Baseball

HI EVERYBODY!

By Andy Jonathan 1974

Welp, it looks as if MLB is really gonna do this.

 

I struggled coming up with an article announcing the imminent return of my favorite pastime for weeks now. It’s a weird feeling, watching sports during a pandemic. As many of you know already, I watch a boatload of professional wrestling. My favorite company, All Elite Wrestling (AEW) has been running empty arena shows along with WWE during the entirety of the crisis. I’m torn, because I know these men and women are potentially risking infection and quite possibly serious health issues or death to bring me entertainment on Wednesday nights. Yet still I tune in every week, and enjoy almost every second of it (unless it’s Raw or Smackdown, in which case I enjoy 1 out of every 10 seconds).

Baseball feels the same way to me, in as much that part of me is thrilled to watch these elite athletes ply their trade for my entertainment but another part of me is terrified that I’m going to wake up and find out that Lucas Giolito is in the hospital hooked up to a ventilator. I desperately want to have the comfort back that comes with watching a baseball game from my couch in the summer while checking my fantasy team’s stats on my phone. Just being able to pull your mind away from the constant stream of terrible news and watch something that’s fun is quite good for your mental health, but there’s also a feeling that by tuning in you’re enabling behavior that’s not helping the country work past this virus. There’s really no good answer to the question of “should we be watching this?” other than to come to grips with this being the new reality, and (for me at least) to just try and enjoy as much of it as I can. That’s not to say you’re wrong for not feeling comfortable with watching the product, far from it. I wouldn’t blame anyone in the slightest, I’m more just presenting my frame of mind going into this season (or whatever you wanna call it).

Speaking of this season, the start of it is merely a few days away. Since MLB is gonna plow ahead with this, I (and most likely Wes) will be here to cover all the Sox Excitement moving forward. This fresh of the heels of the White Sox pummeling the Cubs bullpen last night in an exhibition game that featured a mammoth home run by (seriously) Adam Engel that touched off a 6 run rally in the 6th inning that chased Robo-Hendricks from the mound and gave Jahrel Cotton vertigo from all the spinning around he was doing. Yasmani Grandal, Edwin Encarnacion and Luis Robert went back to back to back with doubles to end Cotton’s night and cement the win for the South Siders. More importantly, nobody got hurt and Yoan Moncada is apparently healed up from his bout with COVID-19 and could potentially be ready for the start of the season.

With Friday being a pseudo-Opening Day for the Sox, a few questions still remain heading into the series against the Twins. Here’s a few of them that hopefully will have some positive answers going forward:

What Does the Sox Rotation Look Like Going Forward, and Does Carlos Rodon Have A Place In It?

With Michael Kopech opting out for the rest of this season, the Sox are still left with good (if mostly unproven) depth at starter. As it stands, the rotation looks something like this:

1. Lucas Giolito

2. Dallas Keuchel

3. Dylan Cease

4. Gio Gonzalez

5. Reynaldo Lopez

6. Carlos Rodon?

Rodon, fresh off of Tommy John surgery, has made no secret about his desire to slide directly back into his spot in the rotation. With that being said, Gio Gonzales was signed in the off season specifically to provide depth to an unproven rotation outside of it’s top two starters. Will Rick Renteria go with a six man rotation heading forward, or will Gonzales be moved into more of an opener situation? Most of his success in 2019 was predicated on Craig Counsel of the Brewers keeping him from going through a lineup the third time. How will that fare in a shortened season like this? Will he be able to eat enough innings to be valuable? On top of that…

How Much Effect Will Yasmani Grandal Have On The Sox Young Rotation?

One of the main reasons Rick Hahn signed Yasmani Grandal this past fall was not only to add switch hitting pop to a Sox lineup that lacked it from the left side (Moncada notwithstanding), but to bring his elite framing skills to a Sox staff that outside of Lucas Giolito could desperately use a few extra called strikes. Will Grandal’s framing ability be able to harness the talent that Dylan Cease and Reynaldo Lopez clearly possess? Also…

Is The Regression Monster Coming For Yoan Moncada and Tim Anderson?

With both Moncada and Timmy hitting over .315 last season and TA winning the AL Batting Title, how much regression can be expected for the two? Moncada completely flipped the script from his 2018 season by massively cutting down on his K total and raising his BA from both sides of the plate. Tim Anderson did the same, all while walking approximately -7 times all season. I don’t think anyone believes that Tim is going to hit .335 again, the question is how far will he fall?

What Will Eloy and Luis Robert Bring To The Table This Season?

Eloy had a pretty solid rookie season all things considered, finishing with a .267/.315/.828 slash line with 31 dingers. Unfortunately for him, he spent a decent time on the shelf with varying maladies that kept him from really reaching his true potential. Will he be able to stay healthy and pick back up where he left off? Will Luis Robert be as good or better than Eloy in his rookie campaign? We all saw him rip a dinger off Carlos Rodon while falling down the other day, and that alone made a lot of our pants uncomfortably tight while watching it. How will he fare against pitchers that aren’t coming off Tommy John surgery? Does he have the plate discipline to go head to head with the Mike Clevingers and Josh Haders of the league?

How Good Are The Twins, Really?

As far as competition for the Sox goes this season, the main monolith standing between them and the promised land still resides in the swamps of Minnesota. With the type of offense that gives pitchers night terrors, the Twins are an offensive force to be reckoned with. On the other side of the ball, however, the Twins have a lot of questions of their own to be answered. Jose Berrios is a true ace, but after him the drop off is STEEP. Jake Odorizzi threw above his head in the first half of last season, but came crashing back to earth. Michael Pineda is very good, but also very suspended. Kenta Maeda is solid, but hasn’t been anything more than a super long reliever for the Dodgers in the past 3 years. The shambling corpse of Rich Hill is there, still throwing his 32 MPH curveball. Their bullpen is average at best. Is this the weakness the Sox hitters will be able to exploit? Finally…

Will COVID-19 Make All Of This Moot?

