2019 2nd Wild Card Team (Robby_WightSox)

PREAMBLE

I represent a demographic of White Sox fans who are young adults that have never seen their favorite team in the playoffs. I’m 22 and the last time people saw the Sox in October I was 12 and I did not care as much about baseball as I do now.  With this in mind the team I created will skip year two of the rebuild and go straight to competing for the 2nd Wild Card because 2018 was a disaster in terms of watchable baseball. 

ARBITRATION-ELIGIBLE PLAYERS

  • Jose Abreu, $16M TENDER
  • Avisail Garcia, $8M NON-TENDER
  • Yolmer Sanchez, $4.7M TENDER
  • Carlos Rodon, $3.7M TENDER
  • Matt Davidson, $2.4M TENDER
  • Leury Garcia, $1.9M NON-TENDER
  • Danny Farquhar, $1.4M NON-TENDER

I’m done watching Avisail Garcia.  Sure he hit 19 homeruns and was injured but with his size and strength he can’t even crack 20 bombs. It is time to realize that Dave Dombrowksi has screwed the White Sox with this trade and it is time Avi joins St. Louis or Tampa and hits .340 with 37 HRs because that is what will happen once he leaves us for good. With the other Garcia, he is always injured and I’m just calling the Alex Rios trade a bust also.  Besides Yolmer can take that spot as super utility.

CLUB OPTIONS

Write “pick up” or “decline” after the option.

  • Nate Jones, $4.65 million/$1.25M buyout  HE GONE
  • James Shields, $16 million/$2M buyout     HE GONE

Nate Jones is a good reliever. But he is always injured and we have a limited number of bullpen spots for this upcoming season.

As for James Shields here is this stat line 16-35 5.31 ERA yeah I don’t need to say more.  We get rid of John Danks and then this dude comes along. HE GONE.

OTHER IMPENDING FREE AGENTS

Try to retain, or let go?

  • Miguel Gonzalez (made $4.75 million in 2018) – HE GONE

FREE AGENTS

No. 1: Sign SS Manny Machado (8 years 325 Million) Machado is the perfect guy to target because he will be the star this upcoming year and he is an attention seeking guy like Adam Eaton was.  I don’t care if he is a “dirty player” he just wants to win. We need guys that other teams hate to play against and he is the one.

No. 2 Sign RF Andrew McCutchen (2 years 20 Million) This guy can serve mentor on my current CF for this team (unlike Jimmy Rollins) and he gets on base.  KenWo was right.  Screw the often injured Pollack and give me a guy who I can plug in the top of the lineup and hits for contact and doesn’t look awful running around the bases.

No. 3 Sign Super UTL Marwin Gonzalez (3YR 15 Million) This man replaces L. Garcia who is also a switch hitter and can platoon LF and save the seat warm enough until Eloy Jimenez comes up.

No. 4 Sign RHP Nathan Eovaldi (2YR 22 Million) His postseason stuff has made me like him and he should be on the white sox to serve the mentor veteran role with postseason experience left by James Shields

TRADES

No. 1: Trade RHP Alec Hansen, OF Micker Adolfo, 3B Jake Burger, 3B/SS Luis Carbelo for 3B Jake Lamb and Archie Bradley. Jim didn’t like this idea on the latest podcast but Arizona is going to breakdown their team and we could have a great 3B in need of a change of scenery who is a left handed power bat and we need one other than Palkamania. We also get a reliever with postseason experience who can groom either Zack Burdi or Ian Hamilton for the closer role. In terms of who we are giving up I don’t think any of these guys could be anything special so let Arizona deal with these new injury guys.

SUMMARY

Lineup:

RF Andrew McCutchen R

SS Manny Machado R

1B Jose Abreu R

3B Jake Lamb L

2B Yoan Moncada S

LF Eloy Jimenez R/Mawin Gonzalez S

C Omar Narvaez L

DH Daniel Palka L

CF Tim Anderson R

Bench: MattyD, Yolmer, Castillo, and Gonzalez

Rotation 

Nathan Eovaldi RHP

Carlos Rodon LHP

Reynaldo Lopez RHP

Lucas Giolito RHP

*Jordan Stephens/Spencer Adams RHP (let them fight it out in spring training and use Covey as the backup and **Dylan Cease as the backup’s backup)

Bullpen

Archie Bradley CL

Ian Hamilton RP

Jace Frye RP

Juan Minaya RP

Dylan Covey RP

*Caleb Frare RP

*Ryan Burr RP

*Aaron Bummer RP

*Carson Fulmer RP

**Zach Burdi RP

*Spring Training battle/ **Midseason call ups

This team has potential to be good and has guys who can get on base.  I decided to move Tim Anderson because he has a good arm and I’m maximizing his speed by having it used running around CF.  Anderson is versatile and can do the same as Dee Gordon did by switching from the infield to the outfield.  McCutchen will be his right hand man in learning the position but because his bat is weak he is batting 9th.  McCutchen and Abreu are between Machado and shows a lot more potential to score runs than Moncada at the top of the order.  If Moncada is going to be a 200 plus strikeout guy I want him in the middle of my lineup so he can read pitches early on in the game so when he comes up to bat he has a plan.  Moncada has power and speed and I believe year 2 of his development will be much better. Lamb continues the trend of lefty power bats brought in from the NL like Dunn/LaRoche but he NEVER played for the Nationals and is a 3B so hopefully he is our guy that will stick. Eloy is the goat so he will be fine and after him is our contact catcher Narvaez followed by our pinch hit late inning crusher guy Palka. Our bullpen is the weakest but its time to continue development of our bullpen arms and see who makes it and who doesn’t. Rotation can be good if Giolito remembers how to get out of the 1st inning and Reynaldo Lopez continues to improve on the mound.

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Neat_on_the_rocks

I like the idea of Going for Lamb but I dont know how I feel about Hanson/Burger/Adolfo package. Thats such a hugely high variance package.

Marwin Gonzalez will make more than 3/15. He should make twice that in my opinion.

KenWo4LiFe

I like this one! Good plan. But I think Marwin Gonzalez gets like 12 million a year.