Aaron Judge has ascended to another plane of existence. On Wednesday, he hit his 300th career home run in his 955th career game, making him by far the fastest player to reach that milestone. He’s currently on pace for 57 homers and 11.3 WAR, and in the two weeks since I compared him to a seven-foot-tall god-child, he’s somehow gotten even better, raising his wRC+ from 212 to 219. All of this is to say that the occasion didn’t need any help in the drama department, but the White Sox couldn’t help themselves.

In the top of the eighth inning, down four runs with one out and Alex Verdugo on second, brand-new manager Grady Sizemore chose to intentionally walk Juan Soto in order to get to Judge. Let me say that again: The White Sox intentionally walked someone so that they could pitch to the guy with the best batting line since 2004 Barry Bonds – whom they were going to have to face anyway unless Verdugo somehow got doubled off second base – with two runners on base rather than one. And it worked, in the sense that Judge quickly freed the White Sox from having to play in a competitive baseball game. Read the rest of this entry »

Despite notching two wins over their last six games, the White Sox are flirting with history, and not the good kind. As of this morning, Chicago stands 63 games below .500, 42.5 games back in the AL Central, and on pace to finish 39-123. Out of compassion, I will refrain from reciting the record of the 1962 Mets, but the players from that team who are still with us are likely taking this time to get the champagne good and chilled. Hard as it may be to believe, the goal of this article is not to dunk on the White Sox. Instead, as we enter the home stretch of the season, I’d like to consider how they’ve affected the playoff picture.

The White Sox have played 25 of the other 29 teams in the league, and they have distributed to those fortunate franchises a net total of 63 victories in the same way that an elderly man on a park bench distributes bread to the legion of ravenous pigeons jockeying for position at his feet: indiscriminately. For a few weeks now, I’ve been wondering whether the landscape would look different if those 25 teams never had the good fortune of playing the White Sox. Whom have the White Sox helped or hurt the most? Read the rest of this entry »

On Thursday morning the White Sox sat at 28-89, recently having broken a 21-game losing streak. Which looks bad, but consider that Chicago is on pace to lose three more games than the 1962 Mets did. Or that over a comparable period — their last 117 games — the Vanderbilt Commodores football team is 40-77. (Vanderbilt’s past 117 games includes a winless season.) So the White Sox cashiered manager Pedro Grifol.

Yeah, that’ll fix the problem.

Immediately, thoughts turned to which unfortunate would be handed this hospital pass of a team. Especially because the traditional next man up for an in-season firing is the bench coach, and Charlie Montoyo (who has recent MLB managerial experience with the Blue Jays) was among the casualties.

As it turns out, the next skipper on this voyage of the damned, apparently, is Grady Sizemore. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Tuesday and Friday I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.

Last week, I explained how players can still change teams even as trades are no longer allowed. Now that we’re a week-plus into August, I’d like to run down the list of players who could be placed on irrevocable waivers before the month ends, which is the latest that a team can claim them and still have them be eligible for the playoffs. Players placed on waivers are first offered to the worst team in the league, then to the other clubs in ascending order all the way up to the one with the best record at the time of the waiver placement.

I’ll be focusing on teams with playoff odds below 5%, though contending teams teams could see if a rival wants to bite on an onerous contract. (Spoiler alert: they will not.) As a reminder, when a player is claimed off waivers, it’s a straight claim. The team that loses the player gets nothing more than salary relief, as the new team is responsible for the remainder of the contract. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2024 season started absolutely terribly for the White Sox. After 25 games, the team’s record stood at 3-22, thanks in large part to an anemic offense that barely scored two runs per game. At the time – the Sox were 3-21 when I wrote the piece – I posed the question of whether the White Sox had a real shot at losing 120 games. I concluded that it was possible, with ZiPS projecting an 8.1% chance that Chicago would lose 120 games, better odds than even the Oakland A’s during their brutal 2023 season. That appeared to be the end of the story, at least until July.

