The centerpiece week of MLB's November calendar culminated on Thursday with the final day of the GM meetings and the announcing of the MVPs. Neither event contained shockers, and both contained only minor White Sox news.
On the MVP front, Miguel Vargas finished a respectable sixth place behind unanimous choice Yordan Alvarez and five others. He was named on 29 of 30 ballots, including four third-place finishes, which was the highest total behind actual third-place finisher Bobby Witt Jr. and the fourth-place Cam Schlittler, who was the unanimous choice for AL Cy Young.
Pete Alonso finished fifth, on the strength of his league-leading home run and RBI totals. Vargas beat him in WAR by the same exact margin by either system -- 5.3 to 5.0 -- but it's within a rounding error, and when you consider the position penalty, a 5 WAR season from a first baseman is a real damn good one.
Either way, it's easily the highest MVP finish by a White Sox player since José Abreu won it in 2020, halving Luis Robert Jr.'s 12th-place finish for a 2023 season he'll seemingly never replicate. He managed that finish without home cooking, as James Fegan and LaMond Pope both had him seventh. The third-place nods came from national writers and AL Central beat guys. One of them, Paul Hoynes of Cleveland's Plain Dealer, also threw a sixth-place vote to Munetaka Murakami.
White Sox rumor roundup: Pitching, pitching, pitching
On the White Sox rumor front, nothing is quite reaching even medium boil yet, but that can be said for most of the market. Evan Phillips is the first guy to agree to a multi-year deal, as he's joined the Atlanta Braves on a three-year, $35 million contract, but nothing else has risen to that level yet.
The White Sox are connected on arms, and Chris Getz continues to leave open the possibility of a sizable investment...
The White Sox intend to do their part in that regard with their starting pitching pursuit. The rotation is the roster’s weak point and the strongest area of the free-agent crop, and the most efficient way to use their available, but still-limited provided budget compared to other major-market teams.
“It’s the greatest need in our game, but there’s opportunities out there, there’s opportunities in this free agent class, there’s going to be opportunities in trades,” Getz said. “There definitely could be opportunities that we go for a lengthier contract for a pitcher. It hasn’t made sense for us to do that. Is now the time? Perhaps.”
Thus far, Bruce Levine has the White Sox in on Japanese pitcher Kaima Taira, who ranked 14th on FanGraphs' top 50 free agent list with a crowdsourced contract estimate of three years and $48 million. Given that Taira excelled both starting and relieving and is listed at 5'8" and 209 pounds, consensus value is hard to estimate from the outside.
He has to sign by Dec. 1, or else his posting window will have expired. He has to sign with the White Sox if only for footage of him and Noah Schultz warming in the same bullpen at the same time.
In less intriguing news, Jon Morosi has the White Sox among several teams inquiring about Dustin May, who wouldn't be a bad second free agent pitcher signing.
In more speculative, spit-balling type of discussion, Jesse Rogers told Chuck Garfien that the White Sox are talking to Nick Pivetta, but he sees Michael King as the best fit. There's the talent part, but Rogers also references the fact that King's agency represents so many White Sox players, including Murakami, Andrew Benintendi, Chase Meidroth, Kyle Teel, Mike Vasil, and Joey Bart, so he's likely to hear good things.
Rogers' colleague Jeff Passan pointed the White Sox in a different direction. Well, two different directions:
The perfect transaction: After trying to solve its starting pitching shortage at the deadline by adding Luis Castillo, Chicago is back for another go. And there is no shortage of available starting pitching. The White Sox won't be in on Skubal -- even though, with a payroll currently under $100 million, they absolutely should be -- but beyond him options abound. King, Gray, Martinez, Pivetta, Mahle -- not to mention Kaima Taira, Trevor Rogers, Clay Holmes, Kevin Gausman and Nick Pivetta. One pitcher in particular stands out, though, and he's among the hardest throwers in the class for a team that could use an infusion of fastball velocity. Sign right-handed starter Freddy Peralta.
Never forget your history
In the latest edition of his Pebble Hunting newsletter, Sam Miller took a long look at a play during this past regular season in which Henry Davis attempted to cut down a runner at second, but punched Cooper Pratt in the groin on his follow-through.
In my opinion, this actually could count as catcher’s interference, not on this pitch but on every subsequent pitch caught by Henry Davis for the rest of his career. How can any batter’s process not be affected by the knowledge that he might be about to be punched there? Contact isn’t required in the legal definition of “assault”; creating a reasonable fear of imminent contact is enough. Is the threat of more Henry Davis punches—potentially on any and every pitch—not a form of interference, enough to have a chilling effect on the batter?
Because I've been blogging about the White Sox for 20 years, I can tell you the answer to Miller's question is an easy "no," because I CTRL-F'd "Buck" immediately upon the reveal of the premise, and it turned up zero results over the remainder of the text.
It's understandable why Gordon Beckham getting wrecked by a John Buck follow-through wouldn't have resonated outside South Side spheres, because that happened in an otherwise meaningless September 2009 game between the White Sox and Royals, and the YouTube video was cryptically titled by a SSS mainstay in order to avoid copyright crackdowns before MLB eased its policy on social media sharing.
But it's a video whose title I manually enter into YouTube multiple times a year whenever a highlight of groin-related baseball trauma circulates, because the wheezes of an increasingly delirious Hawk Harrelson remain as hilarious today as they were 17 years ago.
