@supergoose5142

1 week ago

The Benintendi signing (on paper) made sense. The White Sox let Abreu walk because they already had too many 1B/DH types (Vaughn, Sheets, Burger, Jimenez). Signing Benintendi allowed the White Sox to move Vaughn (atrocious OFer) to 1B, where he'd presumably be a bit better or at least equal to Abreu defensively, and leaving the DH spot open for Eloy (which would hopefully keep him healthier). The White Sox upgraded two positions defensively. They probably should have been more wary of Benintendi's power decline in 2022, but it kinda made sense. I was never really fully in on the White Sox core. I didn't think Cease or Giolito would ever develop into SPs at the time they were acquired. Offensively, almost all of the hitters they were developing were strict corner guys (Jimenez, Vaughn, Burger, Sheets, and to a lesser extent Moncada). Jimenez and Vaughn both had lowish walk rates, highish K rates, and really poor defense. There were no up the middle prospects except for Robert, who also had a really scary K:BB ratio. It just didn't feel like a team that was going to be assembled correctly, especially with ownership being unwilling to spend and management not being the savviest traders. They only spent on mid-range vets who were already on the older side (Grandal, Lynn, Keuchel, Graveman, Kelly, and I guess you could kinda put Hendriks in this category too). Those players all broke down over the lifetime of their contracts and ownership/management wasn't able/willing to do enough to replace them. Hahn/Williams/Getz are all about 20 years behind the times. Even the '05 White Sox were a very "old-school" team and Hahn/Williams tried to recreate that lightning in a bottle until they got fired. They refused to compensate for flaws in players that even casual fans of today could recognize. They didn't account for the aging curves of players in the post-steroid era. They didn't account for guys like Tim Anderson, Yoan Moncada, and Andrew Benintendi only being useful players if they could consistently run an unsustainable BABIP. They failed to dumpster dive for players with useful traits who could be acquired for cheap and instead gave out big-ish contracts to relievers and put veterans like Elvis Andrus in the starting lineup. (I actually think the inability to find useful depth pieces to cover for the injuries that any team is going to experience was the main source of failure in this contention window. The White Sox started a lot of hopelessly bad players in the last couple years). They rightfully got rid of Hahn and Williams and replaced them with a guy who's only goal is to make the White Sox a retirement home for former Royals players/staff. I genuinely think they've been the most incompetently run team in baseball for at least the past 10 years

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