Levine was cut from the same cloth that Ryan was, having helped build Cleveland into the contender it was through the same methods Ryan did. He helped draft Carlos Santana, Francisco Lindor, and Jose Ramierez so he knew how to build through the lower levels of the minors.

The Sox in that same period continued along the path that Kenny Williams set them on in 2006, consistently trading away promising young talent for one last gasp after another, year after year, until finally the team had no choice but to trade away the best pitcher in the history of the organization to jump start a clinically deceased farm system. Now that the team started the season ranked 4th overall in the league for their minor league system, the question that falls before Rick Hahn and company is can they develop players they draft? They’ve been able to trade for other team’s well scouted minor leaguers, and had pretty good success bringing them along. The Sox international scouting crew has been nothing short of aces so far, but the continental US team has been pretty hit or miss. Has Nick Hostetler done enough at the lower levels to reap the kind of benefits the Twins have done for decades? Is Chris Getz the guy to guide the next round of Sox prospects to AAA and beyond?

The Sox farm system was absolutely decimated by a plague of injuries this season that bordered on the biblical, so the only grade that can really be given so far is “incomplete.” It will be very interesting to see how Zack Collins, Nick Madrigal and Andrew Vaughn fare at the higher levels in the next few seasons as they have the potential to solidify the Sox lineup like Kepler and Polanco have done for the Twins thus far.

Fingers crossed.

 

Baseball

Ricky Adds To Sox Spiky

By Sam Fels 1310 0

Ok, sorry about that.

It’s been a cantankerous few days on the Southside. I suppose this is where a joke about it always being cantankerous around 35th and Shields would go, and that’s just the Sox Experience, but I’m trying to turn a new leaf here. So we’ll just leave it. A couple days ago you had Rick Hahn making the mistake of thinking Twitter represents all Sox fans and lashing out. And today in the Athletic, Rick Renteria has just about had it with people criticizing his lineup construction.

It’s not hard to see where Renteria’s anger, or insecurity, or frustration boils from. This is his second managerial job, and the first one lasted only one season before he was replaced by Joe Maddon and the Cubs went on to this era. His one season on the Northside was seen merely as a caretaker, someone to smile at Anthony Rizzo and Starlin Castro to aid their development after having their souls broken by Dale Sveum. And it was generally understood that Renteria would be moved along when things mattered again, which happened much faster than anyone anticipated. It felt like Renteria was never judged on what he could do as a manager, and though his one season didn’t mean much, we never got much of an answer.

The thing is though, both Rizzo and Castro had their best seasons in the majors in 2014, Rizzo’s by far. Now maybe you can chalk that up to just natural maturation and growth, but it would be a stretch to say Renteria didn’t have anything to do with it all. Moreover, Jake Arrieta became a star that campaign, Kyle Hendricks, Jorge Soler, and Javy Baez came up late in that season (though the latter certainly had some issues with the whole whiffing-at-the-world thing), and at least some seeds were planted. We can even throw in Hector Rondon having a great season as a Rule-5 pick, and he would be a valuable piece going forward. It feels like all of this couldn’t have happened in spite of or around the manager, smiling politely the whole way.

So to the Sox, and once again Renteria is being viewed as merely a placeholder or glorified mascot, even in his third year of managing. And for the most part, at least to start, he wasn’t given really anything to work with. You don’t want to look at that 2017 team if you’ve eaten in the last hour or are planning to in the next. Basically, it had one pitcher who was then flipped across town halfway through and not much else.

Still, this season, Yoan Moncada, Tim Anderson, and Lucas Giolito have all taken major steps forward–along with at least half of a breakout campaign from James McCann–and it’s easy to pass that off as them just being naturally talented and gaining experience. But this seems to keep happening with Renteria around, so either he’s one of the luckiest guys in the world when it comes to young talent or he at least can provide an environment for it to progress and even flourish. There are more than a few managers who couldn’t even figure that one out.

