The White Sox Looming Decision
If there was one overarching theme of this last offseason, it was the surprise push towards contention from a lot of teams that didn’t quite look quite ready to win. The Padres were the most aggressive unexpected buyer, eschewing rebuilding to instead load up for a run in 2015, but they weren’t the only team to decide to capitalize on the current unprecedented level of parity in the sport. Over in the AL, the White Sox made a similar series of moves, bringing in Jeff Samardzija, Melky Cabrera, Adam LaRoche, David Robertson, and Zach Duke in their offseason makeover. With Chris Sale and Jose Abreu at the top of their games, Rick Hahn decided to push in on 2015 and see if they could follow in the Royals footsteps.
The pre-season forecasts, though, never really bought into it. On Opening Day, our Playoff Odds page had the White Sox going 78-84, with just an 8% chance of winning the AL Central and a 6% chance of winning one of the two Wild Card spots; the Rangers and Twins were the only AL teams with a lower chance of reaching the postseason. There was a scenario where things broke right and the White Sox became legitimate contenders — the Astros are currently in the midst of that scenario at the moment — but it was going to require the team’s role players step up and fill some of the areas where the team was expected to get replacement level production.
That hasn’t happened.
The forecasts saw big holes at catcher, second base, third base, right field, and the last two spots in the rotation; so far, Tyler Flowers, Micah Johnson, Conor Gillaspie, Avisail Garcia, John Danks, and Hector Noesi have all been below replacement level. That’s just too many voids for a contender, and when guys like LaRoche, Cabrera, and Samardzija struggle too, then you end getting pummeled by a lousy Twins team on your way to an 8-14 record after the season’s first month.
That’s where the White Sox are today, after getting outscored 31-8 in their four game series against Minnesota. And it’s not like they’ve played better than their record; by BaseRuns, they should actually be 7-15, and have played worse than any other team in baseball, including the Brewers, the team that just fired their manager. The White Sox aren’t actually the worst team in baseball, but this isn’t a team that has played well and just run into some bad luck, or given up runs at the wrong time; they’ve just been straight up awful.
Given the fact that Chicago is now staring at a seven game deficit to the Tigers, with the Royals only a half game behind Detroit, their already-low Playoff Odds have now sunk to the floor. As of this morning, our forecasts give the White Sox a 2% chance of winning the division and a 3% chance of capturing a Wild Card spot; they’re still ahead of the Rangers and Twins, but now just barely ahead of Minnesota, and they’re hanging out in the same range as teams who either have admitted that they’re building for the future or are about to be.
And so now, we’re about to find out just how committed to 2015 Rick Hahn really is. There is still theoretically time for the season to turn around, but the White Sox don’t really have 140 more games in which to try and overcome their slow start, because 56 of those games come after the July 31st trade deadline; their final decision point will come around Game 100 or so. So they have roughly 80 games to get back in the race, and if Detroit and Kansas City play at even their modest projected rest-of-season winning percentages, the White Sox would have to play ~.650 baseball to overtake them by the end of July. I love Chris Sale and Jose Abreu, but I don’t see a scenario where this roster is capable of winning two out of every three games for three months.
So, now, the question is how long of a leash Hahn gives this roster before he starts exploring present-for-future trades. Doug Melvin has already raised the white flag in Milwaukee, but noted over the weekend how difficult it is to find a trade partner in May:
“There’s not many teams looking to make moves at this time of year,” said Melvin. “Very few teams are open to taking on money at this time of year. You get similar answers: ‘We’re still looking at our club right now.’
“The frustrating part is you would like to make some moves and do some things. But, early in the year, the only thing you can do is (between) your club and Triple-A. Those moves aren’t as impactful as we’d like to be able to do.”
You can’t sell if no one is buying, but at the same time, waiting too long to sell could be especially problematic for teams like Chicago and Milwaukee. While both teams have some players of value who could be traded, neither team is likely to trade their franchise players; I don’t expect we’ll see Jonathan Lucroy, Chris Sale, or Jose Abreu changing teams any time soon. And both teams are in their current positions because their role players aren’t as good as they needed to be, so they’re generally marketing low-performing guys who aren’t that great to begin with.
