Podcast: Johnny Cueto continues to deliver for White Sox
Record Date: 8/21/2022
Rundown:
- Chicago White Sox split six games against Houston and Cleveland thanks to two outstanding starts from Johnny Cueto. How is he doing this?
- Lance Lynn regaining his form.
- Bad decisions from Tony La Russa and Joe McEwing
- AL Playoff Picture
- Series preview for Baltimore
Grandal injury is a net positive on DH and OF defense. Without trying to get him every day at-bats, Vaughn should mostly make appearances at 1B, DH, and occasional LF.
Over the 2020-2022 period, a fair bit of this team’s modest success can be attributed to 3 things that we can’t reasonably expect to experience again in 2023:
(1) 2020: a short schedule against only teams from the weak AL Central and the weak NL Central.
(2) 2021: Rodon’s great performance on a $3M contract…after the Sox didn’t think it was worth tendering a contract for roughly $4.4 M (IIRC)…
(3) 2022: Cueto’s amazing performance on a pro-rated $4.2 M pillow contract.
One Cueto makes up for a bin of bargain-shopping duds….
Not really, all those duds had loser playing time.
I thought Stone sounded like a delusional company man as he gushed about the front office signing Cueto during the Saturday telecast.
They essentially got Cueto because Lynn got hurt.
If the front office was smart wouldn’t they have signed Cueto initially instead of Velasquez and saved the money they spent on Vince.
Velasquez was signed as swingman, sixth starter. They could have signed Cueto with the idea of Kopech as sixth starter, figuring an injury or Keuchel not lasting would move him into the rotation anyway
Or they were just trying to save a million dollars
I don’t know why they make the decisions they do. I just don’t think the offseason rotation swap would have been Cueto for Velasquez (who wasn’t guaranteed a spot). It would have been more like Cueto for Kopech.
but as you mentioned there was Keuchel so a need for another starter should have been assumed/considered. I give the FO almost no credit for Cueto, we were fricken lucky he was still available when we did get him.
Tough house!