As the article is based around. Renteria gets a lot of shit for his lineup choices, and as it also points out he’s behind a handful of eight-balls when it comes to it. Earlier in the year it was Anderson batting seventh, though now he’s batted second even more. Some would have liked to have seen Eloy moved up, but he hasn’t really done anything yet to merit that. Overall, I’m of the opinion batting order is a touch overblown, but it’s easy to see where hitting third or fourth would add extra pressure to a rookie still trying to navigate the heavy waters of The Show.

Renteria doesn’t have an OBP-heavy leadoff hitter anywhere, which isn’t his fault. It also would seem that Jose Abreu is entrenched in the third spot as organizational policy, so someone has to go cleanup which we’ve come to find out isn’t really where you want your best hitters. In an ideal world where everyone was healthy and producing, your top three would be some combo of Moncada, Jimenez, and Anderson, but it just hasn’t worked out like that for various reasons. Renteria has black holes essentially in center, right, DH, and second base. That’s a lot to navigate around.

Of course, he can’t escape the criticisms of his in-game managing, and there’s way too much bunting and playing for one-run. And while James Fegan here leans to the “having no choice with the talent on hand” button, which is defensible, to me if the season isn’t really about wins and losses (and it isn’t) then you have to establish what you’re going to do going forward. How you’re going to play. Show the kids who will be here that no, we don’t bunt here or we don’t go for moving the runner over, just bash the shit out of the ball and let’s get two or three at once. But at the same time, does it really matter what he decides to do with Yolmer or Cordell at the plate? How much of a tone does that set going forward for Moncada or Jimenez? I’m guessing not much of one.

As for bullpen management, we know Renteria likes to go hard at times, and get the matchups he wants. There is something to be said of showing everyone that you want to get wins, that their hard work should be rewarded at times with the manager doing just as much to get those rewards. Though beyond Aaron Bummer and Jace Fry (maybe Jimmy Cordero), it’s hard to see out of the pen who is going to matter long term. But getting them in as many big spots as you can isn’t the worst idea in the world.

None of this means I or anyone else would expect Renteria to be around when the Sox are contending again, be that next year or probably more likely 2021. Which might be harsh on Rick for a second time, but that’s reality. But it would seem the main crux of his job–moving the players forward who are going to be the driving force for that contending team–he’s done. And he’s done it for a second time.

Baseball

Twins Spotlight: Rick Hahn

By Andy Jonathan 1568 0

Seeing as though this feels like it’s the 63rd time these two teams have played each other so far this season (with still an additional series to go after this), I figured I’d eschew the normal Twins Spotlight this series and talk a little about the NBCSN podcast our Sox Overlord Rick Hahn went on last week. In said podcast, Hahn was asked if he was ever active on social media at all and what he thought about the general pessimism of Sox fans on Twitter. What follows are direct quotes lifted from the podcast:

“…If I was 12, 13 years old, I’d have some strong assed opinions of what my favorite teams were doing, and I’d make sure I’d probably post them on Twitter and be a pain in the ass.”

“The executive side of me, you know, obviously finds it somewhat unfortunate. Whether it’s because certain things leak out creating issues with potential trade partners, or it starts issues internally with a player’s name being out there you have to deal with…”

“…There’s some areas right now, whether it’s White Sox blogs or the Twitter universe or whatever that just everything is negative. The glass is always half empty. And there’s almost like this momentum towards feeling they want the rebuild to fail because they can say ‘I told you so’ more so than they want to celebrate a championship, and that’s unfortunate.”

“It’s one thing to be critical and scrutinize and take the facts and eventually then decide ‘I don’t like this. It’s another thing, and it’s a little bit fed by this age of Twitter to have this instantaneous 45 second response of ‘this is horseshit’ ya know, without even thinking anything through. Which is fine, because whether it’s next year or the year after or whenever this run begins and we start getting closer to having parades around here…all that will be forgotten.”

 

Huh. Those are some…interesting opinions there. While my first instinct here is to get fired up and write 12 paragraphs of “fuck you” retaliation to these statements, I’m going to do what Rick Hahn wants us all to do and take a pause an analyze what he has to say in the podcast.

