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The Madrigal Mystery Tour

Almost assuredly part of Robert being at the top is the desire to get him as many at bats as possible since he's missed so much time.

Last year Moncada's future was being compared to Robinson Cano. Currently, his future is being compared to Javier Baez. At this time next year, will we be comping him to Starlin Castro?

Your trolling is leaving a lot to be desired. Go refine it elsewhere and get back to me once you've improved, champ.

As usual, we've released the back half of the Top 30 list first. Tomorrow will be the full list. For now, enjoy the 16-30 list, with capsules for each player. And discuss! Where were we higher or lower than you think we should have been?

Orrrrrr. Our front office can do their jobs and resign core guys while drafting and signing solid replacements for the defectors.

So tell us who you would've picked 4th, We'll see how it all shakes out. You have one shot don't say multiple names to increase your odds of picking someone who ends up better than Madrigal. The Sox had one shot at it so should you with a slight advantage of seeing how well any of them have done so far in their assignments.

This is 100% not the reason why.

No, you said go back to the chuck e cheese table. You should know better by now

It can be both. How have the big Septembers guys like Morel, and Fields, and Owens, and Giolito, and Trayce Thompson, and Moncada put up help them later? It's a nice theory, there just doesn't seem to be much evidence sitting out September kills careers. If it does, the Sox should probably trade Luis Robert right now for whatever they can get. With all he has missed, he evidently will have no chance.

He's leading off because the leadoff guy gets the most PA in a season. 2018 doesn't matter, so why not lead off Moncada and get him the most PA of anyone on the team?

Thats enough of your couched insults bullshit

It's so bizarre to me that in this MLB with all of the different makeups the star players have, people can still feel convinced that they know the ceilings of players. We really still doing little infielder = eckstein? Last year all I heard was Albies was basically Yolmer Sanchez. We have a super star that's a 6'8" (judge) monster bookended by a 5'9 centerfielder (betts). Smooth athletic powerhitting MI (baez) next to pudgy short corner infielders (Ramirez, and guess whose having the best season?. A 5'7 batting champion (altuve) And a prototypical golden child (Trout). Don't tell me you know what these guys are capable of. Madrigal wants every ounce from a baseball career. I'll bet on that guy.

FutureSox will have an interview with tons of Bush information in the week or so!

Moncada has a wRC+ of 91 according to fangraphs. That is below average no matter how you slice it and dice it. Also, a 34% strikeout percentage with a sub 700 OPS looks pretty overmatched to my eyes.

It takes a lot to put me into Ron's camp, but here I am firmly #TeamHotFiRe. +1.

He IS a league average second baseman, he just doesn't have a league average batting line, which is propped up by first baseman and corner outfielders. MLB league average 2B is 94 wRC+ this year. Moncada is 93. Regarding the second line: I never said it wasn't. The conversation I was having was about whether or not Moncada needed more time in AAA. Moncada has disappointed everyone by not being a star this year, but he has NOT been overmatched. He's 23. He's working out his struggles in the Majors, where most 23 year olds are working out their struggles in AA/AAA. This is good. He's on a good track.

Don't you think he needs to become a league average second baseman before we start declaring him a star? Also, the bolded is a lot easier said than done. Many a baseball career has been derailed by an inability to ever full recogonize and adjust to major league pitching.

Ya don't say? Haha No we've never given that much thought, but I'll put it in front of the writers and see what people think for the next one.

Then this rebuild is already a massive failure and the future is just as bleak as the last 10 years have been.

Moncada is in a free fall. wRC+ of 93. OPS barely above 700. People honestly think this kid is improving and having a good year?

The league has figured out how to pitch him and he hasn't adjusted. His hit took was always shaky and has been absolutely exposed by major league pitching. He needs to learn to make adjustments or he will never be anything special. Hahn should have stood firm on Benintendi but a bad gm is a bad gm.

Lmao. Weren't you just posting the other day about how Yoan Moncada has the potential to be the one of the best second baseman of all time? Rick Han should be fired on the spot if Moncada starts next year at Charlotte.

