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I just went back and took another look at Moncada's Minor League career. I don't know why we should be surprised that he hasn't been any better than he has. He really never demonstrated any ability to dominate, in the Minors. He had a 30% strike out rate there, and we had no reason to think that it would improve, in the Majors. If he were a prolific slugger, hitting 40 homers, his strike outs might be acceptable. However, he didn't hit for that much power, in the Minors and he isn't anywhere near that, now. I've said it before, but to me, he looks like a very "well built, speedy, athletic and "flashy" player, with a pretty LH swing. In other words; a lot of style and not much substance. To this point, the style hasn't translated to great baseball skill. Let's hope that he develops the skill, but so far, he really isn't very good. I'd like to see if he could hit LH pitching, as a left handed hitter, like most of the great left handed hitters do. At this point, he is worthless, as a right handed hitter. I'd also like to see where else he could play. We've discussed this, at great length, but it bares repeating; Second base should belong to Madrigal. I have a feeling that he is soon going to push the issue, because he doesn't really profile anywhere but second base, and that is where he should stay. Moncada might better be utilized at third. I don't really care what position he prefers, he isn't good enough to demand that the team accommodate his preference. He has the arm to play there and Madrigal does not. It's hard to justify keeping Eloy at AAA, considering how much better he has hit there, than Moncada did. Yet Moncada got the promotion pretty quickly. Eloy appears to be a much better hitter than Yoan and I'll be surprised if he doesn't have a better career. That's ok, if Yoan ends up hitting anything close to what Jimenez is likely to produce, he could be a valuable core piece, given his other tools. I'm not giving up on him, but I admit that I'm disappointed with Moncada's results, so far.

Seriously, I'm so tired of every thread getting bogged down by the same 3-4 posters, "old man yells at cloud" nonsense. We get it, you guys hate the White Sox front office and every decision they make, but you don't need to derail every. single. conversation. to make your opinion heard.

As I said, the strike outs should be considered as a relative factor: "If he were a prolific slugger, hitting 40 homers, his strike outs might be acceptable." Bryant's last full year in the Minors, he hit 34 doubles, 43 homers and drove in 110 runs, while hitting .325 with an on base % of .438. I'll take strike outs, with that kind of production, but not with Moncada's.

typical strike zone against Moncada

Learn what a rebuild is. They can take years. They are literally about living in the future. Remember when Starlin Castro was the future on the north side? Where was he when the Cubs won the World Series? Oh, right. He wasn't there. Stop living in the past, FOF.

Every poster deserves better than this trash post. 2012 Astros - 55-107 2017 Astros 2012 Cubs - 61-101 2016 Cubs

I hope the Sox lose as much as possible this year while keep their big names prospects down 1. For a better pick, 2. To save service time on those guys and 3. To make the season more miserable for the insufferable meatball fans like Faust

And people b****ing about the Sale return at this point are nuts. We got prospects back that ultimately ended up with FV grades of 70, 60, & 50. The 70 grade prospect is a top 5 physical talent in all baseball. The 60 grade prospect has as big of a ceiling as any RHP in baseball. The 50 grade prospect just started in CF in the Futures Game and still has untapped potential IMO. In today’s world that’s an absolute fucking haul. I get Sale is the GOAT Sox pitcher and it sucks to see him dominating elsewhere, but right now it appears our front office did their due diligence and got what could be an epic return. That could change with time, but right now there is zero reason to be calling this a poor trade for us.

There's tanking And then there's this. What is this?

The return on the trade of a player of Chris Sale’s caliber IS a BIG DEAL, always, rebuild or otherwise.

Oh, you’re right. You are so right. The return from trading your best asset at the start of a rebuild would mean nothing in regards to the rebuild. What was I thinking! Silly me....