The challenges for this season to get underway, let alone finished are colossal. As of me writing this, the Toronto Blue Jays are still without a park to play in since the Canadian government told them to pound sand. The list of players who are opting out grows by the day, as does the case count across the nation. Testing delays are wreaking havoc across the South, forcing players to sit out without results to their required results. How long before the league has to take a serious look at whether or not continuing the season is viable? We could’ve been a month into the season by now with a decent infrastructure in place for testing if the owners hadn’t decided to be colossal dicks about everything, and now the league is behind the 8-ball. Will the considerable obstacles facing a full season be overcome? I guess we’ll see before too long.

 

Hoping you all and your families are well, and continue to be so. Stay safe everybody, and please for the love of baseball…wear a fucking mask.

 

 

Baseball

New World Order: 2020 White Sox Player Previews: Lucas Giolito

By Andy Jonathan 1458

With the position players all wrapped up, we come to the spot on the diamond that will matter the most to the playoff hopes of the White Sox, the pitcher’s mound. From where things stand offensively for the Sox with additions made in the off-season, run production is not going to be an issue for the team moving forward. If the Sox truly have deigns of making the playoffs it’s the pitching rotation that’s going to have to step up and mow some people down.

Since we’ve gone all in with the pro wrestling analogies so far, we may as well keep it going. Every good faction in wrestling needs a leader. Evolution had HHH. DX had Shawn Michaels, and the nWo had Kevin Nash. I guess that makes Lucas Giolito the Kevin Nash of the White Sox rotation.

 

2019 Stats

Games Started: 29

14 Wins 9 Losses

3.41 ERA 1.064 WHIP

228 Ks 56 BB 24 HR

11.62 K/9 3.43 FIP

5.1 WAR

 

Last Week On Nitro: 2019 for Lucas Giolito was an amazing leap forward from his status in 2018 as “World’s Worst Starting Pitcher” (at least according to Fangraphs) to “Top 10 Starter In MLB Worthy of Cy Young Votes” (Also according to Fangraphs). He bettered his stats from the previous year in every meaningful category, but none more impressive than his K/9 rate, which jumped from 6.49 to 11.62. Giolito credits this jump to work he did in the previous off-season to completely overhaul his mechanics and delivery to give his fastball more movement and allow more pinpoint accuracy at the top of the strike zone.

The results were nothing less than phenomenal, as his 5.1 WAR was second on the team only to Yoan Moncada‘s 5.7 tally. The stats could’ve been even better, but a lat strain caused him to be shut down early and miss his final 3 starts of the year (2 of which would’ve been against the moribund Tigers offense). That likely cost him a few AL Cy Young votes, but ultimately his progress in 2019 is far more important than any award and he’s cemented as the White Sox ace for the next 5 years unless a resurgent Michael Kopech takes it from him.

Too Sweet! (WHOOP WHOOP): Best case scenario for Lucas Giolito this season is he continues his upward rise towards the top of the American League pitching lists. He’s able to stay healthy, and avoid the post All Star break slump that ended up costing him about a half point of ERA in 2019. He breaks the 275 K plateau, bumping up his WAR for the season to above 6, making him the first Sox player to crack that ceiling since Mark Buherle almost did it in 2005 with a 5.9 season. He also finishes top 3 in AL Cy Young votes, and secures his 2nd All Star Game appearance.

If his delivery arm slot holds up and he’s able to replicate the successes of last season, I’m certain Rick Hahn will reach out to Giolito’s camp and begin discussions for a contract extension. While I don’t think the deal would end up nearly as team friendly as the one signed by Chris Sale back in 2013, there would still be value for both sides of the aisle by having the team buy out his remaining arbitration years. Keeping Giolito in a Sox jersey for as long as possible would reduce the sting of being forced to send the team’s previous young ace away.

You Fucked Up! You Fucked Up!: Worst case scenario for Lucas Giolito has already happened, and it was called the entire 2018 season. I’ll throw up his stats from that godawful year as a comparison to the 2019 ones above:

Lucas Giolito 2018 Statline

Games Started: 32

10 Wins 13 Losses

6.13 ERA 1.48 WHIP

120 K 90 BB 27 HR

6.49 K/9 5.56 FIP

Just looking at those numbers sends a cold shiver down my spine. Having personally watched multiple Giolito starts in 2018, I can say those numbers were all very well deserved. Thankfully, Giolito’s underlying numbers last season supports his turnaround as being genuine. He actually had worse batted ball luck in 2019, based on his .273 vs .268 BABIP numbers. While nothing is impossible, I certainly would bet on the 2019 Lucas Giolito showing up this year as opposed to the 2018 version.

The other thing that could derail his season would be injuries, but seeing as though he’s already had Tommy John surgery the odds of that recurrence would be pretty low. Other than that, he’s been pretty durable throughout his career with the last few weeks of September being the only extended time missed. Fingers crossed this trend continues.

Bah Gawd That’s Giolito’s Music!: This season is going to be more of the same for Lucas Giolito. I would fully expect any innings restraints to be off him, so barring any major time missed for injury I would think he’d eclipse the 200 inning mark for the first time in his career.

Adding in the new high in innings would also give him the chance to blow past the 250 strikeout line, which when factoring in the framing skills of Yasmani Grandal seems all the more likely (I also feel like I’m going to be talking about Grandal a lot during the pitching portion of the previews, in a very good way).

My final stat line for Giolito looks something like this:

17 w 8 L/3.32 ERA/1.14 WHIP/266K/64 BB/25 HR/3.38 FIP/6.1 WAR

Home runs are always going to be an issue for pitchers who ride the top of the zone like Lucas does, aided and abetted by the bandbox nature of The Down Arrow. As long as he can keep those under 30, I see no reason for a huge jump in any of his peripheral stats. The defense behind him could definitely be an issue, as outside of Luis Robert in center field there isn’t much in the way of plus defenders there until Nick Madrigal makes his triumphant entrance at second base.