After the awful start, things got slightly sunnier for the Sox for awhile. They swept the Tampa Bay Rays, a team expected to be a contender, and over the next not-so-nice 69 games, they went 24-45. While a .348 winning percentage isn’t in the same zip code as competence, that’s a 56-win pace, a level of lousiness that is fairly commonplace for the worst teams in the league, not the stuff of legend. But as the trade deadline approached, things again turned grim.

The White Sox won the first game of a doubleheader against the Twins on July 10, improving their record to 27-67. That date, almost a month ago, was the last time the White Sox won a game. The team’s 21 straight losses ties them with the 1988 Orioles for the second-most consecutive losses in modern baseball history (since 1901), just two losses behind the biggest loser, the 1961 Philadelphia Phillies. In some sense, the current one might be the most impressive losing streak, simply because the differences between the best and worst teams in baseball has shrunk over the years, making streaks like this more challenging to achieve.

And no, the White Sox haven’t been unlucky. Using a modified Pythagorean winning percentage (I use 1.83 for the exponent rather than two, as it’s been slightly more accurate historically), the White Sox have been the fourth-worst team since 1901.

If the season ended today, the White Sox would have the worst modified Pythagorean win percentage in more than 80 years, since the Philadelphia Phils in 1942. No, that’s not a typo; the Phillies officially shortened their team name for a season in 1942, apparently because they decided they didn’t want to have the same name as the line of cigars.

Problem is, the season doesn’t end today, so the Sox haven’t closed the deal yet. Regression toward the mean is a real thing, and one of the primary reasons why people overrate teams when things are going very well, and vice-versa. At the end of the day, a .235 winning percentage or the .272 in modified Pythag are likely – though not guaranteed – to go up over the remaining games. Projections represent a more stable description of a team’s ability, as well as one that’s generally more predictive of the future, and even with the diminished post-deadline roster, ZiPS sees the White Sox as “only” a .355 team, a 58-104 pace that represents merely a ho-hum level of awfulness.

But it’s also likely that given more games, these other terrible teams likely would have played better ball as well, for similar reasons. (Remember, Major League Baseball didn’t implement the current 162-game schedule until 1961.) While ZiPS projections date back to 2005, I have a quick little estimator for a team’s underlying ability that correlates fairly well with projections; it’s a mix of actual record, a team’s “wRC Pythagorean” — which uses wRC rather than runs score and allowed — and a model of regression toward .500. So I calculated the worst teams by this method and compared them to Chicago’s .356 estimate.

Whew, the White Sox once again fall to satisfyingly hurlicious levels as the worst team since the 1952 Pirates. And the thing is that for the Sox, a .355 record is lousy enough that they stand an excellent chance at losing 120 games anyway with the number of losses they already have banked. With 47 games to play, a .355 record would net them only 16.7 wins, leaving them at just under a 44-118 record, tantalizingly close to the 1962 Mets standard. And since we know that projections aren’t perfect, or at least maybe reality isn’t, that gives the White Sox ample room to continue to underperform and take the grand prize. Luckily, ZiPS can take care of that estimate.

Even with things projected not to go quite as badly, ZiPS gives the White Sox a slightly better than one-in-three chance (34%) to lose 120 games. And it could get even worse, with a 1% projected shot of finishing with a 35-127 record (or worse). That is championship brutality right there. The amusing thing is that this probability could’ve been even higher, but the White Sox didn’t trade Garrett Crochet or Luis Robert Jr. at the deadline, leaving the team encumbered with an additional 2-3 wins. If I remove Crochet and Robert Jr. in favor of their likely sub-replacement replacements, ZiPS projects the Pale Hose to have a 66% chance of losing at least 120 games!