Can we create a “Ownership / Front Office b****fest” thread and direct all further complaints there for the near future? I have no problem is people hate Reinsdorf, KW, Hahn, etc. but it’s like every single thread gets derailed with the same tired argument. We get it, these guys have a terrible track record over the past 10 years and probably didn’t deserve the opportunity to rebuild the club. But those are the cards we’ve been dealt, so either we can all be patient and see how it shakes out or we can panic at every single bump in the road and use it an excuse to whine about these guys relentlessly. I know this will fall on deaf ears, but a lot of good conservations are being ruined with all the non-stop b****ing.

Glad you’re not the GM. Hahn did not enter into the Sale deal thinking it was ok to come out of it without at least one future star to show for it.

Lot of straw arguments going on in here. It's not that you expect a player to magically become worse while dominating AAA. The question is *when* will he be reaching his potential in MLB. A guy with an 1.100 OPS in AAA is probably not getting more prepared to hit MLB pitching while he's in AAA. So long as that is true, you're not just delaying the time when he becomes a free agent but also the time when he's a player that's going to carry your team. Maybe he's going to be great as soon as he is called up, but maybe he'll need a year or two or three. While some have written off Moncada already, it's very plausible that by this time next year he's setting the world on fire and we'll be glad that we have him ready to go in mid-2019 rather than being right in the middle of taking his lumps at that point. As for the specific situation with Eloy, the more the Sox bide their time the less sense it makes to call him up. That being said, I think with all else being equal he could benefit particularly by having a couple months of MLB experience and then an offseason to deal with whatever happens in those 2 months. He can get that experience and then has an extended time to see what adjustments he has to make, adjustments that may be hard to implement in the middle of his rookie season. Depending on what the Sox see, it can also help them in their planning with regard to player acquisition to see just how ready he is.

Because it's the 3rd inning, he has thrown 46 pitches, and he has allowed 0 runs

“Who the hell cares?” on the return of a trade involving Chris Sale? Answer - every single, serious White Sox fan, that’s who! And the owner and front office. Didn’t think that needed to be spelled out, but apparently it does.

And are you starting a Madrigal thread in PHT ranting about how Madrigal is a bust and this rebuild has been a failure?

Fulmer will almost certainly get into the game.

But to the individual player it is still a pretty big open point. It is one thing if he was ready at spring training and you hold him out 3 weeks...it to me is a whole other thing when a guy is ready in July and you are holding him out basically 3 months (or the equivalent of half a season). That said, none of us know the dialogue the Sox have had with Jimenez nor know what they think he still has to work on, etc. There could be legitimate developmental reasons that when combined with starting the clock, drive the Sox to believe it is the best thing to hold him out until mid April.

The first thing I did when we traded for Moncada was to look at his Minor league stats and said to myself; what's so great about this guy that we traded away the best pitcher in the AL for him. A friend of mine who is a Red Sox fan told me what bothered him was giving up Basabe in the trade to us but not Moncada.

Not really. The White Sox had no use for Chris Sale at the time. No one player breaks a rebuild. No one looks at the Astros and seriously goes "Man, they blew that rebuild when they passed on Kris Bryant". Quit living in the past.

As the headliner in the trade for Chris Sale, they most certainly do.

The vast majority of these players won't be on the team when it matters. They don't "need" Yoan to be a superstar to become a good team. They "need" positive contributions from the majority of positional players and a damn good pitching staff. Luckily, baseball still isn't played on a spreadsheet.

No, they really don't.

It was a good article but it ignored the, in my opinion, pretty important factor that is their development, and whether keeping them down when they're both clearly ready can hurt it. They're gonna need time to adjust to the MLB level and I think getting a taste of it now could be very beneficial for them both.

Are we really using strikeouts as the end all be all? Go check Kris Bryant’s minor league strikeout rates. Moncada was rushed through the minors, his development will like take a little longer than expected. Let’s all give the kid some god damn time. He’s already shown significant improvement in July, which a loud group of posters here continue to ignore.

Wish I could be more optimistic but I see these trends continuing, which is why its a bit disappointing we were relatively quiet at deadline. Pirates have an abundance of middle infeilders in high minors. Anderson and Moncada can't be the answers.

