NorthSideSox72

I guess you could call this the Opening Podcast of the 2019 season for FutureSox. It is a preview of the 4 full season affiliates, who open play tonight. The guests to cover each (joining host Clint Cole) are: Trevor Wilt, radio for the Intimidators Joe Weil, radio for the Dash Curt Bloom, radio for the Barons Jonathan Lee, media member covering the Knights for Sox Machine and FutureSox All the details, links, ways to download and subscribe, are here. Enjoy MiLB Opening Day!

FutureSox is releasing the affiliate previews today and tomorrow. First up is a Kannapolis squad that has some serious depth in the infield and the rotation, and should be a fun one to watch. Winston-Salem later today, Birmingham and Charlotte tomorrow.

FS' team previews start rolling out today - in fact the first one in about 30 minutes. Another later today, 2 more tomorrow. And they will definitely cover those topics!

That guy has had so many injury issues. TJS, broken hand, hammy. And the thing is it's not like the first two are about being out of shape or something. Plus he worked hard and lost a bunch of weight while recovering from TJS, and now he pulls a hammy anyway. I feel bad for the guy.

You will note also that Burger is assigned to Kannapolis. The reason for both is that if players open the season on the DL, they are just kept on the DL of the last team they were active with. That doesn't mean that is where they will be when they return.

Seriously. The ceiling has been caving in for a few years now, they do repairs and it keeps happening. Amtrak is hemorrhaging cash and has money to fix it.

I've never been in LaSalle station (even though I work in that building), but I can't imagine it is worse than the platforms at Union.

I've had this idea in my head for years, to do a tour of all the micro states in Europe: Malta, Monaco, Andorra, Liechtenstein, San Marino, Vatican City, and Luxembourg. Unfortunately it appears to be a very expensive thing to do and would need at least 2 weeks. Getting to Malta, you need to either fly from Rome or a couple other cities, or take a boat from Sicily. That's all I found out about it.

That could be true, I don't know. I ride the Milwaukee North, and have ridden the UP-North and UP-West quite a bit before. I have only minimal experience with any of the lines going South or Southwest.

Yeah Metra isn't exactly fantastic with reliability, especially during the winter, and Union Station is a mess (and owned by Amtrak so Metra can't do a lot about that part anyway). But in the end, even with the occasional delays or problems, it is WAY better and cheaper than driving downtown. So there it is.

He might be held over in Extended. Not sure. Will know official rosters soon.

FutureSox has 3 of the 4 rosters now, and are writing previews. They have also tweeted and/or RT'd a bunch of specific players on Twitter. But none are yet 100% official because, as someone else stated correctly, the Sox are notoriously late with releasing them.

While I appreciate the respect for FutureSox, let's be real here. FS gets people to games live, talks to scouts, talks to players and coaches, etc., and that's very good as blogs go. Better than most. But Kiley and Eric are both guys who scouted for MLB clubs, also see a lot of games in person, and have similar contacts. It is probably true FS probably has more total combined knowledge specific to the Sox system, but it is also true that Kiley and Eric have much more professional experience with evaluating talent in general. The best bet is to read both and take them for what they are. I have some serious disagreements with this list too, but it isn't because I think Kiley and Eric are just "writers". I think they have some biases (like ALL of us) and don't have time to get super-deep on any one system to get some of the nuanced info.

That nickname should be dragged out into the street and shot. Also I'd guess he comes up in 2020.

This makes a lot more sense than the 8/100 deal Gomez was originally reporting. Still odd in a way though, that this only gives him 1 extra year of control. They are basically paying, if Jimenez is still an average or better starter, like maybe a few million dollars for that extra year. So it's worth it, and if he's better than average, it gets even better.

Must be my network blocking it. I'll have to try tonight.

Thanks, but, link seems to be bad.

Haha OK. We can argue semantics around the term "sprain", which per these medical sources can mean a tear or other things, but that's not the main point here anyway and its just terminology. It is that this revisionist history and saying he should have had surgery is ridiculous. Again, it means you either think you know more than the doctors, or that the doctors/team were hiding some surgery-is-necessary information to hold off on surgery for whatever weird reason. What you and a few others are doing is just hindsight criticism because you are angry at the team generally and this is a convenient target. To wit, see what ptatc is saying in all of his posts...

Will there be a SoxTalk bracket tourney this year?

First, it is not "likely" there was a tear. And besides, you have no idea, nor do I. But the early report was specific that there was a moderate sprain, saying nothing of a tear (sprains sometimes are a tear and sometimes not), so making the leap to "likely" is nonsensical. Possible, yes. Second, again, there is zero motive for the medical staff to do what you are supposing - to avoid surgery when a tear was already present and mess up Dunning's career. They clearly would want to do the opposite. Third, that is not how medicine works. You do surgery when necessary, or as a last resort. Surgery is not some flippant thing they do because maybe there's something doable in there. You do it when you have to, because surgery has risks. Fourth and finally, no matter how you characterize the decision, it did not result in losing two more years of development. At worst it added the loss of a July-August period in 2019, which is 2 months of play. Surgery today means he's likely back to normal a year from now, give or take a month or two either direction.

A sprain can be a tear, but not all sprains are tears. And yeah I was in the same boat as everyone else, knowing there was a good chance that is where it would end up. That makes perfect sense. But that's not the same as saying he should have had surgery then when - if there was no tear - that wasn't even possible.

Not sure how you made this leap. This isn't front office as in management if you will - it is medical staff. And to pretend you know more than them is most certainly disingenuous.

I guess this is one of those pet topics for me. The last few years especially, I see a lot of people dehumanizing players by just saying "clearly he has a torn UCL" when a pitcher's forearm hurts or "clearly he should have had TJS already" when they have zero knowledge of a tear. It is like saying they either know more than the doctors (laughable), or they see the players as video game characters and don't consider how serious surgery is. I even saw a scouting-related blog insisting Alec Hansen "clearly has a torn UCL" when, again there was no evidence of and in fact there was every reason to believe otherwise. From a journalism perspective that's abhorrent to me - it is fast and loose with information and perpetuating lies while trying to make them look somehow knowledgeable. Maybe Dunning had a tear, maybe he didn't, but the initial reports were that he did NOT. Did it happen later and they elected to try to heal anyway? Maybe, I don't know nor does anyone else here I don't think. But believing the doctors knew surgery was needed and then for some unspecified reason avoided it anyway is ridiculous.

You just kinda made the same case I did with more words. No tear, no surgery. Significant tear, probably surgery. Some small tear, well, that is a question with variables that are over all of our heads and the decision is fuzzy. But you can't just throw around "should have had the surgery before", when there is no info (that I am aware of) that he had a tear last summer. That isn't how any of this works. Are you aware of a report of a tear? If not, we need to not suggest surgery thinking it is some magic fix for all elbow ailments.

Again, not possible. Stop saying this. No tear, no TJS.