And once the trade season really heats up, those guys are going to become Plan C or Plan D for teams actively looking to buy. Jeff Samardzija is a nice trade chip, but he’s not Johnny Cueto, and if the White Sox wait for the Reds to fall out of the race, Samardzija is very quickly going to become a secondary option. The Cubs anticipated this same problem last year, trading Samardzija to Oakland on July 5th, but the White Sox probably shouldn’t even wait that long this year. At that point, the Reds are likely to be at least listening to offers for Cueto, even if they probably won’t trade him until after the All-Star Game in Cincinnati on July 14th.
While the White Sox will need Samardzija to start pitching better in order to re-establish his value, I’d imagine their best chance at getting a strong return is by selling early enough to put some separation between he and the rest of the starting pitching market, as well as giving the buyer more starts than if they wait until July. The Red Sox, for instance, may be able to be lured into a deal for Samardzija sooner than later, given their desire to avoid long-term commitments to starting pitchers. The Dodgers seem content to plow through every arm they have in Triple-A before they make a trade, but they’re another potential buyer who likely sees value in giving a bit less to shore up their regular season rotation knowing they don’t need another ace to make two starts in October.
And, of course, Samardzija isn’t the only guy the White Sox can sell. Alexei Ramirez is off to a horrendous start, but still projects as a league average shortstop going forward; teams like the Padres could get a significant boost from replacing their flotsam with a guy who can still play the position and hit a bit. But again, Milwaukee might also put Jean Segura on the block as part of their blow-it-up plan, so there’s probably a benefit to striking first, making a deal early rather than hoping that another contender who should have a strong interest in Ramirez emerges.
That isn’t to say the White Sox have to start the firesale tomorrow. There is still the core of a good team here, but there are just too many weak spots for this roster to make a real serious run in 2015. It could have worked, but it just didn’t, and now it’s probably time for the White Sox to start looking towards 2016 again. Swap out some of the go-for-it pieces they acquired over the winter for things that will help more next year, and then spend the next nine months trying to make sure that the scrubs around the the 2016 stars aren’t quite so scrubby.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
Another team that tried to take a bad roster and infuse it with lots of expensive new talent in order to make a push to win now is the Redsox. Given their performance to date, and their falling playoff odds, should they also be sellers at the deadline? The Yankees look like clear contenders, but they’ve got a big hole at second base. Boston has a high priced ageing veteran at second. Seems like a match made in heaven.
Not gonna happen.
I’m not sure if this is satire or not. If so, it’s really subtle. Good job!
It’s not satirical. It’s passive-aggressive.
Sox trading to Yankees (or vice versa for that matter)… I just cant see one helping the other win the division. I dont see a trade involving both of these two.
Well, the Sox sent Stephen Drew to the Yankees last year, though that is probably best interpreted as an act of sabotage.
Obvious trolling or satire but seriously while the Red Sox has disappointed its not even close to a sell mode and they have too much moeny available for a rebuild in the offseason to even worry about it. Their big problem is they should have jettisoned their expensive injury prone anchors such as Napoli, Victorino and Craig so they would have even more flexibility they are now probably looking to buy to upgrade the rotation. I wouldn’t assume the Reds jump out just yet. While they have lot of piece that makes sense to move I think they hold out as long as they can before selling completely.
Good point.
Red Sox were a deserved last place team last year, and decided to spend half a billion dollars in the offseason only to see them enter 2015 with the oldest roster in mlb, a hitting upgrade balanced by a pitching downgrade, with little star power at the top of the roster and question marks all over the bottom of it…..and now they unsurprisingly again have a bad record with a bad run diff, which might even be looking better than it should due to their opponents gifting them with a record breaking pace of unearned runs (though granted that might be balanced a bit by a somewhat low babip).
they might be able to get something decent for uehara and napoli at the deadline. maybe even buchholz if he gets hot for a bit.
It’s a common fallacy to take last year’s team and add / subtract based on performance or personnel changes.
Resist this urge, and use preseason projections instead, modified for the games that have already taken place.
This is the way to understanding.
The only thing more misleading is the urge to pretend last year didn’t happen.
i implore you to resist this urge, and not have blind faith in projections which assume that outputs for kids (betts, bogaerts, vazquez) and reclamation projects (victorino, craig, masterson) are as reliable as projections for veterans with consistent recent track records, or which arbitrarily assume that players will be very good defenders at positions they’ve never played before.
this is the path to understanding.