I’m not sure I’d go so far as to call it a silver lining, but hope remains even for the most woeful teams in baseball. The last team to make a serious late run at 120 losses, the 2003 Tigers, improved quickly in the following seasons and made it to the World Series just three years later. Those 1952 Pirates were in the middle of a full rebuild helmed by legendary general manager Branch Rickey, hired in ’51, and though health problems forced him to step down in ’55, the organization assembled many of the key players who were on the World Series-winning team in ’60. And let’s not forget that seven years after losing 120 games, the Mets won the 1969 World Series. White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf isn’t one to embrace change, but a disaster of epic proportions could, in theory, be the one thing that would prompt him to overhaul the organization. I wouldn’t say I’m terribly optimistic about this actually happening, but with an improved farm system – we now rank Chicago’s farm as the third best in baseball – and maybe a better front office assembled, the Sox could turn things around.

Whether the White Sox have a brighter future is something we’ll have to wait to find out. For now, enjoy these Sox as they reach new levels of ineptitude, because they may be the worst major league team you’ll ever see.

Another year, another frenetic trade deadline. This year’s bonanza was light on top talent relative to recent years, but it made up for that in volume. With tight races in both leagues and plenty of teams looking to shore up clear weaknesses, it was a seller’s market, particularly when it came to pitching. Now that the dust has settled, I’m here to hand out some judgment.

These are going to be inherently subjective, but that doesn’t mean I don’t put a little rigor into my system. I’m focusing on two things here when I look at individual teams. First, and more important: Did a team’s moves match up with its needs? This is easy to gauge, and since it’s the whole point of the deadline, it carries the most wait. Second: How’d teams do on the trades they made? I think this part is inherently more subjective – there’s no unified prospect ranking or database where we can see how traded players will do the rest of the season, and we’re working with less information than teams have. That doesn’t mean I’m not crediting teams for trades I like or docking them for moves I don’t, just that I’m weighting it slightly less than the first category. Let’s dive right in.
Read the rest of this entry »

The trade deadline isn’t a coda to this White Sox season — this debacle, this farce, this insult to tire fires — because the song isn’t over yet. There’s still another third of the way to go, another verse on the road to 120 losses. No, in songwriting terms this is a bridge, a shift to a minor key followed by a saxophone solo, meant to put you in the mood for a modulation and the big finish.

The White Sox aren’t trading Garrett Crochet. They are trading one of the two big outfielders who were supposed to turn into a legendary Chicago sports double act, alongside Jordan and Pippen, Toews and Kane, Perry and Singletary. But they’re not trading Luis Robert Jr.

Remember, all the way back in 2019, when Eloy Jiménez was one of the top five prospects in baseball? When securing his future commitment to the franchise was so important that the White Sox only allowed him to make his major league debut after he signed a six-year contract extension with two team options? Yeah, well after years of injuries and disappointment and recriminations, Jiménez is headed to Baltimore in exchange for minor league left-hander Trey McGough. Read the rest of this entry »

You didn’t really think teams were done swapping relievers after Friday and Saturday, did you? If you thought maybe they were tapped out for late relief help on Sunday and Monday, well, you thought wrong! If your bullpen doesn’t look like there are enough dudes to capture Helm’s Deep, you’re woefully short-armed.

The San Diego Padres acquired LHRP Tanner Scott and RHRP Bryan Hoeing from the Miami Marlins for LHSP Robby Snelling, RHSP Adam Mazur, 3B/2B Graham Pauley, and 3B/SS Jay Beshears

As one of baseball’s elite closers on an expiring contract, Tanner Scott was arguably the best short-term option available among relievers. His walk rate has peeked up a little to the numbers of the bad old days, but his first-strike percentage has stayed firmly in positive territory, which is an important indicator of where walk numbers will settle. Scott is likely to help the Padres in a very tight NL Wild Card race, but he’ll probably be even more important for them in the playoffs if they can get there. In San Diego, he teams up with Robert Suarez to asphyxiate opposing lineups late in the games. As far as elite closers who occasionally walk a few too many batters go, Scott is one of the less stressful of the genre, because he’s so hard to hit against with any authority, giving him a good shot at escaping jams following those free passes.

