Cleveland is a pretty good comparison for the White Sox in many respects.  It is a team with strict financial limitations that frequently finds itself drafting in the teens rather than the top five, and is built primarily around the excellent, cheap front of its starting rotation.  It’s just that Cleveland has addressed the same problems better than the White Sox have. They drafted Tyler Naquin, who hit .296/.372/.514, two picks after Courtney Hawkins, who hit .203/.255/.349 in his second attempt at Double-A this year. They signed Rajai Davis as their veteran stopgap center fielder, who provided about one win above replacement instead of Austin Jackson, who did not. Jose Ramirez turned into an All-Star whereas Carlos Sanchez has shown no discernible progress in about three years.

But hey, drafting is hard, injuries happen, and sometimes a player just hits his 90th percentile and the organization only deserves the faintest of credit for it. I am hard-pressed to find an excuse for why Cleveland signed Napoli for one year, $ 7 million, while the White Sox stood pat with Adam LaRoche and Avisail Garcia. Obviously the White Sox believed they would have LaRoche on hand and they were not expecting his retirement. They probably should have had more contingency plans generally, but I won’t pretend that LaRoche’s departure was predictable.  But even if LaRoche had stayed for 2016 and even if he had somewhat of a bounce back year, he still needed a platoon partner.

Avisail Garcia was tendered a $2.1 million contract in his first year of arbitration eligibility, meaning Napoli would have cost about $5 million more — or, assuming you’d be bidding against Cleveland, maybe $5.5 or 6 million more. Napoli would go on to post an .800 OPS while receiving the most playing time of his career. He has had better rate stats when used more selectively against right-handed pitching, but if you were planning on having LaRoche around, it looks like you could have used him for ~450-500 high quality PAs, or if pressed into full-time duty, you could still expect him to hold his own as a designated hitter who can spot start at first base.

Was the cost prohibitive? That seems strange, even for the White Sox.  A one-year deal for less than $10 million should not be prohibitive for any organization, especially given that they spent approximately $ 5.1 million on Garcia, Jimmy Rollins, and Justin Morneau. Nor can they say they wouldn’t have enough plate appearances for him. People get hurt, players need rest, and the team wound up giving more than 1,000 plate appearances to sub-replacement bats, on a roster with tremendous positional flexibility.

How much of the decision was continuing to double down on their bet that Garcia would develop? It’s not crazy, even now, to suggest that there is a non-zero chance that he improves to make himself a useful major leaguer in some capacity. It is crazy for a team genuinely attempting to win, with elite talent in its prime, to rely on Garcia improving to the point where he has to be a quality major leaguer in order for the roster to function. It appears that after years of dashing themselves against the rocks of Dayan Viciedo — the Mike Napoli of Japan! — the White Sox bet the farm on Garcia once again, and unsurprisingly, it blew up in their face again.

600-plus plate appearances of Napoli and a couple of other minor changes would have made the 2016 White Sox a lot better.  And again, mid-to-low-end free agents could make the 2017 White Sox a lot better.  There just isn’t a lot of evidence that the White Sox as currently constituted have the ability or willingness to identify that you need redundancy and depth, or even the most rudimentary description of evaluation — which players are good and which players are bad?

So while I still believe that, given the cards they have to play, the White Sox should try for the playoffs again in 2017, I certainly understand those who disagree based on despair, frustration, and lack of confidence in the organization.

Lead Image Credit: John E. Sokolowski // USA Today Sports Images

LaRoche’s departure didn’t cripple the White Sox by any means — any team that was a LaRoche away from contention wasn’t a contender to begin with — but it did highlight a weakness in the way the 2016 team was constructed.

The White Sox were lacking in left-handed bats, and more specifically in left-handed power. The hope that they were going to get it from LaRoche was likely misguided, even if he had stuck around. A LaRoche-Avisail Garcia platoon didn’t inspire much confidence, but for a team that was reluctant to spend any significant money on a robust free agent market, it wasapparently the best they had decided they could do.

So when LaRoche bailed, the White Sox were left with Garcia and not much in the form of hope. There weren’t that many fallback options — and some were more appealing than others — but the White Sox opted for Justin Morneau, who signed with the team June 9 and made his debut with the team a little more than a month later on July 15.

Morneau hit .261/.303/.429 in 218 plate appearances, which is more or less what you could expect out of an injury-prone 35 year old. He walked less frequently (5.5 percent, lowest of his career), struck out more often (23.9 percent, highest of his career), and failed to generate the kind of power the White Sox were desperately lacking (.167 ISO compared to his career average of .199, although that number had already been trending downward for a number of years).

I don’t believe the White Sox were foolish enough to believe Morneau was going to be the offensive savior this team so desperately needed, but his being the only backup plan to LaRoche’s departure was just another example of inadequate response to problems that emerged with the roster.

It would be impossible to envision a scenario where a team’s designated hitter abruptly retires three weeks before the start of the season, but it wouldn’t be impossible to have envisioned LaRoche missing time for another reason or simply being unplayable. Depending on a 36-year-old, lumbering, injury-prone DH for left-handed power was likely to be a problem. Having a 35-year-old, lumbering, injury-prone DH as his replacement was unlikely to be a solution.

