MORE thoughts, tidbits, memes and sentence fragments on the White Sox purge
The 108ers talked in-depth about the Ricky and Coop firings in the video below, if you already watched it, consider this an addendum to that discussion. If you haven’t, spend an hour of your time watching the video instead of looking at Pornhub, you fucking animal!
I want to highlight a few points from this video.
WATCH THE VIDEO – I suspect in this video that part of the reason to go out and get a new manager, other than just getting a better manager, is the potential for Rick Hahn to brain drain another organization. Think about it, Ricky Renteria came from the Cubs, so he could absorb best practices from them on how to run a ballclub, Chris Getz in development came from the Royals so he could absorb best practices from them on how to work the development game, Nick Hostetler in amateur scouting from the Braves to absorb best practices from them about drafting…..and so on. That’s why I think he explicitly mentioned “championship organizations”.
WATCH THE VIDEO – Chorizy also pointed out, that regarding the Pitching Coach job opening up, and obviously this is pure speculation, but it might be that promoting from within, someone like Matt Zaleski or Everett Teaford is the back-up plan. As Chorizy denotes in the video, it’s very possible the White Sox want to go out and grab market knowledge and find a pitching coach from an organization that churns out pitchers and hasn’t been appropriately rewarded, via title and pay, one of those people that makes this happen. He highlighted Ruben Niebla from Cleveland who is now the assistant pitching coach. Again a knowledge grab.
It seems like Hahn is on a search for best practices wherever he can gather them and that sort of makes sense, because he’s not really a baseball guy, he’s a lawyer and he’s grown up in an “insolar” (his words) White Sox organization. The normal way to gather this sort of information is to fire your GM and hire a new one that has experience from other organizations. That doesn’t really happen with the White Sox, so this is the next best way to do this. I think of Hahn a little bit like baseball Ted Phillips.
NEXT…….Daryl Van Schouwen with a good little article to “fill in the blanks” on the Renteria & Cooper firing
READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE….it fills in the gaps of info that we think we heard in Rick Hahn’s press conference.
Below is the excerpt I would really like to focus on tho’
Transgressions like this will get a middle manager fired. We talk extensively about “Ricky Renteria middle manager” in an old podcast.
WHY DOES RICKY HATE ANALYTICS?
We as fans, particularly those that don’t care for Ricky, always credit the decisions that went wrong or that we didn’t like to Ricky. But we don’t know that, we don’t know which ones are following the mathaments provided by Rick Hahn’s wonks and which ones ain’t. We don’t even know if pulling E5 in game 2 was a decision that Ricky did on his own and that the front office hates…or vice versa. It’s tough to put a finger on what is what, necessarily, although we can probably make some educated guesses, even in doing those, our priors will inhibit us to some degree.
Also, reading closely, it says “not entirely, but to a degree“. I wouldn’t read this as RICKY IS ANTI-ANALYTICS!!! It reads like there was maybe a couple tree things that the organization and the manager butted heads on. Truthfully, I’d expect this to almost always be the case. Does anyone do EXACTLY what their boss wants every time? Do we expect the next manager to follow the front office blue print to a t? Do we even want them to? Or would we like them to impart their own knowledge in certain spots? That’s a question for each fan to answer to themselves.
Also, understand that lots of situations in which we say “FOLLOW the ANALYTICS” are really spots where the Analytical side of the decision (theoretically) has like a 50.8% chance of being correct, while the other “feel side” of the decision (theoretically) has a 49.2% chance of being correct. I’d argue that at the tails there is rarely certainty as to the correct answer. And data can reveal different answers based on who is cutting it up, what data is fed in and what the machine that cranks out the answer is saying. And I am someone that would like the manager to materially follow said ANALYTICS!! Remember, this ain’t something like blackjack where the probabilities are precisely calculable.
THE WHOLE WORLD KNEW THE WHITE SOX NEEDED PITCHING…WHY WOULD SOMEONE GET FIRED FOR THIS?
I mean, let’s be honest, Renteria has worked with Hahn for years now, I’m sure he knew telling him something to the effect of “HEY, CEASE FUCKING SUCKS!!! WE NEED A BETTER STARTER, RIGHT NOW!!!” would probably rub the boss the wrong way, true or not. I pick on Cease, not because I dislike him (that’s right James Fox, I don’t dislike Cease, although I’d like him to throw more strikes), but because it was the first pitcher Hahn mentioned in the presser when talking about “internal options” and he commented on how few starts he’s actually made. So I’ll speculate.
One thing I have noticed on twitter is a majority of fans defending the GM for standing pat at the 2020 trade deadline. Things like “Don’t mortgage the future” or “Lance Lynn was too expensive”. Those statements can be true and you can also add depth and optionality to the roster. Take a look at some of the transactions from the deadline and see how many fit at least one White Sox deficiency and see how cheap it was to acquire those players HERE.
Regardless, sitting on your hands at the trade deadline is not by default the more prudent move, in and of itself. It might be, but it also might not be. I read this constantly on twitter and it makes my blood boil to see people misidentify risk. It is very risky to sit on your hands when you have a chance to win a title. VERY RISKY. How many playoff opportunities do you think you’ll get with this core? Is it enough to punt one and not improve heading into it? Again, those are questions for each individual fan. I’ll use a poker analogy, from tournament poker and hopefully Pnoles is NOT READING this and if he does read this, I never EVER do this in practice, this is just an example.
Let’s say your hero (the BeefLoaf) is sitting on the button with 2 random cards, we’ll say 2 of diamonds and Jack of clubs (rags), and there is a raise from a loose player and a couple of players call behind that player. If I have enough of what they call “fold equity” and an appropriate chip stack to blinds ratio, the right play might be to shove my chips in the middle trying to get everyone to fold. The novice will look at this move and say, that guy is an idiot, he just traded that away for that? Such a stupid move! The more advanced player will probably realize that by NOT making this play, I played very poorly and busted out on the money bubble because I didn’t have enough chips in Oakland. Sometimes sitting on your hands is a very poor play.
WATCH THE VIDEO – Lastly, going back to the video above, MySoxSummer brought up the excellent point that fans should hold the new manager to as high of expectations as they held Ricky Renteria. I’d argue it should be an even higher bar, but no need to quibble.
Materially, the fan base wants this manager to guide the team to at least as good of a record (percentage wise) as Ricky did, but reading the responses it would appear that the vocal majority is willing to give whoever the new manager is, some sort of grace period. A good chunk of the White Sox fan base is hilariously in the position of thinking Ricky Renteria was the limiting factor, until they remove him and realize that in actuality the roster is the limiting factor. I can’t wait to see the goal post shifts if the 2021 team regresses strongly, particularly in the bullpen.
LAST BUT NOT LEAST
Try to remember that the NEW Manager, whoever that may be isn’t a panacea, filling the holes in the current MLB roster like Jaime Escalante is more important than the bump you get from an upgrade at the skipper position. It’s still good though. Probably as good as replacing 2020 Matt Foster with 2019 Aaron Bummer….a very solid upgrade….oh and also.
-BeefLoaf
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beefloaf108
Low information White Sox Fan. Big Feet Energy ORIGINAL 108er Like Whore 2019 Opening Day #SoxMath WINNAR Mediocrity Personified