More amusingly, the Sox finished dead last in the coaching rating, which is purely a rebuke of Robin Ventura, who apparently had become the biggest pariah in major sports to reach the point where he was allowed to politely step down. While fans remember 2005 well enough for the Sox to finish 35th in “championships won or expected within the lifetime of current fans” (though Ethan only barely fits in that group), and are 27th in affordability, they are also 116th in fan relations, owing to an eight-year playoff drought and no clear way forward.

If avoiding the suffering and disinterest that comes during the worst of a hard rebuild has been a reason to avoid that direction in the past, it will be interesting to see how fans tuning out on a middle of the road team, and becoming more sympathetic to teardowns due to the success across town will factor in. Not that it’s the correct move here, but it’s bound to be the correct move at some point before we’re all dead.

2. MLB Trade Rumors’ deep dive into Jose Abreu’s arbitration situation is…interesting by late-October non-playoff standards. There is some confusion on whether Abreu‘s 2016 salary will be calculated with his signing bonus averaged over all six years of his deal or just divided over his the first three. But that would only produce a $1.5 million swing in the 2016 salary figure that next year’s salary–should he enter arbitration–would be based on, and him getting anything more than a nominal raise as a show of goodwill seems functionally nil. Because a first-year arbitration player of his caliber would be unlikely to earn more than he already is making.

Abreu seems likely to opt for arbitration as it gives him an opportunity significantly raise his earning potential with a return to form over the next three years, but none of the heavy financial lifting of him doing that is taking place in 2017.

3. It appears not everyone loved my dismissive tone toward former Wisconsin basketball star and meatball White Sox fan Frank Kaminsky trolling the Cubs by wearing a Steve Bartman jersey. I am certainly of not of the mind that everyone needs to band together and root for the Chicago team, nor of any real recommendation of a proper way to engage with this expensive and unfulfilling consumer product in any way.

This was more of a word of caution, that perhaps, just maybe, with the Cubs being a rampaging, 103-win team that is one win away from the World Series and set to face Corey Kluber and a collection of No. 4 and No. 5 starters in the next round, now is not the peak time to be setting yourself up to be dunked on endlessly online when their near-imminent ultimate triumph comes to pass.

Maybe you are of heartier stock, maybe your commitment to trolling the Cubs is life-defining, and when faced with this inevitable cataclysm, your inclination is to stand athwart it, rather than scurry for survival. Or maybe it’s just easier for you to just slip offline for a few weeks until the heat dies down than it is for me. Anyway, it was just a recommendation. You don’t have to only kick ‘em when they’re down, but maybe don’t try to kick ‘em when they’re armed and mowing down everyone in the room.

4. Matt Davidson‘s foot still isn’t even all the way healed yet. He broke at the end of June running the bases. I remain unconvinced about the notion of his swing changes bringing back his prospect status, but the Sox were really thorough in having all the players they could learn something from by giving extended major league tryouts, just completely shatter.

In 2014, Avisail Garcia‘s freak shoulder injury kept them from getting a long look with which to assess him during a throwaway season, and they wound up choosing to figure out if he could be a starter on a contender while simultaneously trying to contend. But I’m sure that won’t happen again.

5. We haven’t delved into it enough here, but will be doing so increasingly going forward, so I wanted to link again to Jeff Long’s breakdown on spin rate from last month. Chris Sale figures prominently into the discussion of pitchers with ideal stuff.

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

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 Sox somehow managed to cap Robin Ventura’s departure with a magnanimous final news conference, where the once beloved former star was able to spin an extremely curious report about having the ‘choice’ of whether to continue in 2017, into a graceful, unselfish decision to end an unsuccessful run for the sake of the franchise. So why, with all of these good, if not actually completely franchise-curing steps taken, have the White Sox only bolstered their status as an enigmatic franchise?

Well, because they’re definitely still the White Sox, and doing the bare minimum in a truly inscrutable manner is only so convincing. Ventura is unfailingly professional and well-liked, but many baseball men who carry those descriptors have been dismissed from manager jobs for stretches of disappointment far less pronounced than four-straight losing seasons, and two-straight flops in seasons that began with hopes for contention.

