The White Sox player polls – Coaches & Hahn

Good day friends, we bring you the last of the White Sox 2018 review with our players polls coaches and Hahn polls, voted on by the fans, with comments from the fans….let’s do dis!!

Ricky Renteria

The Fans….

BeefLoaf’s Take – I voted with the fans.  The easiest parts of his job to judge are his tactical managing in-game and the development of young players in his care.  Both were medicore to terrible this season (Daniel Palka’s hulking HR performance aside).  Ricky makes questionable moves throughout the game and is likely hurting the teams chance of winning more than helping it when he’s requesting bunts early in the game.  Maybe it was all a complicated rouse to ensure a top 5 draft pick….I don’t know, but I leave the season hopeful that he has the capacity to learn and improve, but Underwhelmed by the 2018 seasons performance.

Don Cooper

The Fans…..

Todd Steverson

The Fans…….

BeefLoaf’s Take – I have lumped these two jokers together because to me, it is equally difficult for me to judge their specific performance.  I know it is tied to the overall performance, but the player profiles and lack of talent more closely correlate to overall performance of the team.  In layman’s terms.  If a player was expected to have X performance with the average pitching coach, what is his performance with Cooper.  These are probably knowable at some level of quant calculations with moderate comfort in the calculation, but not by a dickhead like me.  Same with Steverson, the offense was actually ahead of the pitching by a wide margin, but a similar analysis would need to be conducted and I don’t have the wits about me or the time to do so.  As MySoxSummer always tells me…..”If a hitter has great success, the success is always attributed to the hitter and the great adjustments they made and that they don’t listen to the hitting coach, conversely, if a hitter struggles, the blame goes to the hitting coach, sighting that he should have DONE SOMETHING to help the player hit better.”  It’s a complicated analysis.  I did vote underwhelmed on both because the team performance blew so bad, but I am open to anyone and any opinion to the contrary.

Rick Hahn

The Fans………

BeefLoaf’s Take – I voted Underwhelmed….WHERE….TO….START.  Hahn couldn’t manage to sell the magic beans that were Avi Garcia’s 2017 season and he couldn’t find a suitor for Jose Abreu either.  Hahn didn’t use the White Sox substantial payroll flexibility to bring in more prospect talent (absorbing Jacoby Ellsbury’s or Matt Kemp’s contracts could’ve bolstered the farm), other than paying ~$7M for 38 IP of Joakim Soria and Kodi Medeiros who the White Sox internally are singing the praises of, but the rest of the outside world believes is hopefully a LOOGY in the future.  The White Sox did not invest in a Rule 5 pick on a roster that clearly could’ve absorbed one (they used a pick but then traded it).  Hahn did trade some International Cap space (which the team really can’t use because it exceeded the cap previously for Luis Robert) for a few teams ~15th reliever on their 40 man roster, which is in the good column for sure, but hardly a home run.  I don’t want to fully rehash it, but Tommy Pham was apparently available for org depth and he didn’t find himself with a new CF.  I guess the folks that were Encouraged are hanging their hats on the expected excessive value that Hahn is securing in 2025 on the back of Eloy Jimenez.  I don’t know.  At least this season’s 1st round pick looks more likely than the last several to be a major league regular, so that is also a plus.  Finding Daniel Palka has to be his #1 accomplishment of this off-season and the stat heads out there will say that’s “Meh” at best.  Be better next year Rick, there are a lot of us counting on it.

-BeefLoaf