Spare Parts: Frankie Montas restarts the market
The biggest Scott Boras client hasn’t decided on a home yet, but his top pitchers continue flying off the free agent board well in advance of next week’s winter meetings.
Frankie Montas restarted the hot stove after a Thanksgiving weekend pause, reportedly signing with the Mets for two years and $34 million, pending a physical. He joins Blake Snell and Yusei Kikuchi in not only signing before the winter meetings, but beating the contract projections, as FanGraphs’ crowdsourced guess put Montas at two years and $26 million. This all seems to bode well for Garrett Crochet’s value, at least until the musical chairs start dwindling in supply.
Montas is coming off a 2024 season that was average at best on the whole, albeit with a big performance bump after being traded to the Brewers. The Mets had success with pitchers at a similar juncture in their careers with Luis Severino and Sean Manaea, so back to the well they go.
It’s worth noting that Montas’ strikeout rate jumped nearly 10 percent after being dealt from the Reds. Perhaps new White Sox bench coach Walker McKinven had something to do with that. Speaking of which …
Spare Parts
Daryl Van Schouwen has the jump on the White Sox’s coaching staff announcement, although he doesn’t quite have all the names. We’ve known about McKinven, Ethan Katz and Marcus Thames returning, but Van Schouwen has Grady Sizemore, Jason Bourgeois, Justin Jirschele, Jason Bourgeois, Matt Wise and Drew Butera all coming back as well. Setting aside the specific titles as a smaller matter, assistant hitting coach is the only real mystery here.
Aram Leighton reported another White Sox non-roster invitee in Cal Mitchell, a former second-round pick of the Pirates who hit .222/.285/.343 over 71 games with Pittsburgh in 2022 and 2023. He signed with the Padres after the season and hit .277/.359/.612 with 22 homers over 122 games at Triple-A El Paso in 2024.
After the Birmingham Barons won the Southern League title, I wondered what it might meant for the coaching prospects of Sergio Santos and John Ely. We know the answer to the latter from Scott Merkin, who says Ely is stepping away from the professional grind after his wife gave birth to their first child after the season.
Russell Carleton writes about the upcoming experimentation with automated ball-strike systems in spring training games, and what he writes reminds me of watching Colson Montgomery see multiple called balls overturned by challenges last year:
If you’re going to turn some pitches that were in a “60% of the time” strike zone into surefire strikes, that’s going to mess with the whole ecosystem. We saw above that batters respond to increasing probability of a strike by swinging more often, because their other option is accepting a higher likelihood of a strike. Would they be incentivized to chase worse pitches that the evidence shows that they have a harder time making contact on? The reality is that there’s the “definitely a strike” zone. There’s the “definitely not a strike” zone. And there’s the fuzzy zone. There are different rules in the fuzzy zone. Taking away the fuzzy zone and forcing it into the yes/no zone is going to have some very unpredictable consequences. Maybe they’d even be good consequences, but there would be consequences. […]
If MLB can figure out where the strike zone is, it would just be an engineering problem to program a robot to call that zone. They could get their wish: a strike zone with no ambiguity and no fuzzy edges. Maybe they need to stop and ask whether that’s a good idea. The human element isn’t just a semi-charming quirk of how the game is played. The fuzzy zone is a distinct and real strategic feature of the game. Forcing everything into a binary system isn’t “cleaning up a problem” like most fans seem to think. It’s fundamentally altering a piece of the game, and when you approach it from that perspective, it suddenly takes on a very different meaning.
Pedro Grifol can feel better, because Matt Eberflus was fired by a franchise that’s even more historically averse to dumping its leader in the middle of a season. I’d say that his tenure was reminiscent of Grifol’s, except Grifol’s White Sox were a combined 14-45 in his two Aprils, so he never got a chance to freeze up in an important games the way Eberflus did.
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Automatic strike zone – never thought about the strategy perspective. However if it’s well defined then hitters with good strike zone judgment will adjust and become more dangerous because it’s consistent (or should be). hmm. I’m on the fence on this one.
The game has always been a bit cyclical, right? If ABS get implemented, I could see a world in a few years where teams start to covet good control guys again and maybe ease up on the fireballers with little idea where the ball is going. If I know a hitters weakness is up and away, a guy who can throw consistent strikes up there and induce weak contact might be more valuable than a “chuck it and fuck it” guy if the strike zone is consistent everyday, every game, all game.
