Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley pass the halfway point of their 30-team season preview series by previewing the 2021 White Sox with James Fegan of The Athletic and the 2021 Diamondbacks (46:45) with Nick Piecoro of The Arizona Republic, plus a brief postscript on the career and retirement of Nick Markakis.

Audio intro: Parquet Courts, "Black and White"
Audio interstitial: The Hives, "Try it Again"
Audio outro: Nick Lowe, "Halfway to Paradise"

Link to Athletic article on teams developing velocity
Link to James on Kopech
Link to James on Crochet
Link to James on La Russa and team unity
Link to report about Reinsdorf and La Russa
Link to James on Vaughn
Link to James on Giolito
Link to James on Lucroy
Link to James on Cease
Link to Dan Szymborski’s bust candidates
Link to Szymborski’s breakout candidates
Link to Nick on Lovullo’s contract
Link to Jake Mailhot on Ketel Marte’s power
Link to highest-WAR seasons without an MVP vote
Link to highest-WAR careers without an MVP vote

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This week may be Prospects Week here at FanGraphs, but for MLB, this has been Minor Signings Week. The long offseason dance is just about over, and everyone’s now at risk of going to homecoming alone. So rather than a long spiel that sees me reference a historical battle or obscure 18th-century literature, let’s get straight to the moves.

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The White Sox were one of the most exciting teams in baseball last year; a youthful, exuberant squad that broke up the Minnesota/Cleveland hegemony in the AL Central with a solid pitching staff and an unending barrage of crushed, smoked, and blistered baseballs. They led the league in position player WAR, and it was a team effort — seven different Chicago players had more than 100 plate appearances and an above-average batting line.

Notably absent from that group: Yoán Moncada, the one-time top prospect in baseball. He still put together a solid season — he hit .225/.320/.385, good for a 96 wRC+, and played stellar defense at third base — but after his breakout in 2019, 2020 can only be viewed as a disappointment.

I’ve got good news for people who are hoping Moncada turns things around: I know one of the main contributors to the problem (well, two, actually, but we’ll cover the second at the end of the article). I also have bad news for people who are hoping Moncada turns things around: it’s the same problem as always, and one that I hoped he had put in the past. Moncada simply doesn’t swing enough.

If this doesn’t sound like a common problem to you, well, yeah, it’s not. We as fans (and analysts) want batters to have a “good eye,” to avoid swings at devastating secondary pitches that they can’t do anything with. That’s the downfall of many a prospect, but Moncada has never had that problem.

Every year of his big league career, Moncada has chased fewer pitches than league average. This isn’t some trick of the count, either. Most batters chase more frequently when they’re behind in the count. Moncada chases less:

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In the 2021 ZiPS projections that are live on this very website, Lucas Giolito is projected with the most WAR of any pitcher in baseball. If my social media is any indication, this projection is, so far at least, the source for the most joy and the most consternation. What is it about Chicago’s young ace that gives him such an aggressively optimistic projection?

One of the common complaints you see from readers about projections is that they don’t go out on a limb very often. To me, this makes perfect sense: when talking about the mean projections, massive performance changes should rarely be the player’s typical expectation. Think back on José Bautista back in 2010. At the time, Joey Bats was a player pushing 30 who had hit .238/.329/.400 in the majors in more than 2,000 plate appearances for five major league teams. As we now know, his destiny was to explode on the scene, slugging .617 for the Blue Jays, resulting in the first of his eventual six All-Star appearances. But that doesn’t mean that his baseline projection going into 2010 should have reflected that result; that unlikely things happen doesn’t mean that they weren’t unlikely.

Projections do go out on a limb, but in a conservative sort of way. One of the more notable examples in recent years is the 2019 ZiPS projection for Shane Bieber. With a 4.55 career ERA (but a 3.23 FIP!) in just 114 2/3 major league innings entering the season, ZiPS gave Bieber an optimistic projection as the 14th most valuable pitcher in baseball with a 3.71 ERA over 187 innings for 3.8 WAR. That was enough to put him just behind Clayton Kershaw and ahead of notables such as Zack Greinke, Noah Syndergaard, Stephen Strasburg, and Patrick Corbin. Not only did Bieber meet this projection, but he also exceeded it, finishing eighth in WAR among pitchers at 5.6.