^This is why everdiso is a millionaire on the back of all of the successful Vegas bets he’s made on preseason win totals. Since he’s figured out a system far better than any of the sabermetric projections used by Vegas or fangraphs, he’s collected hundreds of thousands of gambling winnings betting through his extremely accurate system of “never betting on older players to have a better season than their previous season”, as well as “young players without long track records always underperform”.
I don’t think there’s anything arbitrary about projecting a player to be a better defender at a position he’s never played. We have data on what positions are harder than others, and what to expect from a change between two given positions.
No, projections aren’t always right, but given the choice between betting on a projection and betting on some random person who says “I simply believe strongly that X will happen” I know where my money will be.
These boards are littered with people saying “omg see! Teh projections r wrong!” because they want validation, without acknowledging how often results actually do fall within the error bars.
let me guess, Michael – you had no problem ignoring the war projections for the yankees, which were better than the red sox’ projections on opening day, correct?
You copied this from the sports section of The Onion.
Red Sox Yankees Red Sox Yankees ESPN ESPN ESPN hooray!
Indeed. This is an article about the White Sox. Why is it that some people can’t accept that? Why does it have to be turned so that it’s about the Red Sox and/or Yankees?
Because everdiso clicked on it.
What works better in May – selling big names or small names? Seems like Soto and Beckham should/could fetch something as bit players on contending teams in need of C / MI help… both are FAs in 2016. Saving their pro-rated $3.5m not meaningful, but getting a few lower-tier prospects could be.
Also interesting that you didn’t mention LaRoche as a trade chip. Through 2016 with $13m next year seems fair enough… so maybe the thought is that CHW could contend in 16?
Lastly, any chance they can eat some of the Danks deal and dump him for nothing at the deadline?
Soto and Beckham wont fetch anything. They are the ‘real world’ version of waiver wire fodder. They are secondary parts on a bad team. Same with LaRoche (but, a tad higher usefulness), Danks, Even the pitching starved arent looking to acquire him. Sox would have to give him away.
You’re probably right about Soto / Beckham – neither fetched anything last year…
LaRoche – at a projection of 105-115 wRC+ I would assume he would get something if he was expiring in 2015.
Exclusive first basemen are really worth very little, especially ones being paid a FA salary (albeit a reasonable one). LaRoche would generate a B- level prospect at best.
O M G. Beckham plays baseball? He didn’t tell me!
The thing is that none of the potential contenders look to have a need for a 1B/DH, except maybe the Rays and Angels. With Adam Lind probably on the market it’s very hard to find a buyer.
I most certainly don’t disagree with the premise of this article, watching the White Sox this year has been painful. Just want to point out that Avisail is currently OPSing .811 and while his defense isn’t that good, he’s not nearly the problem that everyone else you lumped him in with is.
The guy who has accumulated exactly zero WAR this month? Defense and baserunning count, too. Also park adjustments.
And that offensive production includes a .441 Babip that’s about to crash, so yeah, I think he fits in that group of problem spots.
Garcia’s also waiting for the power to come around; he could just as easily start getting a few more balls out of the ballpark. And while he hasn’t looked wonderful in the field, I’d wait a little longer than a month to put a ton of stock in UZR.
Ok, so add some power, take away babip, maybe it evens out and the offense stays at a similar level.
On defense, though, he’s been a negative by the defensive metrics every season, which, as you said, appears to confirm the subjective scouting that he’s not a good defender. I won’t say it’s impossible that he’s a better defender than the numbers and scouting indicate so far, but I’m not basing it on one month of UZR.
This is why I am not big on defensive and baserunning WAR. Who would you rather have as your RF? Avi Garcia .342/.381/.430 or Shin-Soo Choo .141/.273/.297? Honestly. Yet they are pretty close on total WAR. Just because Robin Ventura keeps trying to steal with Avi and he keeps getting thrown out which hurts his value, it does not mean he is a bad player (or below replacement level as this article states). I have seen him play this year, he has made 2 questionable plays in the OF so far but I would not go as far as to say he has been worth -4 runs to the White Sox
He’s also coming off of labrum surgery.
Some people around chicago talk about Avi like he’s a certain all-star, and certainly he’s got a high ceiling, but for now, he’s probably better than the dismal projections but not necessarily a middle-of-the-order talent who’s going to lead them to respectability.