Moving on from Ventura is what any organization would do, and while it’s a nice personal touch that the Sox gave him some measure of his control on his way out, the step of leaking it to the USA Today days ahead of time was at best just bizarre, but mostly a wholly unnecessary machination and public relations hit. Ventura was without a contract for 2017, and an announcement of a peaceful parting never needed three days of false panic that the Sox still did not realize the listlessness of their last few years.

Renteria is an objectively good hire, and possibly someone they would struggle to compete for if he was not already in-house, yet carrying the future replacement for a failing manager on staff for a year is an undeniably bizarre practice, possibly a hindrance to Renteria engineering a true overhaul, and another coaching change being made without any external interviews or curiosity about how the rest of the league conducts business, does little to assuage concerns that this organization looks inwards and only sees solutions, rather than problems.

Bruce Levine’s report that Kenny Williams is staying, and not getting dumped, or stepping down at Monday morning’s post-season news conference is wholly unsurprising. But while Williams’ scalp is hardly some imperative for real progress at 35th & Shields, something wholly surprising is necessary to change the view of this franchise from one that has either failed to realize their structural failings, or simply lacks the will or the means to address them. They still sit at the same impasse between being so lost as to require a rebuild, and so close to competing to finally inspiring major spending and investment. Until that changes, even positive steps that still reflect the same insularity and strangeness that has become all too familiar, will find diminishing returns from fans, media, and maybe even some of these equally inscrutable blogs.

Monday would seem to be too soon to put any proof behind whatever the Sox intentions are for changing their stars, but the Sox would be well-advised to start proving us wrong.

Lead Image Credit: Patrick Gorski // USA Today Sports Images

It started with a Bob Nightengale writing that, although contract negotiations had not yet begun, the front office had decided to bring Robin Ventura back if he wanted to continue managing.  Although Dan Hayes sort of denied it, and even if the language between the two reports don’t technically contradict each other, White Sox fans took to Twitter and berated the team’s social media intern for the remainder of the evening.

So, Mr. Nightengale updated his piece, this time scolding the fanbase for daring to question the organization for its beautiful loyalty and contorting his narrative to defend Ventura while acknowledging that the team has been an abject failure under his stewardship.  The piece cites a “high-ranking White Sox executive,” which calls for speculation about motivation and identity that isn’t very fruitful, but it is ironic that a front office that prides itself on its secrecy–a sort of superficial false cunning as they stumble about the league getting duped by savvier organizations–decides to break its silence purely to insult fans for pointing out the unassailable fact that this team has been a trainwreck under the same leadership for about a decade.

While these attacks aren’t as unpleasant as the ones shaming the fans for not spending money on the team when it is unwatchable and bad, these arguments are ludicrous on their face.  Either Nightengale or the front office argues that it is not Robin’s fault that the team has been horrible, because they haven’t had enough talent, no matter who had been manager.  And yet, the fans are excoriated for not putting their trust in the same front office that has–by this argument–failed to supply adequate talent for five years.

The article goes so far as to say that no manager could have made the playoffs with these rosters, ignoring the fact that the 2012 team missed the postseason by three games, and Ventura basically sabotaged their whatever chance they had of winning with his sheer inexperience and tactical ineptitude.  I am reminded of the extra innings loss to Oakland with six failed bunts, or the crucial September game where Kevin Youkilis was asked to sac bunt for the first time in his career, or Leyson Septimo pitching the highest leverage at bats of the season.

The argument for Ventura as manager was always, “Trust us.”  Even though he had no managerial experience, even though his in-game decisions exist solely as fodder for ridicule by opposing teams, the front office made bold claims about value of his personality and leadership.  Five years later, young position players have flopped and failed to develop, the team has fielded disastrous defenses and posted horrid baserunning numbers–the types of “fundamentals” often attributed to the manager–and every time the team has been positioned to achieve something they have completely and utterly collapsed.  However, until this year, the organization could trot out the argument that he still owned the clubhouse and the players still liked him.  That argument was pretty much unassailable and it is a really important part of a manager’s job.

