On December 7th, 2016, the Chicago White Sox traded Adam Eaton to the Washington Nationals in exchange for Lucas Giolito, Dane Dunning, and Reynaldo López.
It was a very good trade.
White Sox general manager Rick Hahn sold high on Eaton, who managed only 4.0 more fWAR over parts of five separate seasons after posting 6.8 of the stuff in 2016. Giolito surpassed that himself by 2019, and on his career is now up to 15.0 post-2016 fWAR. López? He became an effective starter in 2018 and 2019, and then an effective bullpenner over the last few years. He’s got 8.3 fWAR since the trade. Even Dane Dunning has his moments, the 28-year-old currently entrenched in the Rangers’ rotation and up to 5.2 career fWAR, more than Eaton in the post-trade years. Measuring this deal in hindsight, Hahn got seven times as much value as he gave away, making it the rare trade which looked like a fleecing at the time and turned out to be even more lopsided than we thought. Coming one day after the White Sox traded an often aggravated Chris Sale for Yoán Moncada, Michael Kopech, and others, this deal cemented Hahn’s rebuild as brilliant at the time. After the 2015 trade deadline debacle (the White Sox got hot before the deadline, errantly persuading the front office to hold rather than sell) and the disastrous James Shields trade in 2016, finally Hahn and executive vice president Kenny Williams had figured out how to play the front office game in the post-Moneyball era.
Yesterday, White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf fired Hahn and Williams. They had a combined 52 years of White Sox experience.
The failures of Hahn and Williams were many. Since winning the 2005 World Series, the White Sox have only made the playoffs three times, one of those coming via third-place AL Central finish during the Covid season. They haven’t won a single playoff series in that stretch, and despite a bevy of young talent—Luis Robert Jr. might finish second to Shohei Ohtani this year in AL MVP voting—they continue to struggle even in what’s far and away baseball’s worst division. They had everything in the world working in their favor: historic brand, big market, recent title (which Williams did architect, though some of us would argue winning one World Series is a little lucky when you only made the playoffs one other time in the preceding decade). They fell flat.
It’s hard to judge the performance of anyone who works for the White Sox. Jerry Reinsdorf is one 1984 NBA Draft away from being the least successful owner in the history of professional sports. He plays the part of a dumb old buffoon whose moneymaking skillset of manipulating a tax loophole has yet to translate into running a successful organization. He is among the few people on this earth who could convince you that a baseball team playing in Chicago is in a small-market situation. This rebuild was designed pretty well right up until the time came to sign Manny Machado. When that time came, the White Sox got outbid by one hundred million dollars, sold it to their fans as a near miss, and went on to do what they went on to do, most of which was lose. The White Sox’ failings are so many that it’s impossible to assign one person the blame. You could construct a list dozens of figures long, employees on the baseball side and employees on the business side, and make compelling cases for how each contributed to the continued atrocity that is Chicago’s American League team. When an organization is that uniform in its failures, it’s obvious who the ultimate culprit is. It’s the guy at the top.
I don’t know what’s wrong with Reinsdorf. I don’t know if he doesn’t want to compete or if he doesn’t understand how much his franchises are worth (and therefore how much money he really has) or if he just enjoys working with his friends right up until the point when he has no choice but to fire them. But goodness, man. Is this not trying for you? Does this not sting? How do you not see the mirror?
The White Sox are reportedly going to find one person to replace both Williams and Hahn, someone who will ostensibly lead the front office under a unified vision. Good luck to whoever that is. You’d have to do something pretty incredible to succeed in that regime.
The David Ross Complaints
I am of the mindset that MLB managers’ primary jobs are psychological and environmental. There is so much strategic gameplanning happening behind closed doors in MLB organizations these days (the White Sox presumably excluded) that I have a hard time believing managers make too many consequential in-game or lineup/rotation-building decisions. Even if they do, they’re often marginally impactful at best, with the difference between a guy with an expected 4.50 ERA and a guy with an expected 3.50 ERA just one ninth of a run per inning, and with human elements surrounding that. Still, I think some credit should be given to the fans who complain about managers. They’re usually paying a ton of attention, which is why they notice each perceived gaffe in the first place.