With some reinforcements coming in behind Lucas in the rotation, this season looks like it could be the sequel to his triumphant coming out party in 2019. Strap in, everybody. Looks like it’s gonna be a fun year of baseball on the South Side.

https://twitter.com/PitchingNinja/status/1035329322012291072?s=20

 

Everything Else

New World Order: 2020 White Sox Previews – Luis Robert

By Adam Hess 1366

Continuing our trip trough the outfield, we now come to the most exciting White Sox prospect since, well, last year in the form of Luis Robert. Although, with all due respect to Eloy Jimenez who is universally loved by myself and all Sox fans with a right mind, Robert represents much more hope and potential than Eloy did at this time last year. Similar to Yoan Moncada, the growth and play of Robert is going to be the true key to the White Sox reaching their goal of winning a championship, be that in 2020 (however unlikely that may be) or in the future.

2019 MiLB Stats

.328/.376/.624, 30 HR, 92 RBI, 32 SB

5.1 BB%, 23.4 K%

.396 wOBA, 136 wRC+ in AAA (29 games)

4 Total Errors across all levels

Last Week on Nitro: Robert basically became a real life video game character in 2019 posting just stupidly good numbers at every single stop he made in the minors. As a 21-year-old repeating High-A, he was a pitcher’s worse nightmare put up an obscene .453/.512/.920 slash line with a 305 wRC+ (!!!!!!!!!) in 19 games there to start the year. None of that was a typo. Go back and re-read it. Okay, now catch your breath, because it doesn’t exactly get less impressive. In AA at Regents Park (the one that suppresses offense) he slashed .314/.362/.518 with a 155 wRC+, and then he moved to AAA where all he did was go .297/.341/.634 with a 136 wRC+. Ho hum.

The more Robert tore up the minors last year, the more I wrote about calling him up immediately. In the end, the Sox did not do that obviously, which we can argue about until we are blue in the face but they ultimately *sorta* made it okay by signing him to an 8-year contract extension that virtually guarantees he will be on the Opening Day roster. These contracts are basically the Sox bread-and-butter, as they’ve now done these with Robert, Eloy, Moncada, and Tim Anderson after having done it with Chris Sale and Jose Quintana which then allowed them acquire a great deal of those players. But in Robert’s case, it’s especially good because A) the Sox have their guy with “best player in the world” potential locked up for 8 years and B) we as Sox fans get to enjoy the shit out Robert’s torrid start to Spring Training (.370/.433/.603 line in 30 PA’s) without the grain of salt that he’d be starting 2020 in the minors. Robert is far from the only source of hope Sox fans have for the future of this team moving forward, but he is perhaps the greatest personification of the hope that this will finally come to fruition.

TOO SWEET (WHOOP WHOOP): Let’s just go full-torqued for this one, because it’s best-case scenario after all. How incredible would it be if Luis Robert just… didn’t stop hitting? Imagine this guy comes up and just posts his 2019 AAA slash line with his 2019 MiLB home run, RBI, and stolen base total? He’d be damn near a 7-win player! Fuck a Rookie of the Year, he’d be in consideration for the fuckin’ MVP. The thing about this is that it is kinda… not all that unrealistic. Okay, the 7-win player is a bit aggressive, but even for a rookie with a lot of swing and miss in his game and walk numbers that are not huge, a lot of projection systems just keep pumping out huge projections for Robert. PECOTA projected him as a 4.0 WAR player. Steamer projects him at 3.0. ZiPS has him at 2.5, but that’s with a 100 wRC+ projection as well. If he hits above league average, these projetion systems are saying his *floor* is a 3.0 win player. His ceiling is astronomical.

I am going on  a limb andthe record here – if Robert is a 4-win player or better in 2020, the White Sox are winning 90+ games. That may be a bit optimistic, but I truly believe it. This will be dependent on Eloy turning his late 2019 production into full season 2020 production, Moncada hitting the numbers I droolingly predicted he will last week, the pitching holding up, as well. Again, optimistic. But I believe these things can happen – hell, it happened for the 2015 and 2016 Cubs for the most part, if you use the proper parallels – and if they do, the Sox are gonna be fucking dangerous this year.

YOU FUCKED UP! YOU FUCKED UP!: Firstly, I fucked up because I got vacation brain and thought that this post was supposed to go up today, but it was actually supposed to be yesterday. So, apologies, dear reader. For Robert, though, fucking up in 2020 is both unfortunately a realistic possibility and also somewhat easy to diagnose how it would go wrong. For all of his incredible traits as a hitter, Robert is just not patient. He’s aggressive almost to a fault, and that has subsequently led to some speculation on how he will translate to MLB as a rookie. The fact of the matter is that he really is just too good and too advanced as a hitter to have ever been challenged by minor league pitching.

The somewhat silver lining there is that we cannot be 100% sure if the low walk rate and hyper-aggressive approach were an all-out lack of patience or just the result of being better than any other hitter those MiLB pitchers would face. Essentially, was he just not willing to walk, or did he just decide that hitting a dinger was way more fun so he was just going to put the pitcher out of his misery? To that end, Robert has shown a good amount of discipline in spring training so far, but I also am not going to put a ton of stock in that beyond simply hoping that it will continue into the year. If he can’t show some discipline, I think we are looking at situation similar to what happened to Eloy early in 2019.

BAH GOD, THAT’S ROBERT’S MUSIC: Is it too much of a cop-out for me to say I think he splits the difference here? Normally I don’t buy into projection systems too much because, while I am a fan of using the advanced stats and analytics, I also am a “let them play the damn games” guy, but I do kinda like the Steamer projection for Robert in 2020 – .273/.318/.488 with a 111 wRC+. I am cautiously optimistic he can walk more than 5% to get that OBP up a bit, and think he will steal more than Steamer’s projection of 22 bases to bring the wRC+ up, but overall I think that is a solid prediction for Robert this year, so I will just go with that. More generally, I think he will be in the realm of .270/.330/.500, which really would be an amazing rookie season, in my opinion. Although don’t rule out the whole 7-win player thing either, cuz it could happen. Let’s hope!