But then 2016 happened.  The biggest news items this year were ludicrous stories about the clubhouse melting down in humiliating fashion.  As far as we know, Ventura was a non-figure in the Adam LaRoche saga, as the front office advised the public that he was not to be involved in getting everybody back on the same page.  With regard to Chris Sale and the uniforms, we are basically told that Ventura did not back his ace against the front office, and Sale explicitly called him out for it.  Now, these situations were unusual, and there is evidence that both LaRoche and Sale are atypical personalities.  However, Ventura evidently was unhelpful at best, or actively harmful at worst.  Jose Abreu possibly maybe maybe not calling out the team’s competitive desire was seen by some as a final nail in Ventura’s coffin, as his last purported virtue had crashed and burned along with the rest of them.

The impact of a manager is nebulous and frequently overstated.  The teams with the most depth and talent tend to win, and winning tends to make for a happy clubhouse.  At the same time, there are only thirty of these coveted positions, and it is a lot easier to control who is managing your team than it is to make sure you have the most talent on the field.  Therefore, the manager position becomes a proxy for being willing and able to identify problems and correct them.

But take your pick of how you want to analyze Ventura as a manager.  The results have been terrible–I have not even mentioned the fact that the White Sox have disproportionately gotten their heads kicked in by their key division rivals during Ventura’s tenure.  The process has been terrible.  Ventura’s hand-picked bench coach was fired because the in-game tactics were so bad. The clubhouse is in disarray and morale is low. What else is left?

The front office asked its fan base to take a leap of faith and trust them that Robin Ventura was the best man for the job, and evidently, continues to think he is the best man for the job to the exclusion of all others.  The problem is, there is now five years of data where any way you slice it, he has been an absolute disaster.

Now, the only argument left to keep him has become the front office saying, “Trust us, it’s not his fault. We’re the incompetent ones.”  I find this argument self-defeating and comical, and there is now a very real chance that Robin Ventura will outlast Chris Sale with the White Sox–and the front office is angry that their paying customers think that’s bad.

Photo by Bruce Kluckhohn.

Denial: No way? Are you kidding me?
Denial. It’s the first step. It doesn’t make sense to do this so it must be fake. This is fake news, right? Why would the White Sox keep Robin Ventura around, after all that has happened? Good question! When people say something is a good question, it’s because they don’t know the answer and are buying time while they think one up. I went a step further and explained that, but it’s still not enough time. I don’t know the answer. Doesn’t really make sense!

Anger: This team is trash. They hate their fans, and their fans hate them in return!
It’s ok, you’re right to be mad. Like we already agreed, it doesn’t really make sense. Clearly this is designed just to push you further away from the team you once loved oh so much.

Bargaining: Maybe this is just a way of letting Ventura down easy, allowing him to choose to leave on his own.
Does this make any more sense that actually retaining him? Ventura’s contract is up; he needn’t be fired. What company would go through an elaborate dance, at the cost of a clear PR hit, to possibly maybe make the employee they’re not going to ask back feel a little better about the parting of ways? I don’t really see it. But grief is a hell of a thing.

Depression: None of it matters, the team is bad, and will continue to be bad anyway.
There it is, a more comfortable spot for White Sox fans. Good ol’ depression. But does it matter? Yet another thing I don’t know the answer to. The team is full of badness, lots of gaps to be filled. Does the captain of the ship matter at that point? If the Titanic had a Sully Sullenberger would things have been different? Probably not.

Acceptance: Well the Sox are my team, I’ll end up watching anyway.
It’s true. You will.

UPDATE: The true grieving process doesn’t begin until there is closure, however:

Source: report that Robin Ventura has been offered a contract for 2017 or beyond is inaccurate.

— Dan Hayes (@CSNHayes) September 28, 2016

The initial report did not say that a contract had been offered. In fact, it said that negotiations had not yet even begun. Rather, it stated intention to retain Ventura if he wants to come back. It is, therefore, unclear as to whether this particular deck chair on this particular sinking ship will be rearranged or not.

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

It’s into this context that Abreu’s surprising Monday comments injected the intangible into our autopsy of the 2016 White Sox.

Dan Hayes:

“Abreu, who became the first player in White Sox history to hit 25 homers in his first three seasons, flatly said ‘no,’ his team doesn’t possess the same desire as the Royals. Perhaps in an attempt to not point fingers, Abreu also said through an interpreter: ‘I think it begins with me.’

