Spare Parts: Continuity everywhere, most recently the scouting department

Mike Shirley announcement. (@whitesox on Twitter)

Catching up on a few things, the White Sox tied up a loose end in their front office on Friday by naming Mike Shirley the team’s new director of amateur scouting. He replaces Nick Hostetler, who will still be around as an assistant to the general manager on the pro-scouting side.

As you can see from the tweeted press release above, Shirley indeed rose through the ranks of the White Sox. As you can see below via James Fegan, he has no outward intention of pushing the department in a bold new direction.

“I don’t think it’s my philosophy,” Shirley said of the team’s drafting philosophy. “It’s the White Sox philosophy that comes from Kenny Williams and Rick Hahn, down to (manager of baseball operations) Jeff Lachman, who works in scouting, (assistant general manager) Jeremy Haber. It’s a team of people who have put this philosophy together. It’s not just Mike Shirley, nor will it ever be Mike Shirley. This is about the team, the White Sox. Not an individual man.”

Based on quotes from both Shirley and Hostetler that Fegan relayed, the White Sox are trying to come off as a duck — placid up top, working like hell underneath the surface to meet the challenges of tomorrow, today. How you feel about the move likely comes down to “How did you feel about it before?” That’s generally how the White Sox do things, and the most generous interpretation of Hostetler’s body of work from the players it produced is that he left unfinished business for Shirley.

While I’m getting to things I meant to get to, time for some…

Spare Parts

Fegan answers the question, “What does Don Cooper do these days?” They’re letting the analytics inform their bullpen sessions, which is genuinely what you want to hear:

“A lot of credit to Coop and Has (bullpen coach Curt Hasler) with having the old-school background, old-school pitching mentality and learning all this stuff from our analytics department,” [Lucas] Giolito said. “Really, really educating themselves so they can in turn help all the pitchers. We look at that stuff on an almost daily basis in our bullpens and stuff like that and that’s been super beneficial to me this year. When I can look at an outing and see I climbed up a little higher (in release point) and my ride wasn’t as good. OK, let me go into my next bullpen and focus on getting back into my good (arm) slot and then we have the Rapsodo on it and it’s like oh, there it is, there’s the carry and the way the ball should be coming out. A lot of credit to them for learning all that stuff, taking it all on.”

Giolito’s season will put a positive framing on any story, but Reynaldo López is also there, trying to cement how he gets the good kind of movement on his fastball.

Rob Arthur tests the hypothesis that all the tanking teams are responsible for baseball’s attendance drop over the last several years, and he comes away confident that it’s a driving factor. The number of noncompetitive teams has risen by more than 10 percent over the last five years. Before it was fewer than one out three, and now it’s two out of five.

When Arthur applied the attendance dip experienced by tanking teams in 2018 to the environment in 2015, he saw a similar drop:

Knowing that 2018 had distorted (less competitive) contests than 2015, we expect there to be a hit if we drop those playoff odds into 2015, when four million more fans showed up to MLB ballparks. The model estimates that an impressive 1.4 million fewer fans would have shown up in 2015 had it featured playoff odds like 2018. To put this in less technical language: about 35 percent of the attendance decline from 2015 to 2018 is attributable to less competitive baseball games.

As long as the league’s teams continue to turn a profit without attendance, it’ll probably take a few tanking tank jobs to reverse the league’s mindset. Hopefully the White Sox aren’t one of them.

The Twins rotation suffered a massive blow when the league announced that it suspended Michael Pineda for 60 games due to a positive test for hydrochlorothiazide, a drug masking agent. He was able to reduce the penalty from 80 games to 60 because he made a compelling appeal that he didn’t use the diuretic as a masking agent, but the Twins will still lose him for the remainder of the season, including postseason.

Pineda is a further test to a Minnesota rotation that had been blessed with good health. His 146 innings is good for the fewest of the five starters, so it might not be that big a deal in isolation, but Kyle Gibson also just hit the injured list with ulcerative colitis.

The good news for the Twins? The Twins lead the Indians by 6½ games with 20 to play.

The good news for the White Sox? Pineda was 4-0 with a 2.88 ERA in four starts against the Sox, and they won’t face him a fifth time next week.

Now enjoy this breakdown of Rick Renteria’s last ejection.

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roke1960

The White Sox way of doing things is an absolutely failure. And it all lies on the shoulders of 1 man- Jerry Reinsdorf. He is the one who bought into Kenny Williams’ way of doing things and giving him almost absolute power. Then Kenny put Rick Hahn into the GM spot to continue that White Sox way of thinking. Now they are just shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic by reassigning the same old people into different spots who will not challenge that White Sox way of thinking. At least the Titanic sunk in a short time. The White Sox ship continues to sink, year after losing year.