The White Sox problems were aplenty in 2016. Morneau wasn’t one of them, but he certainly wasn’t part of the solution.

Lead photo credit: Jordan Johnson-USA TODAY Sports

Of course, the entire idea of needing to rejoice because this season is “finally over” brings us back to the initial issue with the season itself — 2016 was a massive disaster that no one saw coming.

From Adam LaRoche grabbing national media headlines in March, to waving the white flag at the end of July, bright and quirky moments such as the Matt Albers Game, to the addition of Tim Anderson to the major league roster, 2016 was spanned the range of emotions for White Sox fans.

But there were just too many telltale and strange occurrences throughout the season, more than I’ve ever seen squeezed into a single year, as a White Sox fan. So in case some of you have forgotten just how strange this season was at 35th and Shields, let’s take a look back on my top seven oddest moments.

L’Affaire LaRoche

Fans should have sensed right away that things were going to get a little weird this season when the White Sox were grabbing national headlines and exploding the Twitterverse before Opening Day. Adam LaRoche’s abrupt decision to retire came as a shock to baseball, but what came as even more of a shock was the reason behind his retirement. After being told he was no longer allowed to bring his son, Drake, to the clubhouse, LaRoche decided to call it quits on March 16th. After Adam Eaton‘s comments that the White Sox lost a “leader” in Drake and Chris Sale‘s claim that the team was “bold-faced lied to by someone we were suppose to trust”, fears emerged of not only a division in the clubhouse, but also that a front office vs. players war was about to ensue before a pitch had even been thrown in 2016.

White Sox acquire James Shields, DFA Mat Latos

I think we can all agree that Mat Latos was simply terrible. Just like the rest of the South side crew, he started off hot, giving the White Sox hope that Don Cooper’s pitching magic was able to salvage a player many felt was dead on arrival. But as the calendar changed from April to May, things went south for Latos, who started six more games in a pinstripe uniform to the tune of a 7.62 ERA in 31 innings pitched. This problem needed to be solved.

Alas! James Shields, aka “Big Game James!” failed to provide a respite after coming over in a major trade. Shields had struggled a bit after hitting a sudden rough patch in San Diego, and the White Sox front office thought they could possibly capitalize on this tiny blip on Shields’ radar to get a discount and have Cooper do the rest. If this was 2009, perhaps that logic would have held up. As it was, and the White Sox sent failed starter Erik Johnson (who recently underwent Tommy John surgery) and infielder Fernando Tatis Jr. to San Diego for Shields. The Padres even threw in $22 million of Shields salary, what a bargain!

Wrong. The struggles Shields endured during his final days in San Diego were more foreshadowing than blips on the radar, and his struggles became even worse as the dingers sailed farther in a smaller ballpark (31 in 114.1 innings). Somehow, Mat Latos and his 4.62 ERA on the season seemed like that one person whose phone number you wish you hadn’t thrown away…

Jimmy Rollins…

Veteran leadership was the guise under which the acquisition of 37-year-old shortstop Jimmy Rollins was sold to the White Sox fan base. It took the famed shortstop of yesteryear 41 games before the Sox brass realized that his .221/.295/.329 slash line were not sufficient among a lineup that also included names such as Dioner Navarro and Avisail Garcia and their less than stellar offensive marks. Rollins may certainly have brought veteran leadership, wisdom, and experience to the clubhouse, but batting him–often at the top of the order–in more than a handful of games for the first two months of the season didn’t slow the Sox slide down from their hot start. Hey, at least we can all go get Jimmy Rollins Sox shirseys on the clearance rack though, right?

The Justin Morneau Thing

Yes, it’s a thing because on June 9th, when the White Sox began to realize that they were at the crossroads of “We Can Get Out of This Slump Avenue” and “This Season Is Over If We Don’t Move Quickly Lane”, they decided to sign a 35-year old, banged-up first baseman in Justin Morneau. Sounds bad already, but there was more! He wouldn’t even be able to join the team after rehabbing from an injury (Sounding even better!) until after the All-Star Break.

Morneau was the red flag that was waved before the white one was later unfurled. He was everything the White Sox aim for, and a symbol of everything wrong with this team’s idea of fixing a poor situation. Some felt a twinge of hope that perhaps by some unbounded miracle Morneau would play the way he did when he was 25 because baseball can be magical sometimes, but others saw the White Sox take the wrong turn at the crossroads.

Matt Davidson, Charlie Tilson, and the barrage of ruined major league debuts

The White Sox were already having a weird season injury-wise, after Jason Coats‘ bloody outfield collision during his debut, and catcher Kevan Smith being placed on the disabled before even officially appearing in a single game, but the worst two of all certainly had to be Charlie Tilson and Matt Davidson‘s debuts.

Davidson has been in the White Sox system for a very long time. After posting strong power numbers and lackluster performances in all other aspects of the game for parts of three seasons, his status as future star third basemen fizzled, and has remained dormant for quite some time. Davidson finally made his debut with the White Sox on June 30th, and while running the bases in his first major league game, he fractured his foot. Goodbye season, goodbye Matt Davidson.

