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If you ever wondered what umpires and managers really say to each other. (NSFW language warning)

Mr. Hahn, I will have to seriously consider renouncing my Sox fanship/fandom if you do take up Mr. Hot FiRe's "generous" offer...

Greg, you always play this victim role, where everybody is out to get you simply because you have a different opinion, but you’re truly clueless, and this post is a perfect example of that. The Mets just claimed Chris Beck, and yet you are wondering if any team would take Shields or Soria for free?

It's pretty obvious by this post that you're not that familiar with the White Sox, nor with baseball for that matter. Soria has been pretty good, and I could definitely see a team desiring his services. Not necessarily as a closer but as late inning relief for sure. Jones has been hit and miss, and he has some injury concerns. But he still can be serviceable if used properly. Avilan, however, has been very good. And he's under team control through 2019. Of those three, he's the most valuable, and I think the Sox could get an interesting return for him. To answer your question about releasing Soria, Shield, and Santiago...yes, if released teams would be interested in them. Teams will be interested in Soria and Shields without them being released. Just because YOU don't like a player, that does not mean they aren't liked or desired by MLB teams.

The #1 human rights violation he is known for is there is only one TV channel broadcast in the country and it shows nothing but 2018 White Sox baseball games with the Abreu at bats edited out.

Jayson Stark wrote a nice article on the Athletic highlighting some key points about MLB Expansion. The issues are things like: -Resolution of Tampa Bay and Oakland stadium issues -What two cities would get the MLB team? -Realignment that might eliminate the AL and NL -League wide adoption of the DH -Reduced regular season (154 games), added playoff round These are all topics and talking points that we can have in this thread, please feel free to discuss any of them. I will be discussing the idea of added playoff rounds in my post. Personally, I've been a proponent of reducing the regular season in favor of more playoffs for quite some time. The added wild card game is a step in the right direction, and it makes for an exciting game indeed, but teams that do well enough to earn a Wild Card spot deserve far better than to have the fate of a 162 game season decided on one game alone. Expanding to a 16 team playoff format ala the NHL is not a terrible idea, in my mind, especially if the league expands to 32 teams. This is a double edged sword however, as there would quite possibly be years in which teams with records under .500 would make the playoffs. This isn't going to be the best example because in a 16 team format leagues, divisions would be realigned, which would no doubt change where these teams do end up. But, in an arbitrary playoff format Top 1-8 in the league, the following AL teams would have qualified for the playoffs in 2017: Indians 102-60 Astros 101-61 Red Sox 93-69 Yankees 91-71 Twins 85-77 Rays 80-82 Royals 80-82 Angels 80-82 Do the Rays, Royals and Angels really deserve to participate in the postseason if they lost more games than they won? This alone is a compelling argument against a 16 team playoff format. On the other hand, if you look at the top 8 teams in the AL in 2016 you get this: Rangers 95-67 Indians 94-67 Red Sox 93-69 Orioles 89-73 Blue Jays 89-73 Tigers 86-75 Mariners 86-76 Yankees/Astros 84-78 One could make arguments that the bottom 4 of the top 8 might deserve a playoff spot, for they did indeed win more games than they lost. The disparity in the league wasn't as great in 2016, and other teams had decent years. For some, the records of the Tigers and Mariners in 2016 won't be considered 'enough' for them to deserve postseason berths. That is completely fair. For others, they might view the fact that those teams were able to get through the long season winning 10-11 more games than they lost, and a postseason berth should be available for them to get a chance to take down a team with a better record. Expanded postseason may have an advantage especially in seasons where the disparity between the top teams and the second tier teams is less significant. But in seasons like 2017 where there are 4 cream of the crop teams and the next tier is meh, could make for a less interesting postseason, or at the very least a highly predictable first round. The other option is an NFL style playoff format, with 1 or 3 game wild card rounds. This may be a better fit for the MLB. With 3 game wild card rounds, the top teams would get a chance to rest up, and set their rotation. But again, this is a double edged sword as the top teams may also not be interested in having a 4-5 day break between their last game of the season and their first of the playoffs. Is that enough time for rust to settle in on a team? Again, I would argue that a team that does well enough to make the postseason deserves better than 1 game to decide their fate, so for me the 3 game wildcard round is more enticing. There really doesn't seem to be any clear or right answer. Whatever the case is, Manfred will most certainly push to get an expansion/realignment and adjusted playoff format completed in his time as commissioner. Stark believes it is not a matter of if, but when. MLB will have some interesting decisions to make. At the end of the day, I am excited for the potential expansion of MLB playoffs, however they decide to go about it. I think it will be good for the game and ultimately more teams will "go for it" instead of rebuild, and some of those teams could end up being great stories like the 2005 White Sox. With such a constricted playoff format as is, teams are forced to try and become 95+ game winners to ensure that they make the playoffs. This is incredibly hard to do unless you amass a serious amount of young talent like the Cubs, Dodgers, Astros, Red Sox, Yankees, Indians... well you get the idea. As such, you end up with situations like the White Sox and Tigers have had to face. These teams could have theoretically put together 85-90 game winners if they continued with the status quo, but both of these teams had to take a long look in the mirror and face the fact that it is harder to put together a MLB playoff team year to year than ever before. The rebuilding strategy has produced teams that dominate the league, and are marginally better than teams that take a year to year approach, thus occupying most of the few available playoff positions. Look at the AL standings this year and you already know this, 4 of the 5 spots will be Boston, New York, Houston and Cleveland. Seattle and LA are the compelling teams that take a year to year approach that seem like they will vie for the 5th spot, but even then, may be relegated to 1 game to decide their fate. With that in mind, it is clear that taking a year to year approach is incredibly risky, as you need to have an overachieving kind of year in order to potentially play only 1 playoff game. Rebuilding to become the next top team indeed becomes a better long term strategy. Assuming Houston wins the division this year but Seattle only falls slightly short of them in the standings, Seattle would deserve a far better fate than 1 game. Expanding the playoffs, eliminating 1 game wild card would go a long ways towards stopping teams from intentionally being bad in order to be good in the future. It would empower more teams to go for it, and not blow up their cores. I guess us White Sox fans can be happy that an expanded playoff format is down the road, when we are supposed to be sustaining success, rather than having already happened and emboldening our front office to continue to try and win with the old core and year to year approach we took for so long.

