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Benintendi is always the problem, haha. Maybe you could get playing time for both Sosa and Mead at LF and DH if Benintendi was not here. But then again, Benintendi could also outperform both guys. Quite the conundrum. So maybe a trade makes sense even more due to the roster crunch, even with the risk involved. Benintendi isn’t going anywhere.

It’s wild you can’t admit you were wrong on this one point and continue to deflect and move the goalposts.

100% it only makes sense if there is both a return you like for Sosa and you think there are some ways to fix Mead. But right now, Sosa is not going to get a ton of playing time (baring injury) and unlikely to maintain his value unless you find a way to get him more at-bats (and all for the OF idea, but not convinced yet the Sox are considering it).

I don’t think so either — at least enough value to make it worth trading him.

All for a dude who you hope to be as good as Lenyn? Cool. That's all you and Chris.

I honestly don't think Sosa has any real trade value either. All bat, no D guys only have a market if they are HUGE hitters, and definitely more lefty than righty.

There is no hangup. You suggested that Sosa showed vastly better power in the minors, which is simply not true. You also suggested that Mead (who is a former top 35 BA prospect) is dead in the water because of 500 bad plate appearances in the majors despite the guy you’re comparing him to also sucking in his first 500 PA’s and then somehow getting better.

It was pretty good. The random craziness is a bit unbelievable but I guess that’s why it’s a movie.

I don’t know how accurate Baseball Reference is but they have him earning $887,500 total in his entire MLB career from 1973 to 1982. I’m sure he also made some money from incentives and bonuses as well. He probably made some money from his Playgirl shoot too. 🤣 Obviously the value of a dollar was a lot higher back then so if he invested wisely, he should be fine. I’m sure he has made more money in his second career as a sportscaster than his playing days.

I can see both sides of the argument. If you can get a decent return for Sosa, perhaps it may be worth it to deal him and give Mead more playing time since he can play all the same positions as Sosa and has had success hitting in the minors. However, Sosa actually hit in the majors last year while Mead has yet to do so. If you trade Sosa and go with Mead, you may not get much out of it. Sosa may not bring much back and Mead could continue to flounder. Also, Mead only has one more year of control than Sosa. I guess it would all depend on the potential return for Sosa to assess whether the above risk is worth taking.

Or the Orioles where he got the Cy Young. If he needs the bucks at his age he did some dumb stuff along the way.

I don't know what the hang up on Mead is here, but have at it. I honestly can't wait until we are actually good again so that other people's garbage quits looking so damned attractive.

So the guy who has been healthier and has hit more HR’s due to more PA’s has somehow demonstrated more power than the guy with higher ISO. Got it.

The fact he has a history of actually hitting homers.

Sosa showed a lot more power in the minors? Based on what metric? Age 20 season: Mead = .212 ISO | N/A - Covid Age 21 season: Mead = .208 ISO | Sosa = .131 ISO Age 22 season: Mead = .215 ISO | Sosa = .197 ISO Age 23 season: Mead = .192 ISO | Sosa = .236 ISO And thanks for ignoring the “cashing in on Sosa” and “limited role for 2026” points that are pretty important to the hypothetical.

Thus is the life of a Sox fan. However, if Shaw is already considered to be a dumpster dive, then the Sox don’t have much hope.

We traded for Periera and gave him a 40 man roster spot. Baldwin hit too good down the stretch to not get consistent at-bats somewhere and the lack of reps in the OF last year shouldn’t be used against him IMO. And then you have Hill who was also tendered and given a 40 man spot. If we assume Benintendi is the LF, it’s actually kind of a filled OF but with room for someone to overtake Periera or Hill. If they plan to make Benintendi mostly DH, then Kelenic’s chance to make the OD roster vastly improve. This is all assuming no other additions either. Don’t get me wrong, I could see Kelenic making the OD roster, but I don’t think it should be expected. And I don’t think that conflicts with Kelenic looking at the guys in front of him and saying “Chicago is my best spot for a major league job” with no guarantees he will got one. The reality is everyone ahead of him was some combo of good in the majors or AAA last year and he wasn’t. To me, it should be a cut and dry uphill battle for him to make the team, but one not impossible to imagine.

If it was they certainly need an editor. Most of this really needs to be looked at in film because of the small sample size. Good advanced scouting will help fine tune the approach to each pitcher. What would be malpractice would be to have him passive to build a pitch count or see a pitcher. If the plate discipline issues become a thing then maybe you tone him down a bit on first strike, but a guy that misses 20% more than league average when he chases cannot give away free strikes. If I can find the time I’ll try and watch some his ABs to check it out.

Sosa also showed a lot more power in the minors. I am not sure why everyone else's dumpster is so much more attractive than the dumpster we already know, but sure.

Some lusted after this dude for the White Sox

Because right now this is a very limited role and theoretically you’re cashing in on Sosa and replacing him with a guy who might offer similar production (eventually) who you will otherwise lose for nothing. Also, you’re ignoring the fact that Sosa has an additional season of development and was just as bad as Mead was before this past season. If 500 PA’s is some sort of death sentence for a young player, it should have been for Sosa as well.

Is this post copied from somewhere else?

