Put Away the Torches
Add the White Sox to the list of teams people will call quitters since they effectively “threw in the towel” by dealing Jim Thome and Jose Contreras last night. The White Sox are six games back of first place Detroit and two and a half back of second place Minnesota. To date they’ve played a little under .500 ball and with 30 games remaining, CoolStandings has their playoff odds at 6%. That is to say, for every 1 million simulations, the White Sox make the playoffs 60,000 times while they miss out the other 940,000 tries
You don’t have to run simulations to understand the chances weren’t good anyways. The Tigers have 32 games remaining, and if they simply played .500 ball Chicago would have to go 22-8 to tie Detroit for first. That’s without taking Minnesota into account. If Detroit plays like they have all season, at a .531 clip, then Chicago has to go 23-7 to tie, 24-6 to win and this is again without taking Minnesota into account.
The bigger offense here might be missing out on a chance to land draft picks or potentially costing them a pick. Per Eddie Bajek’s latest Elias rankings, Jim Thome is a Type-A while Jose Contreras appears to be on the outside looking in on Type-B status. Maybe the Dodgers have agreed against offering Thome arbitration, but otherwise if the White Sox plan to bring the slugger back into the fold next season, it would cost them – or whoever signs him, for that matter – a draft pick.
The draft pick angle should be focused on more while the playoff potential angle is focused on less. Either way, I don’t think Kenny Williams should take much heat for doing what amounts to a favor for Thome.
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if Thome is a Type A and offered arb, he won’t be signed next year.
As long as Moore is a GM…
There’s no way he gets offered arbitration by the Dodgers, right? They’d be paying, what, 10, 12 million for a pinch hitter.
I doubt Thome would accept it. He is obviously aware he can’t play in the field anymore, so he’ll be wanting to sign with an AL team.
Would he fetch 10, 12 million in the AL for next season? Or make more money for the rest of his career in the AL versus accepting arbitration this season and then going to the AL the season after?
Well, given that Bobby Abreu only got $5 million last year and is a superior player at this point, I think there’s little chance that Thome would turn down salary arbitration when it would guarantee him $10.4 million at least (80% of his current $13 million salary). Any good agent will tell him that no AL team would come close to that number, especially if they had to surrender a draft pick as well. And while he’s obviously more valuable to the White Sox for a full season, they clearly were not planning on taking the risk of offering him arbitration either (or else they wouldn’t have made the trade).
Cots has him earning 13 million this season. I suspect he could get maybe 5 million tops on a year offer from an AL team and it’s very likely he know it. It seems damn unlikely he would turn down arbitration.
Preston- For FA’s, there is no floor for amount of arbitration you can offer like there is for club controlled players. LAD could offer him 1 mil in arbitration if they wanted to.
If LA offers $1M Thome counters with $10M and Thome wins and laughs all the way to the bank.
And? That’s not the point I was making.
There is no 80% rule for free agents.
The point you’re all missing is, if he wants to play regularly next year he’d have to turn down arbitration from the Dodgers. Money certainly isn’t an issue for him, so if he wants to play he’ll want to sign with an AL team.
I don’t think the White Sox will even miss Thome that much. With the acquisition of Rios and the return of Carlos Quentin, they had too many players anyway. Dye can just slide over to DH.
People are giving the White Sox heat? What for?
Thome is in decline and Contreras is just plain awful. His ERA in august is awful and doesn’t even account for the 9 “unearned runs” he gave up and make no mistake, he earned those runs by pitching badly. Neither of these guys figured in their plans for next year so go ahead and dump them for a bucket of balls and see what some other guys can do.
What was left of this season? how many teams 4 under .500 on 9/1 have won a championship. And remember – the goal is not to “be competetive” not to make the playoffs but to win the championship. the ’09 White Sox had as good a chance as any bad team of getting hot and winning a bad division then surprising some teams and winning it all. By that I mean almost no chance.
What’s kind of funny is that the Sox seemingly received a much more useful player for Contreras in Hynick, than the 25 year old High-A 240/320/420 third baseman in Fuller.
I can’t believe that anyone would offer Thome arbitration after the 2009 season. He’s making at least $13 million and would almost certainly get a raise if offered arbitration, given his experience and the still-productive season he’s having. I can’t see anyone putting themselves in a position where Thome might accept, and they’d be required to pay $14 or $15 million on an over-the-hill, injury-prone slugger who can’t really play the field anymore.
This is ridiculous. No way anybody offers Thome arbitration. Are you serious with this?
I like you work … but this article is a miss.
If the WSOX had plans to offer him arbitration they would have kept him; they are not missing out on any draft picks here.
Then on the playoff angle … how does losing Thome and Contreras change their chance? My guess would be about .1%.
When I saw the title of this post, I presumed it was in response to the comments for the post immediately preceding it.
I kind of agree, I just don’t get why the White Sox got effective nothing out of Thome. They pretty much gave Thome (and the draft picks he’ll bring with him via free agency) for free.
Thome won’t be an A in the NL, he’s only an A in the AL due to his DH status.
Either way, I don’t think it’s likely any team offers arbitration. Thome will have a strong case to arbiters with something in the 8-10 million dollar range because of his HR & RBI (sad, I know) and I don’t think either team would want him back at that price
$8 mil could be reasonable for a big market AL team, though. Man can still rake.
A quick question; assume Thome falls to a type B Elias rating due to lack of playing time in LA. Does he still have to be offered arbitration by the Dodgers to get a supplemental round draft choice?
Yes. If you don’t offer arb, you don’t get picks.
It is also possible that he signs with another team before the arbitration deadline. Then the Dodgers get a pick without the “risk” of offering arbitration.
This is more likely ih Thome is type B and the signing team does not lose a pick.
wow, bad speculation all around in this article. Why would anyone offer Thome arbitration, why would Thome not immediatly accept arbitration. Thome is exactly the kind of guy you don’t want to offer arbitration too, you’d much rather have payroll flexibitity then to have it tied up in a very very old DH only type player. Especially this year there are going to be more older DH type players than spots available…
Not so fast my friends… Thome and Contreras will have their Elias rankings change for the worse with the change in leagues. It’s also possible that they may not even be ranked since they weren’t on an active roster on August 31. I’ll have to dig deeper on that though.
couple questions:
-If a FA accepts arb, (such as the Thome scenario above) is the resulting contract guaranteed for the year? (I assume it is.)
-does changing leagues affect the Elias rankings? Rafael Betancourt is listed as a type A for Colorado despite the change in leagues.
StatCorner lists a 2009 Contreras tRA of 3.81. That’s lower than Buehrle, Danks, Floyd and Richard.
Changing leagues changes the rankings. Thome’s rankings will be doubly affected since he will be ranked against the NL 1B instead of the AL DH. I doubt he’s Type A now, and especially doubt he will be after a month of pinch hitting.
Thome, as an NL 1B, falls short of Type B free agency. He will not be a Type A or B free agent this offseason unless he really makes the most of his one PA per game.