This should act as a warning to all teams to never sink that much money into a bullpen who is going to be handed a lead in the seventh only 70 or so times over the season.
But the bullpen is not the problem. The league adjusted to Adam Eaton and you’ve got a couple of established offensive guys–Cabrera, Laroche–who are not playing to the back of their baseball cards. You’ve also got several players not giving Hahn the modest contribution, offensively and defensively, that he thought he’d count on. Your top 3 starters had the most collective 2014 WAR of any top three, but they haven’t exactly put it together this year and your 4-5 has been as bad as you feared.
If Hahn had predicted all that would happen, he never would have spent so much on the bullpen.
Bullpen is not the problem, but spending that big on any collection of relief arms is nearly always a mistake (unless you’re in the Yankees/Dodgers range of payroll, in which case it’s just neutral.
Alexei to the Mets could finally make some sense.
Mets SS is currently better, and a lot younger.
the Sox strategy of hoping a miracle would happen with the pitching staff was always questionable. that said, being 4 games out this early means nothing.
that’s Red Sox of course.
Well it did not work (so far) but it could have (yet did not).
Meanwhile the contracts are reasonable and don’t tie up money for too long. And the White Sox are 16th in payroll, those big spenders, shame all that money wasted. Boy I’m a fan and I’d just rather have them tank the franchise for 3-4 horrific years, try to win maybe 60 games… that’d be super!
I’m not sure that the White Sox thought they were going to win this year, but sportswriters sure hought they did. And so now sportswriter can postulate about the “failure” and what to do about it. Brilliant!
Welp. Alrighty then.
This reminds me of the politicians creating our problems and then pontificating about what is wrong with the country and what wonderful solutions they have for the problems they won’t admit that they caused themselves .
It’s clearly Samrdzighras fault, teams that he’s a SP for lose.
Oh and any anyone in a managerial position that uses “impactful” doesn’t have a clue about how to properly do their job.
Looks like baseball’s Trade Deadline Day holiday is approaching earlier and earlier. Like Christmas decorations in Sept. 87 more days!
That Doug Melvin quote is accurate, but it does seem he is surprised by this. This is why nobody waves the white flag in May – it doesn’t get you anywhere.
The Brewers’ bigger problem is they don’t have any mid-range assets to sell. What they have are their two superstars — Gomez and Lucroy — an overpriced juicer in Braun, a couple old well paid SP’s, and an OK shortstop. Unless they break into the two studs and really go full Astros, I can see why no one’s interested in playing.
Anybody know when Samardzija is going to serve his suspension or how long the appeals process takes?
After his start against the Tigers, last I heard.
His suspension is already over, I think. it was 5 games and He dropped the appeal after his last start.
“It could have worked, but it just didn’t, and now it’s probably time for the White Sox to start looking towards 2016 again.”
From a Fangraphs article 22 games into a 162 game season. Never thought I would see that.
I agree.
I’m not sure this article provides much other than something that Sox fans could rub in the authors face if they miraculously turn it around. The Sox should trade for the future if they can. Oh, they can’t right now? Well, then I guess they should spend a while longer trying to win baseball games and reevaluate in 6-8 weeks.
Dave, what about the Indians? Fangraphs projected 86 wins and a first place finish, and they’ve been even worse than the White Sox.
As of 04 May the Indians are actually performing better and their more predictive stats suggest continued improvement. They are undoubtedly under performing their projections as a whole and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see them out of the running come September but ignoring the White Sox deficiencies because the Indians are under performing seems ill-advised.
I wasn’t ignoring the White Sox deficiencies because of the Indians – I’m not even a White Sox fan – I was just curious to hear the Fangraphs take on the Indians, since the fall seems to be harder.
Can I ask a question about grammar with regards to “Sox” (of any color). In the headline / title of this piece, it is being used in the possessive: the looming decision belongs to the White Sox. If the team in question was, say, the Brewers then we’d properly write “The Brewers’ Looming Decision” with an apostrophe added at the end as is done with a plural possessive… at least when the plural ends in s. Here though, we have a plural that doesn’t end in s (though it does end in an s sound). Now with other words ending in x you get the usual apostrophe-s, as in “The fox’s fur.” But that’s not plural. And yet we need something to indicate the possessive. So should it be
The White Sox’ Looming Decision
or
The White Sox’s Looming Decision
?
