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The White Sox have reached out to other organizations for their manager (Grifol) and player performance staff (Mondry-Cohen, Head) this winter. How confident are you that these moves will result in meaningful performance and health improvements from the catastrophe that was 2022?
-- Asinwreck
I’m not confident, but “not confident” doesn’t feel like an accurate way to describe my feelings, either. Let’s do away from confidence being the unit of measurement and instead say I’m very curious to see how this works out – and not just because it’s my job to be curious about it.
If we limit it to confidence, I'd say it's restrained in 2023 because we haven't seen the White Sox try to implement these changes at this scale, and it could be a multi-year process in getting it right. Then we're looking at Luis Robert, Eloy Jiménez and Tim Anderson after multiple years of significant injuries, and wondering whether that lowers the ceiling on their physical tools, or their expected playing time. It doesn't seem like the White Sox can say "Now ... data!" and instantly things take turns for the better.
But I also don't want to dwell too much on being not confident, because these are the changes we've been wanting them to make, they do reflect a real soul-searching, and it should help them identify how much of their problems are talent-centric, rather than being absurdly overmatched in preparation and management. I don't see them going backwards from this, because they just went backward, and look what happened.
Speaking of which...
I’m still struggling to generate any enthusiasm for next season. I’m having trouble moving past the entire LaRussa incident and everything that surrounded it. I feel like the Sox owe the fans an apology, and while I certainly don’t expect one, I’m stunned at how little they seem to care about us. It feels like they aren’t even making the effort to continue the charade of the “always try to finish 2nd” team they’ve been for the last 40 years. I guess my question is “why keep doing this?” I also have to admit, the Cubs Convention weekend hit me harder than I expected. I’m REALLY jaded about Sox Fest
-- Jason H.
We shouldn't expect the Sox to apologize for Tony La Russa because fans also deserved apologies for 2016 and 2011, during which the White Sox's uniquely entrenched and convoluted chain of command transformed ordinary difficulties into profound failures.
And they can't really apologize in their current arrangement. The first priority is insulating and protecting Jerry Reinsdorf, and any truly open acknowledgment of what transpired in each episode would reflect poorly on him and only him, because just about every other team would've overhauled their front office once or twice in the last 15 years.
The closest fans will get is Rick Hahn indirectly roasting Tony La Russa with his praise of Pedro Grifol, which is insufficient, especially when they further separate themselves from fans with the unnecessary and unexplained cancellation of SoxFest.
As for why anybody should keep subjecting themselves to such disappointment, I laid out a case here. It's obviously beneficial to me if you keep watching and following the White Sox, so maybe I'm the wrong guy to ask.
In your opinion, what would be a successful season for Norge Vera?
-- SoxOdyssey2031
I think a successful season would be 100 innings, because that would mean he’s healthy enough to pitch for five months, and he would have cut down on his walks to face 100 innings’ worth of batters. I kept typing and deleting more words in an effort to make this answer seem more substantial, but I feel comfortable with that sentence.
What is the likelihood that Abreu, Cueto and Pollock signed elsewhere this off season because of clubhouse issues? Are the beat writers going to wait 2 or 3 years again before telling us about clubhouse fights like they did with Eaton and Frazier? At any point have the Sox beat writers given their impressions of the Sox 2022 clubhouse?
-- Mark S.
Maybe I’m naïve, but I don’t feel like it’s especially likely. That’s less because the White Sox clubhouse was a healthy place to be, and more because it strikes me more like 2011, with the biggest problems being largely contained to the rift between the manager and the front office, leaving an established player hierarchy to run itself. I can buy the idea that there were cliques in the White Sox clubhouse that didn’t mesh, but with so many guys missing large chunks of time due to injury, that could mostly be because work wasn't there to bring them together.