‘I think it’s desire,’ Abreu said. ‘It’s desire to win. It’s their hunger to win games and to be good. For me, that is the main point for them.'”

If those comments seem unusually pointed for Abreu, then it should be no surprise he that he reportedly met with Robin Ventura afterward and walked his back his statements on the White Sox collective desire on Tuesday, doubling down on the self-critical element.

By the time reaction quotes started coming in from typically well-spoken Alex Avila and Adam Eaton, the Sox lack of “desire” had been normalized to being the typical disappointment that comes with a fourth-place finish, and in that sense is echoed by near all the important principals. Robin’s suggestion that Abreu might not have been perfectly translated is quite possibly the truth, but could also be a means of deflection (how much difference could there be from what he was trying to say? Was he trying to say they were unlucky and faltered through no fault of their own?).

Those in the clubhouse who Abreu may have been voicing frustration with have largely dismissed the comments as inoffensive. However, it’s hard to simply ignore Abreu’s comments, especially after he’s strained to project an image of faith in both the process and his colleagues throughout his three years on the South Side. He’s shown no desire to wring out the White Sox in public, which makes anything negative coming from him all the more notable. It’s an admission that something is wrong, and possibly in need of major overhaul.

While we here at BPSS disagree with Eaton’s assertion of “we thought we had the pieces” to go further-the roster had simply too many holes, most of which remain unaddressed – but the feeling of underachievement is clearly widely shared amongst those in the clubhouse.

It would be an overstatement to blame the feeling underachievement, and any evident lack of desire, entirely on Robin. While he hasn’t done much worth lauding, it’s not as if he somehow managed to undermine the motivation of the entire roster. But it doesn’t take insider access to see the trouble the White Sox have had within clubhouse this year, and those in charge will  naturally be marked by what they failed to do: the conflicts they failed to mediate before they became public embarrassments, the on-field meltdowns they they failed to stanch, and the desire they failed to find. If the organization is looking for an overhaul of a team that has failed to compete for now four straight years, one has to imagine that these failures will be a large part of what will be addressed.

Lead Image Credit: Bill Strelcher // USA Today Sports Images

So why then, after a somewhat early arrival of White Sox top pitching prospect Carson Fulmer, would the team abruptly option him back to Triple-A Charlotte in August, with a vacancy left in the rotation by the injured Miguel Gonzalez?

On paper, the move looks ludicrous. Fulmer has spent his entire playing career–before landing in the White Sox bullpen–as a starter; that’s who he is, that’s what he is. With the 2016 White Sox season cooked past the point of well done, shouldn’t this be the perfect opportunity for the team to let Fulmer explore his development as a starter in the big leagues?

It sure seems like a good idea, but maybe it isn’t. Using Fulmer in a major league rotation before he’s ready for such a burden, even with a team that can offer a sufficient amount of room for error for him, is simply skipping a crucial step for Fulmer, or rushing his progress, if you will.

“It’s hard to come into the big leagues and have success right away.” Fulmer told the media in Kansas City. “You face experienced hitters in pro ball, guys who have seen very good pitching for a long time,’’ he said. “They know tendencies, a pitcher’s strengths and you look at that and say, all I can do is throw strike one and be capable of throwing any of your pitches in any count.’’

It’s the experience and knowledge Fulmer has procured from these situations that will aid him upon his return to Charlotte, where he won’t be vying to attempt to perfect too many things at once, all while trying to strikeout hitters like Albert Pujols again.

But it’s also those moments, such as striking out Pujols in his first major league appearance, that will give Fulmer the confidence and ability to understand that he has the stuff to do stuff like that, and with regularity. As Fulmer said himself, it’s hard to come to the big leagues and have success right away.

“I’m learning more up here than I ever have,” Fulmer said during the White Sox series in Miami. He’s learned quite a bit during his short time here, and now it’s time to slow the pace, let the lessons sink in, tinker with the things he noticed needed tinkering.

Control has been the biggest issue for Fulmer during his time in the majors; something quite common for rookie pitchers. He is leaving the majors holding onto an unsightly 8.49 ERA, and a 13.2 percent walk rate. But his potential shows through with a solid 18.9 percent strikeout rate, and a DRA of 4.91, over three and a half runs below his ERA.