Right off the bat, Hahn goes right for the timeless putdown used by jocks against nerds everywhere, implying that everyone complaining on Twitter and other social media outlets are 13-year-olds sitting in their mom’s basement bitching about everything. It wouldn’t shock me if Hahn fantasized about doing the scene in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back where they get the list of people who talked shit about them online and go house to house punching movie nerds in the face. That being said, pretty much anyone who’s ever been on Twitter has had that fantasy, so I have to give Rick that one. If I had my druthers, I’d spend the rest of my life going house to house kneecapping every chud on Twitter who thinks trolling is hilarious.

The second quote is where I start to have an issue with some of his opinions. The implication that Twitter causes Hahn headaches in the way he does business is somewhat unacceptable. This past off-season the rumor was the Sox either had a deal in place, or were close to one with the Dodgers for Joc Pederson and it was leaked on Twitter which resulted in the Dodgers pulling out. Hahn himself spoke about it previously back in March with Chuck Garfien on his podcast. In it, he implies that the ask from the Dodgers changed after the information showed up on Twitter. I can somewhat feel for him here, at least a little bit because that has to be frustrating as fuck.

That being said, my issue with it is the fact that the call is coming from the inside of his own house. I get being pissed about the deal being torpedoed, but if someone in the Sox front office is leaking details about this deal to Twitter, then he has bigger issues than Twitter. That’s like getting mad at a dog for sniffing another dog’s ass. It’s just what they do. Twitter spews out a shitload of rumors, a microscopic portion of which end up being true. I suppose the leak could’ve come from the Dodgers side of the camp, but I don’t know why they would then pull out of the deal. If that was the case the deal must not have been that solid anyways. Does Twitter suck? Absolutely. It’s a fucking hellscape where your soul goes to die 145 characters at a time. Doesn’t mean that absolves the Sox front office for blabbing about potential deals before the ink is dry on the paper.

The third quote deals with an area that I myself am part of, the Sox blog-o-sphere. Hahn is of the opinion that overall we bloggers have the overall attitude that leans toward the dark side. That the glass is always half empty for us. To this point, all I can say is “no fucking shit.” Look, I get that constantly hearing negative stuff online about the team you’re personally trying to build can piss you off. I really do. That being said, Hahn should perhaps try and look at it from our prospective, which is that the Sox have been absolutely brutal to watch more often than not these last few years. That combined with the kind of injury luck the Sox have had the past few years has a tendency to make a fan of a team supremely pessimistic.

I totally understand that we are in the middle of a rebuild that was necessitated by years of Kenny Williams attempting to delay the inevitable by trading the prospect cupboard bare, and we all knew there were going to be some lean years ahead. To imply that I want the rebuild to fail just so I can keep complaining about it is disingenuous. You think I WANT the team to stay like this? I want to keep watching AJ Reed and Yonder Alonso flail about when it could be Luis Robert? That I want to waste my time watching Welington Castillo look like he’s being attacked by fire ants behind the plate when I could be watching Zack Collins develop at the major league level? I have no interest in any of that shit whatsoever. I’m negative online because I’m tired of the Sox sucking worse than the drain in Marlon Brando’s bathtub. When the team has a possibility to suck less and it’s squashed because you want another year of team control on a guy murdering AAA pitching right now (or this time last year with Eloy) it’s not because I want the rebuild to fail, it’s because I really fucking want it to succeed.

Moving to the last and most terrifying quote, Hahn implies that when the run truly begins all will be forgiven we will get to watch a bunch of parades. This may be true, because I would be hard pressed to argue with a guy who built a championship squad from the nothing that was here. The issue is the quote implies that the Sox are going to BE a championship quality squad, which also implies that the front office is going to be able to fill the holes in the roster through free agency. For a guy who has shown the inclination to go dumpster diving to fill needs rather than shopping at Best Buy, the thought that the Sox are going to be throwing parades seems to be based on filling holes internally rather than on the market. He implies that the Sox run is going to begin “next year, or the year after that or whenever”  and that says to me that the timeline for the rebuild is in flux and seems to have been pushed back. Granted, I may have been hearing just what I wanted to hear about timelines from him in the past, but this quote does not inspire much confidence in the rebuild from here on out. Hopefully I’m just reading too much into this, and he was just speaking off the cuff, but I wonder.