But why did ZiPS love the Beebs so much? It wasn’t one factor. Instead, it was an accumulation of smaller positive factors that significantly outnumbered the negative ones. Bieber was only 24. He had a record in the minors and majors that suggested he could avoid lofty gopher ball totals. His BABIP in his rookie year was extremely high. From his quality-of-contact data, ZiPS thought that batters “should have” hit .252 and slugged .415 against him in 2018 when the actual numbers were .285 and .467. And so on.

It’s the same thing for Giolito entering the 2021 season. No, he isn’t in the same position as Bieber was entering 2019, given that he’s already received Cy Young votes in two seasons. But it does take something special to get ranked No. 1 with a bullet. His top-notch projection doesn’t mean that it’s going to happen, only that it’s more likely to occur than the downside scenarios. And the latter do exist: ZiPS projects a 15% chance that Giolito will be worse than a league-average starter and about a 7% chance he’ll have an ERA on the wrong side of five, both things that would have a very negative effect on Chicago’s 2021 fate.

So what are some of the reasons for this digital love?

Lucas Giolito is Still Relatively Young

Pitchers don’t have a typical age curve, but it’s still preferable to be in your twenties than in your thirties. Like Bieber, the height of Giolito’s ceiling remains an unknown. Both Gerrit Cole and Jacob deGrom are amazing pitchers, but after a few more years in the majors, there’s less uncertainty about their remaining upside. Superstars in their mid-20s, on the other hand, frequently have another gear or two remaining. Among Giolito’s top comparables were a multitude of youngish pitchers who were already stars and did have such performance bumps remaining: Greg Maddux, Jose Rijo, Dave Stieb, Brandon Webb, and so on.

Of the top 50 most comparable pitchers in Giolito’s cohort, 32 of them beat their baseline performance estimates over the following three seasons — an astounding rate of success given how attrition claims pitchers. For Cole, that number is only 23; for deGrom, 26; and for Max Scherzer, 19.

Lucas Giolito is Well-Suited for his Home Park

Home run rates for pitchers are volatile, but they’re not random. Giolito fares well in velocity and barrel-based numbers and was in the top-tier in most of these measures in 2020. Among the pitchers projected in the top 10 overall in ZiPS, only Luis Castillo consistently beat him. And this is especially important because of the characteristics of the park. Guaranteed Rate Field (that name still makes me cringe) is a bit of an unusual bird, a homer-friendly park that tends to be neutral overall. For a pitcher with an elite ability to avoid batters crushing his pitches, this provides an opportunity to squeeze out a little more value. In other words, while Guaranteed Rate is a neutral park for everyone, Giolito’s homer-avoiding tendency makes it a de facto pitchers’ park for him. This one of the reasons ZiPS liked Dallas Keuchel’s chances at a bounceback season in 2020 and continues to think he’ll be very productive for the Sox. Were this a neutral park, Giolito would lose just enough in his projection to drop him to third in the league in WAR.

Lucas Giolito Left Some Strikeouts on the Table

At a 33.7% strikeout rate, Giolito certainly wasn’t struggling to punch out batters. But from the across-the-board improvement in his contact numbers in 2020, ZiPS thinks that he should have seen a larger bump in his strikeout rate from 2019’s 32.3% rate.

As part of its model for calculating baseline expectations, ZiPS has a measurement that I’ve dubbed zSO. (The Z stands for ZiPS, as you may have guessed.) Using contact data, velocity numbers, and the like, ZiPS makes an estimate from how many strikeouts a pitcher “should” have ended up with. It’s not a number I pulled out of my hat but one used as part of the model because it has more predictive value than actual strikeouts. Going back to 2002, if all you knew about a pitcher was his strikeout rate and his zSO rate, you’d have predicted the following year’s strikeout rate most accurately with a mix that was 82% zSO and 18% actual.

Looking at the top 15, while zSO is far from infallible — all models are wrong, but some are useful — it had a solid record at identifying the strikeout outliers correctly. So what about the 2020 season? There’s a lower minimum batters faced here (200 batters faced) because of the short season, so you’ll see some larger-than-typical variations between actual strikeout rate and zSO.