Tilson, who was originally drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals in 2011, was traded to the White Sox for reliever Zach Duke at the 2016 trade deadline. Tilson made his major league debut with the White Sox on Aug. 2, and right after collecting his first major league hit in the third inning, two innings later he curiously fell over while chasing a liner to the gap. The effort had torn his left hamstring, requiring season-ending surgery. 

“I can’t even imagine,” Sox manager Robin Ventura said. “This is a dream. He gets called up, gets a hit in his first at-bat and after that it all gets taken away from you for a while. It’s tough. All the guys on the team, as much as you want to put it out of your mind, you feel for the kid.” 

One can only find so many ways to say “bizarre,” and this season exhausted them all.

“We’re mired in mediocrity”

Unforgettable is probably the word I would use to describe how I felt the moment I read this quote from the only person in which I still had unwavering faith in the White Sox organization, general manager Rick Hahn. It was just before the trade deadline, and the White Sox still had over two months of a season of baseball left to play, yet the only person for which myself and many others looked to for direction through the murkiness of 2016 had found a way to eloquently dress up the phrase “It’s over.” I’d known for a while, much like many Sox fans, that the season was nearly over. The hope still hung by a thread though. But Hahn’s words on that afternoon cut that frayed little thread for me — with half of a season of baseball left to play. White Sox fans didn’t know how or what to feel, and despondency quickly took the place of hope on the South side.

Chris Sale cuts up an entire team’s jerseys a few hours before first pitch

After a week that felt as though it had lasted a decade in the lives of White Sox fans, another bizarre moment occurred. ESPN updates lit up phone screens across the city as Chris Sale abruptly left the White Sox clubhouse an hour before his scheduled start. Coming less than one week after Hahn’s white flag waving comments sparked conversations on whether Sale would be moved at the deadline or not, and days before the deadline, this moment felt as though the thin walls of sanity still propped up at 35th & Shields and around Sox fandom during these perilous times were crumbling down.

For a time during his inexplicable absence from the clubhouse, it seemed he must have been traded, confirming the dire situation long feared: that the organization really had to trade their franchise player. But, as it turned out, Sale simply had a meltdown, and destroyed the entire team’s uniforms just before the start of the game because they were “uncomfortable”. Just when folks thought things couldn’t get any weirder for the White Sox, they did.

White Sox fans have suffered their share of heartbreak over the last decade, but it’s safe to say that 2016 has provided them with a vast array of reasons to feel like this year was unique. From a 23-10 start to Guaranteed Rate Field… 2016 saw everything. Bring it on, 2017! It can’t get much weirder than this (But it still can).

The White Sox haven’t had to venture out into the insane world of free agent starting pitching acquisition. Chris Sale, Jose Quintana, and Carlos Rodon were acquired for two first round picks and in minor league free agency.  Sure, they’ve had to scramble to fix the fourth and fifth slots in the rotation, and even now those slots don’t inspire a ton of confidence, but that’s pretty normal.  There are plenty of teams who have spent literally hundreds of millions of dollars and/or massive amounts of trade resources trying to replicate what the White Sox have in the rotation and failed — e.g. Boston, Arizona, or even the bizarre failures of the Minnesota Twins, murdering themselves with $50-80 million mediocrities.

When you only need to fill a fifth starter spot, you can do perfectly fine just digging through the bargain bin aggressively. Mat Latos was a worthwhile flyer for the cost, they got a good/lucky April out of him, and then abandoned him once he stopped being effective. Miguel Gonzalez was scooped up even while Latos was thriving, just as a hedge, and that’s actually worked out quite well. Indeed, in terms of the rotation, the White Sox front office should hold their heads high. They have struck gold at the top end and have gone on the attack to give them reinforcements.

Then you look on the other side of the ball and you wonder if it’s a completely different front office in charge.

Well, first let’s start with the good news:

Tim Anderson has been really, really fun. It doesn’t really matter how you look at it. From a results standpoint, he is hitting .304/.310/.488 at shortstop, which is good for a .278 TAv and roughly in the top half of the league in that category, even in this sudden Golden Age of Shortstops. Aesthetically it has been even better, with his much-hyped athleticism playing as advertised. It’s very early yet, but so far Anderson has represented a non-pitching draft and development success that has been virtually extinct on the South Side since George W. Bush took office.

The shortstop situation is an example of how you can cure a flaw in the roster in a very healthy way, and for White Sox fans who don’t really pay attention to other teams, this is how most teams plug a hole–from within. Moreover, even though it was risky, the White Sox’ offseason approach here was very defensible, albeit risky. The position was a liability, but they did have their top prospect racing through the system and potentially on the horizon. They had a competent understudy in the form of Tyler Saladino on hand, and so they threw a minor league deal out to a veteran who would theoretically complement Saladino’s virtues and hope that would tide them over until Anderson was ready.