Some Cubs fans have been frustrated with David Ross for a while now, and often, their complaints have surface-level merit. Again, my mindset is fairly trusting as far as the numbers go, so I don’t have a problem with Miles Mastrobuoni pinch-hitting for Miguel Amaya last night, but I completely understand the critique. I also understand frustrations with moment’s like today’s where Jameson Taillon was still in the game with the bases loaded and nobody out in the sixth inning. I know he brought a no-hitter into the frame, but his pitch count was getting up there. I would have preferred the Cubs had someone else getting ready to go for when the moment came.
One complaint I don’t understand is the complaint directed at Ross last night for having Drew Smyly start. For one thing, I have a hard time believing the rotation’s construction is all that much under Ross’s purview. I think Ross has a role in it, yes, but I don’t believe the ultimate decision on whether to call up Jordan Wicks belongs to him, and I’m skeptical that he has all that much leeway to choose between MLB-rostered options like Smyly and Hayden Wesneski. What frustrates me the most about the complaint, though, is how readily it ignores the real problem: This roster lacks starting pitching.
It’s something we’ve talked about for more than half a year now, ever since the die was cast and we knew the depth chart would be what it is. The Cubs started the year with two established starters who’d be in the middle of a rotation on a good staff, one young ascendant with high hopes but a very low floor, and a collection of lottery tickets, a few of which were of the journeyman flavor like Smyly and Adrian Sampson. I don’t have a huge problem with this construction. I don’t think it was all that reasonable to expect this team to contend without some massive free agent investments, and with evidently deserved confidence in the farm system, I could see that investment turning out counterproductive. There’s a lot to be said for waiting until the last possible moment to commit to specific long-term, overpriced veterans. You want to make sure you’re filling the right holes.
Still, it’s far from David Ross’s fault that his rotation options currently are what they are. Wesneski has a 5.62 xERA and a 5.58 FIP, numbers which were worse back when he was starting but haven’t been great in relief. Every other potential Smyly replacement in the rotation is down at AAA. The bullpen is being leaned on heavily because the other four Cubs starters are each averaging fewer than six innings per start on the month of August. What’s David Ross supposed to do? Go over to Altoona and kidnap Paul Skenes?
There’s also the matter of Smyly’s contract. The guy isn’t gone after this season. He signed a two-year deal, and the $8.5M he’s making next year isn’t nothing in what seems to be worldview of Cubs ownership. He showed early in the season that he has the capability for competence. That’s not a guy you want to punt off active roster, even if you are in a playoff race. In an ideal world, Smyly would be enough of a bulldog that a phantom IL stint wouldn’t phase him in the slightest and he’d come back next year as the best version of himself, but I don’t know that we’re living in that world. The human element is no small deal in a sport which revolves around the most successful teams spending eight and a half straight months in close quarters with few days off. Continuing to have Drew Smyly’s back might feel sappy, but it could also be the difference between having a serviceable fifth starter next year at times and being in this exact same position again.
I sympathize with the frustration. But if this season really is analogous to 2015 in some way, we can have a little more patience. Yes, let’s hope for a more intentional piggybacking plan on Sunday, when Smyly gets the ball again. But let’s also acknowledge that this is a flawed team we can believe in to improve by next season, and one which nonetheless has a great chance to make the playoff field.
The Real John Fisher Problem
Ultimately, Major League Baseball’s relocation problem seems to stem from the fact that the Braves got away with getting a massive commercial real estate benefit when they moved out of their cool urban location to a sterile suburban tract of land. If one inflection point in baseball history was the advent of the multi-purpose bowls like Three Rivers and Riverfront and Old Busch and the Vet, and the next was the dawn of the beautiful retro parks like Camden Yards, Truist Park could be argued to mark the beginning of this next wave, one in which baseball stadiums, for their owners, are less about baseball and more about dining options, apartments, and office space. These are the things John Fisher goes to Las Vegas to seek.