It may be tilting at windmills even at the MLB level. As far as I know, they just use the data from the catchers, which would be incomplete. To get a better picture, they would have to overlay the catcher's data over the typical zone for each umpire, as we all know umps have varying zones. Another thing that illustrates the issue with framing, at least to me, is the inconsistency of its leaders. If it were truly a skill, you would expect that the same guys would tend to be towards to top. We know Nolan Arenado is a great defender, and the numbers show it year in and year out. The same can't necessarily be said of framing. If you look at the last few years you will see some head scratching things, for instance, in 2014 Jonathan Lucroy was 5th in baseball in framing. In 2017 he was dead last. That is quite the drop off. But ok, maybe he just deteriorated incredibly quickly. Willson Contreras was 25th in 16, 88th last year, dead last this year. Buster Poser was 1st in 2016, and 23rd in 2017. Alex Avila was 87th in '16, 105 in 17, he is 16th this year. Cervelli was 7th in 16, 100th in 17, and 92nd this year. Max Stassi went 60, 45, 1. Maybe he is really working on it, but that is a heck of a progression. Derek Norris went from 92nd, to 7th to 8th. That's weird. Russ Martin went from 5th to 31st to 8th. Jason Castro went 9,3, 15, 29, which is mostly consistent I guess. James McCann went from 108 to 27 to 110, to 23. Really odd. Now there are some guys that are consistently toward the top, Molina is routinely right around 10, Grandal has been consistently toward the top. Sal Perez is routinely at the bottom, but I'd take him in a heartbeat. There are just enough weird variances to make me doubt the validity of the numbers to some degree. Guys just seem to really bounce around a lot. Someone please sell me on why I should buy in more.

Hey guys lets leave all this politics BS in the Buster. This is the place to argue about Rodons and Rondons.

Nah, he's trash and should be sent back to Oakland, just ask SoxTalk.

FUCK YEAAAAAA!!!!

If Rodon and Covey both stick as TOR starters, then there's Lopez, Kopech, Hansen, and Cease in the org with 1 potential, and guys like Dunning, Stephens, Adams, Flores, Henzman, and probably some I'm missing or who aren't showing particularly well right now (Clarkin, Guerrero, Lambert) with mid rotation potential, there's no way they're not going to find a starting rotation there.

Under Reinsdorf that probably wont happen.

Dang I just thought a seagull was a baseball and thought it was a single.

Hats off to you Mr. Abreu. Awesome play.

I don't like expanding the playoffs because baseball is a game where there's a lot of statistical noise on the way to determining who the best teams are. It means the playoff series, even with 7 games, aren't very good at sorting out who the best team is. The 162 games, on the other hand, do a good job of ensuring the best teams get in (even if there are going to be some spots on the fringe decided by luck). Expanding the field of playoff teams while shortening the series subtracts signal and adds noise.

Must feel good getting one right after how often and extremely you've been wrong about Abreu, huh?

Dylan Covey: the reason everyone needs to chill out about young players and realize that development isn't linear and the results don't matter this year anyway.

That picture is a PV of 30 with a FV of 35 tops.

So Covey is our best starter and Jace the best reliever. Before the year, I would have said that wouldn't be likely....in AAA

Regardless, I think Caulfield deserves more credit. He is all over the place sometimes but he puts together long, well thought out posts pretty often. I think he is a very valuable poster to have. I always enjoy his posts late at night when nobody else is posting.

