Official White Sox Offseason Moves Thread

[Hitmen77]

Todd Steverson and Greg Sparks are out as hitting coach and assistant hitting coach:
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2019/...g-coaches.html

[A. Cavatica]

I find this ironic. TA wins a batting title, Moncada and McCann have career years, Abreu rebounds.

I get that our offense was lacking in XBH and walks, but it sure seems like Steverson had more success stories than the previous few hitting coaches.

I liked Menechino as a minor leaguer, but I have no idea whether he will help the offense. I have to assume that, as an organizational guy, he had an advantage over all the qualified hitting coaches who didn't play here.

[voodoochile]

Originally Posted by A. Cavatica

I find this ironic. TA wins a batting title, Moncada and McCann have career years, Abreu rebounds.

I get that our offense was lacking in XBH and walks, but it sure seems like Steverson had more success stories than the previous few hitting coaches.

I liked Menechino as a minor leaguer, but I have no idea whether he will help the offense. I have to assume that, as an organizational guy, he had an advantage over all the qualified hitting coaches who didn't play here.

I'm surprised too, but maybe the Sox are looking at what the Twinkies did and thinking, we want some of that.

[Mohoney]

Originally Posted by voodoochile

I'm surprised too, but maybe the Sox are looking at what the Twinkies did and thinking, we want some of that.

Want to do what the Twins do? Stop asking a budding superstar 3B to bunt the liveliest baseball in league history and then getting cheesed off when it doesn’t work.

God, Renteria sucks.

[Grzegorz]

Typical...

[Zakath]

Yeah. I'm not getting this move. The runs will come, but hitting just for power gets you a lot of solo homers. Multi-run innings win games, and that means getting guys on. The key is stringing them together.

[Tragg]

I would hope they are doing this, at least to some extent, to improve OBP. last in the league in walks, led by Yolmer, is no way to go through life.

[blandman]

Originally Posted by A. Cavatica

I find this ironic. TA wins a batting title, Moncada and McCann have career years, Abreu rebounds.

I get that our offense was lacking in XBH and walks, but it sure seems like Steverson had more success stories than the previous few hitting coaches.

I liked Menechino as a minor leaguer, but I have no idea whether he will help the offense. I have to assume that, as an organizational guy, he had an advantage over all the qualified hitting coaches who didn't play here.

We still had one of the worst offenses in baseball. Individual accomplishment is great, but let's not act like this isn't one of...again...the worst offenses in baseball. We can argue why that is, but what we can't argue about is that we have...one of the worst offenses in baseball. Scored the 24th most runs out of 30 teams. And only 3 of the worse teams were in the NL, where there is no DH.


There's a lot of reasons we only won 72 games. But really, there are more concerns as to why we SHOULDN'T have won that many games. We have a lot more holes than we have prospects ready to fill before we are competitive.

[KRS1]

Originally Posted by blandman

We still had one of the worst offenses in baseball. Individual accomplishment is great, but let's not act like this isn't one of...again...the worst offenses in baseball. We can argue why that is, but what we can't argue about is that we have...one of the worst offenses in baseball. Scored the 24th most runs out of 30 teams. And only 3 of the worse teams were in the NL, where there is no DH.


There's a lot of reasons we only won 72 games. But really, there are more concerns as to why we SHOULDN'T have won that many games. We have a lot more holes than we have prospects ready to fill before we are competitive.

24th with four black holes doesn’t shock me or scare me about the future. We’re going to plug at least two of them immediately with very highly regarded prospects and we have a largish second group right behind them battling for a couple spots that we can stopgap in the meantime. I like what I saw of Collins at the plate, I think he is going to surprise some people.

I’m good with where our hitting depth is immediately and not far down the line. Just give me some damn pitching. It’s depressing watching the dogs we had to trot out there every other day and every day out of the pen. Pitching is essential to this rebuild and needs to be addressed ASAP with at least one big time veteran. The right arms could change my outlook, immediately.