The risk was a calculated one in the sense that you were throwing two mediocrities at the problem, each hedging against the other, and because shortstop has such a low bar for production. Granted, Anderson may have needed all of 2016 and even some of 2017 in the minors, but I don’t think it was crazy to do this instead of gambling on, say, Ian Desmond. Desmond has had a renaissance in Texas, but his peripherals had been collapsing for years, and there was real reason to believe he wasn’t worth forfeiting a draft pick.*

*This is notwithstanding the fact that I think Zack Burdi is a disappointing result for said pick. I doubt Burdi was Plan A for the pick, and I’m frustrated that this is how it turned out, sacking the pick for someone as volatile as Desmond would mean surrendering the ability to exploit draft opportunities. That they didn’t necessarily materialize is not the flaw in this strategy.

Similarly, Melky Cabrera, Todd Frazier, and Brett Lawrie have more or less been what you’d realistically expect from them.  The troika of modest trade and free agency adds have been somewhere between average to above average while representing one third of the lineup.  That’s great! Good job, everybody.

That’s the good news.

Since the 23-10 start, the White Sox have been–to put it charitably–limping along with less talent than they need, and what’s infuriating is that none of the problems they’ve had are a surprise. Avisail Garcia has been one of the worst players in the majors. Again. Alex Avila got hurt, and if that startles you, I would suggest you don’t have much interest in baseball.  Austin Jackson was a glove-only option, but really, that the role he was cast to play.

Remember, as soon as Adam LaRoche retired, Avisail Garcia was Plan A at DH. In Spring it looked like the organization was willing to take the same aggressive bargain bin dumpster diving that they have applied to the back of the rotation. Scooping up guys who have succeeded in the majors in the past, targeting contracts that cellar dwellers want to get rid of, etc. Travis Ishikawa and Jerry Sands are pretty poor options, even by those standards, but they were bodies from outside the organization that were brought in to see if they could get any sort of boost at all. Sands wound up with a K% above 40, and Ishikawa never even played in the majors.

Then the White Sox…stopped trying to solve the problem. Justin Morneau is the first and only major league player they have added on the offensive side of the ball of any consequence, and he has yet to actually play for the team.  Meanwhile, James Loney became available on waivers and was untouched. Even though the Padres added him on a minor league deal, he was clearly still freely available, as the Mets acquired him for “future considerations.”

Loney has hit .277/.336/.438 for the Mets, which is only slightly better than his 2014 numbers, and is basically a photocopy of his career averages.  So, even if the White Sox say, “Well, we were counting on LaRoche and we were blindsided by his retirement,” there is little excuse as to why they didn’t pounce on someone like Loney–who was definitely available–after LaRoche quit.

Similarly, Minnesota signed Robbie Grossman to a minor league deal on May 17th of this year, months after LaRoche had retired. He has a .421 OBP.

Now, there are reasons to argue against acquiring both of these guys. Before their short spurts good performance this year, you could argue that Loney was washed up based on his 2015* and Grossman was a failed prospect, although it is worth pointing out that the Astros kept him instead of J.D. Martinez and he was a BP Top 100 prospect once upon a time.

*Note: The White Sox were evidently counting on Adam LaRoche, who is both older than Loney, and was worse in 2015, so I’m confused as to why LaRoche would be acceptable but Loney wasn’t an option.

So the White Sox missed on these guys, not necessarily because they should have known they’d each be plus bats, but rather because they sat on their hands.  They didn’t do anything.  The same organization that added Jacob Turner, James Shields, Mat Latos, Anthony Ranaudo, and Miguel Gonzalez when it was clear that John Danks couldn’t hack it anymore did absolutely nothing to help the disastrous DH situation for three months.

And it all circles back to this offseason, when the White Sox did not add any free agents of consequence for the outfield or DH.  The defense I saw from many on social media was that the White Sox could always add at the trade deadline instead.

Even ignoring how an organization like the White Sox cannot afford to keep acquiring talent in trades–how useful would Marcus Semien or Trayce Thompson be for this roster right now, even if one or both of them did bring something potentially helpful?–and even ignoring the fact that if you wait till the end of July you punt more than half the season without needed upgrades: The market does not always match what you need if you bank on this strategy.

As of Saturday, July 9th, Sandy Alderson explicitly said that there just aren’t that many sellers out there period.  The only team he would cite as a seller as of now is Atlanta. Even if there are more–I bet Tampa or Cincinnati would listen to offers–they can afford to wait until July 31, or the end of August or even until this winter to sell players unless they get an offer that suits them. And, what if the players who are a good fit get hurt, like Josh Reddick did?

The White Sox decided they’d like to roll the dice on the remote chance that Avisail Garcia could be adequate, or that the market would provide them exactly what they needed and when they needed it.  In the meantime, they sat on their hands, refusing to make any additions that could have helped bridge the gap until a more permanent solution was found. If the excuse for inaction is that they didn’t have any targets they could pry away for a reasonable price, the organization still only has themselves to blame. This was an extremely obvious and likely risk to their “strategy” of doing nothing all winter, and doing nothing once Adam LaRoche quit.

If they had aggressively rifled through the bargain bin, I’m pretty sure they could have found someone–anyone–who could beat Avisail Garcia’s .234 TAv.  Maybe it would have been a Robbie Grossman, who would be the best hitter on the team right now.  Maybe it would have been James Loney, who, by TAv, would also be the best hitter on the team right now. And this is an organization that realized that there was a problem at the back of the rotation and did exactly what they needed to do to make their offseason strategy make any sense at all, but wouldn’t for DH.