I'm sure Cueto and Pollock weren't impressed by what they saw, but they also didn't choose the White Sox to begin with. Cueto had to settle for a deal, and Pollock had no say whatsoever. As for Abreu, the writing was on the wall for first base/DH before the season, and his tone had shifted well before he knew what 2022 had to offer, so he chose a deal that would've been hard for the White Sox to justify matching.
Correct me if i'm wrong but TA, Lynn, Robert, Moncada, and Eloy are all competing at the WBC. Why would the White Sox grant permission to 5 of the most critical players on the team, who are also massively injury prone and coming off down years? It seems like the season should be more important and getting across the new regime's philosophy.
-- Adam H.
From what I can find, the players are the ones who have the ability to determine whether they can be considered to play in the World Baseball Classic, and the team can only object to a player being rostered under certain medical provisions. Dylan Cease, for example, turned down the opportunity, and it sounded entirely his choice.
If Major League Baseball considers the WBC to be an important event -- and it's great for the event if players are buying into it, like Team USA seems to be -- it probably doesn't want its teams being able to withhold talent for general injury concern reasons.
The good news is that there doesn't seem to be much evidence of the WBC affecting a season one way or another, at least in a way that transcends correlation into causation. There are plenty of safeguards in place for player usage, and who knows, playing for one's country might demand a better form of readiness than what the White Sox have instilled over the years.
The 2nd base conversation has been beat to death this offseason by everyone except the front office, since they still have work to do with less than a month before pitchers and catchers report. What is the best case scenario at this point? I have a bad feeling we are going to miss Danny Mendick...
-- Tim B.
The best-case scenario would be Lenyn Sosa or Romy González being somebody you don’t mind seeing come to the plate. I'm far more bullish about the former, but I can't discount González being a victim of a unique combination of injured and ill, and a depth chart that demanded him nevertheless, that made any kind of positive showing impossible in 2022. Either could be a 3 WAR player over 550 plate appearances because they have some combination of power, defense and general athleticism, so it wouldn't be the biggest surprise in the world.
To me, the problem isn't so much that second base could be a disaster. It's more than second base, right field and catcher could all be disasters, and bolstering even one roster spot would help insulate the rest of the lineup from cascade effects.
Given the changes in the shift rules it seems that defensive range will be more important than in recent years. With Benintendi in left, Moncada at 3b and TA at ss, the left side seems solid. The right side is less certain however; do we have a reasonable idea what Andrew Vaughn offers defensively compared to Jose Abreu? Who is the best internal option defensively at 2b? By all accounts, Oscar Colas will be an upgrade over both Vaughn and Sheets in RF. Which Sox starting pitcher(s) are most likely to be disadvantaged under the new rules?
-- Greg S.
I don't see Vaughn being better than Abreu. I don't see him being meaningfully worse, but I wouldn't count on him being an asset, especially since he hasn't logged meaningful time at the position yet in the majors.
As for second base, I'd consider González and Sosa largely equal. González has more foot speed, but Sosa has played well there himself, and it's a matter of how they react to MLB game speed. Hanser Alberto might be the best bet of anybody, but he's not on the 40-man roster. Everybody else gets the expectation of "fine."
Colás should be an easy upgrade in right field, even adjusting for the occasional misplay as he gets used to MLB outfields and batted balls.
Just like the second base discussion above, the concern is less about the individual positions, and what happens if misfortune strikes. For instance, if Luis Robert again misses weeks in center and Anderson the same at shortstop, the Sox are stretching underqualified players even thinner. That's why I'm all for an Elvis Andrus reunion at this point in the offseason ... unless he's one of those guys Mark alluded to who have zero interest in coming back.
As for the pitchers, Cueto benefited the most of any White Sox pitcher from shifting, which prevented nine hits behind him. Lucas Giolito was second with six, but that's tied for 53rd in baseball, for context. I'm probably most interested to see how the lack of shifting affects Aaron Bummer, because it seems like the defense is seldom arranged properly for him no matter what, so maybe the lack of options simplifies matters.