No, Giolito doesn’t make the top 15 of underachievers, but he’s close. Compared to his 33.7% strikeout rate, ZiPS thought he “should have” been at 35.7. And that’s unusual, as leaders in anything in baseball are more likely to have overachieved than underachieved. Of the top 20 strikeout pitchers in 2020, ZiPS thinks that only four pitchers actually underachieved: deGrom (0.2%), Tyler Mahle (0.3%), Castillo (0.6%), and Giolito (2.0%).

In summation, ZiPS sees Giolito as a nearly perfect storm of awesomeness and one of the top Cy Young contenders in the American League. With Cleveland reeling, the White Sox have an excellent shot at taking the division and going deep into the playoffs. If the White Sox raise a world championship banner in 2021, the right arm of Giolito will likely be responsible for a great deal of the hoisting.

On Tuesday, Liam Hendriks signed a contract with the Chicago White Sox that will pay him $54 million. Craig Edwards covered the signing, and Tony Wolfe took a look at the South Siders’ new bullpen, which is now one of the best in baseball. But there was something confusing about Hendriks’ contract. It will pay him $54 million, but how many years he’ll play to earn that money isn’t yet set.

A quick overview: over the first three years of his deal, Hendriks will receive $39 million. After that third year, the White Sox have a team option to bring him back for a fourth year with a $15 million salary. If they don’t want to pay him for that year, they can pay him a buyout instead, a common structure in contracts with team options. Here’s the rub: that buyout is for $15 million, the same amount as the option salary. It’s deferred over multiple years, so it isn’t exactly the same, but Hendriks will get $54 million in cash, and he’ll do so whether he plays for the Sox for three or four years.

Why design such a strange tax structure? It’s in pursuit of one of the oldest American pastimes — tax avoidance. Let’s quickly walk through how Hendriks’ contract works in Chicago’s favor, and take a quick jaunt through other contract structures while we’re at it.

When the league came up with the CBT, they put some thought into working around loopholes. Consider, for example, a team who has plenty of room under the tax level in 2021 but projects to go near it in 2022. Now imagine that they sign Trevor Bauer to a two-year, $80 million deal. If they paid him $40 million in each year, it would look like this:

Assuming a tax threshold of $210 million, they’d be $30 million under the line in ‘21 and $20 million over in ‘22. Why not, then, pay Bauer $60 million in year one and $20 million the next year?

Why not? Because the league doesn’t fall for that nonsense. For the purposes of the CBT, salaries are spread out evenly across the term of the deal. Design wild roller-coasters all you want; a two-year deal for $80 million will count for $40 million each year, no matter when the actual checks go out.

Next, let’s consider a different way around the tax, and a different way the league closed that loophole. Consider a team going for it this year. They’re right up against the tax in this hypothetical world, and they’d prefer not to pay it. Instead, they offer a different deal, this time to a hypothetical closer. In year one, he’ll receive $10 million. Year two is a team option with a salary of $30 million. Should the team decline the option, they’ll pay a $10 million buyout.

One of two things will happen: either our closer will make $40 million for two years of service, or he’ll make $20 million for one year. That feels like a reasonable contract for both sides — and if the league didn’t look too hard at it, they might give the team a tax number of only $10 million in year one.

Let’s make it more absurd, though. What about a one-year deal for $5 million, with a team option for a second year at $60 million and a $15 million buyout. Now the team will certainly pay the buyout. Our pitcher still gets his $20 million over one year. Would anyone think that’s really only a $5 million salary in year one, though?

The league doesn’t. Buyouts of team options are treated as part of the total salary paid in guaranteed years. What does that mean? Let’s take a look at Ronald Acuña Jr.’s contract to explain it. His contract looks like this:

That’s $90 million over eight years. After that, there are two team options, the second of which we’ll ignore (given that it only kicks in if the team exercises the first one, CBT math ignores it). The first team option is for $17 million, with a $10 million buyout. That brings the total guaranteed money in the deal to $100 million over eight years — $90 million in salary plus the buyout. What’s Acuña’s CBT number in each year? $12.5 million, or $100 million split evenly over eight years.