[Frater Perdurabo]

Originally Posted by KRS1

24th with four black holes doesn’t shock me or scare me about the future. We’re going to plug at least two of them immediately with very highly regarded prospects and we have a largish second group right behind them battling for a couple spots that we can stopgap in the meantime. I like what I saw of Collins at the plate, I think he is going to surprise some people.

I’m good with where our hitting depth is immediately and not far down the line. Just give me some damn pitching. It’s depressing watching the dogs we had to trot out there every other day and every day out of the pen. Pitching is essential to this rebuild and needs to be addressed ASAP with at least one big time veteran. The right arms could change my outlook, immediately.

I think this is a reasonable, objective take. Maybe I’m biased, because I agree with it.

[A. Cavatica]

Originally Posted by blandman

We still had one of the worst offenses in baseball. Individual accomplishment is great, but let's not act like this isn't one of...again...the worst offenses in baseball. We can argue why that is, but what we can't argue about is that we have...one of the worst offenses in baseball. Scored the 24th most runs out of 30 teams. And only 3 of the worse teams were in the NL, where there is no DH.


There's a lot of reasons we only won 72 games. But really, there are more concerns as to why we SHOULDN'T have won that many games. We have a lot more holes than we have prospects ready to fill before we are competitive.

The biggest reason our offense was poor is that we got nothing from our right fielders and designated hitters.

Was that Steverson's fault?

Why was the genius who brought in Alonso and Jay not responsible? What about the genius who kept running Palka out there?

[voodoochile]

Originally Posted by A. Cavatica

The biggest reason our offense was poor is that we got nothing from our right fielders and designated hitters.

Was that Steverson's fault?

Why was the genius who brought in Alonso and Jay not responsible? What about the genius who kept running Palka out there?

And our 2B and our CF...

[blurry]

Originally Posted by KRS1

24th with four black holes doesn’t shock me or scare me about the future. We’re going to plug at least two of them immediately with very highly regarded prospects and we have a largish second group right behind them battling for a couple spots that we can stopgap in the meantime. I like what I saw of Collins at the plate, I think he is going to surprise some people.

I’m good with where our hitting depth is immediately and not far down the line. Just give me some damn pitching. It’s depressing watching the dogs we had to trot out there every other day and every day out of the pen. Pitching is essential to this rebuild and needs to be addressed ASAP with at least one big time veteran. The right arms could change my outlook, immediately.

I keep repeating myself but Robert and Madrigal haven't proven a thing at the major league level and also, neither of them draw walks at a decent clip. Moncada and TA had high averages with really high BABIP each so historically there will probably be regression. Collins is good at taking walks. Vaughn will (hopefully) be good at doing the same, as will Gavin Sheets and Steele Walker.

Even with the improvements and the possible immediate boost from 2 more hyped prospects, this team has shown nothing in terms of developing hitters who can take walks and avoid strikeouts. The team has been among the worst in the majors in that regard, positional black holes or no. This wasn't just a failure of the hitting coach- to be this bad for this long, it's an organizational failure.

JD Martinez is an elite hitter and I'd love it if they could get him but he's opting out of his contract meaning 3 years / $20M per isn't going to cut it.

[A. Cavatica]

Originally Posted by voodoochile

And our 2B and our CF...

True, but at least we got good defense out of those positions. RF and DH are positions for defensively challenged sluggers, so the shortfall in offense was much larger.

[blandman]

Originally Posted by A. Cavatica

The biggest reason our offense was poor is that we got nothing from our right fielders and designated hitters.

Was that Steverson's fault?

Why was the genius who brought in Alonso and Jay not responsible? What about the genius who kept running Palka out there?

Alonso and Jay hit in other places. Palka's not a great hitter, but they couldn't get him going. Players like Yolmer took serious steps back at the plate. These are all failures of the hitting coach. Fair or not.

The question is whether you give more credit for star breakouts, or more blame for all the failures. It's hard to see the former overshadow the latter when you also consider this was one of the worst offenses in baseball despite the high level of talent in the lineup.