Most writers (and I think news outlets in general, and those in Chicago and Boston in particular) go with the former. But either could be adopted as a matter of style; what I don’t think is correct is not indicating the possessive in any way, as in the title here.
I believe that the Chicago Manual of Style had a rule whereby the addition of the “s” for plural possessives is dependent on whether the final consonant (“x” or “z”) is actually pronounced. So, in this case, because the “x” in “Sox” is pronounced, the headline would read, “The White Sox’s Looming Decision.” In contrast, if the final “x” or “z” is not pronounced (e.g., Devereux, Bordeaux), you would only add an apostrophe. But I’m sure different style manuals have different rules.
I would’ve thought the rule would dictate the opposite.
The correct answers are “The White Sox'” or if referring to one member of the team, “A White Sok’s”.
You’d think a “grammar nerd” would have ended that first sentence with a question mark.
Look, he’s not a punctuation nerd.
All for selling Alexei right now, just wish he was hitting better. Carlos Sanchez is ready to contribute and Alexei’s defense and solid offensive track record can still warrant a nice return. Padres are looking for a shortstop and I’d love Quakenbush and one or two of their prospects.
Also Gillaspie is massively under-productive for his position. He’s a good hitter, but he shouldn’t be starting for any major league team. Would Davidson be any better? Possibly, if you start him against lefties and lower tier righties and have Gillaspie start against the majority of righties.
They need more power and consistency in the middle of the order and Eaton to start getting hot (he started slow last year too). The pitching will come, Sale, Shark and Quintana aren’t this bad, Danks is, but they’re stuck w/ him until they can find somebody to take that contract. Rodon will be a part of the rotation in about a week if the rumors are to be believed. Once things start to normalize, the doom and gloom will begin to fade.
Definitely an ugly start for my White Sox, but I do think there is room for improvement. Dropping all of these division games early puts them behind the 8 ball though.
Eaton has displayed a relatively similar batted ball profile while hitting .235 on balls in play, so that should come up a bit (similar situation for Alexei). I’d like to believe Abreu will get hot soon and Sale/Shark/Quintana will keep them in games going forward, but they are going to have to start getting production from LaRoche in order to make any noise. His 35% K rate is disturbing.
For better or worse, I expect Hahn to have a pretty long leash in regard to selling off pieces. A lot of expectations coming into this season, and many White Sox fans will never forget the white flag deal in 1997 when they were only 3.5 out of the division lead.
Of course there’s room for improvement. That’s not the point made in the article. The point is that they need to improve a whole lot, and probably unrealistically so, in a hurry or they’ll have to decide to throw in the towel.
Dave isn’t saying that they’re the 2nd worst team in baseball. He’s saying that their path to the playoffs involved them having a start much more like the Astros have had and that they’ve dug themselves a hole they’re probably going to be unable to dig themselves out of.
Wasn’t disagreeing with anything Dave said, just throwing my 2 cents in.
You never white flag in the first week of May unless your chances were essentially nil to start and were putting up a brave front to try to woo some fans early on.
Yes, I agree the White Sox chances were never great, but a 20 game stretch is way too early to panic. Seriously. Lots of things can change. Call me back on July 1.
This organization is following the same trajectory as the 1997-8 Bill Wirtz Blackhawks. From there on the old man only cared about loyalty and family, winning and paying customers fell somewhere outside the top 10 on his priority list. From 1998 onwards, old man Wirtz kept the same dead weight in the front office regardless of losing results, and every head coach was either “Blackhawks Family” or was a link to the good ‘ol early 80’s – and every one of them was a bad hire and got no results. They’d bring players up too early because they were drafted high, and they’d play like they were brought up too early so the Hawks just shipped them out for nothing in return; a few years later, after getting experience, players like Ruutu, Calder, and Cleary wound up being average or above NHL players for other organizations. But they were never going to produce with Wirtz dysfunction. And it’s a shame really because they had a nice run from 83 to 96 with only a couple awful years in that span.
I don’t hate Jerry Reinsdorf; he was a good steward of the team for 30 years with the late 80’s being the only truly awful span. But now he’s showing signs of rewarding loyalty regardless of results and only hiring alumni to run the team. And the results are the same as the latter-day Bill Wirtz Blackhawks.
