Just about every other winter, Chicago has a late-season arctic blast that covers Guaranteed Rate Field in snow, and refreezes a field that might've been on the verge of thawing for good. This is when Roger Bossard surfaces as the season's second groundhog, saying that such a drastic turn in temperatures requires a lot of work to re-reverse in order to get it ready for Opening Day.
But reversing nature is kinda Chicago's thing and the Sox have groundskeeping royalty in charge, so while there's a little bit of drama and tension in the timeline, Bossard never actually ends up seeing his shadow.
It's hard to say with certainty that Major League Baseball and its Players Association will reach a deal that will preserve Opening Day as originally scheduled along with the 161 games that follow, but Monday's negotiations at Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter, Fla., are what actual progress looks like. A group of players met with a group of owners, proposals (or parts thereof) were batted around between the parties and among their own kind, and a little movement resulted from it.
Plenty of ground remains uncovered -- they didn't even discuss a raising of the competitive-balance tax threshold -- but they're meeting again today, so there's less pressure on each agenda being comprehensive. Should today's discussions result in more of the same, then I think we can say the last three months featured MLB playing four-corners offense, and now it finally decided to plug the shot clock back in.
If that's the case, then we probably don't need to figure out how the Charlotte Knights will go about fielding a roster when their season is scheduled to open in Norfolk on April 5. But let's say the discussions take a turn for the worse resulting in one or both sides taking their balls and going home for weeks. Then this question from Andrew from the last P.O. Sox mailbag comes into play.
If the lockout continues, what do you think the trickle down effect will be, starting in Charlotte, as players move into slots that MiL’ers on the 40 man roster occupy? Does anyone stand to gain (or lose)?
I'm doubtful we'll get to the point of having to consider this, if only because a slightly delayed spring training still leaves plenty of time for players destined for Triple-A to be cut from the big-league camps and still report to Charlotte in time for the former International League's Opening Day, but it's still kind of a fun puzzle to put together. You just have to like puzzles. Even puzzles from thrift stores, where all the pieces may not be included.
Speaking of "not included," players on the 40-man roster are included in the MLBPA's negotiations, so 12 to 14 guys likely to start the season in Charlotte are locked out of the equation. Those players are:
Starting pitchers: Jonathan Stiever, Jimmy Lambert, Jason Bilous
Relief pitchers: Matt Foster, Anderson Severino, Bennett Sousa
Catchers: Seby Zavala, Zack Collins, Yermín Mercedes
Infielders: Danny Mendick, Romy González, Jake Burger, Gavin Sheets
Outfield: Micker Adolfo, Blake Rutherford
You can quibble with some of the assignments. The Sox need a second catcher on the 26-man roster, somebody like Sheets has earned an Opening Day spot as long as he's not blocked, while Bilous probably returns to Birmingham, and Adolfo is out of options, so who knows if he'll last the spring in the system.
Still, the bulk of them would be ticketed for Charlotte without controversy, and they account for nearly half of Charlotte's 28-man roster. How would the Knights go about making up that gap?
Somewhat counterintuitively, the Knights probably wouldn't feel the shorthandedness on the pitching side, if only because the results were miserable in 2021 even with all hands on deck. It gets far dicier when trying to solve the other side of the ball.
(I'm not going to go into great detail on the White Sox's minor-league signings here. That's what the annual "Who's Who" non-roster invitee post is for, especially since a player's presence in big-league camp gives us some basis for expectations.)
Starting pitchers
To answer the question above, "Charlotte Knights pitchers" would likely benefit from the absence of 40-man players, because it might lower the degree of difficulty for pitching at Truist Field ever so slightly. McClure leads the way, going from a 3.82 ERA in Birmingham to 6.81 in Charlotte in 2021. Facing Double-A lineups might be a way for him and the rest of the gang to bridge the gap.
Parke actually posted a 3.62 ERA over 11 starts with the Knights last year despite striking out just 38 batters over 54⅔ innings, so a decrease in opponent quality might take the edge off any regression, or maybe he'd look like a world-beater. Banks has taken the ball for Charlotte in desperate times, and these would qualify.
Vargas hasn't pitched at Triple-A, but he has two decent performances at Double-A in his favor. As for the last spot, Battenfield survived in 23 games at Birmingham last year, and now he's 27, so if somebody has to be thrown in the deep end, he'd be the most likely to appreciate it. Johan Dominguez is another candidate.
Relief pitchers
The top five on this list are holdovers from last year, and Crick was good enough to be on your off-roster radar whenever spring training begins in earnest. Kubat is another guy who could take starts. Muckenhirn's pitched at Triple-A with Baltimore and had a nice year with Birmingham, and Perez's performance was just a little shy of Sousa's roster spot-winning work in Birmingham, so he could benefit from the extra reps. Rios is the most intriguing of the players new to the roster.
Catchers
With Collins, Zavala and Mercedes on the outside looking in, the Sox should be hurting here, but this is actually a pretty good tandem for the circumstances. Pérez doesn't strike out, and he blocks and throws well enough. His drawbacks are subpar receiving and a lack of power, but the automatic strike zone in Triple-A would take care of the former. Read's a lifetime .275/.313/.523 hitter over 117 games at Triple-A for the Nationals, which has earned him a couple cups of coffee.
Infielders
Here's the reckoning. Without Sheets, Burger and González in play, here's who's remaining. Sánchez could start at second base or shortstop for any version of a Charlotte Knights team after the way he finished his season, hitting .343 at Birmingham followed by a .533 OBP in the Arizona Fall League. Forbes, Rivera and Remillard are holdovers, with Remillard's ability to play six positions greatly appreciated. Burt would be new to the level, but at least he's coming off an intriguing partial season at Double-A Wichita.
Outfielders
And the shortage extends to the outfield, where Jones is the only one who is a natural to open a season at Triple-A. He's had two stints in the majors with the Giants, and while he's listed as a third baseman under Baseball America's transactions, he has experience in outfield corners. He'd probably rotate between one and first base along with Fisher and Remillard, because none of them has to hold down one spot.
Everybody else has been grinding it out -- and trying to avoid getting ground down -- in Double-A, with Céspedes the lone prospect. Barring a spring transformation, I don't think the Sox would want to start him in Triple-A, both because Double-A pitchers posed some challenges to him, and Truist Field's dimensions bail out bad approaches. That said, if we're looking at Neslony, Fisher and Dedelow behind him, then Céspedes may be the best of a bunch of iffy choices.
That only accounts for 27 players, so we may as well talk about Oscar Colás. I could see his starting assignment shifted upward by an absence of 40-man players, but I think that would have him going from Winston-Salem to Birmingham, not Birmingham to Charlotte, in order to keep expectations in check during a significant transition.
Given the low-level nature of most minor league contracts, it's probably worth leaving a spot or two open for a player whose presence might not yet be known. Hopefully MLB will end its lockout of the players and make this discussion mostly moot, with whatever's relevant transferring neatly over to our discussion of NRIs.