Overall, most of what Hahn is saying in the podcast feels more like an “I’m not mad, YOU’RE the ones who are mad” comment and that he’s sort of just shouting at the rain. I get that, because that’s how I feel writing about this team sometimes. The internet is a shitty place, and it can wear on you after awhile. If Rick Hahn wants any of that to change in the slightest, the Sox are going to have to do more than tell us “Don’t worry, the good times are coming soon” and actually show us that they are through their actions. I would love nothing more than to watch the Sox dominate the AL Central for years to come, and to contend with the Astros and Yankess and Red Sox in the postseason. I want that in the worst and best way possible. If that makes me pretty negative when I’m sitting through the Sox losing three of four to the Angels when they really could’ve swept them I guess that’s fair. It’s going to be the norm until the Sox front office shows me that I should be something other than that.

 

 

 

Baseball

Rick Hahns Sox Fans More BS at MLB Trade Deadline

By Wes French 1389 0

Rick Hahn, Kenny Williams and the White Sox front office either think you’re stupid or just don’t care. Definitely on that spectrum somewhere, closer to thinking you’re stupid.

The MLB’s new lone trade deadline came and went Wednesday afternoon with exactly one trade to file for Hahn, KW, and Co. No, they didn’t cash in on closer Alex Colome. Jose Abreu gets his wish to continue building on his 0.4 WAR in Chicago. John Jay is still here to amass AB’s for his free agent binder this winter. Welington Castillo remains at best the third most popular BEEF on the Southside (after Loaf #fromthe108 and the Italian Beef+Giardiniera pizza at Beggar’s in centerfield). The Sox, in fact, traded no one from any active roster at any level of their organization on Wednesday. So what the hell kind of trade did they make?

The Chicago White Sox at 46-58, good for eighth worst in the MLB, 13 games out in the wild card and 16 games behind  Minnesota for the division, traded recently operated-on Nate Jones, $750k (to cover half Jones remaining salary) AND $1 million in international bonus pool money to the Texas Rangers for a couple of not-really-prospect pitchers that are highly unlikely to become the CWS version of the Fernando Tatis Jr. debacle. Joe Jarneski is 19, coming off of Tommy John and actually not atrocious thus far in the Arizona League. Ray Castro is 22 and pitching poorly in the Dominican Summer League. Wooooooooof.

The Sox are not good right now, but you can see some potential both on the horizon and in the here and now with players like Lucas Giolito, Yoan Moncada, Eloy Jimenez, Tim Anderson and Dylan Cease waiting for Luis Robert, Nick Madrigal, and Andrew Vaughn to join them in Chicago. The system isn’t exactly stacked after those three, though, with a slow development year and/or injuries to most of the second and third tier prospects. They could have moved out any of the mediocre veteran players on the roster for literally anything and come out looking good, having added more overall talent to the farm. Maybe there really just were no takers for veterans on cheap, expiring deals…and if it’s about opening a 40-man spot, those same players can be stuck on waivers in August, which still exists, freeing up space for Robert and Madrigal. But then their service clocks would start, which is not the White Sox way. It’s all about control, you see.

Why, then, Rick Hahn thought it best to trade away roughly half of their remaining international bonus pool to jettison only $750k owed to a reliever on the 60-Day IL (that can simply have his option declined in the November) is beyond me and everyone else. $2 million on the international market is nothing to dismiss. Money that could have been used to bring in anywhere from one to a handful of very raw but very intriguing young talent to a system that the Sox front office is very clearly going to lean on a great deal going forward. Yes, the international signing system is incredibly messed up, with most top talents locked into hush-hush deals years before they’re even eligible or are straight up hidden from other teams. Looking at you, Detroit. Weirdos. Still, there are plenty of talented players still unsigned and more that could become available later in the signing period that lasts until June 15, 2020. This is an inexcusable waste of resources.