This is not the core John Fisher problem, though. Even if we were still in the Camden Yards era, Oakland would have been a tough place for a Major League Baseball team to succeed. Fisher’s an ass, but even if he was just asking for a nice, downtown ballpark, Oakland might be wise not to give it to him, and he might be fiscally prudent to not build it there himself. Oakland is a tough place for professional sports right now. Its population isn’t growing quickly if at all, it’s not all that big to begin with, taxes are high…I mean, I know we’ve said this before, but if you were adding an expansion franchise in a sport which had teams in neither Oakland nor Las Vegas, which would you choose? It’s not the exact relevant question here, but it’s not meaningless.
The real issue with John Fisher is not that he’s being a real piece of shit about moving the team. The real issue is that an argument can be made that he’s been wanting the team to lose these last few years to make sure the ballpark is really, really empty while he does this. Attendance, in the relocation game, is seen as a justifying force. And the REAL real problem, then, is that we don’t know whether Fisher’s cutting costs to lose games or cutting costs to save money, because they function the same way. Which makes the ultimate problem one lying on Major League Baseball’s shoulders: Owners have figured out they can make a ton of money without making any effort to win, and some have begun following that strategy. (Bob Nutting, the Pirates’ owner, is probably the most egregious example, but Bud Selig laid the foundation for the practice with his cries about inequity between big and small markets, and Billy Beane is—ironically, in this case—the guy who’s done the most to point out the fallacy within Selig’s claims.) What does this mean with Fisher? Well, it’s hard to tell if he’s losing so he can move the team or losing so he can make money. The second has become commonplace enough that what should be a galling acceptance of consistent defeat is instead, well, commonplace.
The Royals Might Build a Downtown Ballpark
God bless the Royals if they do this. It would be their greatest zig yet.
The Kansas City Royals are looking for a replacement for Kauffman Stadium, and like the Brewers and White Sox and Rays and probably some others I’m missing, they’re stretching out their fingers for a big PR war with their taxpayers’ elected representatives. But, as they unveiled designs yesterday, they at least offered those designs for two locations. One is in the suburbs. (Boo!!!!!) One is downtown. (Yeah!!!!!)
If the downtown location does happen, it looks like it’d be a blast. It’s supposed to touch corners with the Power and Light District, tearing up what’s currently mostly parking lots and adding vitality to a city that, like most cities, could use more vitality. I know there are tax considerations here and there are things other than parking lots which would be torn out, but for baseball’s sake, I hope this is the option that wins out. I know a lot of suburban Georgians love the Battery, but that cannot be the model for professional sports. We need our teams to play within the cities they represent. That’s where the meaning behind all this originates.
What If: Nick Lodolo Edition
One of the many incredible things about the 2023 Cincinnati Reds season is that their two best starting pitchers on paper, Hunter Greene and Nick Lodolo, have made a combined 22 starts. Most healthy starters are up to 25 right now individually. The Reds, already young and very much rebuilding, haven’t gotten a full set of innings from even their top two arms combined, and they were still only half a game out of playoff position entering today.
Unfortunately for Cincinnati, things are not looking up on this front. Greene is back, yes, but Lodolo got worse injury news this week, with another stress reaction flaring up in his tibia. He’s going to get a second opinion, but this is looking like the sort of thing which will leave the lefty out for the season. If the Reds miss the playoffs by a game, it will be relevant that Ben Lively and Graham Ashcraft made a combined forty starts.
Holdouts Are Awkward
Patrick Mahomes was asked today about Chris Jones’s ongoing holdout, one which Jones’s Twitter account yesterday indicated could last until Week 8. Mahomes’s responses? As reported by ESPN:
“I don’t think anyone expected him not to be here now, but that’s part of the contract negotiation stuff. I’m not looking down on him for anything like that. He has stuff that he’s tried to get done that he feels like he needs to, to get done right now. I respect his decision.”
