Spare Parts: The World Series is set
The Rangers put forth one argument for White Sox fans who want a front office to aggressively add to the 26-man roster without concern about payrolls six years from now.
The Diamondbacks offered a rebuttal for doing barely enough.
After sneaking into the final postseason seed at 84-78, the Diamondbacks are heading to Texas to face the Rangers in the World Series. They swept the Brewers in the Wild Card Series, swept the Dodgers in the NLDS, and they rallied from series deficits of 2-0 and 3-2 by winning the final two games of the NLCS at Citizens Bank Park, disappointing a lot of fans who found the Phillies the superior choice for entertainment.
When Chris Getz repeatedly references the division the White Sox play in, it’s with this kind of outcome in mind, where everybody can set aside things like weak competition and a negative run differential because October is essentially a randomizer. The White Sox are terrible at creating their own luck, because 2005 is the only time in the last century where the Sox won a postseason series, but until the Sox are thrown into a situation that incentivizes greatness, Arizona has provided a more recent example they can recently site for blind luck. Hopefully Josh Barfield knows a little bit how that can be done.
Spare Parts
Karan Patel, the first player of Indian descent taken in the MLB draft by the White Sox back in 2017, was the first player selected in a four-team Dubai-based draft on Monday. He’s part of the Mumbai Cobras, on a team managed by Chris Sabo of all people. I don’t think Mumbai is going to remind him of Cincinnati.
A survey of the other three rosters for ex-Sox (or former farmhands) turns up Bartolo Colon and Hector Sanchez on the Karachi Monarchs, Alex Katz, Courtney Hawkins and Dwight Smith Jr. on the Dubai Wolves, and Andre Rienzo, Alejandro De Aza, and Sam Abbott* on the Abu Dhabi Falcons, a team whose honorary GM is Nick Swisher.
(*Abbott’s water polo background made it easy to overlook that he was born in Kuwait.)
- Giants hire away Padres manager Bob Melvin; San Diego plans ‘thorough’ search to replace him — San Diego Union-Tribune
- Why allowing Bob Melvin to interview with Giants makes sense for Padres — The Athletic
AJ Preller will get a chance to hire his third manager in four seasons after letting Bob Melvin interview and accept a job with the San Francisco Giants. This tweet made me laugh, because Preller still has two more years before he reaches White Sox level of absurd security:
On the other hand, Preller gets points over Rick Hahn for having his relationships with his managers immediately deteriorate.
Craig Breslow, the lefty reliever who rose to assistant GM for the Cubs, will get to lead the team he used to pitch for. The Red Sox are following the Rangers/Chris Young route by tapping a former player who attended an Ivy League school. Young was drafted out of Princeton, while Breslow graduated from Yale with a degree in molecular biophysics and biochemistry.
Jon Heyman says Eduardo Rodriguez is going to opt out of the three years and $49 million remaining on his contract with the Tigers to become a free agent. Rodriguez got five years and $77 million from the Tigers after going 13-8 with a 4.74 ERA over 157⅔ innings for the Red Sox in 2021, so he probably figures he might get the same after going 13-9 with a 3.30 ERA over 152⅔ innings for the Tigers in 2023. But he’s had a couple of injuries and absences, and he rejected a trade to the Dodgers at the deadline, so his market isn’t the easiest to gauge. Still, anybody who helps fatten up the starting pitching market benefits a team like the White Sox, who will likely need to sign multiple starting options over the winter.
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The Padres and White Sox are like these bizzarro reflections of each other. That story about Preller hiring some rando from New Zealand to run the analytics and biomechanics department only to find out he was lying about his credentials is absolutely wild. Only made wilder by the fact that Preller made him his clubhouse spy instead of just firing him.
Catching lightning in a bottle is mostly about luck. I doubt that Josh Barfield, no matter how involved he was in AZ, has any special insights into how to propel a young athletic team that by most measures is a middle-of-the-road team past teams like Milwaukee, Los Angeles, and Philly. He might be great, or merely good, but he’s mostly just lucky.
Yeah, without checking I’d guess this is the first time in history we’ve had a pennant winner with a sub-.500 regular season Pythagorean record?
1987 Twins were 79-83.
I used to catch fireflies in a jar. Does that help?
Oh Tony…Tony….Tony…tsk…tsk…tsk
Kuwait is known for its access to water.
This league is fascinating. I hope we get telecasts somehow in the US.
I hope we get telecasts somehow in the US.
He says as he negotiates the exclusive Icy Hot and elastic ace bandage franchises in Kuwait.
The most unsurprising news of the day is that I’ll be rooting very hard for the Abu Dhabi Falcons to lose every game they play.
At least the Padres try to do things, so Preller has that over Hahn, who at this point in time I still don’t know what he really did outside of speaking to reporters about the team while GM. On a happier note, the offseason plan should be entertaining since my guess is there will be three different types of entries: 1) get em all and pay up! which is unlikely 2) the obvious: Sal Perez trade and Merrifield pick up with some minor pitching additions 3) absolutely nothing since Getz has no track record and paired with Jerry logic, might result in: Bounce Back 2.0, tune in…again. But I’m looking forward to hearing about submissions and how those look compared to reality, always the cognitive dissonance as White Sox fans.
As much as I disliked Hahn, we could ultimately pass the blame upward, and that’s not something I would do for Peter Seidler.
The Padres kinda do things the way a guy on cocaine does things, including bringing in weird people who are suddenly extremely important, like Ben mentioned above.
Um, how do….nevermind
Will be interesting to see what the market is for Eduardo Rodriguez. Seems like a headcase who is sometimes good and sometimes mediocre.
Well, he thinks he is worth more than 16 million (and might be right). Decent LHP do not grow on trees.
Bryce Harper made this statement last night: “We’ll be back. We’ve got a great owner and a president and GM that are going to give us the best opportunity to win and be here every single year. … We’ll be back.” Having read that I no longer wonder why he would not sign with the Sox
Can’t sign with people who don’t offer you a contract.
Maybe he went to the Jose Abreu school of contracts?
Breslow graduated from Yale with a degree in molecular biophysics and biochemistry.
If I was half as smart as him, I’d know how to attach the ‘Homer Simpson yells at Nerd’ gif. But, alas, I am not.
this explains why they recruited Barfield. “Get someone who knows how to put together a second place team”
Edit: that’s not a slight against Barfield, but a slight against Jerry, in case it wasn’t obvious.