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Madrigal has hit 2nd 3 times in the last week right ? I know a couple of those were against KC but the Sox offense has done well with him there. 3-0 in that time .Madrigal might hit into more DP than Grandal because he actually swings at pitches but he's also more likely to be used in hit and runs or get a hit that might advance Tim to 3rd. Plus if both him and Tim get on that's a lot more speed on base than if Grandal gets on base. With the Sox last in HR's I'd rather not depend on a HR to score Grandal from 1st. I agree he should be lower but it isn't that bad to have him 5th if you are going with R-L-R-L in the lineup and Yermin and Vaughn might be able to hit more with guys on base. Vaughn is 2nd on the team now in doubles so if you can get Grandal to 2nd base, I like Yermin and Vaughn behind him, both guys with gap or HR power.

Dodgers are free falling right now, 5-15 in their last 20. Their bullpen is falling apart . Injury bug has hit them hard.

SMH

This was my take about Vaughn . He started slow so TLR let him sit a few games. I know everyone wanted to see him playing every day from the get go but he did what most managers would do when you insert a rookie with no upper level minors experience and no LF experience . You sit him down and let him , study, you talk to him about how pitchers going to be approaching him , slow things down, study film of his AB's. It sucks that because of injuries that the only guys around to replace him sucked but it all came out in the wash that TLR was an idiot. I think he was handled the right way. And now it has absolutely paid off and he's out there every day, in a short period of time . But how he is doing now only adds fuel to the fire that he should've been out there every day from the beginning ,whereas like you suggested and I suggested long ago that it was no great mismanagement nor injustice to Vaughn to slow things down for him.

Yea I mentioned Liberatore and even gave the link for the full trade . Garcia is Cuban and should've been on the Sox radar for a while since he was given a $2.5M bonus to sign with the Cards,. He was DFA'd and the Rangers traded for him. Gave up only cash. Just saying the Sox are more likely to make trades that receive cash than ones that give it up. Can't always be in contention if you aren't always doing everything necessary to expand your level of minor league talent. The Dodgers, Cards, Padres and Rays and to a lesser extent Oakland seem to do this and realized middle of the field prospects are the ones to invest more heavily in. They are the more athletic types who can more easily convert to other positions.

I brought those OF's up more to emphasize that the Sox shouldn't be trading prospects for an aging good player like Blackmon who will costs prospects, money and is old or for Gallo who doesnt have much time left before he becomes a free agent and has slowed down a lot and can no longer play CF due to that. All these OF's are impact players, you named a few OK pitchers and a DH . Of course draft picks and the wonderful young players who were traded for in the Q, Sale and Eaton deals were all part of the rebuild process but that doesn't mean you can't continue to explore prospect for prospect trades or continue to build the scouting department to explore as many athletic position player talents as possible. Garcia, Azorarena and Grisham all started in CF as prospects and Tatis was a SS . Middle of the field guys not types like Burger, AJ. Reid, Palka , Skole, Collins, Mercedes, Sheets , Encarnacion (as an example of wasting money on another lumbering aging slow guy.)

Every team makes mistakes. I could also ,while fantasizing the Sox had any interest in adding Adolis Garcia or Randy Azorarena to our Cuban connection , that they had selected Trent Grisham instead of Carson Fulmer in the draft. Grisham went the pick right after Fulmer. He was a HS LH CF type when the Sox hadn't yet changed their thinking about adding higher upside young talent who play the middle of the field. I'm not sure they have yet changed their focus for more of these types. Between Garcia, Arozarena and Grisham that's a lot of OF talent they passed on between 2015 and 2020. All 3 were within their grasp either as IFA's /draft pick (not sure if they had the money due to restrictions ) but certainly later when all 3 were traded.

I doubt Gallo can play CF passably unless you mean in the sense that Vaughn can play LF passably. However the fact that Gallo has slowed down in sprint speed a lot and is likely to slow down even more , that speed in CF means a lot more than it does in LF.