Bryan Hoeing is a sinker/slider reliever who has never quite clicked, as he’s never really been able to induce many swings-and-misses, nor has he mastered the art of inducing weak groundballs. He strikes me mostly as a depth guy who has plenty of years of club control left, and barring a breakout, he seems destined to be shuffled back and forth between San Diego and Triple-A El Paso a lot over the next few years. This trade is about Scott. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been awhile since we’ve seen the Royals act like contenders, but given that they entered the morning of the trade deadline with a one-game lead for the third AL Wild Card spot, the behavior is merited. On Monday they added righty starter Michael Lorenzen in a deal with the Rangers, and on Tuesday afternoon they swung deals for A’s reliever Lucas Erceg and White Sox infielder Paul DeJong. None of them are blockbusters, but they all fortify Kansas City’s roster, with the DeJong move a step to address a particularly weak bench.

The Royals acquired the 30-year-old DeJong, who’s making $1.75 million this year and has another $250,000 in bonuses within reach for attaining the 400- and 500-plate appearance thresholds, in exchange for 21-year-old righty Jarold Rosado, a reliever with the Royals’ A-level Columbia affiliate. The trade took place about four hours before the Royals were set to play the White Sox at Guaranteed Rate Field, so DeJong joined his new club — his fourth since the start of the 2023 season — by walking from one dugout to the other.

Paul DeJong has walked over to the other dugout pic.twitter.com/Olm4BoirNH

— James Fegan (@JRFegan) July 30, 2024

Drafted and developed by the Cardinals, DeJong was once considered a foundational player. Coming off a 25-homer 2017 season in which he was the runner-up in the NL Rookie of the Year voting, he signed a six-year, $26 million extension, a record at the time for a player with less than one year of service time. He hit 30 home runs and made the NL All-Star team in 2019, but by May ’22, in the midst of his second consecutive season with a sub-.200 batting average, the Cardinals optioned him to Triple-A Memphis to revamp his swing. His performance rebounded, though not to his 2017–19 level, and so on August 1, 2023, he was traded to the Blue Jays. He went an unfathomable 3-for-44 for the Jays before drawing his release three weeks later, and then just 9-for-49 after being picked up by the Giants. For the season, he hit .207/.258/.355 (66 wRC+). Read the rest of this entry »

Today the White Sox made a three-team trade with the Cardinals and Dodgers that sent Erick Fedde and Tommy Pham to St. Louis and Tommy Edman to Los Angeles. In exchange for Edman, the Dodgers picked up the prospect tab in the deal, sending Miguel Vargas and teenage Low-A infielders Jeral Perez and Alexander Albertus to the other side of the Camelback Ranch complex. You can read about the Cardinals and Dodgers parts of the trade here.

The White Sox had mostly gotten pitching back in their previous trades made under new GM Chris Getz, but in this one they turned to hitting, receiving three batters whom I have been a little lower on than the prospect-watching consensus. I like all three players but don’t love any of them, though I think Vargas has a feasible shot to be a decent everyday player, and soon.

The seeds of this deal were planted when Chicago signed Fedde during the offseason. After a lackluster tenure in Washington, Fedde remade himself in a Scottsdale pitching lab and had an incredible 2023 season for the KBO’s NC Dinos, posting a 2.00 ERA in 180.1 innings while striking out 209 and walking just 35. He was named the KBO’s MVP and won their equivalent of the Cy Young. Getz and the White Sox bet a very modest amount ($15 million over two years) that Fedde’s improvements would translate to the big leagues, and they were right. Fedde has pitched well and turned into a prospect piñata. Pham’s salary was a little over $2 million. Essentially paying to acquire prospects (especially hitters) is exactly what a team like the White Sox should be doing, and over the course of about eight months they’ve executed that with Fedde and Pham.

A big part of the reason I was lower on prospect-era Miguel Vargas than my sources and peers was because I didn’t think he could play the infield well, if at all. That has turned out to be true and, after trying a few infield positions besides his native third base, Vargas moved to left field this season. This occurred even as the Dodgers had big league injuries on the dirt, which I think is telling. He isn’t great out in left either, but it’s conceivable he could improve as he continues to play there. I haven’t heard from anyone in the org as to whether the White Sox will revisit the infield with Vargas. If they do it would strike me as a 2025 spring training task rather than something they ask Vargas to do right away.