Rick Hahn gave the kind of quotes you could most easily expect him to spit after the deal, playing like he’s smarter than everyone in the room with a dig at the pre-deadline articles being wrong and trying to bump this as a cost saving move while adding “depth” to the system:

“(Jones) was not, I think, on anyone’s hit list or predicted in trades in the columns you’ve been writing, but we had the opportunity to add a little bit of depth to our pitching staffs in the lower levels of the minors as well as trade a little bit of economic savings as we move forward.”

In reality, this is about the guy signing his checks saving $1.75 million; the amount they won’t pay Jones and won’t spend on future talent. The roster space they opened on the 40-man won’t be used on Luis Robert. This had nothing to do with getting better at baseball.

“That money will be spent.” 

That was Rick Hahn after the Sox finished second to San Diego for Manny Machado’s services. It apparently will not be spent on cheap, controllable talent. And you can bet if they won’t spend on that they won’t spend on the top tier players that hit the market. I foresee a lot of second place or worse finishes ahead on the Southside.

 

Baseball

Mets Spotlight: Brodie Man

By Andy Jonathan 1751 0

With the trade deadline looming, and the Mets already active in it with their acquisition of my personal Man-Crush Marcus Stroman last night, I thought it would be fun to take a look at the man behind the madness, Brodie Van Wagenen. Plus I find the inner workings of professional sports teams fascinating, and this gives me the perfect excuse to delve even further down that rabbit hole.

Van Wagenen was hired this past off-season after previous GM Sandy Alderson decided to take an extended leave of absence to spend more time with his remaining brain cells. Van Wagenen previously had been a player agent, having represented some of the Mets top talent (and Tim Tebow) like Jacob deGrom, Robinson Cano and the remaining ligaments of Yoenis Cespedes. While you might think that hiring a former agent to be the GM of a baseball team that has previously negotiated with said agent might be a conflict of interest, it’s not without precedent. Former A’s and Blue Jays ace Dave Stewart went from being a player, to an agent, and then eventually to GM of the Arizona Diamondbacks.

The issue that a lot of people in baseball had with this move is that as the agent of some of these players, Van Wagenen was privy to the medical information of his clients which he could then in theory use against them in salary negotiations.  Granted, the likelihood of that is slim as it would immediately result in a grievance being filed against the Mets by the player’s union but it’s not a concern without merit.  This didn’t deter the Mets, however, as they signed Van Wagenen to a five-year contract last October.

Van Wagenen didn’t waste much time making moves, as he sent their top rated OF prospect Jared Kelenic and Jay Bruce to the Mariners for the 2018 saves leader Edwin Diaz and the corpse of Robinson Cano and it’s $100 million dollar price tag.  Also in the deal was the Mets top pitching prospect Justin Dunn who also sits in the top 100 ranked ML players as of last week.  He also signed free agent catcher Wilson Ramos and added infield utility man Jed Lowrie to one year deals.

The only one of those moves that has panned out thus far is Wilson Ramos, and then only just barely as he’s been worth 0.2 WAR thus far this season slashing .259/.335/.387 with 10 dingers and 45 RBI. The guy he replaced behind the dish was Travis D’Arnaud, who ended up with Tampa Bay and has produced 1.2 WAR for them with a .249/.316/.482 line. Whoops. Robinson Cano has predictably continued the downward spiral on the back half of his career.  He’s been worth -0.2 WAR thus far and played below average D at 2B.  He’s also logged a decent amount of time on the IL with various maladies.  Edwin Diaz has been a shadow of his former self at the back end of the Mets bullpen.  His ERA currently sits at an ugly 4.95, and he’s blown five saves thus far and has been worth 0.4 WAR.

Even if that brutal off-season wasn’t enough, Van Wagenen seems to be a might bit…unstable.  Earlier in the month it was reported that during a post game meeting with staffers Van Wagenen lost his shit and ended up throwing a chair around the room. He’s also been known to manage games from the comfort of his home by calling Mets staffers to relay instructions to manager Mickey Callaway regarding the pulling of deGrom from the game. This new style of management certainly brings back memories of George Steinbrenner doing the kind of shit that made him such a great Seinfeld character.