I can’t think of an explanation, other than the fact that maybe they really thought Avisail Garcia could hack it?  If that is the explanation, then this team needs to take a hard look in the mirror as to why they seem to be the last ones to figure out that a position player isn’t a major leaguer time and time again. Or why their Plan As are so frequently underwhelming and paired with no credible Plan B.

There are problems that can’t be fixed. Catchers are really hard to find, for example, at any time, and if your catching situation is poor you’re not at much of a competitive disadvantage, because most teams have a bad catching situation. But if you can’t find a DH who can post a TAv better than .234 then…I suppose I have nothing else to say.

It was a risky strategy, based far more on hope than calculation, and what they were gambling with was yet another of the peak years of Chris Sale, Jose Quintana, and Adam Eaton. It doesn’t look like this gamble paired with baffling passivity is going to pay off.  And maybe they pay a trade deadline premium for a bat–impact or not–at the end of July, but I suspect the damage has already been done.

Lead Image Credit: Matt Marton // USA Today Sports Images

Perhaps now would be a good time to sit back and admire it, after he just showed the world that he’s a work in progress, with a lot of progress still needed. Monday night against the badly slumping Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Rodon had the shortest Sox start since Neal Cotts walked the park at Yankees Stadium in 2003. Rodon was mercifully pulled after a third of an inning but not before doing his darnedest to prove beyond the shadow of the doubt that he was going to miss by a foot to the armside on every other throw until Robin Ventura forced him to stop.

Rodon is never going to be anything more than average at the very best with his command, and even that would represent a triumph over the violent mechanics and inconsistencies that have been present in his delivery throughout his career, and which reared their head fully on Monday night. Scouting friend of the blog Mauricio Rubio from 2080 Baseball, noted Rodon’s head whack was more pronounced, along with a stiffer back through his start, and given how messy he was last week in Minnesota, it’s no surprise things crested here.

Not to minimize a clearly awful and troubling night for someone serving as the Sox No. 3 starter this year, and a guy who ideally surpasses Jose Quintana by the end of the season, but if anyone was going to completely lose their mechanics in a start this year, it was going to be Rodon, and if anyone was going to have it be a natural point in their development, it was going to be Rodon. And if anyone can straighten out and strike out 10 guys his next time out…well, this is getting repetitive.

It’ll be a fun update from Rodon’s throw day this week with Don Cooper, because it will certainly merit some attention.

2. There was real human cost to Rodon’s wildness, as J.B. Shuck got optioned to Triple-A to free up space for another bullpen arm after Jake Petricka, Zach Putnam and Dan Jennings (49 pitches!) all logged several innings of mop-up.

Shuck has lost some of his place on the team so far this year. His scratch outfield defense and speed is not the godsend it was to a team that now starts Austin Jackson, and has Tyler Saladino on the bench. And his hegemony over opportunities against left-handed pitching is infringed upon by Jerry Sands. Starting out the year by reaching base once in 11 trips isn’t helping either, so while getting optioned seems like a minor inconvenience, it carries a real threat for Shuck, and it’s all because Rodon couldn’t throw a strike.

3. Credit to Rodon for momentarily distracting from the moribund White Sox offense, which has now scored five runs in four games, and hasn’t even scored as many as four runs in a week. It can feel like nitpicking since they are 8-5 and superficially off to the superficial hot start they desperately needed, but three runs per game and the worst TAv in all of baseball are very real reasons for concern.

Chief among these concerns would be Todd Frazier, who is now 2-for-23 over the last week with 10 strikeouts, replete with a lot of worrisome whiffs on fastballs in the zone. Early, unstabilized pitch whiff data indicates he’s certainly in a bad stretch of whiffing on ~15% of hard stuff–certainly a bad spike–but not unprecedented for cold snaps in his career. Combined with admitted pressing and poor plate judgement, and we have an awful, interminable slump from the heart of the offense, for a franchise that really cannot endure another big-ticket offensive addition tanking on them.

4. It’s natural over the course of a season for holes to emerge in the lineups and rotations of contending teams. There are too many variables with injuries, declining veterans, disappointing youngsters, and random down years for even the best teams to not have a reason to add at the trade deadline.

Where the Sox are not done any favors is that this natural process is taking place alongside their work-in-progress DH situation. Adam LaRoche‘s sudden retirement always necessitated the addition of another left-handed bat, and Avisail Garcia is more than likely not going to develop into a capable major league hitter, nor a suitable platoon half. This situation could have been addressed all offseason, but instead was allowed to fester, and is now presumed to be something they will be on the lookout to fix with some of their new-found surplus money as the season develops. But having a built-in fixer-upper position heading into the year gives them extra work on top of the distinct possibilities that the catching platoon remains dreadful, Jackson’s bat continues its downward trend, or shortstop remains a sinkhole and Tim Anderson is not ready. The Sox currently look at least a bat short, but could be distinctly in need of two by mid-year.