Laughing at the Mets never gets old. The Mets are TRYING to compete and have a worse winning percentage over their last 50 games then the Sox. Think about that! They are so desperate they are signing Chris Beck and adding him to their 40 man. Yikes.

Lol. His walk rate is significantly better and .1 in WHIP is fairly significant. His ERA is also 2.5 runs lower. Dude, I don't know what else to tell you. We clearly disagree. I have no doubt that Kopech would be in the majors if the Sox were trying to win games at the ML level. I have no doubt that he would be one of the best if the not the best pitcher in the our rotation if he were up right now. But the Sox aren't trying to compete, and they're actually trying for the first time in my 28 years on this earth to not rush prospects and try to rebuild the right way. A big part of that is not being dumb about service time for key players. Kopech is a key player. Covey, despite somehow now looking like a competent MLB pitcher, is not (though him being a solid mid rotation starter out of nowhere would be huge).

I hope he doesn't take a couple weeks off. SoxTalk is the best site for White Sox fans. Everybody gets to express their opinions without any censorship. Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing especially on SoxTalk.

Uh oh. Not a good sign for a previous UCL guy. This is the primary muscle that supoorts the medial elbow.

I went to one of those Rick Hahn Q & A sessions on Monday. I found it funny when he was asked a question about Dylan Cease, and the first thing he did was make a joke about how Fangraphs doesn't think he's a top 131 prospect

I think ptatc's problem is that you are looking for an excuse to keep him in AAA. We should be doing whatever is best for his development, whether it be keeping him in AAA or moving him up to the bigs. We shouldn't be looking for reasons to keep him down... If he has more to learn in AAA great keep him there, if he is ready for the bigs he should be moved up at the next service time benchmark.

The middle infield in Chicago is pretty well set for the near future. But depth, for insurance and alternatives (and maybe trade bait) is always good. Ken takes a look at three lower level prospects in this area, with quotes from the players, to paint a picture of some of the available talent.

You are correct. Many of the classic PEDs weaken the tendon due to its effect on the collagen and its disproportionate increase in the muscle's ability to generate tension compared to the tendon. So athletes with multiple severe tendon injuries raise a few eyebrows.

This is true. You're right reps would help, but so would some lineup help. RIght now he's at the tail end of the Engel/Tilson, Narvaez, Trayce trio. Yoan hitting in front of Sanchez really only benefits Yolmer (actually think Yolmer has the best possible position for success in our lineup). You think Moncada would be producing better numbers in Benitendi's position in that Boston linup? Uh yeah. Might see a pitch or 2 with Betts and JD Martinez waiting. Right now, he's very exposed and pitchers really don't need to show him anything. Except for maybe 1-2 times per game that he's leading off an inning, he's up with 2 outs and nobody on. So does that make him less talented? Are Moncada's skills lacking or are they just not fully applicable yet? Does that mean that Yoan Moncada is the one with issues? He's far from perfect, but I think you will see eye-popping numbers put up when we start packing our lineup with MLB-caliber hitters. My dad always said the famous line while playing Eucher..."when you learn to play with the cards you're dealt, you'll get better ones." Kind of think that's where Moncada is right now...Learning how to play with nothing around him. If he can learn and continue to push through and develop, I think this will only benefit him down the road. Great guys can have good years in bad lineups. However, a great lineup can take someone good and make them great.

There is definitely developmental value to playing in MLB. The sooner you do that, the sooner they are ready. You don't want to play so many games with service time that you end up delaying your window for contention.

Honestly, why is it such a terrible thing that not many teams make the playoffs in baseball? I think it makes for a better playoff, and it sure doesn't make it drag out for way too long.

So businesses are making more money but not giving any of it to the little people. That's our country in a nutshell right now. It's all about the 1 percenters, folks. I don't think Trump can make business owners do the right thing with their profits. However, he is one of the ruthless 1 percent as well. I wonder if Judd Legum is in favor of Bernie led socialism as well. This is why I want free stuff now. The top money earners will never change and spread the wealth to their employees. They'll just buy another vacation house with the profits. Meanwhile we're all going to be on the streets. Did you see it was 1 percent of all baby boomers or something like that have any cash saved for retirement? When 40 percent of Americans are living on the streets it should get interesting, very interesting cause that will even affect the 1 percenters. Elect Bernie.

1. According to an article I read after the movie, it seems like it was premidated to start the events. 2. I think Charlie was possessed by the demon that the cult worships (explaining why she is so creepy). I think the grandma put it inside her at a young age (the mother mentions early on in the movie that she had a brother that was crazy and said he would say that the mother would try to put people inside of him) and then the demon was transferred from her into the boy at the end. http://collider.com/hereditary-ending-explained/

Uh, no. Exactly one person wanted to extend Avi. Literally no one else did.

