Heyman reaffirming that the White Sox are still in on Todd Frazier talks was probably the most juicy Monday news update, but since I already used it for yesterday's morning update....
...it's Hector Sanchez's day!
Read MoreWhite Sox news mostly stayed in a holding pattern all weekend, as did pretty much any and all updates on the corner outfield market. The Sox left the Winter Meetings with Rick Hahn saying he wasn't done improving the offense, and explicitly stating "There's still room in the payroll to improve the club."
Read MoreThe White Sox didn't actually get anything done on Thursday, but the buzz of acquiring average (or better!) infielder for spare minor league arms has them talking like, well, the way they probably should have been talking the entire time.
Read MoreMost of Wednesday felt like the Sox deal for Lawrie had fallen through. After being reported to be on the doorstep of confirming the trade with Oakland as reporters were heading to bed Tuesday night, nearly all of Wednesday went by with no report of progress, some word of squabbling about the prospects going in return, and buzzing about the Sox now shifting their focus to Todd Frazier.
Read MoreThe White Sox have acquired third baseman and potential pyromaniac Brett Lawrie from the Oakland Athletics for minor league pitchers J.B. Wenkeldon and Zack Erwin. Lawrie, who hit .260/.299/.407 (94 wRC+) in 602 PAs with Oakland last year, looks to slot in the White Sox as-good-as vacant 3B hole, hopefully solidifying a position that has been in flummox for the last decade.
Read MoreTuesday began with a joke.
Read MoreThe White Sox didn't have a first day of Winter Meetings active enough to justify something like say, taking a day off work just to sit in front of Tweetdeck all day, but there are various reports that confirm their existence and vitality, and not just in a "The Braves are interested in signing [SERVICEABLE VETERAN WITH ZERO POTENTIAL FOR ABOVE-AVERAGE PRODUCTION]" type of way.
Read MoreIn recent years, the Winter Meetings have been a time of much activity for the White Sox, especially since Rick Hahn filled the GM seat. In the last tow years, Hahn has acquired Adam Eaton, Jeff Samardjiza, Melky Cabrera, and David Robertson all during baseball’s annual December assembly, moves that have been, for better or worse, some of the most consequential of the Hahn regime. What the White Sox plan to do at this year's Winter Meetings seems to be completely up in the air.
Read MoreDioner Navarro's official terms have been announced.
Read MoreThat new catcher replacing Tyler Flowers is Dioner Navarro.
Read MoreTyler Flowers was non-tendered. The staff at TCS saw him as, "Not ideal, but nowhere close to the biggest problem with the roster." But Hahn has hinted that a new catcher is on the way? What?
Read MoreMidnight ET Thursday morning is the deadline for decision on whether to tender a contract to arbitration eligible players. For the most part, it should be full of easy decisions for the White Sox, but they have already surprised us with the "Punt a reliable shortstop to the moon" decision. Who knows what's up their sleeve?
Read MoreThe Boston Red Sox agreed with former White Sox farmhand Chris Young to a two-year deal according to multiple reports. After initial alarmist concerns that this hinted at a trade from the Red Sox outfield group of Mookie Betts, Rusney Castillo, Jackie Bradley Jr., and Brock Holt...until more sober voices suggested that Young was more likely a platoon bat/competent major league quality insurance for when one or more of those previously named falls flat on their face in an everyday role. Which is likely.
Read MoreAfter the curious departure of their GM, a disappointing 2015 that included a deadline sell-off, the Tigers are somehow still being the Tigers of the past five seasons: they're effing going for it. Jon Heyman reported they reached a deal with right-hander Jordan Zimmermann in the neighborhood of five years and roughly $110 million.
Read MoreTom Verducci's latest piece, very surprisingly on the topic of Erik Johnson, contains some hard information on his, up to this point, mysterious decline and surprising relative to form. After his disastrous 2014 filled with velocity loss, control problems and a summer of getting tuned up at Triple-A Charlotte that left him fearing he was on his way out of the organization (which seems a bit panicked), Verducci reports that Johnson sought the help of a private pitching coach to clean up his mechanics.
Read MoreWhile we all continue to stare at the massive void that is the increasing likelihood that the White Sox will make no more than a series of minor moves this offseason, the team itself began that process on Tuesday when it acquired righthander Tommy Kahnle from the Colorado Rockies in exchange for minor league pitcher Yency Almonte.
Read MoreIn the most White Sox move of all-time, the White Sox have hired Aaron Rowand to be a Minor League outfield and baserunning instructor.
Read MoreAdam Engel is the 2015 Arizona Fall League MVP thanks to a ridiculous .403/.523/.642 batting line over 19 AFL games. Engel joins recent past AFL MVPs Greg Bird, Kris Bryant and Nolan Arenado, but also Chris McGuiness, Grant Desme and Sam Fuld, the latter of which might be the best comp for him.
Read MoreThe encouraging part of the Dan Hayes' report that the White Sox are open to trading Avisail Garcia is that it shows the White Sox are aware of what we are seeing on a daily basis, that Garcia is: currently awful, showing no progress, and an increasingly poor bet to put things together offensively to a degree that will overcome his mounting shortcomings elsewhere.
Read More1. So...
Are the White Sox rebuilding? Adding on? Ken Williams told reporters last night that definitive direction hasn't been decided upon yet
— Scott Merkin (@scottmerkin) November 18, 2015
Uh...you think it would be past time to do something like this...
