Mike Vasil and Accumulating that 7 thru 35 Talent That Rick Hahn Talked About
Former White Sox GM Rick Hahn was on MLB Network this week talking about Pete Rose and a variety of other topics. MLB Network host Brian Kenny did manage to squeeze three and a half minutes out of Hahn regarding the rise and fall off the White Sox under his purview. Most of the clip is just a summarized version of the last decade plus of Sox fandom and really isn’t worth your time, however, there is one nugget that is worth some isolation. When asked why the White Sox chose to go into the rebuild after the 2016 season when they finished 78-84….
“The problem is NOT the talent 1-6, the problem is the talent 7-35”
An interesting quote from the former GM as it seems that his rebuild fell apart for not succeeding in the very avenue with which he knew was a crumbling foundation of the White Sox. Always and forever.
Mike Vasil Recorded His First Major League Save Last Night
In a surprise move on Wednesday night in Cincy, with the White Sox leading 4-2, manager Will Venable called on Rule 5 pick Mike Vasil to come in and get three outs in the Ninth inning, commonly known as a “Save”. A starter by trade, Vasil has mostly been working in long relief out of the White Sox pen early in this 2025 season.
After inducing a weak grounder to first by Austin Wynns, Vasil relinquished a four pitch walk to Will Benson. However, he gathered himself and generated a harmless fly ball to right field from Matt Mclain which was easily caught by Michael A. Taylor and then got a nice play from Miguel Vargas down the line on a grounder from Rece Hinds to end it. A relatively quiet save, but the scar tissue of being a White Sox fan the last half decade made it exciting nonetheless.
Vasil’s stats are pretty fun. His baseball card stats are terrific, already 25 IP, 1.80 ERA, 1.20 WHIP, 2-1 with a Save. It’s not a baseball card stat, but because Baseball Reference calculates it’s bWAR using what actually happened (so to speak) instead of expected stats, he’s already earned 0.8 bWAR on this young season.
However, the underlying nerd stats aren’t so cute. He’s only got a 14.3% K-Rate, while having a near identical 13.3% BB-Rate. His allowed BABIP of .208 and LOB% of 85.4% likely show he’s getting a fair amount of batted ball luck. However, none of these really matter for the moment. What does, is how he was claimed off of waivers from the Rays, who purchased him from the Phillies, who drafted him in the 2024 Rule 5 draft from the Mets. This is part of Chris Getz‘s accumulation plan.
The Rule 5 Draft
Everyone knows what the “Rule 4” draft is in MLB. That’s the draft with the college and high school players that get selected every year with some giant bonuses and a lot of TV coverage. That’s just known as “THE MLB DRAFT”. Well the “Rule 5” version is the red-headed step child of the draft world. See below for a tl;dr definition of the Rule 5 draft.
Now that you pretended to read that, just know that the general thesis of the Rule 5 draft is to keep really good teams from hoarding too much talent from really bad teams. It’s less about parity and more about giving players opportunities. However, teams have gotten pretty good at protecting their best talent and this draft doesn’t generally bare the fruits it once used to. But, for Chris Getz and the White Sox, it’s about building out that talent from player #7 to player #35 that fired and shamed former GM Rick Hahn spoke about. The White Sox had the first pick in the Rule 5 draft in 2024 and wasted no time selecting Shane Smith from the Brewers. Maybe you’ve heard of Shane Smith, I heard he’s doing well *wink*
Then via waiver they pick up Vasil and the White Sox even traded some cash to the Cubs for Gage Workman, but that 2024 Rule 5 pick didn’t “Work” out. Regardless, the pattern, the approach is the same. Getz and crew are in accumulation mode. And they are digging in cupboards and old cookie jars for any semblance of talent that they can add to this ensemble.
How Should a Mike Vasil-Like Addition Work?
Now let’s throw out the terrible outcomes, where a Mike Vasil just stinks and gets tossed back to his original team and then let’s remove the Shane Smith like outcomes (those are rare, but matter a lot!). We’ll say that the nerd stats and baseball card stats meet in the middle somewheres and Mike Vasil gives you a totally acceptable long reliever performance in 2025 allowing him to stay on the MLB roster the entire year (a requirement of keeping a Rule 5 pick). What happens next is that he regains his 3 minor league options. WOO HOO! Full details about Minor League Options HERE.
Once this happens he immediately becomes even more valuable because he can be shuttled from Charlotte to Chicago as needed over the next 3 years. The White Sox (for as long as I could remember) have been bereft of the depth of 6th, 7th and 8th starters that they could easily slide up and down from the bigs to AAA to cover over injuries and such. When you look at the AAA Charlotte starters of this season, you see why that’s important.
When you look at Bryse Wilson‘s feeble attempts at starts, you see what that’s so important.
Always need a back up plan to the back up plan and that’s what building up the talent between 7 and 35 really means. Hahn couldn’t do it, we’ll see if Getz can, but the plan appears to be in place and although accumulation mode ain’t much fun, it just might be as necessary as finding their next star.
-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