“He has the stuff, the breaking ball, but it’s going to be if he’ll locate.” Manager Robin Ventura said of Fulmer.

Every word Fulmer spoke of being in the bullpen simply implied that no matter what was asked of him, all he wished to do was help his team succeed in any way possible. But one can’t seem to fight the thought that it seemed as though the transition from a lifetime of being a starter to being placed in the the same-yet-different role of a reliever was simply one more thing added to Fulmer’s quickly crowding major league plate.

“Some guys like the relieving role,” Fulmer told the media. “Obviously being a starter, doing it for such a long time, I grew a liking to it. But my role right here is to be a reliever and help us win as much as possible.” Fulmer said of his time spent in relief.

Much of the conclusions that can be drawn from Fulmer’s time spent in the majors simply boil down to “Right place, wrong time.” Getting a glimpse of what will eventually be a place for Fulmer to flourish in the future, perhaps even in the near future, will serve as an important benchmark in his development.

“When he first came up, everything went pretty fast for him.” Ventura said of Fulmer’s debut. The major league version of slowing it down as a pitcher comes in the form of being relegated to the bullpen, something that the White Sox simply identified as the wrong fit for Fulmer. Fulmer’s demotion didn’t mean “You weren’t successful”, it’s the White Sox way of saying “It isn’t the proper environment for you to successfully continue to develop as a starter in.”

It won’t be long until Fulmer sees U.S. Cellular Field again, and likely when he does, he’ll be not much older, but certainly wiser.

Photo courtesy of Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports

That’s a huge issue in its own right, but there’s no need to beat a dead horse. What I would like to bring to light is the White Sox inability as an organization to move on from the toxic assets that plague their team. Whether it’s their players, their coaches, or their front office staff, they White Sox refuse to shake up their organization and move in a new direction until it’s too late. The White Sox are a living and breathing embodiment of the disposition effect.

The disposition effect comes from the field of behavioral economics. Essentially the disposition effect refers to the backwards behavior that is observed when investors have some assets increase in value and other assets that fall in value. Investors are much less willing to sell assets that have gone down in value but they are more likely to sell assets that have increased in value.

A great deal of investors fail to understand that the future performance of an asset is unrelated to its purchase price. In turn, they believe that an asset that has gone down in value will eventually come back up, and that an asset that has increased in value may come back down, when in reality, the complete opposite is often true. An asset that has gone down in value has likely decreased in value for a concrete reason, and vice versa. Some new information about the company/product/service/etc. has come to light and as a result, the market has shifted to adjust to this new information. The asset has been revealed to be inferior to what prior estimates believed and it’s unlikely the asset ever returns to its original purchase price.

While baseball players and coaches are undoubtedly not stocks and bonds, the same general principle should be applied. For example, Avisail Garcia was a decently-touted prospect who had the raw power that could possibly translate to 30 home runs in a major league season. There was a chance he’d be a valuable player! However, as he played more and more in the major leagues, new information was revealed about him. He was horrible defensively and he had an ugly swing path that led to far too many ground balls for him to ever realize that raw power. After nearly 1100 plate appearances (which is really too many already) Garcia had made it clear that he was a toxic asset that would likely poison the White Sox chances at a playoff berth should they continue to play him. The White Sox chose to ignore the new information and rely on years-old prospect shine, and, utterly predictably, Garcia once again has ended up as a replacement-level player that dampened the White Sox chances to end their playoff drought.*

If giving Garcia so many chances to prove himself while completely failing was an isolated incident, maybe you could give the White Sox organization the benefit of the doubt. However, this is much more of a systemic issue that continues to torpedo the team. Just looking back the past five or six years, the White Sox continue to fall into the familiar trap. The most glaring example of this was the Ozzie Guillen saga that plagued the team in 2010 and 2011. The White Sox’ relationship had turned extremely toxic with Ozzie starting in the Winter of 2009 when he told Jim Thome there wouldn’t be playing time for him in 2010.

