Waiting for Austin Jackson to slide down to one-year, $5 million deal, while torturously late and removed from the major moves of this offseason, fits in line with the larger theme of seek small financial commitments that do not go beyond 2016. It doesn't look like Baseball Reference has added Jackson's $5 million to their Opening Day estimates for the Sox salary.
Read MoreThe White Sox played something resembling a baseball game against another professional team Thursday for the first time in 2016, and got righteously tuned up by the Dodgers 6-1, in a game that would have seemed especially lifeless if it wasn't, you know, the first Spring Training game of the year.
Read MoreA few days into March and a couple split squad games is as long as the White Sox could sustain the suspense of a position battle at shortstop. Bruce Levine reported Wednesday that Robin Ventura admitted Jimmy Rollins is a near lock to make the White Sox roster, and gave this telling quote to Dan Hayes.
Read MoreThe White Sox have gone the entire offseason not taking on a single new financial commitment for the 2017 season, and to date their biggest investment of the winter is absorbing Todd Frazier's second-to-last arbitration year, for which they owe the still extremely bargain rate of $7.5 million. They return the worst right fielder/designated hitter combo of 2015 and let a nearly-unprecedented bevy of offensive upgrades go off the board for fair value or far less.
Read MoreWhen Rick Hahn came out and said that the White Sox seven-game win streak right before last year’s trade deadline didn’t impact the team’s decision to hold onto Jeff Samardzija, I believed him. Unfortunately, I think that leads to a much bigger issue: the White Sox seemingly lacked long-term planning with this decision and now the chickens have come home to roost, so to speak.
Read MoreJimmy Rollins is a minor league signing.
He gets $2 million if he makes the major league roster out of camp and we can discuss about how likely that is to happen, but he's a minor league signing at an extremely vulnerable position for the organization.
Read MoreThe last four guys probably are not particularly rosterable, but including Turner's guaranteed money, that's slightly more than $25 million for six guys likely to break camp with the big club. And since Frazier and Lawrie could just be non-tendered after 2016, that is total sum of the commitments they have made overall this offseason, relative to $13.3 million that cleared off the books.
Read MoreNick & James gathered together (all two of them!) to discuss the frustratingly slow offseason. Topics include:
--The merits of Dexter Fowler
--The downside of Andre Ethier
--The case for simply sticking with Tyler Saladino at this juncture
--Even if Rick Hahn is good, it doesn't make missing out on all the free agent outfielders not bad
--What the White Sox are great at, balanced by their struggles
--Looking forward to losing in the ALCS
Cat Garcia was reporting from SoxFest all weekend. Her first article for The Catbird Seat is a recap of Rick Hahn and Robin Ventura's comments on the state of the White Sox. Follow her on Twitter @TheBaseballGirl.
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Oftentimes the only useful and complete view of how a team approached a free agent pursuit is after the fact, possibly years later, in a book perhaps, written by Jonah Keri. Reacting to incomplete and often intentionally strategically released information and trying to paint a larger picture is a minefield.
Read MoreIt's not like the White Sox only have one hole left. It'll be a minor victory if Tyler Saladino stays over a .600 OPS in full-season play, Adam LaRoche is very likely toast, and needs a platoon partner even if he isn't. Erik Johnson doesn't seem very good, we know John Danks is not. Their bullpen is fine, but is not an imitation of the Royals super pen that is currently the vogue. There is plenty they could do to improve the team.
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 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 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 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
"You don't want to rob Peter to pay Paul," has become a recognizable Rick Hahn phrase during his three-year reign, and it's not my favorite one to hear, since it's deployed as an explanation on why he's hesitant to do something. GMs are always more fun when they're making moves, even if they're doomed to fail.
Read MoreSeeing as the Bruce Levine piece from Wednesday morning just flashed across my timeline like rage-inducing shooting star, I tried re-reading it to see if the view it provided of the White Sox became more coherent upon review.
Nah.
Read MoreThe Catbird Seat is a White Sox blog by White Sox fans that focuses on intelligent and humorous baseball commentary. Brought to you by ESPN's SweetSpot Network.
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