Just so I stick this somewhere, wanted to count this before going home. By my numbers, ignoring a partial game they have to complete, I see 27 games left on Charlotte's schedule. Kopech pitched yesterday, so if he pitches every 5th game, he'd have 5 starts remaining. If they had him go every 5th day, they might be able to pack a 6th in, but let's say he has 5 starts left. He's thrown 113.1 innings so far this year. If he went 7 IP in each of his remaining starts, which would be high for him but it's what he's done his last 2 outings, that would put him at 148.1 innings this year. Altogether last year he pitched 134 innings, so although it's at a higher level, I'd kinda like him to be able to get 12 or so innings more than that, to get closer to 160. So...if I was doing what was best for his development, I'd probably have him complete the season in Charlotte, try to stay in the groove he's in right now, and then give him a September callup with a plan that he's going to start 2 games down the stretch and then make a few final outings out of the bullpen to finish the year. That gives him a bit of MLB experience, game planning, and coaching, and it gets his innings where we'd want them this year, so that we can think about him going 180+ innings next year in the bigs. I would be a little disappointed if he wound up close to 140 innings this year and they didn't call him up to push his arm a little more, that might be the right thing financially but it's not the right thing to do with his arm. I also don't think he's an AFL candidate, especially with him looking good right now I don't want him to just take a month off and then start again, and with the number of injuries we've had there are probably a lot of other guys who should have priority for those 6 slots just to get more complete seasons in.

A couple of 1990s articles penned by Mike Pence claim the President needs to have more moral character than a typical citizen. Having affairs and lying about it is grounds for impeachment as long as that President has a D after their name. They are all phonies and hypocrites.

We all see the "loud tools," & we all look hopefully toward Moncada becoming what his tools say he should be. OTOH, I keep going back to wondering exactly why he "had to" be called up last July. Last year, we all had to read how "Moncada has nothing left to learn in AAA." This year, we have to wonder if he can hit RH, if he'll ever get his K rate down, if he'll ever take a more aggressive approach early in counts, if he'll ever learn to protect in 2-strike counts, if he'll ever learn consistency in his approach to fielding, among other issues. I said then, & I still say now that Moncada had a lot more than "nothing left to learn." Him failing to become an absolute STUD would hurt this rebuild significantly.

Eh, I disagree about the Trout comparisons. The reality is that there is no other good comparison for his potential other than Trout. He has all of the tools that Trout does, the difference is that Trout has done it consistently at the MLB level. The other comparison I'd use is Cano(on the juice) with 35+ SB potential. I fail to find a better comparison to Moncada's ceiling other than Trout because Moncada has incredibly rare physical talent, The kind only the best of the best in baseball history have had. The Trout stuff is if he reaches his ceiling. I have consistently said "a notch below Trout" is Moncada's ceiling mostly because he's never going to hit .340 like Trout has.(I could see Moncada in the .310-320 range for a season or two if he puts it all together) In all other aspects of the game, his potential is right there. If You asked me if there was a player other than Trout that you would bet to be the next 40-40 player I'd pick Moncada. He's that talented. I don't think there is a player in baseball who has that potential other than Trout and Moncada. There is only a handful of players that I could name off the top of my head that have/had the physical gifts that Moncada has. You wouldn't want me to name them, because the comparison would seem so ridiculous, but I will anyway: When it comes to tools, Moncada is up there with the following: Trout, Mantle, Mays, Ken Griffey Jr, Bonds(off the juice) I'm not kidding and it isn't crazy either. What is crazy is saying that we know if he'll reach that level of performance. He may not, but he is that talented. Moncada is also extremely raw for a 23 year old at the MLB level. I think there is a 5-10% chance that Moncada reaches his ceiling, which is way more than the odds of you winning the powerball. There is also a >40% chance that he's a 4-6 WAR guy each year, given that he's already put up a 2.5 WAR in 160 games with the White Sox. Moncada's ceiling is the best all around 2B to ever play baseball if he sticks there. How well the Sox coaching staff can tap into his talent is what will determine how good he gets. What makes Moncada so polarizing is that he oozes physical talent, the likes that have only been seen before in the best of the best baseball players of all time, but it is so incredibly unrefined for a player at his age and level. I don't think any of this is ridiculous or hyperbole. Moncada, if he reaches his ceiling, absolutely has a chance to be the starter at 2B in the "all time starting 9", and one of the 10 best position players to ever play the game. If it all goes south on him, he has the chance to be quite possibly the biggest bust in MLB history as well. It goes both ways. Because of the country Moncada came from, his variance on career outcomes is much higher than the players I listed earlier. If you don't think I acknowledge that, you haven't been listening. He got decent instruction later than most players. It seems that in Cuba they just let them go play baseball and let the talent take over. There seems to be very little, if any formal instruction on fundamentals.

