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Kelenic speaking on culture is like Mussolini speaking on liberal democracy.

Luis Robert and Yoan Moncada: Lazy, bad character issues cause they get hurt playing the sport. Jarred Kelenic: Untapped potential cause he blew up his foot kicking a cooler in rage.

I hope he's a late bloomer, realizes his potential, and @Harold's Leg Lift makes his triumphant return to s%*# on us all about it.

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

I really wish they would just hand an OF mitt to Sosa and just play him in LF

Well, for one, when's the last time a team had a Zoom call with a NRI?

Red Sox finally sign someone from the FA market. They've done a good job assembling a ton of rotation depth this season. Crochet, Suarez, Gray are a great 1-3, bumped Bello all the way down to 4, Oviedo has a lot of breakout potential, and then you have Tolle and Early waiting in the wings.

He chose to be nicer to everyone else

Looking at this roster, I still think the Sox end up trading both Sosa & Lee before Opening Day. Mead certainly sucked last year, but offers a similar hitting profile to Sosa, is a better defender, and has more years of control. Given that Mead is out of options and Sosa should theoretically have some trade value after last season, I could Getz cashing in and giving the limited bench role to Mead instead. The Lee situation is pretty obvious. If you keep both Teel & Quero, there is simply not enough playing time for him and he becomes nothing but an insurance policy against in-game injury (which is a poor use of a bench spot). He won’t return a ton, but there is zero chance he slips through waivers and must be traded if you don’t plan on putting him on the OD roster. I fully expect a trade to happen at some point, although it’s possible the Sox hold into spring to hedge against injury.

"Yes, Luis Robert will defer $15M to facilitate that trade!"

They shouldn’t do something dumb for the sake of doing something haha

Giving up assets for Castellanos is the exact opposite of what this franchise should be doing.

He could even post the s%*# talk to us as he is driving his comfy Jeep Grand Wagoneer on the south side.

He also kind of looks like the kid from that Wednesday show

There were a ton of rumors out there about him being in various trades at the deadline to improve 3B. Enough so that Bruce asked him about it. And not only were they looking to improve the position he played, they were talking about him in trades to do it.

I guess we are going to do the Shaw thing again, but even the "excused absence" thing isn't it. https://www.chicitysports.com/chicago-cubs-matt-shaw-trade-alex-bregman-nico-hoerner

There has definitely been a thing internally for him for a while now. They are also putting him out front of a lot of stuff for a dude who isn't in their plans.

Certainly feels like he has a high likelihood to make the team baring a catastrophic ST performance.

And all you need to know is that we just picked up a similar (or better if you believe the hype) off of waivers.

Yea! The White Sox make Jeff Passan's "Winning the Offseason" list. Those banners hang forever!! MLB free agency: Offseason winners, teams in need of a move - ESPN

If the goal is to get satisfaction out of telling the Bears to "kiss our ass" and they move to Indiana and build their privately-funded stadium across the state line, Illinois will still owe $500M on the Soldier Field renovations. Do I think the Bears should make some concessions? Yes. But if all the state wants to do is tell the McCaskeys to kiss their asses because they're billionaires, that's a sure fire way to get a stadium built in Hammond. At least Pritzker is sounding like he's open to negotiations. All the previous talk about IL not even considering a Bears stadium deal for at least another year, if not longer (until IL solves all crime, poverty, and fills all potholes) is a good way to drive businesses out of state. That doesn't mean I agree with giving everything the Bears want, but it sounds like some state officials aren't even interested in negotiating. They just want to be able to tell people they told the Bears to go to hell.

I'm almost certain Smith had one

He’s Benintendi type bad defensively and we can’t roster two guys like that

FWIW, Alberto had an introductory Zoom call and Paz will have one next week. I’m not sure I recall Rule 5 picks having these types of media sessions either.

Invite as many NRIs as you can fit into camp. I’m certainly not against another OF addition depending on what the plan is for Benintendi.

I’d rather give those at-bats to Periera. Former top 100 prospect with multiple plus tools coming of a 128 wRC+ season in AAA and who has only had 176 major league plate appearances to date. Much better use of playing time IMO and right now I’d much rather him get the at-bats than Kelenic.

He has, and that's what I'm trying to get at - if Benny sees increased time at DH, that automatically gives both Teel/Quero less time together in the same lineup.

I'd play both, but I don't think it's a slam dunk will see both in the lineup on a regular basis. If they think that freeing up the third catcher spot to another position player makes more sense for their roster flexibility, I think they will do so. I think that's also why we've heard so many rumors about them shopping Quero - because they realize the excessive value they have behind the plate, and wanted to see if they could pivot that value to another position of need instead of possibly wasting it on the bench.

Hasn’t Getz said Benni is going to DH more? It sure seems like it’ll be 2 catchers. I don’t like that idea but yeah, it would probably be a platoon with Quero getting some ABs against righties (it would be unavoidable with days games after night games and more righties).

I’d rather play Kelenic and Baldwin for those few weeks/month

For what purpose?

If there was one substantive aspect at which Mead was decent, much less excelled, I could see it. But Mead has no power, Ks too much, doesn't walk; and while he's probably a better defender than Sosa, he's still a below par defender. In the minors, his batting average kept him afloat. He just doesn't make enough contact for that to carry to the majors though. Sosa hit 22 homers last season; nothing in Mead's background suggests he can come close to that. If someone wants to give us a nice return for Sosa, then fine; but expecting Mead to do anything is a real prayer. As of now, I like the "have Sosa shag balls in left" idea.

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.

The fact he has a history of actually hitting homers.

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.

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.

The only point that I was making with Sosa and Vargas is that sometimes young players don’t pan out and excel immediately.

It would be cool

True, but I would also be surprised if ~50 or so at bats in ST will dictate his entire future with the team. I think it will be how well he works with Sox hitting coaches this ST or if he is deemed disagreeable or uncoachable.

Yeah. As of right now, it feels like it’s “his job to lose.”

I agree with him

Here is my understanding of the situation: The Bears and Illinois had an agreement for the renovation/rebuild of Soldier Field. The Bears paid their portion on the agreement. Illinois issued bonds to cover their portion. Hotel tax revenue was to be used to pay down the bonds. Those bonds were backloaded. What the state has been doing with the hotel tax revenue, rather than paying down the bonds is the issue. I am not a fan of government funding of stadiums. However, I don't believe the Bears should be responsible for the state's lousy handling of the financing either. The state would need to pay or refinance those bonds regardless of where the Bears play in the future. Moving doesn't change this at all, so why should the Bears be responsible?

There must be accountability or else the integrity of ban bets will be in question.

A nicer guy would have taken the W and allowed him to continue posting. 🤣

Harder to post random crap over there though, so probably not getting the same fulfillment as he does here. Feel bad for the guy as he means well, but a bet is a bet and there are real consequences to losing.

And Blake Larson is a little low for me on this list. A left handed starter who was looking really good at instructs before TJ. Landon Hodge should be higher. I'm tired of seeing Ky Bush on these lists too. A 26 year old reliever at best. And he wasn't even looking that good before TJ.

White Sox signee RHP Franchel Crisostomo makes the list here

Sox fans have PTSD after the last 45 years.

Agreed. The OP seems to have issues with something yet to be proven has any truth to it.