UTK Special 1/27/25

Bottom Feeders

Clay Davenport’s projected standings aren’t final now, but they’re pretty instructive here with a couple weeks to go before teams show up to camp. We pretty much know most of the rosters, save a couple players still out there and the normal camp surprises of players that get pushed, or not pushed, and the surprises each spring brings. The April whereabouts of Alex Bregman, Pete Alonso, or even Dylan Crews and Jackson Jobe won’t shift the standings too much from where they are.

Which means that down there at the bottom, we have some familiar names. The White Sox, Marlins, and Rockies are all currently projected to win 60 games or less. I mean, that is a 19 game improvement for the Sox over their historically bad 2024, but then again, Davenport had them projected for 67 wins last year and they underperformed in an equally historic manner. With the few additions they’ve made and little likelihood that they’ll rush some ready prospects, they might not even get back to 60.

The White Sox do have prospects, including two of the best lefty pitchers in the game. Noah Schultz and Hagen Smith were listed as the two best in MLB Pipeline’s recently released rankings. While Smith is more likely to come next year, Schultz is very close and there’s literally nothing blocking him. Schultz is a 6-9 power guy, but in the minors, he’s never been above Double-A and was strictly limited below 70 pitches last season. That’s just 88 innings so a full season or even a 120 inning season at any level is going to be a push.

Smith was a ‘24 pick out of Arkansas and he’s your typical SEC stud. He throws across his body, but has been healthy and touches 100. He did have Tommy John previously, way back when he was 15, so some worry he doesn’t have the post-TJ honeymoon time many college pitchers do. He barely pitched after the draft, just 7 2/3 at Single-A, after going “just” 84 in a dominant college season. Again, the innings make it unlikely that he could go 120-150, but would pushing Smith now be better than a theoretical full season from Martin Perez or Davis Martin? I’m not sure.

Add in Braden Montgomery, Colson Montgomery - they’re not related - and two solid young catchers in Edgar Quero and Kyle Teel, and you have a hard time convincing me that the Sox wouldn’t be better if they jettisoned players like Luis Robert, Andrew Vaughn, and Andrew Benintendi to get even more prospects while getting little worse and perhaps better on the field in the short term. (I realize those aren’t like-for-like deals, but the ones that are won’t bring much in return.)

The Sox ownership situation is well known and the push for a new stadium has gone a bit quiet for now, but the on-field situation isn’t directly impacted by either.* The White Sox seldom have gotten involved in big free agents despite being a “big market” and being well able to afford it. They’ve been a development organization for the last thirty years, because the guys running the baseball side were largely successful with it and liked it that way. When it went bad, it went bad, but there’s no evidence yet that the new organization knows how to fix it.

The problem is different in Colorado. They’ve spent big money, but it’s never paid off. The stadium is regularly full and a great experience, aside from the home team’s results. Talk of the stadium and setting being the problem have largely quieted in the humidor era, but the bad teams have made it tougher to figure out if it’s the pitching (or lack thereof), the home/road split issues, or just being bad.

At just 57 projected wins via Davenport, it’s Colorado that’s the worst number in the system. There’s just no talent bubbling up from the minors and the moves they’ve made like Kris Bryant and … well, Bryant, because none of the rest are around anymore have been failures. Sure, there’s an Ezequiel Tovar here and a Kyle Freeland there, but even if those players were better than they actually are, there’s no pattern or depth showing that they’re actually developing players than merely progressing them.

With Chase Dollander an easy comp to the Reds’ quick-and-good pitchers of Rhett Lowder and Chase Burns, we’ll get to see how a pitcher many thought was game-ready coming out of the draft will deal with Coors Field, assuming he can get past being a Yard Goat and an Isotope. Again, putting him at the back of the rotation isn’t outrageous by any stretch and he has more upside than anyone currently there.

With Charlie Condon expected to come fast, the Rockies have a couple top guys, which could be enough to be interesting in the next few years. They’ll have to contend with the Dodgers, but that’s why wild cards are there. The problem is that even guys you can dream on to go with Condon and Dollander are years back in High-A. The front office, one with a heavy scouting focus, is preaching patience, but that expiration date is long past.

It’s the same with the Marlins. They’ve got some World Series rings, but the video from those isn’t HD. They’ve changed locations, stadiums, owners a couple times, GMs a bunch of times, and rotated through talent like DiCaprio through models. They’ve had plenty of talent and for various reasons - some trades, some tragic - there’s little of it left. The latest hope, wunderkind Peter Bendix, is expected to make them Rays East, but that takes time and, well, tanking.

At the top, we’ll see whether Sandy Alcantara can get back to being elite and then what the Dodgers will trade for him. (I’m kidding, kind of.) Bendix would be right to trade him away once he shows he’s back, maximizing his value to restock a still-thing farm. Add in Max Meyer and Eury Perez, also injury returnees, and you have either the makings of a solid rotation or the makings of trade bait.

The problem is the position players. Even if the three pitchers turn into three aces, the lineup isn’t good enough to support them, offensively or defensively. Xavier Edwards is intriguing with the tools and early results, while Deyvison de los Santos is basically a real life Pedro Serrano. Beyond that, it’s platoons and palookas.

In the minors, their high draft picks haven’t paid off yet. You have to go back to 2020 to find a guy with current value - Max Meyer, who’s been so injured it hasn’t paid off yet. Before that, it was 2015’s Josh Naylor, and he’s not helping the Marlins. (He was part of a dump trade early, which is its own story.) A guy like Jacob Berry, who profiled a lot like Dylan Crews when he came out of LSU hasn’t made it above Double-A. Hitting 238 there has led him to fall off prospect lists and expectations. With the most recent three picks all used on high schoolers, it’s reasonable to have a longer term timeline, but previous similar high school picks haven’t panned out. Joe Mack (‘21) hit 241 at Pensacola last season. Khalil Watson (‘21) was traded to Cleveland after never getting past High-A.

Their top prospects are Augustin Ramirez, part of the Jazz Chisholm return, who’s a nearly ready catcher, Starlin Caba, who the team got in the barely noticed deal of Jesus Luzardo to the Phillies, and Max Acosta, part of the Jake Burger deal with the Rangers. Yes, Bendix clearly sees he’s not got what he needs in his own system, so he’s going out to get some from others who do. That’s smart, but it’s not going to help just yet.

With Clayton McCullough getting his first crack at managing in the bigs and his first time managing at all since 2013, which was with the High-A Vancouver Canadians, there’s another unknown for the ‘25 Marlins. There’s no way to tell how good McCullough is with this season’s team, though over performing this projection could come down to one-run games and whether he and Daniel Moskos, a Driveline guy and former big leaguer, can handle a fragile staff.

I’ve often said that bad teams have to at least be interesting. Being bad makes sense sometimes. Tanking works and hasn’t been disincentivized yet, and the reality of arbitration and control make pushing players up quickly make less sense in the longer term, ready or not. These three teams have been bad a while, have no prospects of getting better this year or even next, and don’t show me anything I’d describe as exciting. These are the kind of teams where the marketing department is likely going to emphasize the new manager or how nice it is to spend a day at the park in their marketing campaigns. Those cities and their fans deserve better. It’s not going to be a salary cap that saves these teams, but a commitment to winning and a bit of luck.

*Yet. There’s some inter-relation in the two, with the proposed stadium site and surrounding development owned by The Related Companies. They also own the Miami Dolphins, which has maximized their stadium and surrounding area into an F1 event. Don’t think they wouldn’t try something similar and that they wouldn’t want to own at least part of the tenant if the thing gets built. It’s Chicago.