Should the Braves exercise Acuña’s option, they’ll pay him $17 million in 2027, but $10 million of that will already have counted against their tax numbers in previous years. How does that hit the salary cap? The league has left it purposely ambiguous, but one interpretation is that the tax number will be lower to account for that previous hit. In Acuña’s case, he has another $10 million buyout the next year, so it’s hardly a lock, but we’re just using him as an example. Again, we don’t know exactly how the league accounts for buyouts — but in my mind, there’s a decent chance that having the cost of the buyout on previous years’ CBT numbers decreases the number the league uses in the option year.

With that explanation out of the way, let’s get back to Hendriks. He’s due $39 million over three years, an average of $13 million per year. After that, there’s his buyout, which also counts against the tax. It’s for $15 million deferred over time. The league discounts deferrals slightly, and without getting into the exact math there, let’s assume that they treat Hendriks’ buyout as worth $13 million in present-day terms. That means he’s due $52 million over three years for the purposes of the tax.

Should he remain with the team for a fourth year, the deal has only $2 million in “new money” — the difference in value between a deferred and present-day $15 million. That makes for big tax numbers in the first three years — roughly $17 million per year — and a minuscule $2 million hit in the fourth year. Again, I’m not certain that this is how options are treated — but it’s a reasonable guess, at the very least, and one of the best reasons I can see for structuring a contract in such a strange way.

Why would a team want to do this? The Sox are no dummies. They’re nowhere near the CBT threshold in 2021 — they check in around $160 million even after Hendriks’ contract. Will they be so far below the threshold in three years? It’s far less clear! Lucas Giolito will need a new contract by then. Nick Madrigal, Dylan Cease, Michael Kopech, and Codi Heuer, just to name a few, will be in their arbitration years. If they’re planning on keeping Lance Lynn, he’ll surely earn more than this year’s $9.3 million salary.

By taking a bigger tax hit now, the White Sox are setting themselves up to avoid paying taxes in the future. Are they actually considering declining the option? Almost certainly not. Why would they? Short of Hendriks being out for the season with an injury, they’ll keep him, because the difference between $15 million now and $15 million over 10 years simply isn’t much in the grand scope of things.

One thing worth monitoring: I’m not actually sure if the league is going to allow this nonsense. I feel reasonably confident that they wouldn’t have allowed a $15 million team option with a $15 million buyout if there were no deferrals involved. Even including that fig leaf, I don’t think there’s much confusion about what’s going on here. The league can treat vesting options that are very likely to be triggered as guaranteed, and it wouldn’t shock me if they did that here. For now, though, it sounds like Hendriks’ contract counts as $54 million over three years in the eyes of the tax man.

In other words, Hendriks signed a four-year, $54 million dollar contract this week. It won’t be reported the same way everywhere — it’s a complex contract, after all. At the end of the day, however, the White Sox wanted to pay Hendriks $54 million to secure his services for the next four years. They did just that — with a little financial chicanery thrown in for good measure.

The White Sox don’t need an elite bullpen to compete. They had the most valuable position player group in baseball in 2020, and that was without two stars, Yoán Moncada and Luis Robert, playing to their full potential. They also have a rotation that boasts two aces and a fair amount of rotation depth. Give them last year’s Phillies bullpen, and they’d still likely be able to fight for a playoff spot, especially in their division. Fit them with an average ‘pen, and their postseason expectations begin to look like more of a certainty.

Much to the chagrin of the other AL Central teams, Chicago’s bullpen doesn’t look like it’s going to be average, and it definitely doesn’t look like it will be awful. That much was made clear when the White Sox signed Liam Hendriks — the best reliever in this year’s free-agent class and at worst a top-three-or-four reliever in baseball — on Monday. Since the start of 2019, he has been nearly two wins more valuable than any other relief arm in baseball, posting a 1.79 ERA and 1.70 FIP in 110.1 innings. Our Depth Charts have Hendriks forecast for 1.6 WAR in 2021, tying him with Aroldis Chapman and Edwin Diaz for the highest relief WAR projection in baseball. With that considerable boost, the White Sox’ bullpen now projects to be the second-best in the majors, albeit with loads of free-agent talent still unsigned.