All this brings us to the trade deadline, which in typical fashion Van Wagenen has jumped by trading top pitching prospects Anthony Kay and Simeon Woods Richardson to Toronto to bring in Marcus Stroman.  On the surface, the move doesn’t seem to make much sense. The Mets currently sit 11.5 games back in the division and six games in the wild card race.  Stroman was largely regarded as the best pitcher available on the market other than Noah Syndergaard at the deadline, and was actively being pursued by the Braves and Yankees.  Granted Stroman has another year of team control before hitting the market, but it seems the Mets need more than just him to compete next year as Zack Wheeler and Syndergaard himself are not long for the team.

Which might be why he traded for Stroman, as a potential replacement for Syndergaard if he’s dealt at the deadline.  If that’s truly the case, it will be very interesting to see the return the Mets get for him. In addition to that, I would sincerely hope that Rick Hahn would be calling and asking about the price for Thor as he’s an immediate upgrade over anyone not named Lucas Giolito.  The main question at this point would be asking price.  Syndergaard has two more year of team control left, then hits the free agent market in a year pretty devoid of starting pitching.  If the Mets were to ask for Michael Kopech, would Hahn be open to making that deal? I think I would, though it would be a tough pill to swallow. I’m hoping Hahn isn’t the one to break Van Wagenen’s streak of terrible deals by getting fleeced by him. Though I’m not expecting much out of this deadline for the Sox, Thor would be a nice surprise as long as the price is right.

Should be an interesting few days.

Baseball

Series Recap – Sox Lose 2 of 3 To Miami: Mad World

By Andy Jonathan 1245 0

BOX SCORES:

Game 1: White Sox 9 – Marlins 1

Game 2: White Sox 1 – Marlins 5

Game 3: White Sox 0 – Marlins 2

 

This series loss, possibly more than any other series loss this entire season really fucking grinds my gears.  It’s a prime example why this front office, and to a lesser extent Rick Renteria, are taking what could be a very fun Sox team and grinding it into the dust.  On top of that, you’ve got Steve Stone on Twitter telling us we should all just be happy and enjoy the fact that semi-professional baseball is being played on the South Side.  We should just be happy that instead of bringing up prospects that could potentially benefit from major league experience we get castoffs like AJ Reed.  Instead of signing players in the offseason that could potentially make this product emminently more watchable, we should be happy we get to watch Jon Jay and Yonder Alonso.  I understand that Eloy and Tim are hurt, but REAL MLB teams are able to replace guys like that with players that can at least keep the team afloat.  Instead we get more of the Reed/Engel/Castillo Triangle Of Death.  To quote Lou Brown from Major League, “I’m sick of this nickel and dime shit!”

 

FUCKING BULLETS

NUMBERS DON’T LIE

-On the plus side, both Ivan Nova and Reynaldo Lopez continue their quest to redefine their seasons.  Lopez in particular has gone from “Nickleback Greatest Hits Album” down to about “Mumford And Sons Unreleased Tracks” in terms of quality (Hey, it’s MY sliding scale).  Granted, their 2 performances were against one of the more pathetic starting lineups in the league, but that’s what big league pitching is supposed to do.  Lopez didn’t benefit as much as Zac Gallen did from HP Umpire Ryan Additon’s expanded strike zone, and did most of his work up in the zone where his fastball can do the most damage.  Nova mildly impressed me in going the distance Monday night, but still only threw about 63% of his 112 pitches for strikes.

-Dylan Covey is not a starting pitcher, and trying a fucking 6 man rotation to keep hammering this square-assed peg into the round hole is only going to make his ERA worse.  He very clearly could be the beneficiary of an opener, but Renteria and Hahn are being insanely stubborn about this, and I just don’t fucking get it.

-Jose Abreu looks like he’s pressing right now, and if I were him and saw the collection of stiffs my coach packed around me in the lineup I’d be pressing too.  Every time I see AJ Reed step in the batters box I just think he’s one bad haircut away from becoming Guy Fieri Redux.  Except the real Fieri would have a better chance of taking a slider to Flavortown, if you know what I mean.