Baseball

New World Order: 2020 White Sox Player Previews – The Big Baby

By Wes French 1500

We open the outfield previews with the young goofball set to hit all the dingers, Eloy Jimenez. Hi Mom!

Eloy kicked off a trend of signing in the Spring so as to avoid being a victim of service time manipulation ensure a place in the starting lineup and Left Field to open the 2019 campaign. Eloy started slow, had trouble with the curve/anything breaking and seemed to be trying to hit 10-run homers the whole first month+ before injuring himself in the field (which would become his unfortunate recurring theme). Then around June something clicked and in the second half he become the baseball mashing monster we all hoped, while improving his on-base skills in the process.

Jimenez is primed for a true breakout in 2020, ready to build on his incredible final month of 2019 (1.093 OPS/184 wRC+). The Big Baby spent the offseason determined to improve his very sub-par defense and emphatically squash talk of moving to DH any time soon (“No, fuck that”).

2019 Stats

.267/.315/.513

6.0 BB% 26.6 K%

31 HR 79 RBI 69 R

.343 wOBA 114 wRC+ 1.9 WAR

-11 DRS

Last Week On Nitro: 2019 saw Jimenez open his MLB account and it was most definitely not the greatest of debuts, much to the chagrin of Sox fans. Eloy piled up ugly strikeouts and ugly routes in the outfield, telegraphing the pressure he felt as the rebuilds golden boy. Jimenez took his sweet time adjusting to Big League breaking balls, which were the bane of his existence for a good two months. These are the type of things you expect from rookie hitters, even the best of them, but the expectations were unfair and it clearly weighed on the young slugger. The good news is he was able to make adjustments and improve and excel as the season went on. He settled in, going on a tear through June after returning from his first IL stint in May to the tune of 11 HR/25 RBI in 36 games. July saw another rough stretch (and second IL trip), which coincided with the club as a whole hitting the proverbial wall, before the Big Baby compiled a strong final 50+ games to see his 2nd half numbers reach 35/15/41/.292/.328 with a 128 wRC+/.870 OPS. The overall numbers above in just 122 games make for a very encouraging overall debut, especially factoring the abysmal start.

The real sore spot for Eloy’s rookie season, literally and figuratively, was his play in LF. Sox Machine’s Jim Margalus chronicled Jimenez’s season of OF gaffes in a twitter thread and it does not disappoint in all the worst ways. To his credit, Jimenez headed to Winter Ball in the Dominican with the sole purpose of working to improve his defense and stay in the field as long as he can. The Organization seems to think he’s making progress, given that they gave a three-year extension to the aging Jose Abreu, signed Yasmani Grandal and Edwin Encarnacion and still employ plenty of other DH-adjacent bats like Zack Collins. Eloy is clearly averse to the idea and he’ll get the opportunity to prove his worth for the foreseeable future. He really doesn’t have anywhere to go but up from that -11 DRS metric, one that likely cost him a top three AL ROY finish.

TOO SWEET! (WHOOP WHOOP):  Eloy flies out of the gates in March, continuing his Sept/Oct 2019 assault on American League pitching, producing something like a .365 OBP/900+ OPS and swatting over 50 HR. The work in the field shows enough improvement to keep his DRS around -3-ish or better, helping him into the conversation for AL MVP on a White Sox team that threatens to crash the October party. He starts to pull the ball in the air more to LF, he keeps the K% closer to 20-22 and improves the BB% to 8-10 and the rest of the lineup benefits because of it. I party nearly every night.

Say Eloy improves his stat line to .310/.345/.540 and that’s still a marked improvement and a force. Combine this with what would be the baseline for the likes of Abreu, Grandal, Encarnacion, Yoan Moncada and Tim Anderson and you have a very, very dangerous lineup. Eloy could hit anywhere from the 3 hole to 7th, but ideally Ricky will spot him up somewhere and leave him so as not to mess with any improvements we’ve seen. This Spring he’s seen most of his time in the 5th spot, so we can assume that’s where he slots most of the year although you never really know with Ricky Renteria and his lineup blender.

There is some real speculation as to whether Jimenez will improve enough in the OF to get that DRS down so much, but he has put in the time and was much better later in the season (after he surely got a talking to for running himself into an elbow injury in July after karate kicking a wall earlier in they year). That and the addition of him making it a priority last Winter at least gives hope for a solid positive regression.

YOU FUCKED UP! YOU FUCKED UP!: The big numbers seen over the final two months were a mirage. Eloy slowly starts his season, forgetting the pitch recognition he picked up as 2019 wore on and yet again finds himself on the IL early because of a misplay in the field. He languishes through a sophomore slump, hits a paltry .240/.285/.460 and turns in an empty 25-30 HR along the way. He continues playing LF like the ungraceful elk he is while attempting to call off his CF often, who is now Luis Robert – a guy that will definitely hurt more running into that Charlie Tilson. I cry every night.

This scenario sees the fanbase and media start to question the long extension Jimenez inked in March 2019 and ponders if it’s really that great of business to dole out that kind of coin to players with no MLB ABs to their name (it still is). I do think that anything less than a slight improvement over Eloy’s final line from last season will be packaged as a disappointment from the media/fans and could hurt his mental development. This is a very tight knit core, though, one that has signed basically the entire lineup save RF for at least the next three seasons and has reinforcements in Andrew Vaughn (1B) and Nick Madrigal (2B) very close to being here for at least another six with everyone but Abreu and Grandal. Any adversity Jimenez or his teammates find will see the rest rally around them and that has to count for something.

BAH GAWD THAT’S JIMENEZ’S MUSIC!: I’m going to predict Eloy at .302/.341/.560 with 44 HR and a league leading 118 RBI. The lineup around him is vastly improved and so is his plate discipline, which leads to the breakout he’s capable of. He plays a slightly improved LF, enough so to stay out of Robert’s way and keep himself off the IL multiple times.

