The White Sox Fire Sale Continues As Lance Lynn And Joe Kelly Are Traded To LA, Kendall Graveman To HOU
What a sad organization this is. You can read my full, unabridged thoughts on the state of the White Sox here.
That's it. That's where I'm at as a Sox fan and I think I can safely say that's where the vast, vast majority of other Sox fans are. This organization is a complete and total mess and there's nothing they will do to fix it. NOTHING. They will be mired in mediocrity until Jerry no longer owns the team, someone comes in, cleans house to the BARE bones, and starts from complete and total scratch. Not the half assed shit they hoodwinked us with in 2016 and will try to hoodwink us with with the new rebuild.
Let's take a look at this trade, but this is ONLY FOR shits and giggles. I want to make that very clear.
Look, Lance Lynn has been a bag of hot ass this year. That's probably putting it lightly and I'm positive even the big bastard himself would agree. Anyone on the planet would when looking at a starting pitcher with 115 innings under his belt and a 6.18 ERA at the trade deadline.
BUT BUT BUT...he's still striking guys out. A lot:
Strikeouts are good. Really good. There is about a 99.99% hit rate on batters not reaching base when striking out. This may come off as shocking, but not letting hitters reach base is the first priority for a pitcher. Oh yeah - Lynn's HR rate is about 100x worse in 2023 than what it's been throughout his career, too. That's a stat that should normalize/regress to the mean after someone fixes Lynn.
Anyways, if someone wants to go to Baseball Savant and break down his spin efficiency, his ride, his sink, and get me numbers that I totally won't read, but numbers that will totally say, "Lance Lynn still has a lot left in the tank", that's your call. I'm not gonna do it. All I know is the Los Angeles Dodgers - an organization that is hellbent on grooming their players from LoA through MLB on how to maximize their potential - see something in Lynn that they can tweak to get him back to the big bastard we're accustomed to, and that's good enough for me.
Joe Kelly was also in the deal. He's been hurt and when he hasn't been he hasn't been…great. But he's still filthy. Anyone with eyes can see how filthy he is. The Sox just didn't do a good job of tapping into said filthiness. If the Dodgers tap into said filthiness, they have a high leverage arm coming out of the pen for them.
On that note, bon voyage to the big bastard. His start here was perfect; his end here just happened to be dog shit. Sorry they couldn't build around ya, Lance.
The Sox returned a familiar face in Trayce Thompson:
Klay's brother had found a little success with the Dodgers. Even through out a 2.5 fWAR season last year. But he's at most a 4th OF and doesn't mean shit for the future. I know Sox fans are gonna see his name and flip the fuck out, but whatever.
The other guys?
Jordan Leasure and Nick Nastrini. I don't know shit about them - nobody reading this does - but here are their Pipeline write ups:
Nastrini:
Looks like he might have some wicked shit and should he be able to hone his command, might be a nice piece. Will that happen with the Sox? It typically doesn't, so I tend to feel like it more than likely won't. Hope I'm wrong.
I take it back - Leasure isn't listed in the Dodgers top 30 per Pipeline. Here's his draft video though:
So basically they got a guy who might be an actual "guy", another guy, and a guy who is on the precipice of being out of baseball. Awesome awesome and more awesome!
Just get me to fucking football season.
UPDATE:
Graveman is gone too:
Here's the return grades by MLBP:
25 year old who played in college with Andrew Vaughn. There's your Yaz replacement, who's prolly out the door next, followed by whoever the fuck else is paid anything of significance. Wash, rinse, repeat.