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Welcome to Soxtalk! One thing youll find out here is how forgiving and patient the posters are here.

The FO has much to be blamed for but taking Moncada and Kopech (plus Basabe and Diaz) is not one of them. At the time of the trade, every major rating service considered Moncada a top 3, if not the best prospect in baseball. Kopech was on the ascent as a fireballer with TOR potential. They might both end up disappointing but, at the time, it looked like more than a fair trade.

Cano had more PA's in his rookie year than Moncada has had in his entire career, yet Moncada isn't a rookie? This dude's talking just to talk.

LOL - well, thank goodness you are happy and content with the results of the last four decades to help balance out that bitterness and grudginess of the more serious fans out there!

Matty D with homer #13.

If you take away all of the top prospects, they aren't fun to watch. How deep.

I'm willing to listen, and Moncada is underperforming, but that doesn't mean he's a bust or that the trade won't work out. To the Herrera trade, it "seems" mediocre because of Herrera's name value, but in reality he is only under control for three more months. None of the guys they got back have a high ceiling, aside from maybe the third baseman they got (Gutierrez, I think), but it doesn't seem too bad to me considering what they gave up.

I know you love false equivalences, but it's been made clear that you don't want to understand others' points of view, so there's no point in giving you an actual response

How do you guys know this was a mediocre package? You need to wait at least 3-4 years before you can pass judgement on any trade.

I can just see it...if Elrockin, the best Sox fan, has even given up on this team...why would/should hard working blue collar SouthSide families reward the Sox with their hard-earned money for an inferior product? Really thought Polka was going to miss that somehow...you’re almost more surprised when a ball is actually corralled out there.

Don’t let Greg775 see this...you might send him into a season-long depression, or, at the very least, cancellation of his MLB.TV/Extra Innings package and a vow never to overpriced pay for soda, hot dogs or a beer at a game ever again.

The White Sox have no casual fans.

Good point in terms of perception of casual Sox fan. Hard for them to get excited about rebuild when they see Moncada really struggling. I doubt the casual fan cares how Dunning is doing in AA.

Ha IKR. This just seems a new low, you got guys writing off a 23 kid with positive WAR in under 600 pa and some writing off a 22 year old pitcher in AAA. Come on.

I honestly can't believe how many people want to call this trade a bust 18 months in.

👍👍👍👍👍👍

It's more of an indictment on the FO if Moncada and Kopech bomb. Would be pretty pathetic to not get at least 1 above average major league player for one of the best trade chips I can think in the past 5-7 years given the level of talent, years of control and affordability Sale had...

But when it's a squash, Lesnar style, don't you say the same about those matches? It's either what you wrote in the bolded statement or a squash. I've never really seen an in between, unless you believe "in between" is a horses*** match and in that case, no thanks.

Soxfan is right, but to be fair, there really is not a chance Yoan Moncada will be out of the league in 5 years unless he suffers a horrific career-ending injury. The dude is in a really bad slump and still has 41 XBH and 10sb and 56bb in 523 ML PAs I think at worst he'll be an above average MLer

Way too many ifs in this statement for my liking. The Sox need Moncada and Kopech to be studs if they are to become a mini powerhouse in two years. There is a big difference in expected outcomes between the Sale trade and say the Swarzak trade. Getting hosed on trading your biggest chip is how you end up in a never ending rebuild cycle.

I think the general consensus is actually that it is way to early to be panicking.

The flipside is only frightening if busts come across the board with the Sox top prospects. Even if Moncada, Kopech and Basabe all bomb out and we get crap from the Sale trade. If other guys like Dunning, Hansen, Lopez, Jimenez, Robert...if many of them do reach their potential and the Sox become a mini powerhouse 2-4 years from now, it's all good then. You know when you go in to a rebuild and start making trades like the Sox made, that you're going to get hosed on some of the trades. It's part of the process and it serves no purpose to get worked up about the return on each and every trade. The risk is mostly on the side of the team taking the prospects.

Well I'd say Reynaldo Lopez has produced pretty well for the Sox early on. But yeah, I get what you're saying. And we all probably remember that when the rebuild started, after Eaton and Sale were moved, things switched to Q rumors. The Yankees were allegedly one of the biggest suitors. And there was that alleged deal that fell apart on Christmas Eve, which many thought was Q to the Yankees. Could Judge have been part of that? I recall that winter Yankee fans wanted us to take Judge for Q and Sox fans wanted no part of him as a headliner. His stock was down from his slow MLB start I guess.

Look on the bright side, he's hitting better than Trayce Thompson.

Hopefully Moncada will figure it out - obviously he has talent. I'm sure the pressure of being here to be the big star of the future is also hard to deal with. At this point it's certainly reasonable for people to be worried. But yeah we have a couple more years before we can start to make any real conclusions.

FWIW, Moncada has the second most called third strikes on pitches that were outside the zone in MLB with 9 such blown calls. Matt Davidson is first with 11. For the sake of context, he's also struck out looking 22 times on pitches *inside* the zone, which ranks highly. Still, you're looking at nearly a third of his strikeouts looking ending on a blown call by the umpire. For more context, he's had 5 pitches in the zone called balls with 2 strikes (56th highest in MLB), so this isn't merely an artifact of him taking a lot of pitches. League-wide players on average get many more 2-strike pitches in the zone called balls than the opposite kind of mistake because the strike zone as it is typically called by umpires is smaller than the rulebook strike zone. And as one last fun fact about Moncada's struggles with the umpires, he's had 5 occasions in which a 3-ball pitch outside the zone was called a strike, 3rd highest number in the league. He's only had the inverse happen 2 times, making him one of the unluckiest full time players by that measure as well. Side note: Davidson has only struck out 14 times looking on pitches inside the zone, meaning it's about a coin flip when he's called out looking whether strike 3 was in the zone or not.