Yoan Moncada wRC+ =95 Alen Hanson wRC+= 108

Cue the Eloy is now struggling because he's disappointed with not being promoted comments.

well thank god @The Mighty Mite from sebring florida and his buddy knew that the real talent in the deal was Basabe.

THE WHITE SOX WILL NEVER SIGN BRYCE HARPER OR MANNY MACHADO THIS OFFSEASON!!!!!! C'mon Rick....prove me wrong!

The Sox would never enter a full-scale, proper rebuild. Then they did. They'd also never make a major, franchise-altering trade with the Cubs. Then they did. I definitely get the impression that Hahn takes these "the White Sox would never _____" comments as a challenge. Now it's that the Sox would never sign a stud free agent to a record-breaking contract. We'll see about that in the next couple offseasons.

I know you can't fathom a situation where you're not correct, but whatever they did with Moncada last year doesn't matter. If we were talking about Moncada, then it would matter. Moncada had MLB experience when acquired. They are different players and different situations.

The teeth gnashing over Moncada on this message board is crazy. If he is still a below average hitter and leading the league in strikeouts at the end of 2019, I will start to be concerned. Until then, just give the kid some time to figure it out.

Yes and aren't we the fanbase that b****ed about the team rushing the players for a decade? Now letting them get more time in AAA is counterproductive? Something doesn't add up...

It comes down to would you trade one or two months of these guys when they are just starting out, and have them play for an awful team, for a full year of them when they should be at or near their peaks, on a team that actually might contend. The answer is obvious. Maybe they don't get to their peaks. Anything can happen, but it's an easy choice. Unfortunately Hahn has to dance around it with ridiculous comments because for some reason saying what you are doing due to the current rules is taboo. Anyone who thinks not should not be ripping any other trades.

Some cool facts about Infinity War

At the end of the day, the Sox don’t NEED Moncada to be a star for the rebuild to work. What they need is solid production across the diamond and a strong pitching staff. Big picture, pitching is a bigger concern to me but it’s far too early to be overly concerned there either considering we haven’t seen what guys like Kopech, Cease, Dunning, etc. are capable of at the big league level.

Moncada is lucky he is on a bad team. At least he doesn't have the pressure of playing in important games. If he was on a good team battling for a playoff spot, he would most likely end up a platoon player until he figures out lefties or just bats LH.

Fine, they’re guaranteed to average 3-4 fWAR the next five years. How low are we setting our standards these days? Nobody in the world, when that trade was made, expected Moncada to be anything less than an 850+ ops, 4+ fWAR player. We can rationalize all we want why he has disappointed or what happened to his fielding the last two months, but this almost forces Jimenez to be a superstar...or for the White Sox to spend hundreds of millions in free agency, unless Kopech and Cease can both be counted on to line up as #1 and #2 for the next decade.

2.3 fWAR now for 2017-2018 http://www.espn.com/mlb/stats/batting/_/sort/strikeouts/order/true Tied for first in MLB strikeouts with Gallo. Chris Davis and Chris Taylor the only other two from the Top 10 with under 21 homers. Those luminaries would be Stanton, Judge, Goldschmidt, Upton, Harper and Khris Davis. Tim Anderson barely ahead of Alex Gordon in RC27...and abysmal BB/K ratio. Not good. fWAR of 3.7 in nearly 1450 at-bats (2.5 seasons). Yolmer knocking on the door of irrelevancy.

Pathetic, Renteria...you gone.

Or the, see that is the reason he shouldn't be promoted comments.

I mean, maybe they are right, as he was traded for basically nothing, but people put way to much credence into their opinions.

Pretty unlikely the White Sox trade for him now.

Considering he was widely considered one of the catalysts of that dysfunctional clubhouse, he should probably not bring it up

purely speculation, but between Eloy/Kopech/Rodon, Eloy is far and away the guy I could see signing a long-term extension with the WSox.

7 years ago, the only current players on the Sox 40 man who were with the team were Yolmer who was Carlos in A ball, and Kevan Smith who was just drafted. With JR's advanced age, and of time itself, there really is no way of knowing what things will be like for the White Sox in 2025.