Vargas is lacking the raw power typical of a great left fielder. He’s not an especially explosive swinger and depends on his feel for sweet-spot contact to generate extra-base power. The combination of Vargas’ plate discipline and this slick barrel feel create enough offense for him to be a lower-impact everyday left fielder. Here’s how some of his performance and talent-indicating metrics compare to that of the average MLB left fielder:

These are solid numbers that back up the visual scouting report that this is a skills-over-tools type of hitter. I think he will have produced close to 20th at the position (give or take) when we look back at all the left fielders across the league five years from now. The outfielders in front of Vargas in Los Angeles blocked him from the big league playing time that his minor league performance merited for most of the last two seasons, and he should be given a big league opportunity immediately in Chicago. Andrew Benintendi is under contract until… (checking Roster Resource… holy shnikes) until 2027, and so the White Sox have to figure out what they’re going to do about that. Benintendi is not playing well enough to block Vargas.

The other two infielders in the trade, Alexander Albertus and Jeral Perez, were both playing at Low-A Rancho Cucamonga until Albertus was diagnosed with a lower leg fracture a little over a week ago and put on the IL. Albertus’ name has been bandied about each of the last couple trade deadlines because he does stuff that appeals to both scouts and analysts. The soon-to-be 20-year-old infielder is a career .303/.449/.415 hitter (mostly at the rookie level) who puts the bat on the ball and controls the strike zone. He takes a hellacious cut and has been athletic enough to do so while maintaining strikeout rates down in the 14-18% range the last two seasons (MLB average is 22%). As hard as he swings, Albertus doesn’t generate a ton of power and his swing path runs downhill. He’s a much cleaner defensive fit at third base than at shortstop, and he might end up being quite good there. (He’s played all three non-1B infield spots the last couple of seasons.) This is the Yandy Díaz branch of the infield prospect tree (OBP and contact skills, third base fit, less power than you want) where Díaz is what happens when the athlete becomes very, very strong deep into his twenties. Paths to an everyday role will probably require that of Albertus. He is more likely to be a utility guy.

If you want evidence of Albertus’ shot to get strong, look no further than Jeral Perez. Perez has already become much more physical than I would have guessed having watched him a ton in Arizona last year when he was a compact Others of Note-type player in the Dodgers system. He now has average big league raw power at age 19 and, physically, looks maxed out. Perez’s compact build and strong top hand through contact allow him to be on time with regularity, but his feel for moving the barrel around is not great. Though he’s posted above-average contact rates so far, I do worry that he is a candidate to be exposed by better fastballs in the upper minors, ones located on the upper-and-outer quadrant of the strike zone. Perez is a similarly a mixed bag on defense; he has acrobatic actions and can really turn it around once he’s secured the baseball, but he too often struggles to do that. He has flub-prone hands (which will probably get better) and mediocre range (which likely will not as he ages). This is the sort of second baseman who lacks range but who is great around the bag and basically average overall. I like his chances of getting to power enough that I have a priority grade on Perez (a 40+ FV is like a mid-to-late second round prospect in a typical draft), but I consider his profile to have a good amount of risk and variance. This is not the type of athlete who ends up with defensive versatility, so he’s going to have to keep hitting.

You can see how these guys stack in the White Sox system here.

In addition to Edman, the Dodgers also picked up 17-year-old DSL pitcher Oliver Gonzalez in this trade. He had worked 21.1 innings in a piggyback role before the deal. He’s a very projectable 6-foot-4 or so, and his fastball currently sits 89-93 mph with around 20 inches of induced vertical break and just over 7 feet of extension. His curveball has a nice foundation of depth and shape, but he doesn’t have feel for locating it. It’s a pretty good starting spot for any teenage pitching prospect. Again, the draft is a nice way to gauge the way we should think about Gonzalez, who would probably get about $750,000 to $1 million in bonus money. He has been added toward the bottom of the Dodgers list.