Ozzie wanted a rotating DH so he vetoed Kenny Williams’ decision to retain Thome in favor of Mark Kotsay (Side note: ugh that’s a painful memory). The feud worsened throughout the year, eventually culminating in Ozzie going off the rails after being directly questioned about Thome and Ozzie’s son Oney going on Twitter rants calling Kenny Williams a pig. The team, which was now more of a sideshow than a team, would finish 2010 with 88 wins and this was enough to prompt the White Sox to retain Ozzie throughout the entire 2011 season. Predictably, the results were disastrous. The team went “all-in” pushing their payroll to its highest point ever and, the White Sox proceeded to finish under .500 and well out of playoff contention.

Now, again rather predictably, the White Sox have held on to Robin Ventura well past his usefulness as a manager. The White Sox have long known about Ventura’s shortcomings, or incompetence, as an in-game tactician, which have hampered the White Sox ever since he took over in 2012, but they always cited the familiar refrain that he was a stabilizing presence in the clubhouse. That’s been, quite clearly I might add, disproven this season with the Spring Training Drake LaRoche debacle and then the Christopher Scissorhands incident more recently where face-of-the-franchise pitcher Chris Sale directly called out Robin Ventura for not being an advocate for the players. Robin’s in-game decisions have always stacked the deck against the White Sox, but if he can’t even control the clubhouse why is he even here?

Obviously, this trend doesn’t only apply to beloved former players-turned-managers. The White Sox have a strong history of giving playing time to washed-up veterans and failed prospects. I’ve already talked about Garcia. Dayan Viciedo was given 1800 plate appearances to prove that he was as useless as a push-lawnmower on a 20-acre farm. Jimmy Rollins’ corpse was given two months earlier this year to prove he was completed cooked. He’s now a TV studio analyst. Matt Albers, who has failed to hold hitters to an OPS below .884 in any month since April, has been trotted out in high-leverage situations. With the season lost, the White Sox continue to play Dioner Navarro and his putrid pitch framing and ~.600 OPS instead of moving on to other players. And the only thing that prevented the White Sox from desperately trying to squeeze value out of a 36-year-old Adam LaRoche was the fact that he retired before the year started.

The White Sox are stuck in a rut. They’re too obsessed with recouping value from their bad investments that they fail to realize when they’re making the situation completely worse. The front office’s refusal to replace Garcia or even Robin Ventura himself before the year and subsequently, with the season already lost, Robin continuing to play Navarro over young catcher Omar Navarez, or bringing in Albers to Wednesday’s loss instead of a younger pitcher, who also happens to be the team’s top prospect, with the game on the line epitomizes the problem. The organization knows they have the equivalent of Enron stock all over the place, but they continue to willfully delude themselves into thinking these players will rebound or turn into better versions of themselves. No one, especially the organization, benefits from this.

The best thing the team could have done is try to shake things up just to see if that works. Everyone should know by now that Navarro and Albers are awful players and Robin is a poor manager. These individuals represent no value to the organization’s future. Why not try to learn something new about someone else? When the White Sox fell flat early in the year, they could have replaced Robin to see if that would spark the team. Or maybe they could have given Jason Coats regular at-bats over Garcia to see if Coats would be any kind of an asset moving forward. These things would likely not have mattered in the grand scheme of things, but there’s a greater chance that these maneuvers would have produced better results than the status quo, which was virtually guaranteed to fail.

Sometimes little moves like that really work out and help an organization. Look no further than the 2015 White Sox team which gave playing time to Trayce Thompson down the stretch. Or maybe look outside the organization to a team like Houston who gave non-prospect Dallas Keuchel a chance to be a major league starter a few years back when the team was awful. Sometimes these long shot players pan out– look at Colombian baseball deity Jose Quintana! But the important thing is that teams would never know about these players unless they gave them a chance. They didn’t block these players behind veterans that were lost causes.

Instead, we have the White Sox, who’ve continued to try the same thing over and over, clinging to bad investments like their lives depended on them and hoping for a bounce back that’s never coming. They’ve seen the benefits of exploring new young players, yet don’t pursue this when it would benefit them most. It’s almost a perfect fit to the colloquial definition of insanity! I don’t know how much worse it needs to get for things to change, but eight consecutive seasons of missing the playoffs and four-straight losing seasons is well beyond what I would deem acceptable. I hope the White Sox can cut bait from their current approach to their future, instead of hoping that rebounds, too.