He could see time in a few different lineup spots, but it won’t be to his detriment as he finds cover no matter where he hits. Encarnacion dubs him his large adult son as Eloy edges him for the team lead in HRs. We all party.

https://streamable.com/j63tw

 

 

Baseball

New World Order: 2020 White Sox Player Previews – Tim F’n Anderson

By Andy Jonathan 1684 0

As we continue around the diamond we come to one of the more exciting (and divisive) players the Sox employ to patrol their infield, Tim Anderson.

In a season where Rick Hahn really needed some pieces of The Future™ to break out and give the rebuild a nice new glossy shine, Tim Anderson stepped up and not only gave Hahn a success story (along with Yoan and a few others), but the White Sox organization a face and an attitude they can market the living shit out of if they do it right.

While this might not need saying, I’m a complete mark for Tim Anderson. He’s exciting, speaks his mind, and plays with the kind of flash and fire that hasn’t been on the team since Ozzie Guillen left for South Beach. There is something very Pro Wrestling about Tim, and that’s probably a big reason I find myself drawn to his play. I mean, this quote is basically cutting a promo on the entire “Old School” belief system in MLB. It’s badass:

If you can’t get behind this type of swagger in professional sports, then you haven’t been paying attention the past decade. Baseball is supposed to be fun, and this is the definition of that.

2019 Stats

.335/.357/.508

2.9 BB% 21.0 K%

18 HR 56 RBI 86 R

.363 wOBA 130 wRC+ 3.5 WAR

Outs Above Average: -1

 

Last Week On Nitro: 2019 saw a career year at the plate for Timmy, with a .335 batting average and a .508 slugging percentage at the end of the year. Oh, and he also won the AL batting title, making him the first White Sox player to hold that crown since Big Frank did it the year I graduated high school (1997. Yeah, I’m old). Despite all of the above, questions still remain about Timmy. While the .335 batting average was amazing, the .357 OBP was somewhat less than stellar. With his BABIP at a pretty unsustainable .399, the question isn’t “IF” the regression is coming for his average, it’s “how much will it be”?

Defensively, Tim committed quite a few errors last year. His 26 total lead all shortstops last season, which is bad. What’s even worse is he missed almost a month and a half with an ankle injury suffered at the shitbox Fenway Park on a soggy infield, so those 26 errors could’ve ended up being a much higher number. The advanced metrics don’t like him either, ranking him 21st in defensive production in 2019 with an UZR (Ultimate Zone Rating) of -9.1.

All is not lost defensively, however. The new defensive stat created by Baseball Savant in conjunction with MLB and Statcast takes into account the difficulty of plays and the distance needed to travel to make said plays (For a good primer on the stat, click here). The league average for fielders is set at zero, and the more positive the number the better, and the more negative number is worse. For comparison, last season Javy Baez was best in the league at short with a +19, while Jorge Polanco was dead last with a -18. Tim Anderson fell just below league average at a -1. What this tells me is that Tim is an extremely athletic shortstop with great range and occasionally poor throw making decisions, which is exactly what the eye test shows.

TOO SWEET! (WHOOP WHOOP): Best case scenario for Timmy is that his BABIP only drops about .030 points, and all of the work he talked about putting in on his defense in the off-season bears fruit and he ends up a league average or better shortstop in the AL. For someone who is clearly as gifted as Tim is athletically this is not something that’s pie in the sky wishful thinking.

A Tim Anderson that hits .290/.310/.480 is going to be a monster in this lineup, which will be even stronger with him hitting in the 7 hole and not leading off like Ricky Renteria seems to think is the best course of action right now. Once Nick Madrigal is fully armed and operational at the big league level, this is gonna be where Timmy ends up. He’s never going to be a big OBP guy, and that’s absolutely fine. Being picky about pitch selection has never been his forte, and I wouldn’t risk changing it just to up his walk total at the expense of his power numbers.

I’d also like to think that him and Moncada will have more of a green light this year, so a 20/20 year is within reach if everything breaks his way. His base stealing acumen has always been more based on his athleticism than any particular feel for the art of it, but much like his OBP…who gives a shit if it works? Having a 20/20 guy hitting in the bottom third of your lineup in a best case scenario is the kind of shit that should give Jake Odorizzi and his pool noodle arm night sweats.

YOU FUCKED UP! YOU FUCKED UP!: This one is pretty self explanatory: Tim’s BABIP falls off a cliff and his numbers completely tank, resulting in the type of season that is much more Alex Cintron than Francisco Lindor. His OBP stays the same, or even drops some and you’re left with a slash line that looks something like this: .225/.252/.388. On top of that big pile of smoldering shit, his D continues to slide and he goes from slightly below league average to total liability.

Then you’re left with the younger more expensive version of Orlando Arcia except with a longer contract term. Meanwhile just to rub salt into the wound, Fernando Tatis Jr. wins the triple crown while leading the Padres to a wild card berth where they upset the Brewers in the 1st round and shock the baseball world by sending the Dodgers out on their collective asses before winning the world series. In addition, the world is dealt a glancing blow by a meteor, which knocks the planet off it’s axis sending us into a 2nd ice age. Also Brooklyn 99 is canceled and Big Bang Theory comes back.

BAH GAWD THAT’S ANDERSON’S MUSIC!: My prediction for Tim this season is this: .272/.308/.461 with 19 dingers and 82 RBI. He’s going to be a +2 Outs Above Average, and steal 18 bases while scoring 90 runs for the Sox.

Renteria is going to stubbornly keep him in the leadoff spot even after Nick Madrigal makes it to the Show, and Luis Robert starts the year on a tear, batting .309. Eventually he’ll come to his senses (around June) and put Tim back in the #7 spot where he will thrive, knocking in 58 of his 82 RBIs.

There will also be plenty more of stuff like this

And This:

And This:

Because baseball is going to be fun again.