Which is all to say, they really cannot afford this Frazier situation to tank on them.

5. Good Morning America ‏@GMA 2h2 hours ago

:/

The prospect of this incredibly bizarre and unique situation getting played up as a heartwarming father-son story and not a dispatch from The Land of the Super Rich and Oddly Employed is disconcerting, but at least it offers the chance of another extremely weird LaRoche revelation.

UPDATE: No it did not. Apparently LaRoche and a journeyman relief pitcher working as undercover agents collecting intel on southeast Asian sex trafficking rings was the last great reveal of this saga. For shame.

Lead Photo Image: Kim Klement // USA Today Sports Images

He’s still a raw talent, as shown by four unintentional walks in six innings, even with a tight zone, but when your stuff is so completely overwhelming to lefties…

“Left-handed hitters are now 28-for-150 lifetime against Rodon, with 0 homers and 12 RBIs”
-Scott Merkin

…it reduces the need for precision.

Rodon had basically no control of anything offspeed at all Wednesday night, landing just nine sliders for strikes (all of them swung on), and barely even touching his changeup. Optimistically, Rodon is a complete mess, a work very early in progress, and still basically unhittable, albeit by a presently terrible offense.

2. Rodon was pulled after a tight sixth inning at 107 pitches, which seemed to place a nice bow on an outing that was tiptoeing around disaster more than the final score. It also seemed like the type of situation last year where Rodon would have had the chance to start the seventh inning with the bullpen waiting behind him, especially after he was handed a 3-0 lead in the top of the inning.

The Sox led the league in pitches per start, and 100+ pitch starts by a country mile in 2015, and were also the only club that averaged over 100 pitches per start. They were, aggressive, but also healthy and–save for Jeff Samardzija–very productive. Still, there are signs of them taming it slightly. Thanks to 104 and 107-pitch outing for Chris Sale, cautious pulls of Jose Quintana at 96 and 100 pitches, and extremly gentle treatment of Mat Latos in his opener, the Sox average start was at 99.4 pitches through Tuesday. That’s low enough to actually be behind multiple other MLB teams, including the Royals, who have no business being at the top of this list.

The Sox methods of health maintenance are well-revered at this point, but more caution isn’t unwelcome. The Sox have finished either first or second in baseball in pitches per start for each of the last three years.

3. Fantasizing about every recognizable name that crawls across the waiver wire isn’t healthy or advisable. Especially when those names are someone who hasn’t been any good since 2014, like 34-year-old Michael Morse, or worse, injured and unwanted Pablo Sandoval. But when the DH combination is Avisail Garcia and Jerry Sands–however you feel about his 1-4, HR, 3 K performance Wednesday, his skill set is redundant wit Garcia’s–there’s potential for improvement with just about any character.

Despite Morse’s vagabond recent ways, his multi-year TAv vs. righties is .271, while Garcia’s is .238 and Sands is under .200. Sandoval is the best of the group (.281) but that’s a case of where your eyes and your wallet need to sweep the projections right off your desk. Morse would be an interesting gamble, no small part due to the fact that he could be quickly abandoned, since this is really an issue to swing their Adam LaRoche cash at.

4. Alex Avila ducked punishment on this final swing from Oswaldo Arcia in the ninth of Wednesday’s game, but not until he already got struck flush on two backswings. This is something that Avila in particular, does not need to have happen.

Tim Anderson‘s mysterious absence from Triple-A action now has the explanation of a wrist sprain, so it probably would have been better if he had actually just disappeared on a vision quest. It’s not a serious injury, but any stumble is a blow to the accelerated timeline scenario, which is both a good thing for Anderson’s development and a bad thing if you are worried about Jimmy Rollins‘ bat (.192 TAv so far).

5. LaRoche’s long profile with ESPN about his decision to retire due to being told to stop bring his son to the clubhouse is seemingly the last bizarre chapter of this exceedingly bizarre tale. It reiterates the account of LaRoche’s decision coming after being told to stop bringing his son entirely, rather than simply making him more scarce, which again highlights Kenny Williams’ role in bringing the situation to a head, but also makes bizarre side trips in painting the tremendously popular LaRoche as an iconoclast.

In some efforts to serve this narrative, the profile flops, since LaRoche’s love of hunting, rustic life and deep evangelical faith is exceedingly normal both for a guy from rural Kansas and by MLB clubhouse standards, but the revelation that LaRoche did undercover reconnaissance work for an anti-sex trafficking non-profit in southeast Asia while under contract is…well, how do you finish that sentence?

In all, LaRoche seems like a very genuine person, who reaches his decisions with good intentions, which is at times jarring and informative to witness, since they are so far apart from any position I would ever take on my own.

This is the part where I feel like there should be a concluding note, or larger assessment of how this reflects on the team or how to treat these cases going forward, but this may not be possible with the LaRoche saga. I think we’re just done here.

Lead Photo Image: Bruce Kluckhohn // USA Today Sports Images

This mentality extends from everyday fans to the most powerful judicial body in the land. Baseball is exempt from federal antitrust laws because the Supreme Court didn’t want to think of it as a business.