*Please don’t think I’m pinning the failure of the 2016 season all on Avisail Garcia. He’s simply one black hole of many that the front office refused to address.

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In the interest of full disclosure: Baseball Prospectus is a prominent sponsor of Saberseminar; Saberseminar is co-organized by Dan Brooks, a member of the BP stats team; several of the talks were given by people currently or formerly employed by Baseball Prospectus; and I presented research at a past iteration of the conference.

–Glenn Healey presented some research regarding expected runs based on quality of contact–i.e. launch angle and exit speed–they were largely summaries of two articles he published at the Hardball Times earlier this year. He showed results relying on data from the 2014 season, and two White Sox showed up as players who outperformed expectations given their quality of contact: Adam Eaton and Jose Abreu. Given that most players who outperform expectations are either fast, lucky, or both, Abreu’s presence on that list was a bit alarming, As was discussed at some length at the time, a lot of his home runs barely cleared the wall, which is reflected in Healey’s numbers. Chris Sale also clocked in as the fourth-best pitcher in terms of contact allowed, though this skill is generally much less persistent than the analogous trait for hitters.

–One of the nice things about Saberseminar is that they give time for a half dozen or so talks from students or otherwise non-established researchers, and White Sox popped up in a few of those talks. The most prominent appearance occurred in Jenna Weinstein, Nick Dulchin, and Tyler Graham’s research, which involved using game theory to model which pitches hitters should look for at the plate. They used Sale as one of their examples, and concluded–using last year’s data–that it made sense for a hitter to sit changeup about 90 percent of the time; their model suggested similar tactics toward basically every pitcher that throws an offspeed pitch. Given the brevity of the presentation and the corresponding lack of explanation of some pivotal aspects of their model, I’m taking those numbers with a pound of salt, but it was interesting to see in light of the recurring discussions this year regarding Sale’s decreased use of his changeup.

–Relatedly, Harry Pavlidis and Jonathan Judge of the BP stats team presented some research they’ve been doing on game calling. No White Sox showed up on their lists of worst or best game callers in 2015, but part of their research involved assessing what kinds of pitches a catcher calls for, and last year Tyler Flowers had a greater tendency toward calling non-fastballs than any other catcher in the league. Food for thought from a work-in-progress model, if hard to translate into actionable insight.

–The student talk that closed the conference, given by a recent grad named Jeb Clarke, sought to identify managers whose teams performed worse than the quality of their players would suggest. The methodology was rather sketchy and focused on very broad effects, and I think most White Sox fans would agree that not having Robin Ventura in the bottom fifth of manager quality over the last five years is a sign that the model needs substantial improvement. Terry Collins was rated the worst manager in baseball, though, so that’s a small win for the model.

–Ben Jedlovec of Baseball Info Solutions presented some new data they’ve begun collecting recently on check swings, broken bats, and bunts pulled back. The cover photo of his talk was a picture of Gordon Beckham doing both of the former two on the same pitch in 2012, but nobody from the White Sox showed up on any of his leaderboards for those two stats. For bunts pulled back, which Baseball Info Solutions has only computed for this year, Melky Cabrera is seventh in the majors by count with 31. By rate, he’s second, having pulled back 86 percent of the time he’s shown bunt. (Angel Pagan is at 90 percent, but in substantially fewer attempts.) As with the Flowers game calling statistic, it’s not clearly meaningful but it’s still somewhat interesting.

–Scott Powers, a doctoral candidate in statistics at Stanford, gave one of the stronger student presentations, using a regression model to estimate hitters’ and pitchers’ distributions of vertical launch angle and exit speed after controlling for other factors. Todd Frazier has the highest estimated variation in his launch angle of any hitter in the league, barely edging out Kevin Plawecki, Maikel Franco, and Kevin Kiermaier. Given that popups have launch angles very different from most other batted balls, I suspect that’s the main driving factor there, as Frazier is within 0.1 percent of the major-league lead in pop-up rate and Plawecki’s, Franco’s, and Kiermaier’s rates are all solidly above-average in that area as well. He was one of the few speakers to post his slides, which can be found here.