Im not a betting man but if I were I would smash the over of 2.6 WAR for Colson Montgomery. I am higher on him than any player in the Sox org and even after last years power tear for the big club I think he’s being criminally slept on. The main concern for Colson is the K-Rate. His K rate in AAA last year was 33% which is a bright red flag but in 284 big league plate appearances he got it down to 29.2%. Certainly not great, in fact it would’ve placed him as having the 8th worst K rate in the league had he qualified. His 8.8% walk rate was around league average and was actually far lower than what he was able to do through most of his time in the minors. What I find particularly promising is that even with that K and BB profile as it is, he’s in the same range as guys like Eugenio Suarez, Riley Greene, Jazz Chisholm, and Byron Buxton who are 120+ RC+ guys. Those four guys share a key set of traits with Colson that allows them to succeed with those low rates. The swing hard and they barrel the ball at elite rates and when they’re squaring up the tend to be very strong pull hitters. That is a recipe for damage. Those guys are 3-5 war players and are established veterans who generally don’t provide the defensive value Colson provides. Assuming that Colson takes a big leap in BB and K rate is a bit optimistic. In fact, I think 27-29% is K rate is probably around where he’ll be most years. I think the walk rate has a much better shot of shooting up to 12% or so as he’s has shown better plate discipline in the minors and teams are going to have to respect the power a bit more. If he settles in with a 12% BB rate and 27% walk rate with how hard he swings and how much he finds the barrel you are looking at a perennial all star with upside for more. One of the things I mentioned about him last year was his off the charts infield fly rate in the minors. I’m not sure if the minor league clubs measured it wrong but that went right back down to where you would hope it would be. He went from twice league average!! in the minors to perfectly average. The next step in his career is the biggest and it has to do with plate recognition and getting ahead in counts. He hit fastballs well overall last year with a SLG of .514. His xSLG was only .390 but his whiff rate was 25.1% which was much better than what we saw elsewhere. When it came to sliders he was essentially Javy Baez. He had a .933 SLG in 33 PAs with a 47% whiff rate and 57% hard hit rate. It’s really hard to find a player as all or nothing on a pitch as him. With two strikes it wasn’t the slider that really burned him it was the change up. He had a 44% whiff rate and 36% put away rate on Change ups without nearly the same amount of changeups as sliders. He had a lot of trouble with curves and sweepers as well. When you look under the hood you see it’s not his chase % that gets him in trouble as he’s about league average. It’s that his chase contact rate is 40.7% compared to a league average of 58%. On pitches in the zone his contact rate is just about league average. What that tells me is he doesn’t have a huge discipline problem or a huge contact problem. It’s that when he chases an off speed pitch he isn’t close. That tells me it’s more of a pitch recognition problem as opposed to being a hole in his swing. For a young guy that came straight out of high school and ascended fast, I don’t think it’s too wild of an assumption to say he can improve in pitch recognition. Even if he chases, he should be in the same zip code and he’ll likely bite a lot less if he sees the ball better. How badly did this hurt him last year? With 2 strikes he was 15/131 (.115) with a .465 OPS and 83ks. When he was ahead in the count he had a 1.083 OPS. You’d expect big splits like this but ideally you get him ahead a bit more often. It goes a bit deeper than that. There is a .260 point OPS difference for Colson from being up 1-0 vs down 0-1. After 0-1 had a 40.6% k rate. After 1-0 his K rate was only 22.8%. Colson fell 0-1 in 145 PAs and got ahead in 105. You’d like to see that number improve. When he made contact on the first pitch (which he did 34 times) in 109 PAs where he swung first pitch he had .559 SLG on a .212 Babip for a guy who’s overall BABIP is .262. You’d like to hope when that sample gets bigger that’ll creep up. I’d have to look deeper into what exactly he was swinging at first pitch. Colson is going to have to establish himself as a guy that’ll cause damage on first pitch strikes. If a pitcher knows that he is going to be aggressive first pitch, they’re going to try and get him to chase. Sometimes they’ll hang one and he’ll get him, sometimes it’ll be far enough that he’ll be able to take it for a ball. What he can’t do is take first pitch strikes. Thats .260 OPS points without getting a shot at it. If his problem was his chase rate I wouldn’t recommend him be that much more aggressive but he’s shown that he has a decent eye. Eventually when pitchers realize that his going to be aggressive first pitch they’re going to give him less to work with. I trust his eye to be able to lay off pitches that are clear misses. Long term I think that’ll get him to more 1-0 counts where we see the best version of Colson. The main thing about Colson that is constant is that he swings incredibly hard and barrels the ball incredibly well and pulls those balls at an incredible rate. That is a recipe for a monster home run hitter. The main hole in his game is that when he chases a pitch you get nothing from him. The fact that he has a decent eye makes optimistic that he can mitigate a lot of that damage with better pitch recognition and by changing the dynamics of his at bats by making himself dangerous on 0-0 counts. Colson actually saw a slightly above average amount of strikes last year. Hell probably see less this year and if his chase rate goes up a bit we’re going to see a regression. If he maintains his chase rate well see more walks and more hitters counts. Ultimately if he isn’t chasing at a high rate and he’s not being passive they have to attack at some point. Last year he had a first pitch strike rate of 63%. That’s a number I’ll watch closely next year as that is above average and something that if he can improve makes him that much closer to the Colson with a .260 point higher OPS

You and Chris Getz can continue to dumpster dive for this.