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While there were plenty of good options in this year’s free-agent reliever class, with Trevor May, Brad Hand, Archie Bradley, and Blake Treinen representing the near-top tier, there was just one ace available: Liam Hendriks. That elite reliever is now off the board, with the White Sox continuing their aggressive offseason by signing the former A’s closer to a four-year deal worth $54 million. Yahoo Sports’ Tim Brown was the first with the news of the signing, and ESPN’s Jeff Passan was the first to report the unusual structure of the deal: Hendriks will be paid $39 million in the first three years, with the remaining $15 million coming either as a fourth-year team option or as a deferred buyout if the option is declined.

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The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2013 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Like Mark McGwire, his rival in the great 1998 home run chase, Sammy Sosa was hailed at the height of his popularity as a hero, a Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year, and a great international ambassador for baseball. In the same year that McGwire set a new single-season record with 70 home runs, Sosa hit 66 and took home the National League MVP award. Three times in a four-year stretch from 1998 to 2001, he surpassed Roger Maris‘ previously unbreakable mark of 61 homers, and he hit more homers over a five- or 10-year stretch than any player in history. In 2007, he became just the fifth player to reach the 600-home-run milestone after Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and Barry Bonds.

As with McGwire, the meaning of Sosa’s home runs changed once baseball began to crack down on performance-enhancing drugs, with suspicions mounting about his achievements. He was called to testify before Congress in 2005, along with McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, and several other players. Sosa denied using PEDs, but while he never tested positive once Major League Baseball began instituting penalties for usage, The New York Times reported in 2009 that he was one of more than 100 players who had done so during the supposedly anonymous survey tests six years prior. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Chicago White Sox. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. As there was no minor league season in 2020, there are some instances where no new information was gleaned about a player. Players whose write-ups have not been altered begin by telling you so. For the others, the blurb ends with an indication of where the player played in 2020, which in turn likely informed the changes to their report. As always, I’ve leaned more heavily on sources from outside the org than within for reasons of objectivity. Because outside scouts were not allowed at the alternate sites, I’ve primarily focused on data from there. Lastly, in effort to more clearly indicate relievers’ anticipated roles, you’ll see two reliever designations, both in lists and on The Board: MIRP, or multi-inning relief pitcher, and SIRP, or single-inning relief pitcher.

For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed, you can click here. For further explanation of Future Value’s merits and drawbacks, read Future Value.

All of the numbered prospects here also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It can be found here.

Editor’s Note: Yoelqui Cespedes and Norge Vera were added to this list after they agreed to deals with the White Sox on January 15.

It doesn’t feel like hyperbole to say one of the most important days in the recent history of the White Sox was Dec. 7, 2016, when they traded Adam Eaton to Washington in return for Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo López, and Dane Dunning. Giolito is now the staff ace and one of the best pitchers in the American League, having compiled 7.1 WAR over the past two seasons. López has been less successful as a back-of-the-rotation arm who hovered just below league average from 2018 to ’19 before falling below replacement level last year, but he’s still provided 4.1 WAR over the last three seasons. Dunning was just shipped out to acquire another right-handed ace in Lance Lynn from the Rangers. A lot of wins can already be credited to the Eaton deal, and more will be added to the ledger by the time all is said and done.

Perhaps it’s cosmically fair, then, that Eaton will now reap the rewards of the roster he played such a key role in rebuilding. NBC Sports Chicago’s Chuck Garfien reported on Tuesday that Eaton will be rejoining the White Sox on a one-year deal, with a team option in place for 2022. The signing comes four years and one day after the team traded him to Washington.

White Sox in agreement with free agent outfielder Adam Eaton, source tells @NBCSChicago. It's a 1-year, $7 million deal with a second year team option for $8.5 million.