I will say the implementation has made me slightly less pessimistic about the whole project, but I’m against robo-ump for one simple reason: it would make the game less enjoyable to watch. Umpires are part of the viewing experience. I enjoy trying to figure out the bespoke strike zone each game holds, and I enjoy watching players do the same. I like watching players and coaches yap at the umpires or get in arguments. I like watching catchers frame pitches and try to work umpires. All those are elements of the game that, to my mind, make it a more enjoyable viewing experience.
I suppose I’m coming with an underlying presupposition that I would rather watch (as entertainment) humans do things instead of umpires.
While we’re on the replay subject, all sports should listen to Steve Stone and cap the time replays take. Look at the play for 15 seconds. If it’s not obvious a call was missed, call stands. If you want to make an exception for the 8th and 9th inning/playoffs, fine. But taking 3 minutes to pore over the details of whether a shirt slightly moved in the 4th inning of a may game is really ridiculous.
I think it’s a good thing. So it means both pitchers and hitters have to adjust, so what? It’s basically a rule that has been enforced inconsistently and now there’s a way to enforce it consistently. As for hitters being more likely to swing, I view it differently. If you have a good eye, there’s now a much smaller fuzzy zone. With the current system, if an ump has a wide strike zone, I think you’re more likely to expand because you know the ump will just call it a strike anyway. A robo-ump won’t have that problem. If you know a pitch is off the plate 3 inches, you can just let it go.
Montgomery has a good eye, and he’d get rung up on a pitch where a seam caught the edge after it was initially called a ball. That’s the example that came to mind when forcing more swings out of a hitter’s comfort zone, or how an adjustment period could be tougher to watch than expected.
The best way I can describe an ABS strike zone is “technically correct: the best kind of correct,” in that the inarguability of it can be seen as satisfying or unsatisfying depending on tolerances.
Sox continue pattern of hiring manager who has to work with the staff holdovers from the old, broken system.
Boyd, who’s averaged just over 50IP/year over the last 5, gets 2/$29mil. from the Cubs. Crochet had better bring back some legit talent.
I’m honestly starting to get a little concerned that, with the cost of pitching going up again, more teams will go get mid-range options, like Montas. Crochet will still be looked at as a premium, albeit risky, option, but if the only bidders at the end are the Red Sox and Phillies, I’m not sure Getz will get the bidding war for which he’s hoping.
This is why signing crochet to an extension is more important than trying to pry prospects from another team for him. Nobody is going to be scared off of trading for him if he’s signed to 6/165 or something like that. His value might even be higher since there will be more “known” cost years. Then any future trade is just a matter of throwing in cash to buy a better prospect. The more teams pay for 1 WAR pitchers the tighter they hold on to their better prospects.
Escalating free agent paydays may make it harder to sign Crochet (or any other pre-free agency player) to an extension. If you or I were in his situation, we might want the certain wealth of an extension today, but pro athletes are often risk takers who love to bet on themselves.
Sure some are, but some aren’t. You still should pursue it in earnest if it makes sense rather than hand waving it away as if you know the players mind.
Sure. But free agency probably looks more attractive today than it did two weeks ago.
So does guaranteed money in the bank.
I feel like Marcus Thames hasn’t gotten anywhere near the amount of scrutiny a hitting coach usually gets after a horrific offensive year… granted the Owner, GM, etc didnt give him much to work with.
Yeah he was one guy I thought for sure was gone. I really don’t understand why he was kept. If he was the only guy kept and the rest were fired, I’d actually be more okay with that, because then I’d assume Venable wanted him.
As it is, it seems like most of the staff, once again, was forced on a new manager. Ugh.
Unfortunately this is the White Sox way. This does not bode well for the start of the Venable era.
I got the impression from what I read is that the org thought they did him a little dirty by not really giving anything to work with from a talent and resource standpoint. It’s also been highlighted how often Thames and Fuller talk to each other regarding plans for players. If Fuller likes and respects him, I get not moving on from him yet.
Replacing Thames would also mean the White Sox would have four hitting coaches in four years. I can see there being a toll to the constant churn, especially if they think Thames can be a trusted conduit for new information. There’s also a little bit of scientific method at work, in that swapping out all the variables might make it harder to troubleshoot.
But that view requires faith that the Sox have thought these things through, rather than it being the product of inertia.