Moncada is at 523 Plate Appearances in his career. Cano had 551 at the end of his Rookie year. The number of PA are pretty close albeit spread out over 3 years for Moncada. Moncada has been compared to Cano from the minute he signed with Boston. The Sox pumped article after article about Moncada "the #1 Prospect in baseball" after the Sale trade was made. The Sox traded away the best pitcher in franchise history and a future HOF for Moncada. The kid was brought here to be a perennial all star. In what bizarro world is a 40% strike out rate considered good and not a giant red flag?

Moncada's also had more than 3x more BB's than Cano and more HR's in fewer PA's. Jesus, dude. Also, we're comparing him to Robinson Cano, who was most likely a HOF'er up until he got popped.

Cano had a 778 OPS at the end of his Rookie year. Also, Moncada is no longer a Rookie. Cano only struck out 68 times his rookie year in over 500 plate appearances. Moncada is sitting at 97 in mid-June.

He is playing like a Kia right now. Looks a lot more like Emilio Bonifacio than Robinson Cano at this point in his career. Let's hope he starts playing better soon. It is frustrating to watch other prospects come up and play well right away. It just seems like the Sox can't have nice things..

Republican's cant stand up to Trump. Trump is who defines them. The party stands for nothing besides for what Trump's opinion is that day. Many of the things they now cheer for go completely against what their alleged core ideas were.

Way too late for that my friend. Moncada's hit tool is being exposed big time by major league pitching. He has an OPS under 700 and and an OBP under 300. We all know about the horrendous K rate. How does this all magically turn around for him? The Sox billed this kid as a Porsche in all the press that came out during and after the Sale trade. After 500 major league plate appearances, it looks like the Sox got a Kia instead.

Comcast modems dont really care about the wireless router, though I'd suggest replacing the modem as well. My speed is so much better without their crap in the way. I believe I linked my setup on the last page but here is what I got: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01I5TJGSE/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01K4CZOBS/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

How about Moncada and Kopech to the Red sox for Chris Sale?

Thank goodness you have nothing better to be upset about.

The US misses the World Cup and Mexico beats Germany. So so gross, I don't care what Landon Donovan says. Still impressed by the Swiss strategy of beat the shit out of Neymar for 90 minutes to control him. It worked.

I got the eye test.... Fielding metrics ain't always accurate and don't cover the broad spectrum. But hey you keep your metrics its fine and your opinion. And thanks for calling me dumb... I guess a computer can tell more than the eye. Tell me how many times didn't he cover the bag? Or miss on the pivot? How many times 2 on and a wild pitcher he would swing at the first piece of carp he would see to GIDP? No situational awareness. Your metrics don't cover that. Metrics in moderation is a good thing, but they don't tell the whole story....

Nothing screams the state of White Sox baseball these days than someone directing people away from Sox baseball rather than to it to attain “happiness” and “escape”.

You must not be very educated on advanced defensive metrics. Save me some time and go do some research on fangraphs. Alexei was an above average defender at the hardest fielding position to play outside of catcher. It seems it is more you being blinded by his occasional blunders, not me being blinded by his dazzling plays.

For what its worth to you I was told by one of the Sox announcers a few years ago when Alexei was playing the he was (direct quote) "the dumbest shortstop in baseball." The comment was made not because of the physical errors which are part of the game but because of all the mental mistakes in the field (example his issues with the double play, touching the actual base for an example) and his base running misjudgements. He was in the league a long time, those didn't seem to improve. I seem to recall an incident between A.J. and him for another example on his positioning when receiving throws from the catcher. A.J. wasn't happy about it. I'd have to agree with a previous poster, the Sox for the last decade or so really make you wonder if the organization stresses anything regarding fundamentals. It seems simple things, baseball situations are screwed up a lot. One way for the rebuild to increase the chances of succeeding is for these kids in the minor leagues to actually learn their trade / craft and master the "little things."

Happy Father’s Day to all of the Soxtalk dads

Seems weird to give guy crap after he has clearly re-thought his position and changed his mind a bit.

So velocity is secondary, but Dane Dunning isn’t going to make with a “90 to 92 MPH”? Maybe you should reference this post in the future when you start writing off Dane again.

I certainly understand why, they are both interchangeably bad.

An awful lot of work in writing up what amounts to a stupid question.

Well, thank God both Albies and Moncada can be good players at the same time. Strange, strange logic.

He is garbage. I have no idea how he gets anyone out. He sucks. it won't last. He might have 3-5 good seasons, but isn't going to last.

Corey Kluber Tanaka Nola Porcello Maeda Orodizzi Ross Cueto Greinke These are some of the guys that get outs pretty routinely that are RHP that averaged less than 93 on their 4 Seamer last season. I think you could make a pretty solid rotation out of those guys...

Yep. See: Colon, Bartolo. Guy hasn't thrown over 90 in almost a decade and is still miraculously carving out decent seasons.

Still doesn't mean it isn't. I just don't think a RHP can get hitters out at the MLB level without averaging 93 on the fastball anymore. You can't even set up hitters because they'll lay off of the breaking stuff and tee off on the fastball, and if you can get 3 breaking balls over the plate then they'll just grab some bench. Watch Giolito pitch and you'll see. He still has awesome breaking stuff but it doesn't matter because he throws 91.