“I know that stuff, contract stuff, is hard to talk about because everybody wants to make money for their entire family and everything like that, but I know how much Chris loves the Chiefs. He loves being part of this organization.”
“I just try to stay out of it and just tell Chris that I love him and that whenever he does come back, he will be welcome with open arms and we know that he’s preparing himself so that when he does get back, he can be that dominant player that he always has been.”
There’s a reasonable school of thought regarding holdouts which says players should honor the contracts they’ve signed. There’s another reasonable school of thought which says players are subject to a collective bargaining agreement which artificially constrains their value, and that holdouts are part of the system upon which NFL owners and the NFLPA have agreed. For Mahomes, though, and for his teammates, the needle to thread is entirely different. For them, it’s about supporting their teammate selflessly while he, for the time being, does not contribute selflessly to the team. Selflessness is a big ask. In either direction.
Rashan Gary’s Back for the Pack
Packers linebacker Rashan Gary was back in 11-on-11 action yesterday in practice, a little less than ten months after tearing his ACL. It’s not guaranteed that Gary will be ready for Week 1 against the Bears, but it’s a good step of progress, and it continues to contribute to some cautious optimism surrounding a team who might only need to be a game above .500 to contend for a playoff berth.
We Might Get Some Reggie Bush Answers
Reggie Bush is suing the NCAA for defamation, specifically taking umbrage with a 2021 statement by an NCAA spokesperson saying he took part in a “pay-for-play” scheme.
It seems the facts of the Reggie Bush situation are that he was paid and that he played. We can all agree on that. The question, then, I would think, is whether Bush played *for* that pay. I know we’re onto the NIL era now, pay-for-play is basically allowed, but I’m still curious about that whole ecosystem, much as I’m curious about the Zion Williamson ecosystem. Hopefully they don’t settle this out of court. Give us a trial!
Ohio State’s Got a New President
Ohio State has brought on Ted Carter as its new university president in a development that’s very important for college sports in ways we do not know. Carter comes to Columbus from Lincoln, where he served for the last three years as the president of the Nebraska system, one which encompasses the Huskers, Nebraska-Omaha, the University of Nebraska Medical Center, and the Division II University of Nebraska at Kearney.
Carter’s first order of business on the athletic side will be finding Gene Smith’s replacement, and that too will be consequential in ways we do not know. Basically, we’re getting an important character introduced here to the collegiate athletics narrative, but his track record (he came to Nebraska from the U.S. Navy) is too sparse and hazy to make any sort of forecast of the eventual implications.
Jaden Rashada Got the ASU Job
Seven months after being released from his letter of intent at Florida due to Florida’s NIL collective failing to pay him in accordance with the deal to which it had committed, quarterback Jaden Rashada has been named the starter at Arizona State, with Notre Dame transfer Drew Pyne likely out for the beginning of the year with a hamstring injury. Rashada, a true freshman, was only the seventh-ranked quarterback on the 247sports composite, but he’s always going to be a fascinating figure in the history of NIL. Now, he’s got at least a few starts as a freshman in Tempe, with the first notable one likely the Sun Devils’ September 9th date with Oklahoma State.
Marcus Ericsson to Andretti
2022 Indy 500 champion and current 6th-place IndyCar driver Marcus Ericsson is leaving Chip Ganassi Racing, CGR announced this morning. He’ll join Andretti Autosport, Ericsson then said in a statement.
It’s seen as a financial move, with Ericsson supplying his own sponsor to his CGR car, and that piece of this is interesting. CGR’s full-season drivers aside from Ericsson are currently first and second in the IndyCar standings, with Álex Palou almost assured of the season-long championship with just three races to go. Andretti’s full-season drivers are 9th, 11th, 12th, and 23rd, with the drivers in 9th and 11th—Kyle Kirkwood and Colton Herta—the two under contract for next year. It’s hard to know what here is the driver and what is the car, but it would seem Ericsson is moving to a worse vehicle. We’ll see what we think of that in twelve months.