— Chuck Garfien (@ChuckGarfien) December 8, 2020

Chicago first acquired Eaton after the 2013 season, in a three-team, six-player deal with the Diamondbacks and Angels that also established new homes for Mark Trumbo, Hector Santiago and the late Tyler Skaggs. Eaton, a former 19th-round pick out of the University of Miami (Ohio), immediately broke out in Chicago’s outfield, compiling 13.5 WAR over three seasons thanks to a .290/.362/.422 line (119 wRC+) and sometimes elite defense. His best season — a 2016 that included a 117 wRC+, 26 defensive runs saved in the outfield, and 5.9 WAR — earned him down-ballot MVP votes, but it came on a White Sox team that finished 78–84, spinning its tires despite the presence of stars like Jose Quintana and Chris Sale. Chicago hit the reset button, and with Eaton coming off a career year and having four years left on his owner-friendly contract extension, he became quite a valuable trade chip.

Eaton seemed like a good fit for a championship-ready Nationals squad with holes to fill in its outfield, but his honeymoon with Washington was short-lived. His 2017 season lasted just 23 games before he tore his ACL running out a ground ball, and he missed two more months in ’18 with bone bruises on his ankle. He finally turned in a full season for the title-winning 2019 Nationals and compiled 2.3 WAR with a 107 wRC+, only to return as a shell of himself in 2020, hitting just .226/.285/.384 (75 wRC+) with four homers in 41 games. He was half a win below replacement level, and Washington declined his $10.5 million team option after the season.

Eaton was able to recoup most of that with his one-year deal in Chicago, which was in need of a starting right fielder after non-tendering Nomar Mazara. Filling that spot in the order was seen as a chance for the White Sox to aim high — George Springer and Marcell Ozuna are potentially transformative bats at the top of the market, while other options like Michael Brantley, Joc Pederson, and Jackie Bradley Jr. rank in the top half of our Top 50 Free Agents list. Craig Edwards’ most recent payroll analysis has the White Sox spending much less than their market size warrants, so the resources to add a big name should be available.

Instead, Chicago opted for a 32-year-old with a modest power ceiling and waning defensive skills coming off the worst season of his career. Eaton had various problems in 2020. He raised his swing rate nearly seven points to the highest mark of his career, resulting in a walk rate of just 6.8%, more than two points below his career average. All of that swinging resulted in a lot of contact — he was in the 91st percentile of baseball in whiff rate — but he still posted his highest strikeout rate since 2015.

When Eaton put the ball in play, he also couldn’t achieve the same luck he has in the past. His ability to leg out bunt and infield singles declined, and a career .335 BABIP plummeted to a .260 mark in 2020. Because Eaton doesn’t hit for much power, his offensive value is sustained by his ability to convert line drives and grounders into singles and to work an above-average rate of walks. When he can’t do that and doesn’t have even average defensive numbers to bolster his case, you’re probably better off calling up someone from Triple-A to take his spot in the lineup.

The White Sox clearly don’t think Eaton has reached that point, likely for a few reasons. He just turned 32 this week, an age that typically means you’re past your prime but not one where you expect production to tank completely. Despite the knee and ankle injuries, Eaton can still run pretty well — he was in the 74th percentile of Statcast’s sprint speed metric this year and up to the 81st percentile the year before, which is pretty close to where he was when he was having his best seasons on defense as well as on the bases. He should avoid challenging Luis Robert to pre-game foot races, but his legs and instincts should still help add value.

His raw tools appear to be holding up in other areas as well. Eaton’s exit velocity in 2020 was down from the previous year, but only by a single mile per hour. He isn’t having trouble catching up to fastballs, as his whiff rate against the hard stuff actually just hit its lowest point since 2014. His line-drive rate has remained steady, as has his distribution of where he’s hitting the ball.

The White Sox, then, are betting that Eaton’s problems are easier to solve than it may appear. If he still runs well, perhaps fixing his defense — where he’s dropped from +27 DRS in 980.1 innings in right in 2016 to -6 DRS in 335 innings in 2020 — could be solved with better positioning, or other subtle tweaks. If his contact skills are still in place, maybe you can salvage his K/BB rates by nudging him back toward his more selective approach of the past. Perhaps there’s a 3-WAR player still here, and it’s just going to take a little elbow grease to bring him back out. The idea of achieving that while reuniting with a former fan favorite might make all that work seem worth it.