We’ve also had 4 RF in 4 years, do we bring back Sheets for RF to have consistency?
I’d agree that you can’t look at the overall results of 2024 to come to a conclusion on whether to retain Thames or not. You’d then need to look at individual results, and there he also fails as no one got better, everyone was looking at their worst.
The scientific method point has validity to it, but then we need to know what the metrics and data points are going in so that objective conclusions can be made.
That’s where we really are now, we had no metrics going in to last year to measure to determine if progress was made and where we need to improve.
It also allows us to judge whether they are seeing the same things we are seeing.
My impression (just an impression since I haven’t spent time on an MLB baseball team) is that hitting coaches are often scapegoats for poor offense, but aren’t really responsible for it. We’ve seen teams improve quickly after a manager change; can you remember a new hitting coach who had the same effect? And why assume that Venable would want him gone? Coming to a new team, he might appreciate a hitting coach who has worked with, and knows about, many of the players. In any event, the team has bigger problems than Marcus Thames.
The Bears are on their fourth offensive coordinator in 2024, and there are still 29 days left to go, and possibly a fifth shortly after the season.
Luke Getsy 1/30/22-1/10/24
Shane Waldron 1/23/24-11/12/24
Thomas Brown 11/12/24-11/28/24
Chris Beatty 11/29/24- Current.
2020 Rookies Garrett Crochet and Luis Robert Jr. are on their sixth White Sox manager.
Ricky Renteria 10/3/16-10/12/20 (2020 35-25 .583)
Tony La Russa 10/29/20-8/29/22 (156-134 .538)
Miguel Cairo 8/30/22-10/5/22 (18-16 .529)
Pedro Grifol 11/1/22-8/8/24 (89-190 .319)
Grady Sizemore 8/9/24-9/29/24 (13-32 .239)
Will Venable 10/31/24-Current (Undefeated)
I would be more sympathetic with this if they were swapping out more variables. But most of the coaching staff is back — back, that is, after the worst season in MLB history *and* hiring a new manager.
I can see cases for keeping Thames in isolation, but these more charitable interpretations require some assurance that they *would* cut ties if Venable wanted to.
I don’t get the romance with the ‘fuzzy zone’. A Joe Shlabotnik painting does not become superior to a Michelangelo because of better framing.
Fully agreed. If we can get it right, why not get it right? Players will adjust.
The fuzzy zone isn’t random. It errs on the side of the at-bat continuing and letting the players decide the outcome (or in the case of blowouts, getting the game over with). On a 3-0 count, the fuzzy zone is 100% in the strike zone. On 0-2, it is 100% out of the strike zone. In the 8th inning of a 10 run game, it is 100% strike zone.
If it was random, it is easy to say get rid of it. No one wants a random shitty call 40% of the time.
The question is, does the strategy of continuing the at-bat make the game more competitive and thus interesting? I don’t really know. For shits and giggles, I say give the AL robo-umps and the NL keeps it old school for 40 years to figure it out.
In my opinion, it changing based on the situation makes it worse. Consistency is almost as important as accuracy. You can’t adjust and play at an optimal level of you’re never sure if a close pitch is a strike or not.
The hitter knows the count too. He knows the strike zone is huge on 3-0 and tiny on 0-2.
Without getting too deep into the math and measurement theory, nothing can be measured accurately unless it is first measured reliably. If the strike zone varies from ump to ump, or from inning to inning, then to that extent balls and strikes are measuring not only pitch location, but also umpire characteristics and game situation.
The pre-2020 DH system came to mind when thinking of imperfect systems that I seemed to enjoy more than most people.
Automated Strike Zone will kill half my enjoyment of the game. Many catchers now don’t even call games themselves anymore and now we’re taking away framing too? The Catcher is now well and truly a “Backstop” whose only job is to catch the ball. We’re gonna have more DH types sit behind the hitter who would have no idea what the job used to entail.
Mark my words, if Robo Umps are introduced, 20 years later the Catcher position will be eliminated and a net will just be put behind the plate.
This is a tad bit exaggerated.
The net behind the plate may be a bit exaggerated, but I’ve had similar thoughts as phoneix, although it probably won’t kill half my enjoyment of the game.
If framing is no longer needed, and pitch calling is no longer a catcher’s responsibility, we may see catchers that are great at blocking pitches in the dirt with wicked arms for throwing out base stealers. That may be the only 2 skills that are necessary for the position in that future scenario. Whether that’s good, bad, or indifferent; that’s up to the fans to decide.