–A number of teams had baseball operationss representatives at the conference, including at least the Tigers, Indians, Cubs, Red Sox, Brewers, and Phillies, plus presumably other teams whose analysts were either incognito or simply went unrecognized. Anyone from the White Sox fell into the latter category, befitting the near-total opacity of their baseball ops department.

–There was a live taping of Effectively Wild that had a cameo from the alphabetically superlative David Aardsma, a longtime former MLB reliever who spent one year on the South side. He has a very deadpan sense of humor in conversation.

–Each year there are a number of speakers from the Red Sox front office, which is unsurprising, since the conference is in Boston and raises money for the Jimmy Fund. They mostly talk about the Red Sox, and they don’t typically divulge much (for obvious reasons), but two things they said merit mentioning here. The first came from Dave Dombrowski, who started his career in the White Sox front office; as he was going through the positions he’d held throughout his career, he got (deserved) laughs simply for mentioning that Hawk Harrelson had once been the White Sox GM. Not the finest hour for this franchise.

–The other came from Tom Tippett, Senior Baseball Analyst for the Red Sox, who talked about some of his memories of the 2011 Red Sox. He mentioned a nugget I’d forgotten, which was that the Red Sox were discussing acquiring Bruce Chen to pitch a one-game playoff if they’d made it that far, as he was a decent pitcher who’d cleared waivers and whose deal was about to be up. Of course, the only reason Chen looked decent was that he ran up a 1.89 ERA in 5 starts against the White Sox, as opposed to his 4.20 ERA against other opponents. It’s nice to know some things never seem to change.

Lead Image Credit: Denny Medley // USA Today Sports Images

Which brings us to the failed experiment that has been Robin Ventura, White Sox Manager. His contract is up at the end of this season and it’s pretty damn hard to imagine the White Sox actively making an effort to bring him back. His five years as manager have resulted in a .461 winning percentage and one winning season, despite the team attempting to be contenders for four of those years. He’s been given more than enough rope to hang himself and for whatever reason (White Sox tradition, misguided over-loyalty, hubris, stupidity, reader’s choice) management keeps grabbing his legs and propping him back up to provide more slack. It’s always been obvious that his tactical decisions are questionable if not downright harmful and this season’s multiple incidents of clubhouse discord have shown that his personality managing abilities can only be described charitably as pedestrian at best.

So why not just fire him now? The brass has already admitted the season was yet another failure. Give the fans their bread and circuses and get a head start on the hunt for his replacement. But that’s all it would be: bread and circuses. A mild amount of sound and fury signifying nothing.

Because until the institutional problem with the White Sox is solved, it doesn’t matter who is tabbed as the next manager. Rick Hahn could somehow find a way to resurrect Earl Weaver and get him to manage the team, but even Frankenweaver wouldn’t be able to turn this squad into a contender. And that’s because overall the organization doesn’t seem to have a consistent or realistic plan on how to improve or contend. The nightmare of fixing relationships in Latin America is still a tremendous work in progress, but no one expected that to be fixed overnight. Ocean liners don’t turn on a dime and whatnot. And the minor leagues remain barren as ever.

The team drafted two pitchers who seem destined to be relievers in the first round over the last two seasons and are hellbent on getting them there as soon as possible. Tim Anderson‘s 85 OPS+ is the most successful hitting prospect since Gordon Beckham. The chances of Zack Collins staying at catcher decrease by the day. And nothing has changed. But you can live and contend for a window of time without a farm system. Look at the Tigers. Look at the Yankees of the past two decades. It’s an ethos. But you have to spend money. The biggest contract in franchise history somehow still remains Jose Abreu‘s 6 years/$68MM. The Royals have given out a bigger contract. The White Sox want to compete while spending like the Pirates and drafting like the mid-00’s Yankees. That’s not a strategy. It’s a leaky pipe dream.

Robin Ventura is a bad manager. He might even be a horrible one. But he’s not the main problem and replacing him and only him does nothing more than mask the larger problem. One of the worst things you can do in medicine is chase and treat symptoms without trying to tackle the actual disease itself. But that’s what the White Sox seem most likely to do.

Lead Photo Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea – USA Today Sports Images