Baseball

New World Order: 2020 White Sox Previews – Yoan Moncada

By Adam Hess 1403 0

As we continue our trip around the diamond for the Sox this year, we now come to the hot corner which is manned by the most important player on the 2020 White Sox. Sure, you can make the case that other players like Eloy Jimenez or Luis Robert need to have breakout seasons, but if the White Sox are going to be good in 2020, Yoan Moncada is going to need to be their best player – again. That may even be true of the years beyond. Let’s just get into this because I am ready to lose my gord over this man.

2019 Stats

.315/.367/.548, 25 HR, 79 RBI

5.7 fWAR, 4.6 bWAR, 5.1 WARP

7.2 BB%, 27.5 K%

.379 wOBA, 141 wRC+ .915 OPS

-4 DRS, 5 Outs Above Average

Last Week On Nitro: Yoan went on a full blown Fuck You Tour in 2019, telling every White Sox fan and baseball analyst that started to doubt him after his rough 2018 campaign exactly where they could put their concern. From the very beginning of the season, Moncada looked like a new player. He was hitting higher in the lineup every day, playing a new position, and was more aggressive at the plate, and all of that led to huge success from jump. He was mashing enormous dingers in big situations right away, which is great for us all because he has the best home run swing in all of baseball. If you don’t enjoy watching this man hit a baseball 450 feet and admire his work with incredible swagger and charisma, you are a joyless human being. Along with the huge homers, he also ripped 34 doubles and 5 triples, and while his walk rate dipped a bit from 2018, you take that trade off for the significantly lower K-rate and the more aggressive approach that led to a .915 OPS.

The only problem with Moncada’s 2019 outbreak is that it’s simply undeniable that his .406 BABIP is not repeatable and is destined to regress. With that being said, when you go across his Statcast profile and look at all of his numbers, the BABIP is the only thing that really sticks out as a red flag. His wOBA of .379 was barely above his xwOBA of .362, and given the fact that he hits the living shit out of the ball as well as anyone in the game – he was 7th in average exit velocity (97th percentile) and 19th in hard hit percentage (92nd percentile) – a high BABIP is going to be a natural occurrence. It certainly won’t be over .400 again, but it’s still reasonable to think he can keep it up around .360-.370, and that’s still going to result in a near-.900 OPS. Aaron Judge is routinely among the leaders in exit velo and hard hit percentage, and and he’s had BABIP’s around .360 every year of his career so far, so there is your comp and reassurance for Moncada’s future.

Along with the offensive outburst, Moncada took to playing third base extremely well, registering in the 87th percentile for outs above average. He also is still one of baseball’s faster runners, though he didn’t steal a lot of bases, totaling just 10. But if BABIP and SB’s are the biggest issues from a 2019 season that saw him register the 16th best fWAR in all of baseball – higher than the likes of Ronald Acuña Jr. and Juan Soto despite playing less games than either of them *sips a huge cup a tea* – then we are just being nitpicky.

TOO SWEET (WHOOP WHOOP): As I said in the open, Moncada is going to have to be the Sox’ best player again if 2020 is truly going to be a year that sees the Sox contend, and to that end the best case for the Sox is that Moncada gets even better this year than he was in 2019. And even with the natural BABIP regression, I think it’s possible. The .367 OBP (or similar, obviously, as I’d be a fool to predict it’ll be exact) could be repeatable if he is able to bring his walk rate back up a bit, and while it may be wishful thinking to think that the K-rate will fall at the same time, obviously that would help things. On top of that, continuing hit the piss out of everything in site while enable the power to stay up and he can easily slug in the mid .500’s again – again, the batted ball rates compare nicely to Judge, who has a career low SLG% of .528.

If all of the above happens, I think it’s easy to envision Moncada slashing something like .270/.360/.540, which would obviously be incredible. If he stays healthy – which has admittedly been an issue for him so far in his career – he could easily hit 30-35 homers and 40 doubles in the process. In terms of the peripherals, Moncada has already been outspoken about wanting to steal more bases, so if he can even raise from 10 steals to 15 in 2020, that is going to boost his wRC+ and WAR numbers. And I think he can get even better defensively as well, although as long as he doesn’t get significantly worse he will be fine over there. If all of this comes to fruition, I think we are talking about 6 win player, and if the Sox are able to reach their ceiling, that will be good enough to make Moncada a dark horse MVP Candidate.

YOU FUCKED UP! YOU FUCKED UP!: I have to be honest – selfishly, I don’t even want to entertain the thought of Moncada falling off a cliff. I am clearly biased, but an all out collapse that indicates 2019 was nothing but a blip on the radar does feel extremely unlikely, but baseball is a cruel game. I don’t think he’d fall so far as to be at 2018 levels again, but if the BABIP was truly the main driver behind his 2019 success, then it’s not all that unrealistic to think he could crash back down to being closer to a 3 win player. And while that would still qualify as a perfectly fine MLB regular, that would be a huge disappointment in terms of the expectations that the Sox and their fans have for Moncada. That’s all I want to say about this because trying to speculate numbers too much could just get depressing.

BAH GOD, THAT’S MONCADA’S MUSIC: Well, I kinda lost my gord a little early here. I tried to stay measured and not just go “WELL THE BEST CASE SCENARIO HERE IS HE BECOMES BETTER THAN MIKE TROUT MY FRENDT” in the TOO SWEET section, but in the process I think I dipped a bit too much into what I am actually predicting will happen. Maybe my 6-win player idea is a bit much, largely because that could depend on him staying healthy, but overall I really think that what we saw in 2019 was a sign of things to come for Moncada. The guy is really fucking good at baseball, and he is going to be really fucking good for a long time. And that is wall I have to say about that.

Oh wait, one more thing – extend him now, Rick!