Kenny Williams says White Sox still deciding on "Plan A, Plan B, Plan C" for the offseason with the winter meetings approaching.
— Doug Padilla (@ESPNChiSox) November 18, 2015
Normally Plan A is the best plan, Plan B is the backup, and Plan C is...
More to come soon on https://t.co/0EC8bW9xiJ. Basically Williams said Rick Hahn is diligently putting in the daily work, but they are ...
— Scott Merkin (@scottmerkin) November 18, 2015
Ok, so here are my most likely explanations for these, uh, quotes from dear friend Kenny Williams, and trust that these are actually in order of most likely to be employed.
A) STAY OUT OF WHITE SOX BUSINESS--The organization that prides itself on being as transparent as a block of wood is making sport of giving indecisive and unrevealing quotes to the press, under the guise of protecting trade leverage. It's not enough to just not reveal who we're targeting, let's pretend we don't even know what the basic state of our team is.
97% chance this is the case.
B) Massaging the money out of Jerry is a marathon, not a sprint, and so until he actually commits to spending, hell, they may be rebuilding for all they know.
This is depressingly realistic to me, but at least Kenny is having fun with it.
2.8% chance this is the case.
C) They are actually incompetent.
Ya never know.
Not because being situationally dependent on rebuilding or buying in based on free agent or trade opportunities is dumb, but because you'd have to be dumb to independently assess that this was not the time for the Sox to buy in unless they face significant financial restrictions.
0.2% chance this is the case.
2.
Source: Free-agent OF Scott Hairston signs minor-league deal with #WhiteSox.
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 18, 2015
Any news like this during a relatively quiet day, or just during hot stove season at all, is bound to get mocked. We want the Sox to go get a big bat, and they signed a guy who was a kinda-interesting part-time bat for a team like the rebuilding Cubs to sign three years ago. But, in mocking this, we overlook two things:
A) There are no bad minor league contracts. Dan Black is in South Korea. Someone has to fill the void and hit some dingers to keep Charlotte fans happy.
B) Scott Hairston in the White Sox organization has some really cool history. As Steve Peters detailed on South Side Sox, if he ever got called up, Scott would be the third Hairston generation to suit up for the Sox, and his grandfather Sam was the first black player the Sox ever signed.
3. August Fagerstrom of FanGraphs had a deep dive into the possibilities for the Sox trading Jose Quintana to fill their offensive needs in the offseason. It's a good primer on what they are likely to do if all the limitations prescribed to them hold up: which is to say I have a litany of objections that I don't want to be seen as a wholesale rejection of piece.
Specifically here, FanGraphs is using a projection based on the Sox previous payrolls to estimate they only have $20 million of spending room, and cites the disastrous results of last year's offseasons as holding them out of free agency. The latter I assume is Fagerstrom trying to project how ownership might react, but it'd be an indefensible reasoning for Reinsdorf to take, just as the Sox ownership justifying thriftiness bases on previous lean years and failing to recognize the opportunity they have with this core--which is a central element of Fagerstrom's premise!--is indefensible, but the assumption here is that the Sox are not spending, and how they might work around it.
The shiny, fun, central element of this piece is a comparison between Quintana and Cole Hamels, who are nearly identical statistically, but with Quintana being younger and signed to a very cheap contract. On the strength of this, Fagerstrom argues that a package similar to the huge haul the Phillies got is the best way for the Sox to meaningfully transform their offense. That's fun to hear, and Quintana's contract certainly could push his value up in that territory, but Hamels' stuff grades out significantly superior to Quintana's, he has a longer track record and has proven his abilities at the highest level of MLB competition. If you don't think that matters for his trade value, and that it's all about their last three years of FIP, you're willfully deluding yourself. And it's worth mentioning especially for the alleged purpose of this trade, that the Phillies got a lot of MLB or near-MLB-ready bats, but they didn't get guys who will dominate in 2016.
Willful delusion is a similar description that could be offered to the plan of tossing up two spots of the rotation to Erik Johnson, Frankie Montas and Chris Beck to sort out, but if the Sox really aren't going to find another way to help their offense, it's less hopeless than their hitting situation. As Dan Hayes mentioned, the Sox are holding out for "a small army of bats," so if they get what really pries Quintana from their fingers, it could at least achieve the feat of curing their offense fast than it would ever improve on its own.
4. Chris Sale's wacky and historic and still kinda disappointing season earned him a fourth-place finish in AL Cy Young voting. Between his W-L record and his ERA, we probably cannot be too worried about the inclusion of advanced statistics in award races if Sale is finishing fourth.
Dallas Keuchel had a great and deserving season and dragged his team to its first playoff berth in a decade, but is also not the cluster of future Hall-of-Famers having great seasons that Jake Arrieta had to beat out to win the NL crown. To feel like this year was one of Sale's best opportunities to win and that it was scuttled by weird injuries, bad defense and inconsistency would not be wrong.
5. And finally, an electrifying moment of White Sox blog synergy in regard to hitting coach fan-fiction.
Fortunately, @JRFegan and I figured out how to make Steverson and Sparks work. pic.twitter.com/uNCNGaSWVa
— South Side Sox (@SouthSideSox) November 18, 2015
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