I was operating more on "when" he puts it all together, but with the fact that Moncada is regressing as the season goes on, 'if" is becoming more and more of a possibility for me. The question now is whether his career goes the way of Baez or Buxton.

But you just said Eloy isn’t that good, so Moncada, Fry, Rodon, Giolito and Anderson will be average and Eloy will be slightly better than Abreu. What other talent is going to make this rebuild great then?

You can't say any of them for sure. Rodon might be gone or traded, Moncada, Giolito and Lopez have been wildly inconsistent. Anderson is meh. Fry is a reliever, so you don't know about them from year to year. Not one player is a lock. I was hoping to find one player that would be a lock. It would have had to be one of Moncada, Anderson, Lopez and Giolito. All of them have more questions about their ability to stick in the majors than answers. All I was asking out of the 2018 season is to have one lock for the 2021 (or whenever) contending roster. That low bar wasn't even reached.

Seriously? Moncada, Anderson, Rodon, Giolito, Lopez, Fry. That is 6 right there.

Dreadful is the proper way to describe this season. Very few positives to take from this season. I don't know how you can say the contention target hasn't been pushed back at least a season or two. I've been trying to stay as positive as I can this season, being as patient as I can, but honestly you can't say that there is one player on the MLB roster that will be part of the next Sox playoff team. Not one. I'm letting my negative side out tonight. I'm disappointed.

Yep. minors and former prospect rankings mean dittly squat for Moncada now. Torres from the yanks is close to passing Moncada in career WAR and Moncada has played 90 more games! There is a ton of young talent in mlb and very little of it is on the South Side unfortunately.

Avi was a good prospect, but not some phenom.

I don't know if you're allowed to say that, a good portion of the board thinks Abreu is bad

That means nothing if you can't put the bat on the ball. Courtney Hawkins had incredible physical tools as well. He couldn't put the bat on the ball even in the minors. It means nothing if you can't hit.

Terrible game outside Engel catch and Davidson pitching

I disagree. I think he's the most vital of them all. Moncada supposedly has game changing potential, Eloy Is going to be really solid but not a superstar. He'll put up .280/30/100 for a bunch of seasons but while those are good players, he can't move the needle as much as Moncada can. Eloy's plate discipline isn't that great either. It wouldn't surprise me if he never puts up an OBP over .350 in his career. with most seasons in the .325-340 range. Again, I think Eloy will be solid but not a superstar.

If he was so right about this, why did anyone think so highly of him to a) give him $63M and b) think he was a prospect. I get that scouting is an inexact science, but why wouldn't more people have noticed this? If this is true, he shouldn't have been on any T100 lists.

I really hope you're wrong. Moncada is such a huge part of the rebuild, that I don't think it can succeed without him becoming a superstar. If Moncada is a washout, they need everyone else to hit otherwise they're never going to be good enough to win anything. They'll probably get stuck in mediocrity, 78-85 win land.

His K rate in AA and AAA was not good. Basically everything KLaw said about him has been true.

Yea keep Davidson. He's too valuable with his two way ability.

He chased a handful of bad pitches tonight. He looked like he's never seen a slider in his life.

There is some potential for being shut out this entire series.

I'm actually excited to watch Davidson pitch.

It would be nice if he would swing at strikes and take balls.

Awful game for Moncada. You could see this slump coming a mile away with how much he's been pulling off the ball since the ASB. OPS under .700 and way too many strikeouts of late.

It's pointless to send Moncada down with 3 weeks left in the MiLB season, but if he doesn't absolutely rake in ST next year, I don't think it wouldn't be a bad thing for him to start next season in Charlotte, if in fact I am incorrect and he has two options remaining. Let him earn his way back up. And now he's swinging at crap. great. Also, there wasn't anything he could do with strike three there. Unfortunately, he was so incredibly up and down early in the season, that one could think he was about to figure it out only to go into another slump again. By the time it has gotten to this point, it is too late to use an option.

The Yankees aren’t like most of the teams the Sox play. I.e. the KC’s, Detroit’s, etc...notice that when the Sox play a playoff caliber team, they get smoked...See Houston, Cleveland, etc. though I can’t explain taking 2 of 3 in Boston.

You know it is getting bad for a player when even his most ardent defenders can't defend him anymore. Moncada has been bad since the ASB, no ifs ands or buts about it. He's really starting to make me wonder. He doesn't look lost at the plate because he's not swinging at crap a lot, but it wouldn't surprise me if he is.