Hahn hasn’t proven he can stock the farm system, and bringing up Rodon before he’s had 35 minor league starts is clearly a sign of desperation because he isn’t ready; he needs to go through the ups AND the downs in the minors so you can see how he handles adversity. If after 35 minor league starts he’s never had any downs, then you have to give it a go. But 7 minor league starts isn’t going to show you enough.
Maybe if Jerry’s son hadn’t passed away the club would already be handed over and some fresher eyes would be on the operation of the club. No doubt if I lost my son my life priorities would certainly be different, so I’m not trying to kick Reinsdorf when he’s down. It is just time for Jerry to move on. Otherwise we have 8 more years of this.
I wish I would have read your post before I posted. You said it much better.
Hahn hasn’t really had enough time to prove whether he can “stock the system” or not . . . and early signs point to the positive. they’ve risen in the organizational rankings . . more importantly, they’ve actually got an international presence now and they’ve gotten away from the bad drafting strategy of “toolsy” outfielders and college pitchers bound for quick bullpen success in MLB.
If the Rodon move is desperation, why is he logging throwaway innings in the pen instead of starting in Noesi’s place? If this were an organIzation like Wirtz’s old hawks, he’d certainly be mired in the minors until after the super-two deadline had passed . . . and you’d never see this club spend on a second “all-in” season in 4 years.
I think you have to give Hahn a chance to see if he can build a more coherent organization from the ground up.
This team is done for this year. the real answer for the Sox is a change of ownership. The sox need new ownership that will clean house from top to bottom and start developing better players. Without a change in ownership this team will continue to flounder year after year
glad the Cubs have a good front office
I can’t believe this. Throughout this entire article and all the comments, no one mentions one of the biggest problems the Sox have – Ventura! The guy is absolutely terrible and makes Lovie Smith look like the Energizer Bunny. Bad decisions, no emotion. The guy has been given some pretty good pieces to the puzzle, but can’t manage his way out of a paper bag. He is the one that needs to go and soon if there is any hope for even a half way respectable season.
Managers don’t really matter much. Easy to blame them but it’s never their fault except to a relatively minor degree.
The Sox are playing with all the excitement and emotion of their manager. Robin is a great guy, and was a good player, but he isn’t remotely manager material. He isn’t a leader, and never was. During his playing days he was a absolute zero on the leader scale, and still is. If he had the guts to call out underachievers instead of being a “player’s manager” some of these guys might understand there are consequences for being a dud. Robin’s a nice guys who has ingratiated himself with ownership. and I guess that’s all that counts on the South Side.
On Jeff Samardzija – For a relatively low mileage arm, I sort of wonder if he’s peaked already. Now, I suspect he’ll have a few good years left in him, but since he became a starter, his fastball velocity has steadily declined. Granted, he’s become a more polished pitcher over the last 3 years, with a more useful arsenal now, so that may be part of a trend in him learning how to pitch, but the flip side is, he’s 30 and the secondary usage rates are quite high compared to his fastball usage rate. Again, I don’t think he’s done by any means, but a part of me wonders if he’s peaked already.
This is silly. The White Sox are two hot weeks away from being a 500 team eyeing the wildcard with four months to go. I certainly hope they’re not contemplating selling yet.
Hey Baseball guy, the Sox are losing 6-0 tonight in the 4th to the Brewers, the worst team in baseball at least record-wise. I would wager that the Sox are the real worst team in baseball. What is silly and laughable is the notion that the Sox could actually put together a hot streak. They are truly pathetic and lead the league in hopelessness.
It’s two weeks later. The Sox are a .500 team eyeing a wild card run at two games back.
“It could have worked out, but it didn’t and now it’s probably time to start looking towards 2016”
My favorite line of the whole article. It seems some are quick to jump the gun and have short memories of past teams that play up to their potential after April and beyond.
Baseball Guy 1
Boneman 0
Could we get another article just like this? kthx
Hey JK, what Koolaid stand are you drinking from? The White Sux are pathetic! 9-7 going into the bottom of the 9th tonight and closer/loser Robertson gives up in order single, double, HOME RUN. Sux lose 10-9!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh and they’re closing in on a Wild Card alright, it’s called the JOKER!