But business people know that baseball is big business. The Yankees franchise alone is worth $3.2 billion, according to the latest annual Forbes report titled, “The Business of Baseball.”

Every once in a while, a news story appears that reorients baseball fans’ thinking a bit. Helping them imagine baseball players as employees, in situations relatable to their own workplaces.

The Adam LaRoche saga is a prime example. In wake of news that club president Kenny Williams confronted the Sox DH about his son’s presence at the team’s facilities, the Chicago Tribune reported, “[V]ocal Sox fans seem to agree with [Williams’] decision to curb Drake LaRoche’s clubhouse time. Many believe it’s a workplace issue.”

For whatever reason, stories like this strike a collective nerve. And fans are often quick to judge athletes who are seemingly overpaid, entitled, and oblivious to real work in the real world—especially those who significantly underperform, like LaRoche.

But rarely does this contempt extend to coddled sports team owners. It should.

The White Sox ownership group, led by Jerry Reinsdorf, are not necessarily given special favors in the workplace (although accommodations were made by the club for Reinsdorf’s grandson), but in real, material terms—i.e. money!—by the state and city, in ways that businesses employing most Sox fans couldn’t dream.

For example, how many Sox fans’ half-billion dollar business facilities were built, maintained, and renovated upon request by the state?

Because U.S. Cellular Field, the White Sox place of business, is paid for by taxpayers. Every year, the city and state contribute $5 million apiece to maintain the ballpark. An additional $40 million or more comes in annually from hotel taxes. And when the Sox request stadium upgrades, like new video boards, a legal agreement obligates the state to pony up.

And how many Sox fans’ businesses don’t pay property taxes? Or are exempt from tax increases?

Although built almost exclusively for private use, U.S. Cellular Field is publicly owned. Therefore, taxing bodies receive no revenue from the property. And the White Sox agreement with the state protects the team against any future tax increases or new taxes imposed by the city, county, or state.

Most of this information can be found in the White Sox management agreement and annual reports from the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority, some of which can be found here.

Also, the White Sox, like all MLB teams, benefit from an industry structure that functions like a cartel (as a result of the aforementioned antitrust exemption). Through collusion, MLB owners have been able to leverage things like, additional television revenues, and reduced player (i.e. employee) salaries via team control and arbitration.

Because they are propped up by taxpayer subsidies and legalized price fixing, White Sox operators have remained highly profitable, and have seen the estimated value of their franchise triple over ten years, all while being pretty bad at their business: assembling a successful baseball team.

Likewise, Adam LaRoche was pretty bad at his business—hitting—last season. And fans turned on him when he then scoffed at his locker room privileges being revoked.

I don’t want to conflate the special treatment of LaRoche and the White Sox—one has an effect on team chemistry in sport and the other on the local economy and distribution of taxpayer resources—other than to say this:

If business performance is the standard by which fans justify special privileges in the work world, the White Sox should be catching hell right now.

Lead Photo Credit: Rick Osentoski // USA Today Sports Images

The spirit of refusal to pin this on one person is understandable, and I agree with it, but there’s a better alternative. Finding fault for the organization looking ridiculous and alienating their fans by turning a clubhouse policy change into a civil war can be spread all over.

First, there’s Adam Eaton, who redefined the concept of overstating a point by calling 14-year-old Drake LaRoche “a leader” that the White Sox had lost. That major league clubhouses are alien organisms that cannot be compared to normal workplaces is a truism that players are understandably diligent about emphasizing, but the Sox roster repeatedly overdid it with comments that had no chance of coming off as anything but ridiculous to casual fans and seasoned industry observers alike. Worse yet, this time it came from a voice that previously has been trusted to be relatable about goings with the team.

The players who liked Drake really liked him, liked having him around and are aggrieved about him being removed in what they see as an unjust manner, but this kind of talk only discredits the team, rather than burnishing the reputation of a 14-year-old

In that vein, there’s Chris Sale, who had the right and responsibility as a franchise player on the roster to confront Kenny Williams, and forcefully, but came off just as detached from reality as Eaton did just with the severity of his tone. Sale is such an elite talent that there’s a degree that any reaction he has is legitimized because management needs to assuage him, but “reasonable,” “level-headed” and “measured” will never be qualities tagged to him after he stood in front of a self-made LaRoche altar at his locker and escalated this dispute to the level of calling for the team’s executive vice president to be fired.

Of course there’s actually Kenny Williams himself. Beyond critiquing the wisdom of taking it upon himself to commandeer a clubhouse situation, it’s simple enough to say that if multiple players come out of a team meeting calling you a liar, or your media accounts of events inaccurate, it was an unsuccessful run of conflict management. Williams intentionally positioned himself to be the bad guy in what he knew would be an unpopular team decision, and now he’s the team executive at the center of the most bizarre MLB dispute in years.