I sometimes think that SoxTalk has memory of a fly. All of a sudden we like Palka and Engel? And dump Garcia? Last year it was let Engel rot and Garcia should be handed an extension... oh and that Nicky Delmonico can be a part of the future and that Davidson is a joke. Then in the beginning of the year it was Davidson can be the DH of the future!! He gets hurt for a few weeks and all of a sudden it's play Palka over Davidson when Nicky and Avi return.... How about this? Really none of these guys are much better or worse than each other and put them on the Nationals or Cubs or Astros and they'd all be riding the bench or in AAA. If we want to be a team that really competes for it all each year I don't think many of these guys are part of it. Hopefully you find 2-3 players from this disaster of a 2-3 years of baseball.

The last was Bryce Montes de Oca in 2014 which was the Rodon draft. He was taken in the 14th by the Sox out of HS. He also didn't sign as a junior in 2017 after being drafted by the Natinals in the 15th. He was taken this year with the Mets 9th rounder

Yeah, so, that's been a problem since June 1. I've made my displeasure very clear to the people who run CN, and their management at Tronc (TribCo media). They are working to fix it, that's all I can say. It's amazing they botched this so badly - they couldn't make the changes needed for the new EU privacy laws in time, so now no one in Europe can read anything TribCo. They are flushing money down the toilet. Which makes me think it will be fixed soon, but in the meantime, all I can do is apologize on their behalf. We (FutureSox) can't do anything about it. Unless we build a brand new, independent site. Which... well, keep your eyes peeled. 😉

I think it would worry me more if a 23 year-old top prospect's game was at its peak at age 23. The guy's a star now with so many ways to improve.

POTUS

He'll be a bust again with his next strike out so let's enjoy the moment, for however long it lasts.

A rare for 6-0 for the farm tonight. Ws across the board! Great time for Basabe to come back alive. He should be ready for AA after surviving the slump.

It should be noted that just mentioning Moncada caused not only one homer tonight, but Puig has also gone 2/3 (2B and HR) to raise his OPS for the season all the way up to .795 after a terrible start to the season (12-3 Dodgers, BOT 6th).

Dems need to keep making it about healthcare and be careful about the social issues they target in some places. Focus on what will win votes (healthcare, pocketbooks, etc.). Here in Iowa, I think you could find a majority in favor of gay marriage, etc., but that's not gonna drive votes for anyone that's not already gonna vote for you.

https://mobile.twitter.com/followmefor3/status/1006695767166406668

Alex Spier of the Boston Globe i do like. He is really into stats almost to a fault at times. He did an inning in the broadcast booth w the Red Sox announcers Friday night. He indicated that there is some concern regarding Moncada due to the hand/wrist injuries he has suffered. I wasn't aware he has had multiple problems. He said that might be contributing to his problems from the right side.

From the Boston Globe: I think some sour grapes but the work ethic could be an issue unless that has changed Moncada was promoted to the majors out of Double A the following season. By then Moncada already had his own logo, a design combining his initials that he tattooed on his neck, embossed on the hood of several customized sports cars and silk-screened on the front of T-shirts. He was wearing one before the game on Friday. The other(Red) Sox players found it more entertaining than anything else, a rookie showing off before he had accomplished anything. They were less amused when Moncada showed little interest in honing his craft. He routinely skipped optional batting practice and rarely sought the advice of veteran players. https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/redsox/2018/06/08/yoan-moncada-very-much-remains-work-progress-for-white-sox/dTJA94kUofR30VfxgSVbcN/story.html

So you are saying they struggle to pick the right free agents. But you trust them to pick the right players in the draft. Hmmm. You think free agency is a crapshoot; what about the draft? So they are incompetent picking free agents but they'll be better at the draft?? (Burger, Madrigal? Rodon? Hmmm).

This i get people want results in line with what he did last year, but I just don’t think it’s been as bad as people Markit out to be. The guy has fewer than 3 walks in 7 out of his 12 starts. He’s had a WHIP under 1.3 in 9 out of his 12 starts. He’s had a k/9 at 9 or higher in 11 out of 12 starts. He’s had 2 starts that accounted for 48% of his earned runs this season. Hes not a finished a product, he’s certainly has had a few clunkers this season, but make no mistake, Kopech has been REALLY GOOD at AAA this year. We all know that a 13% BB walk rate won’t get it done, but even with it, he’s pitching to a 3.60 FIP. Having him stay down or come up is not going to make or break him. He just turned 22 years old and he is good enough and has been good enough to learn and iron out his weaknesses while facing ML hitters. I think he should be up by August if I had a say.

We all knew who the starter of this thread would be when this happened last night, and I bet most of us could paraphrase what that poster would write.....