Rick Hahn’s offseason review: Todd Frazier

To start things off at BP South Side, we are reviewing the offseason moves of White Sox GM Rick Hahn in a staff-wide series. To start, James Fegan reviews the general themes of the White Sox offseason, and the biggest acquisition of the Winter, third baseman Todd Frazier.

It’s a rare new thing to talk about the success of an offseason of a baseball team and its general manager on separate terms, but here we are. The White Sox made a litany of small improvements all over their flawed roster this Winter. PECOTA only likes their splashiest acquisition, Todd Frazier, for 2.2 WARP next season, but you could add another half win to that addition for how much better that would be than what Conor Gillaspie, Mike Olt, Tyler Saladino and Gordon Beckham produced in 2015. Brett Lawrie, also projected at 2.2 WARP, is another league-average-ish trade addition meant to cover up a sinkhole at second base, and moves only got less ambitious from there.

In sum, the Sox got better, but seemingly not enough. PECOTA has them at second place in the AL Central with 82 wins, and other projections regard them similarly. Worse yet, their collection of one-year veteran mercenaries and buy-low options came while superior options from a historically deep free agent class languished on the market and took smaller deals than expected.

But as Hahn’s made pretty clear — he did what he could.

“I probably irritated [White Sox chairman] Jerry [Reinsdorf] at multiple times this offseason in terms of pushing and trying to keep the focus on potentially stretching for things that were beyond our means,” Hahn said. “He’s as competitive as anybody, so when we had the opportunity to improve ourselves with Latos or recently with Rollins, we were able to make that stretch.

“I’m guessing somewhere on a few occasions this offseason, he was probably a little tired of hearing from me about stretches beyond our means,” Hahn said.

Taking on barely more than $32 million in new salary, without dishing out a free agent contract more indulgent than one-year, $5 million lavished on Austin Jackson, Hahn found new starters for a half-dozen positions, took a fatally flawed roster and put it within a few monster years from Chris Sale, Jose Abreu and Carlos Rodon from competing, kept top prospect Tim Anderson, and stayed within his clearly strict payroll limits.

Hahn clearly did his job very well, even if there are objections about how good of a job he was enabled to do.

Todd Frazier

The jewel of the Sox offseason isn’t a big risky signing, or a single large expenditure they allowed themselves. It was right in line with the theme of the offseason.

First, they found a situation where they could get an upgrade for under his market value: The Reds are in full fire sale mode, but had just bought out two of Frazier’s arbitration years at two years, $12 million before the 2015 season.

Second, the Sox paid for a steady starter, getting the Dodgers to work out a three-way deal for them for Frankie Montas and his likely future as a high-leverage reliever, the intriguing but defense and power-challenged speedster Micah Johnson, and Trayce Thompson, who was sliding off the organizational prospect list until a surprisingly stellar MLB debut. Thompson might have the best chance of anyone in this trio to be a regular, but the Sox might have sold very high on him.

Finally, Frazier clearly improves a bad situation with a puncher’s chance at more. If Frazier is a ~2 WARP player with solid third base defense, good power but low OBP, he’s a clear upgrade over last year’s cesspool. If the guy who hit .284/.337/.585 in the first half of 2015, or someone close to him shows up, Hahn has acquired a third major stud in his lineup; a core piece of a team that can win the AL Central.