-Renteria’s lineup construction is approaching 4D chess levels of confusion.  Tuesday night the Marlins started Caleb Smith, who is far and away their best starter and also left handed.  I know that McCann needs a break now and again, but instead of giving it to him tonight, against Gallen the righty, he did it against Smith.  Who did he start instead of McCann at DH?  Guy Fieri Jr, who’s a fucking lefty.  Who’s splits against lefties are trash.  Who he himself is pretty much trash, since that’s where the Astros put him.

-Yoan Moncada is still batting .300 with an .882 OPS at the end of July.  Hell Yeah.  (He still shouldn’t be batting cleanup, but whatever)

-I’m not totally sold on Ryan Goins right now, but I’d rather watch him than Jose Rondon.  He’s not gonna make me forget that Tim Anderson left on his rehab stint today and should be back in a week.  Yay!

-That’s about all I wanna say about this shitty series.  It’s 2:30 in the morning and I still wanna punch my computer screen.  The Twins are next, and if the lineup looks anything like it did Tuesday and Wednesday, get ready for a long fucking weekend.

 

Baseball

The White Sox Are On Message With Dylan Cease, They Just Don’t Seem To Know It

By Sam Fels 1324 0

You can certainly understand White Sox fans’ frustration. When Lucas Giolito isn’t pitching, thanks to injuries or various incompetence, having to suffer through Manny Banuelos or Ivan Nova or earlier Ervin Santana or Dylan Covey (“Dylan Arrieta” according to Fifth Feather) isn’t a great way to extend one’s lifespan. Especially with Dylan Cease sitting at Charlotte, and seemingly putting up numbers that would warrant a look. Certainly a look over the circus clowns that have toed the slab (god I love baseball terminology) for the Sox so far.

Still, if you look at what the Sox have done with their other pitching prospects, it makes perfect sense that Cease isn’t here yet. Between the Cubs and Sox systems, Cease has thrown 336 innings in the minors over parts of five seasons. How much did the others go through? Michael Kopech threw 383 innings in the minors before coming up for brief air last year. Giolito threw 367 in the Nationals system before he got a brief call to DC, and then the Sox piled on another 128 in Charlotte for him upon arriving under their tent for a total just under 500. Reynaldo Lopez had thrown 307 innings in the Nationals system as well before getting his own cameo in the Capital, and then the Sox piled on another 121 in AAA for him after his trade for a total of 428 innings in the minors. So only Kopech has thrown a similar total of innings in the minors to Cease before being called up, and that was just a shade under 50 more innings. Kopech is also now on the shelf, so take that for what it’s worth.

Scouting reports suggest that while Cease is getting the results in Charlotte, the process is still a touch wonky. He’s falling behind in counts and powering through with his fastball, which works there but definitely won’t work in the majors, especially as it gets hotter on the Southside and it returns to its normal air-traffic control disturbance. The other side is that Cease isn’t getting any luck considering the amount of ground-balls he’s giving up, and he might actually benefit from getting to pitch in front of what’s been for now at least a plus-infield defense.

Of course, every pitcher is different and no plan should work for two people. Everyone’s still guessing at this, of course.

Still, it’s a little jarring when Rick Hahn comes out and compares Cease’s promotion timetable to that of Eloy Jimenez’s, because we all know that Jimenez’s was bullshit. Jimenez was ready to be in the majors last year, and probably even pretty close to the start of the season and everyone knew it. The Sox kept him in Charlotte thanks to the CBA and getting another year of control, and guised it as the normal, “Oh he needs to work on his defense (this is left field, people),” or “We just want to make sure he’s ready.”

There are no such concerns with Cease, which makes the comparison to Jimenez pretty weird. The Sox appear to be enacting the same plan with Cease that they have with all their other pitchers, and that’s the story they could easily stick to. And fuck, even with that plan, it took Giolito a full-season and plus to become this. Lopez hasn’t become anything yet, and Kopech has his arm in ice. So maybe they’re figuring it out with the rest of us.

Hahn’s probably on the right track here, he should just avoid mentioning Jimenez when describing that track. Doesn’t really support the argument.