It’d probably mean more good hitting catchers
Absolutely. Catcher would more than likely become a premium offensive position.
I would expect some interesting mishaps with the implementation of this new umpiring system.
Matt Boyd just got $29 mil for two years guaranteed! What??
The biggest change ABS will bring is fewer undeserved K’s, which can only make the sport more entertaining. Human umpires are more likely to incorrectly call strike-3 than ball-4. Eliminating those errors would help reverse the growing dominance of strikeout pitchers, probably resulting in more baserunners and more overall scoring.
The changes will be felt more acutely on the individual level. Batters with good eyes will no longer be punished and batters without good eyes will be let off the hook less often. Same for pitchers with and without precise control. Certain pitches (and certain zones) were always tougher to call. This means, for example, that guys with big curveballs might be more effective because they finally get the strikes they deserve.
But the most important change ABS will bring is the most obvious and the one least talked about: there will be fewer instances where fans feel their team lost unfairly because they got hosed by the umpires. Those moments are a huge source of frustration for me and for that reason robot umps can’t get here soon enough.
This is only true if we assume these “good eyes” players will be able to hit. I mentioned this because Nick Madrigal is a player with good eyes. Robo-umps will increase the number of strikes good eye hitters will see which is fantastic news for Juan Soto or Jonathan India to name two players that take a walk a lot, but is this good news for Nick Madrigal? He will have more opportunities to hit strikes, will that improve his hitting prowess? I have doubts on that. Similar case can be made on India.
One immediate consequences Robo-Ump will bring is an increase of intentional walks, and pitchers with exceptional command might lose an edge because with umpires, they need to be near perfect to fool (the hitter and the umpire), but with Robo-Ump, they need to be perfect.
Madrigal has had above average chase rates (percentage of balls outside the zone swung at) in 4 out of 5 of his major league seasons according to Sports Info Solutions. His unique skill is making contact, not necessarily swing decisions.
Any hopes for Walker Buehler have been eradicated seeing the prices for Montas and Boyd.
Hopefully, these escalating price tags enrage Jerry into selling*.
*to not-Dave Stewart
This is one of the reasons I don’t see the White Sox becoming good again. Jim was mentioning this very same thing in a post he did during the weekend (although he has his own reasons which he hasn’t shared yet). It seems that the White Sox are operating with a contracts prices that are completely divorced from reality.
Somebody mentions “Juan Soto” and many fans say “not gonna happen”…sadly, it is true.
Somebody mentions “Anthony Santander” and many fans say “not gonna happen”…sadly, it is true.
Somebody mentions “Max Fired” and many fans say “not gonna happen”…sadly, it is true.
Jerry and Getz now operate in the Austin Slater and Chris Flexen realm. I don’t see Jerry giving a green light to a massive contract until the White Sox have a cheap core of players that ensures the team is a 80 wins. We don’t have that core, and I can’t see it coming from the minors. We have no bats. Maybe Wolkow will save this franchise.
If the Sox do move Robert and Benentendi and the A’s are serious about increasing payroll it’s possible the Sox will have the lowest payroll in the league. Which is atrocious for a major market team.
It will be interesting to see if the manage to make it happen but I would not bet against them
Good luck to the A’s increasing payroll. Never mind that they always operate on a nothing budget and are not in a position to be particularly competitive, but what free agent with any sort of offers on the table would choose to play half his games in a minor league park?
The article I read said the A’s were considering taking on bad contracts for prospects. Seems unlikely but weirder things have happened
That would be pretty weird. The A’s are unwilling to pay for free agents but they’re willing to pay for bad players to acquire fringe prospects or lottery tickets? Seems highly unlikely.
Kyle Higashioka signs a 2 yr deal with the Rangers. The C market is going to get thin really quick.
But Maldonado is looking to sign on somewhere.
He will be an improvement over Robinson.
The price tag on the backup catcher market is roughly what the sox will spend this whole off season, I fucking hate it here
…but Van Schouwen has Grady Sizemore, Jason Bourgeois, Justin Jirschele, Jason Bourgeois, Matt Wise and Drew Butera all coming back as well…
I like that Jason Bourgeois is listed twice. The first is in charge of going No. 1 and the second is in charge of going No. 2.
That way, there’s always one ready to coach first base.