I like to imagine the Sox had made the minor trade for cash considerations after the Cardinals DFA'd Cuban OF Adolis Garcia like the Rangers did . The Cards DFA'd him on Dec. 18, 2019 and TX. traded for him on Dec.21 Adolis Garcia signed an IFA contract in 2017 with the Cards for $2.5M Randy Arozarena was another Cuban Cards OF prospect signed in 2016 for $1.25M . The Rays traded for him but gave up a top pitching prospect for him because they were loaded with young talent in the minors especially pitchers. Unlike Garcia, Arozarena had a big AAA season but the Ray's traded recent draft choice and top 50 prospect Matt Liberatore who had a nice season in A ball. Jan.9, 2020 was the trade that involved more players than I mentioned. Seems like a Rays type of deal. Give up good A level talent for MLB ready talent. https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2020/01/rays-acquire-jose-martinez-randy-arozarena-from-cardinals.html These are the type of trades the Sox should be making anytime. No reason whatsoever to take on aging guys with high contracts like Blackmon or even to give up too much talent for a prototypical 3 outcome player like Gallo.

Yep run differential does mean good things. The rest of the noise about variances in scores is just baseball.

For the Sox, the Grandal and Keuchel signings were a promise fulfilled about spending the money as hard as that is for some to except. Those are kind of minimal FA contracts for 3 or 4 years is just what we as fans should be expecting from the Sox. That is their idea of spending the money. Anyone expecting much bigger contracts on much better players has always been disappointed. The Sox normal playground is signings in the 1-3 yr range usually in the $7-15M per year range. That's the mid range for them that they have been terrible with.It might be the lower end for a lot of teams. That's why sometimes we have to accept when the Sox prioritize a need for a certain type of player rather than a position. I was ok with Mazara because he was still young enough with upside. It didn't work out but it was better than a 30 something with no upside. I was also one of the few ok with McCann, again a younger guy rather than the retreads, 30-38 yr old catchers on the market every year. Or in the case of Grandal, LH power and OBP . The Sox were desperate for both those things. Pull any old EE thread and or off season threads and whenever DH was brought up as a position of need you'll find I never wanted to pay for a DH . I thought Collins and Mercedes should be given a shot. The EE signing was a typical Sox signing , a blast from the old past paying some over the hill guy way too much hoping for just one more good year . Unfortunately as Sox fans we hate the low budget signings like McCann, Mazara, or Rodon but I'd rather see them take chances on upside in the bargain basement than paying extra for past production. Sign those youngish guys who showed some promise once below their prime , grab them at 24, 25 ,26,27, and maybe you find a Justin Turner or Max Muncy once in a while. Guys who you can actually keep for more than a yr. or 2 but have the room to give an opportunity to very soon. The budget is what it is so I try not to fuss about the size of a Grandal type contract because like it or not that's the top of the barrel for the Sox. That was always the challenge for the Sox to win a World Series in the window. We probably aren't going to get any real big signings like the Cubs or Astro's did in their windows. As much as we wanted a Bauer or a Springer or Machado or even Wheeler the odds are against us winning those battles. This is Jerry doing what he does. The Sox need good luck to win in our window . That's how it is . We got some with Rodon and Mercedes and some bad luck with Eloy and Robert. At least it wasn't all bad . Now we just have to ride out the shit storms, keep playing and find where the holes truly are for the stretch run and hope we can get a reinforcement or 2 at the TDL in positions of need. Like it or not this is the formula we get. Wish us luck ,we are always going to need it more than the other rebuilds. This is why JR doesn't fire guys like Hahn. He knows he puts all kinds of obstacles in his way. You wanna know why Hahn won Executive of the year as voted by his peers ? It's because his peers know who Hahn's Chairman of the Board is and how difficult it is to get anything accomplished as a GM under JR.

Good job ! Kind of sad the winners thread is ignored . Mendick with a 2 run HR was unexpected but sweet in his 1st start in RF. Nice to see a HR from an OFer for a change. Pitching from Lynn fantastic . Bullpen was solid . Hung a snowman in the 1st and cruised to an easy win. Sweep it up it tomorrow SSHM.