Baseball

All The Boys In The Band Know How To Get Down – 2019 Sox Player Reviews: Yoan Moncada

By Andy Jonathan 1758 0

Now we come to another key member of The Future™ who had himself a breakout year, Yoan Moncada. Not only did he bust out at the plate (ending up the 4th best hitter in the AL behind Timmy, DJ LeMahieu and Michael Brantley) but also in the field, transitioning pretty seamlessly from the cornerstone position to the hot corner. Let’s dig in, shall we?

 

2019 Stats

.315/.367/.548

Vs LHP .299 Vs RHP .322

7.2 BB% 27.5 K%

25 HR 79 RBI 81 R

.379 wOBA 141 wRC+ 5.7 WAR

Defensive Runs Saved -6 UZR +4.3

 

Tell Me A Story: Questions, questions, questions. Coming into the 2019 season, all Moncada had around him were questions.  In 2018 he slashed .235/.315/.714 and lead the AL in strikeouts which lead to question after question about whether or not Moncada should abandon switch hitting, about his aggressiveness at the plate and whether or not he took too many called 3rd strikes, all the way to his preparation level for his defensive play. There were even a few members of Sox Twitter (depression level: Joker) who had doubts about his hustle level during the season.

Moncada apparently heard all of these questions himself, as in the off-season he headed to Arizona to work with hitting coach Todd Steverson for the Long Dark of winter. During those months, he spent a considerable amount of time on his swing mechanics and working on being more aggressive at the plate. In addition to that, in the middle of his off-season workouts he found out from Ricks Hahn and Renteria that the Sox were going to move him back to 3rd base, which was his original position when he was drafted out of Cuba by the Red Sox. That’s a lot to deal with for someone who was admittedly struggling under the pressure of being ranked the best prospect in baseball and being the cornerstone of a trade involving a potential hall of fame pitcher.

The work he put in during the winter was immediately shown off during Cactus League play in March where he posted a 1.110 OPS and clocked a few dingers. Most importantly he looked far more comfortable hitting from the right side of the plate, where quite a few times he looked lost in 2018. The hot spring training carried right over to the regular season where he hit .301 in April and knocked out 6 of his eventual 25 home runs.

His effectiveness from both sides of the plate was worth noting, as he was able to up his average hitting right handed from .209 in 2018 all the way to .299 this year. The strikeouts dropped precipitously as well, going from a league high 217 last year down to a far more respectable 153 this season. His walk rate dropped, but that’s something you would expect from a player actively working on being more aggressive at the plate. Really the only thing missing in Yoan’s offensive game is power from the right side of the plate, which you can see below in his slugging heat charts.

               

 

Defensively, Moncada improved as well moving from 2B to 3rd pretty easily. His DRS score may not show it with an ugly -6 but looking at his Ultimate Zone Rating for his play at 3rd base and it’s positive for the first time ever in his career. Fangraphs also had him as the 4th best overall 3B in the whole league, based on qualifying time. So while DRS is a solid stat, sometimes it does not tell the entire story defensively for a player. His errors also dropped from 29 last season down to 15 for this year. Not too shabby for one off-season of hard work, which should hopefully put to rest the talk of his lack of preparation and hustle.

Moncada did miss some time at the beginning of August with a hamstring strain, and a few games after getting drilled on the knee with a Chris Sale slider the same game where the Sox lost Tim Anderson to the shitty field conditions at Fenway. Overall however, he was able to stay on the field pretty consistently which is what you would hope for your hot corner.

Contract: Under team control through 2020 making $550,000, Arbitration begins in 2021, free agency in 2024. I would expect the Sox to try and buy him out of those arbitration years in a deal similar (but more expensive) to what Tim Anderson and Eloy Jimenez got.

Welcome Back Or Boot In The Ass: Once again, just like Timmy there’s no question that Moncada comes back as perhaps the most important member of The Future™ club. Questions going into next season are all predicated on what Rick Hahn has planned for free agency. While I don’t expect Moncada to be moved in the field again as he’s settled in nicely at 3rd, I wouldn’t completely rule it out should the team make a surprise run at Anthony Rendon should he not re-sign in DC. Other than that, it’s a question of where he hits in the lineup and who is on base for him to drive in. Sky is the limit for Yoan here on out, and it’s gonna be awesome to watch him become the superstar he was advertised to be back when the Sale trade was made. The Red Sox may have won the battle, but I think the White Sox win the war.

 

 

 

Baseball

All The Boys In The Band Know How To Get Down – 2019 Sox Player Reviews: Jose Abreu

By Andy Jonathan 1502 0

2019 Stats

.284/.330/.503

33 HR 123 RBI

5.2 BB% 21.9 K%

.344 wOBA 117 wRC+ .833 OPS

-4 Defensive Runs Saved

 

Tell Me A Story: It’s kind of hard to believe that this was the final season of Jose Abreu’s initial contract with the White Sox. When he was signed in the 2013 offseason I was ecstatic that the team was not only spending (at the time) big money on a free agent, but that they were dipping heavily into the Cuban pool which was rapidly becoming the best international market around. It seemed the Sox were ready to get serious about taking back the AL central from the Indians and the Royals with this move. Ohhh how wrong I was.

Regardless of how those seasons turned out, Jose Abreu has been worth every penny of that first contract with the Sox. He’s generated 21.2 WAR in his time with the team, never been lower than 115 in wRC+, and if you throw out the 2018 season (far and away his worst, on a terrible ass team with no protection) he’s never had less than 100 RBI or 25 HR in a year. He was also Rookie of the Year in 2014 and been an All Star three separate times.

So what did he do this season? Well despite setting a career high in strikeouts this season and enduring a pretty rough stretch in June and July, Abreu still managed to post the highest RBI total of his career, in addition to his 3rd-highest amount of extra base hits. Just another day at the office for the most consistent producer the Sox have had since Frank Thomas manned 1B.

Back during his midsummer swoon I found myself preparing to say goodbye to Abreu at the end of the season. It seemed a foregone conclusion that him and the Sox would be parting ways both due to his age rising and his production seemingly dropping off a cliff. How foolish I was, as once the page turned to August, Abreu returned to his uber-productive ways by slashing .324/.386/.946 the remainder of the season. He also hit a wacky .338 with runners in scoring position, which was top 15 in the league for that stat.