Williams’ role in this conflict strangely drowns out manager Robin Ventura, who appears in retellings of the Sox slide into madness when he diffuses a potential work stoppage, and retained the clubhouse’s respect, but is mostly uninvolved in the process of fielding player concerns about Drake’s presence in the clubhouse, or perhaps more importantly, on the field, and isn’t around in the saga of Williams asking LaRoche to reduce his son’s presence, then angrily trying to revoke it entirely when there was no sign of that reduction taking place. It’s hard to tell if Ventura is unassertive or was just underutilized, but for a guy whose merits as a clubhouse presence are typically touted when his in-game tactics are questioned, being a bit player while the clubhouse detonates is uninspiring stuff.

Finally, there’s Reinsdorf himself, who has finally rolled in and committed everyone to silence only after every fissure in the organization was laid bare. He is perhaps the only figure in the franchise centralizing enough to mediate the situation, but by now the notion that all the team’s divisions and damage to their league reputation could be patched in a single weekend seems beyond fatuous.

Maybe the only major Sox figure who avoids blame is Rick Hahn, the general manager who made the agreement with LaRoche which the fracture of kickstarted this whole mess. Sale even gave him a nod of improvement during his immolation of Williams, noting “Rick, I truly believe is trying to build a winning team.”

It was a nice exception to make, but Hahn’s reputation as a skilled actor swamped by mitigating factors didn’t need another entry.

Lead Photo Credit: Dennis Wierzbicki // USA Today Sports Images

In sum, Reinsdorf thinks entire week-long conflagration — which found its way to national headlines and included both LaRoche and Light of the Franchise, Chris Sale calling Kenny Williams a liar, and the team threatening to sit out a game in protest — was a big misunderstanding, and no one is at fault.

Things are so resolved now that he does not want anyone in the organization to discuss the matter anymore, which, given how this story extended itself for the last few days mostly due to players lashing out and saying phenomenally weird things about their clubhouse, was probably the most important detail all along.

Not having the public aware of White Sox turmoil has always been of equal importance as preventing actual turmoil, and much more attainable.

It would have been foolish to expect Reinsdorf coming in to settle matters would have produced anything close to a full audit of the situation being released to prying eyes, but even this strains credibility.

Lead Photo Credit: Dennis Wierzbicki, USA Today Sports Images

While LaRoche was a very long shot to rebound in any meaningful way in 2016, as PECOTA had him pegged for a TAv of .260, there is a non-crazy universe where one points to his .304 TAv in 2014 and attributes his awful 2015 to injuries.  With the White Sox finally filing his retirement papers, however, we will never get an answer as to what he could do in 2016.

The timing of this fiasco remains poor, as Pedro Alvarez had just been scooped up and added to Baltimore’s collection of all-or-nothing lefty sluggers.  Combined with Justin Morneau‘s surgery keeping him from even swinging a bat until June and Marlon Byrd signing with Cleveland, and there isn’t a whole lot left to choose from.

A team with quality depth would be happy to hide Melky Cabrera‘s glove at DH and just use LaRoche’s departure as a way to improve team defense.  The White Sox are not a team with quality depth, and unless something changes, they’re going to have either Cabrera or Avisail Garcia lumbering around ineffectually in the outfield one way or the other.  One could imagine more aggressive use of J.B. Shuck as a defensive replacement (a configuration of Shuck-Austin Jackson-Adam Eaton would be the best defensive outfield the White Sox have run out in a long time), but unfortunately none of Garcia, Jerry Sands or Shuck is a very appetizing option against right-handed pitching.  Indeed, unless you are the biggest Travis Ishikawa fan on the planet, there aren’t any usable left-handed platoon bats in the organization, or indeed, anywhere on the horizon.

Perhaps RotoWorld is correct that the White Sox simply do not presently have a DH, although I suppose Garcia fields like one.

Trade speculation is an easy way to sound like a moron — this shields me from being a moron if I say something dumb, right? — but the most attractive, realistic option looks like Matt Adams from the Cardinals.  The most obvious benefit is that he shares a name with one of our authors, but he has the potential to be a plus lefty bat who can spell Jose Abreu at first base.  Although St. Louis denied it this winter, it appears Matt Holliday is likely to get PAs at first this year, which means, with Brandon Moss on board, Adams could be the odd man out.  Granted, just because St. Louis can afford to part with Adams doesn’t mean they want to do so, but his projected .268 TAv would fit very nicely in the space recently vacated by Mr. LaRoche.

Given that Adams is under team control until 2019, and he will only turn 30 at the very end of that control, the Cardinals can ask for a return that will sting.  Something built around Trey Michalczewski and Jordan Guerrero may get most of the way there.  Those guys are nice, but are likely worth sacrificing in exchange for a guy who may give you ~1,500 quality PAs over the next three seasons.

*While the uncertainty as to how this will impact the team moving forward (if at all) is a source of discomfort, I take solace from Chris Sale singling out both Rick Hahn and Robin Ventura for praise yesterday.  If it is indeed purely an issue between Sale (and perhaps other individuals on the team) and Kenny Williams, then that should be fairly straightforward to navigate.  It also undercuts the narrative that swept Twitter yesterday that Sale had reached the point of no return, hated the whole organization, and would need to be traded immediately.  One is left to guess how well this sentiment correlates to a given speculator’s desire to have their team trade for Sale at pennies on the dollar…

Photo Credit – USA TODAY Images by Joe Camporeale.