I usually don't comment on a players demeanor but I'm getting a vibe like he's big leaguing it now. All the gold chains, trotting down the 1st base line on a GB to 2nd and he's getting a bit swing happy, in a little slump because he 's been down 0-2 , 1-2 a lot and not having better AB's like he did earlier. It's just a bit of bad baseball luck that you run into where every pitch you take is a strike on the black . Or put another way how the heck can Grandal walk this much when he isn't hitting ? You'd think it would be easy for an MLB pitcher to just throw strikes to a guy hitting .120 and challenge him but somehow some way one is getting down 0-2 a lot and the other is up 2-0 all the time.

I love me a White Sox snowman in an inning.

Ok now you're talking . Forget what I said previously.

I'm still trying to figure out why Goodwin isn't up yet over Hamilton. But lets forget about Eaton being banged up or your limited choices on the roster to play RF are Hamilton or Leury when one of them has to play CF ,and that there is a LHP on the mound for KC . I mean what exactly are you expecting from LaRussa here ? You can't make the lineup without Leury in the lineup against LHP so he has to play CF unless u want the lefty Hamilton to start in CF and Leury in RF or bring up Goodwin and he's also LH .

I would generally agree that catchers age poorly because of the demands of the position,but still talking about signing Grandal over McCann hasn't made sense and it still doesn't make sense. I can see an argument for 2 catchers who don't make much money who provide good work with pitchers since that's an often overlooked part of the job. But preparing to come out of the rebuild the Sox had certain needs like LH power and OBP. Grandal had both those things. He was actually an ideal fit because A.) he had a track record of being that type of player and B.) McCann had 1 one year of being who he was for the Sox and C. )Because of the 2 good years McCann had was always going to test free agency. Could the Sox have tried to extend him based on the 1st year ? Sure, if they really thought he was going to be special moving forward but that still didn't solve finding a LH power hitter who also provided OBP. Today the Sox are now among the leaders in OBP and I'd like to think that's because the Sox placed greater emphasis on it when they signed Grandal. It's no coincidence that the Sox are last in HR's but still are among the leaders in run differential and still considered one of the better offensive teams mostly accomplished without Eloy. It has a lot to do with OBP we are getting from guys who have more professional AB's now like Grandal, Moncada, Collins, Vaughn, Madrigal, Mercedes Anderson all guys who have either a high BA or have a good eye or some combination of both.

Frank Menechino

Lot's of different people post here. Not surprising you can find a multitude of opinions on every player based on current results. Message boards and twitter don't work real well with baseball because of small sample sizes. It's a game of patience . Abreu is showing his age, Eaton now sucks after being a good free agent acquisition at the beginning , the bullpen was awesome based on last years result and now it sucks. People talking about giving Rodon a qualifying offer after 30 games or what it will cost to resign him. We get way ahead of ourselves way too often. We'd have nothing to post about if we all waited for the final analysis.

Just like Mercedes. You can't tell me that he couldn't catch once every few weeks . But I'm thinking when the Sox run into a hellish stretch of 42 games in 40 days we might see him a few times.

So as the Vulture you basically eat the body of the dead so you are circling the barely alive carcass of the "lazy" Grandal is that it ? Oh I'm sorry "pure laziness". Since you don't remember him doing that at the beginning of the season, I'll just guess you don't remember he's had knee pain since the beginning of spring training. It may not be reported after every game "oh hey Sox fans, catcher is a very difficult position to play . In fact ,so difficult no one really wants to be a catcher and that's why most catchers are such lousy hitters and the one's who aren't often aren't kept at catcher by their teams because they don't want their best players playing through pain all the time." I'm just taking a wild guess here that "taking a knee" might have a little something to do with relieving pain in a sore knee or taking pressure off a knee that is balky. But that's just me . Can I ask what is "spring time" besides the time of year when flowers bloom ? Is this a stat I can look up so I can see if his spring time truly is increasing ?

With a pick axe ?

Just enough hitting and a whole lot of pitching . The pitching has been outstanding on the road trip. Our starters are really impressive so far.