The thing that really stands out is most of his contact numbers are in line with his career averages. His line drive rate was only .7% above his average, and his hard hit rating about the same. The only interesting thing is his pull rate jumped almost 5% from 39% to 44% which may have been part of the reason for his mid-season dip in production as when Abreu is locked in at the plate, he hits to all fields of the park. Even his BABIP was in line with his career averages, so it’s not like he was the beneficiary of good luck at the plate. All in all, Abreu did this season what he’s done every season. He’s the Swiss watch of AL first basemen, and a model of consistency.

The other thing about Jose Abreu is his effect on the younger Cuban players in the locker room. Both Eloy Jimenez and Yoan Moncada have been quoted about looking up to Abreu and learning from his experience both as a baseball player and an immigrant from Cuba. In addition, Abreu does a lot of charity work through his organization “Abreu’s Amigos” which does outreach work to kids with special needs in the community. Check out this link from the blog WhiteSoxPride if you want to have your cold, dead Sox Fan heart warmed up a few degrees.

Contract: Free Agent in 2020

Welcome Back Or Boot In The Ass: As I said above, in the middle part of the year the answer here would have been a boot in the ass (or more likely a pat on the back and a handshake. Jose is too classy for anything else). Then August and September happened, and he lead the team and the entire AL in RBIs while knocking 33 dingers out of the park. All of this, combined with his role as mentor of The Future™ of the Sox AND his stated desire to continue with the team and see the rebuild through all but guarantees his return.

Honestly, that’s how it should be. Are his skills going to decline as he heads into his mid 30s? Most likely, though I wouldn’t put it past him to continue being the metronome of 1st basemen. Will he still be able to play 1st base as his back ages more? Probably, but age comes for us all in different ways and times (See; Seabrook, Brent).

Jose Abreu deserves the chance to see this rebuild through to the other side and get a taste of the postseason. He’s been a model soldier to an organization that’s done some ridiculously dumb shit in his time with the Sox, and has been a quiet clubhouse leader. He may not take a large discount to come back, but I would think an additional three years at his current salary of $16 million would be enough to get the job done. Rick Hahn has pretty much all but guaranteed they would be able to get a deal done, and I would think it would be in place before the winter meetings in a month and a half. Let’s be honest, you want to see Abreu batting in the middle of a lineup that includes Tim Anderson, Yoan Moncada, Luis Robert, Eloy Jimenez and (hopefully) JD Martinez or someone like him (Grandal). He deserves it, we deserve it, and I’d be shocked if it doesn’t happen.

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Baseball

Series Recap – Sox Take 2 of 3 From Tigers: Good Enuf Edition

By Andy Jonathan 1188 0

BOX SCORES

Game 1: Sox 10 – Tigers 1

Game 2: Sox 5 – Tigers 3

Game 3: Sox 3 – Tigers 6

 

Well it’s not a sweep (which against a team as miserable as the Tigers should always be the goal) but any series win at this point has to be viewed through a positive lens. Honestly if I’m being picky there were a few things that were this the middle of the season I might bitch more about, but at this point of the season all I can do is shrug and gaze longingly at the postseason (and Tim Anderson’s current batting average). The things that needed to be good this series were good (except for Reynaldo Lopez), and the things that didn’t matter were kind of good as well, but still didn’t matter. Playing the Tigers is good for reminding a fan base that despite all the things that have gone wrong for a team during a season, and this season there have been plenty, it can always be much much worse.

 

To The Bullets……OF THE FUTURE™

 

IT’S SUCH GOOD SHIT

 

-The Sox hammered out 47 hits this weekend. 47!!! That’s…a lot. I would’ve wanted some more runs to go with those 47 hits but…POSITIVITY!!!

-TIM ANDERSON WATCH, GAME 155: Timmy did all right this weekend, getting 4 hits and keeping his average at .334, but LeMahieu creeped in a little closer at .329. It will be interesting to see if Renteria gives Anderson an extra day off this week or keeps him out there. I’m sure if it was up to Anderson he’d be out there every day.

-Eloy is on fire right now, going 6 for 14 in the series with two home runs (one of which was of the grand slam variety) and a triple. He came a double short of the cycle Friday night, and is looking like the demigod that was promised us. Oh, his second home run of the series? It was his 30th, good for 2nd in the league for all rookies. He’s gonna lose the rookie of the year honors to Yordan Alvarez of the Astros, but whatever. Alvarez gets to hit in the middle of the MLB lineup equivalent of a fleet of Star Destroyers, so what can you do?

-Speaking of those that deliver, Yoan Moncada is on another plane of existence right now. 6 for 12 on the series with 2 more home runs and some spiffy defense in the field. In his last 15 games, Moncada is hitting .477/.493/.754. I don’t miss Chris Sale that much, do you?

-Credit where credit is due, Adam Engel is quietly having himself a quality back half to the season. In his last 15 games he’s slashing .286/.314/.571 and has 4 home runs for himself. That’s not too bad for your 4th outfielder next year, especially with the defense we all know that he can play. Good for him, good for us.

-All was not roses this weekend, however. Reynaldo Lopez is back to being extremely hittable again, and on top of that it seems like he might be getting frustrated on the mound. He and Renteria had an animated conversation in the dugout after he gave up his second dinger of the day to Gordon “I’m Still Here?” Beckham. Whatever was said didn’t work, as he went back out there and gave up the trifecta to Victor Reyes. Lopez will have one more start on the year, and here’s hoping he ends it on a positive note, as I still feel he’s a solid 5th starter for this club going forward.\

-Next up is the Cleveland Indians, and a chance to play spoiler as the Tribe attempt to sneak into the wild card as they currently sit a half game behind Tampa Bay after the weekend series. Ohhh how glorious it would be to fuck the Tribe out of a postseason appearance, let’s make that a thing.