Joliet Orange Sox

I don’t disagree with you but I’m starting to wonder if roke1960 is Bob Waller.

roke1960

Who’s Bob Waller?

Joliet Orange Sox

Bob Waller was a Sox tv guy in the early 70’s who really went off on the team at the end of the year. He really didn’t like Bill Melton if I remember correctly.

I was just making a little joke for the 55 and older fans about how this team drives one to be negative.

roke1960

Wow, I remember Bob Waller!! He was sooo boring as an announcer. Didn’t they get rid of him after he went on his rant?
Thanks for jogging my memory. I remember the good old days of Jack Drees on Channel 44 and Bob Elson and Red Rush on WMAQ radio.

roke1960

Nope, I’m just a guy who’s been a White Sox fan for 50+ years, who is really tired of the way this organization is being run.

karkovice squad

One of the points made in The MVP Machine was how player development is where teams can create the biggest advantages over the rest of the league because there’s so much parity in amateur talent evaluation. That’s in part because the 3rd-party scouting services and plethora of amateur showcases have reduced the info gaps about amateurs’ tools & skills. There has also been significant publicly available research done about which players produce the most value which ought to close gaps in differences between organizational philosophies.

Which is why the biggest differences are now in teams’ ability to coach and evaluate players’ responsiveness to that coaching.

Then you look at the Sox investing in scouts while other teams are laying them off, making piecemeal investments in progressive coaching while other teams are making wholesale changes, hiring a former Sox out of Royals player development, all those college 1B-types they’ve used high draft picks on, and promoting 1 of their own evaluators to run the draft. And you think maybe they haven’t quite got the message yet.

WestEddy

You know that Nick Hostetler was from the Braves organization, right? And I suppose progress is only hiring guys from the Yankees or Cubs. 

Greg Nix

Hostetler is a scout. Kark is saying the Sox are behind in coaching. 

karkovice squad

Nah, they’re behind in both.

karkovice squad

Yeah, the Yankees and Cubs are both better at evaluation and development than the Sox. So are at least 20 other teams.

If you want to nitpick facts: sure Hostetler had a 3 year sabbatical as an area scout with the Braves in the mid-00s. He got his start in that role with the Sox. He returned to the Sox as a cross-checker for 4 more years before being promoted to scouting director.

To call his experience with the Braves stale is an understatement.

lil jimmy

“those college 1B-types they’ve used high draft picks on”
This drives me nuts.

GoGoSoxFan

Don’t blame your being nuts on the Sox.

WestEddy

Especially noted college first basemen Carlos Rodon and Carson Fulmer.

Right Size Wrong Shape

Vaughn, Sheets, Burger, Collins … Someone with more than 2 tools would be nice for a change.

WestEddy

Burger was drafted as a 3B, Collins as a C. Nick Madrigal exists. I understand some bloggers call them all first basemen. I’ll wait for that to happen. Since you’re talking 2nd rounders, they drafted this guy Steele Walker, too. CF. At least 4 tools. 

Right Size Wrong Shape

He didn’t say that every high pick they drafted was a college first baseman type, just that they’ve drafted a lot of them (which they have). None of the guys that I’ve mentioned have proven that they have a position other than 1B or DH. You’re right, Madrigal doesn’t have 2 tools, he has 3. 4 or 5 would be nice for a change. I actually like some of those guys, but with that many high picks it would be nice to swing for the fences with more guys who actually project to play a position other than 1st or 2nd base in the early rounds once in a while.

I mean, how much compared to other types of players? How far back are we going? Is round 3 a high draft pick?

A quick look at the draft picks from the past five years shows they favor pitching more than any other position. The only year I say they went heavily on college 1B types was taking Burger and Sheets back to back.

Compared to other types of position players, a lot. Other than Madrigal (a 2B only), and Walker (who has some average tools but nothing loud), every other position player in the first 2 rounds the last 3 or 4 years has projected to be a 1B/DH, unless you really believe that Jake Burger is going to stick at 3B.

lil jimmy

They definitely fall under the category of First Base Types.

burning-phoneix

I still think scouting is underrated, Mike Trout was left to go 26th because teams couldn’t be bothered to send scouts to New Jersey, one of the most populous and developed areas of America.

karkovice squad

The Angels weren’t the only team to scout Trout.

Know what NJ also has besides people and buildings? Rainouts during baseball season.