Jake

If a team was offering me Dylan Cease for Nick Madrigal, I'd do it.

If you haven't seen a pretty significant change in Moncada's approach over the past month-ish, you've had your eyes closed. It hasn't turned him into superman, but he has definitely been working on things.

FWIW, Anderson somewhat recently emerged from a rather deep slump and is now hitting pretty much like his typical self...which isn't great, but is good enough for someone playing shortstop and doing it quite well defensively.

Reynaldo has been absolutely pitching his ass off.

Don't forget to watch the baseball games and appreciate the many ways you can end up at the same season statistics

There's basically no way he returns to the minors outside of a possible (but unlikely) rehab assignment. Only persistent ass-kickings in MLB would get him sent down, in which case you won't care about his service time.

If Kopech suffering an injury that has a high repair rate is what foils the rebuild, it was always destined to fail.

His 21% K% over his last 15 games is his lowest 15-game K% as a major leaguer.

Side note: I think this seals the deal that we bring back Shields, probably on a 1-year deal rather than his option.

Similar to Ohtani, it's good that it happened now compared to potentially having it blow out in Spring Training next year. We can second guess until the cows come home, but chances are this was unavoidable without a far less aggressive innings regimen for him. I don't care about the team control, these are the chances you take and it may well have kept our competitive window earlier than it would have been if he had to miss most of 2021.

I don't understand what this is rewarding: So is he the top pitching prospect now or is he being rewarded for pitching best?

Found it weird they didn't bother to quantify their assumptions on this. You have lots of data, both in terms of scouting grades and automated projections, that you can take and cross-check with future results. Why not do that instead of rely on your gut feeling that a certain type of pitcher (great 3-pitch arsenal, unimpeachable statistical production, but no "feel") doesn't pan out?

Hindsight is 20/20, but clear in retrospect that the mixture of his stuff being off and the delay was not going to go well. Had to give it a shot, though.

This game's a stinker but to me it's still clear as day how great Kopech is going to be.

So far everything seems consistent with the Tigers zoning in on his fastball only and Kopech not having the usual power to make guys miss it. They've hit his fastball in predictable fastball situations, they've looked terrible when he locates his offspeed, and they've been able to kill his hanging offspeeds because they're being so aggressive.

The strategy against Kopech is to not even think about the possibility of an offspeed pitch until he fools you several times.

Moncada nearing a career low in strikeout rate in a 15-game span: He's managed solid production in that span as well: He has also made some significant strides as a right-handed hitter. Since the start of July, he has a 100 wRC+ (.717 OPS) with a manageable 27% K% and 11% BB%. He has actually been better right-handed than left-handed by a small amount since July. This should end the discussion about him dropping switch-hitting for the moment.

With regard to last year's team, it's worth keeping in mind that they were ludicrously unlucky and had pivotal calls/plays that easily could have swung the outcome go against them on several occasions. Better luck and you have at least another win, if not 2 or 3.

Yeah and just imagine if all your other potential employers agreed that they wouldn't hire you if you wanted to back out of your current gig.

The contract rules that govern MLB mean there is no requirement for a minor leaguer to negotiate a special deal in order to come up to the majors. If the White Sox or anybody else wants to have a player on a different type of contract, they should either advocate for a new system in the next collective bargaining negotiations or make a better offer to their minor leaguer. The rules make young players take a very small salary and be locked out of market rate salary for most of their careers in order to avoid disincentives to calling them up. The Sox and a number of others just aren't satisfied with all these things and want to steal even more money from their employees.

Makes sense Eloy isn't playing in AAA today. Sox already informed him that performance has no bearing on whether you'll play in MLB, no use risking injury.

For what it's worth, if the Sox came to him offering a contract in exchange for a call-up, it is concrete proof of their bad faith dealing and may cost them in a grievance proceeding.

The handling of this situation has been so bad. Now Hahn gets talked into insulting his franchise cornerstone by saying he doesn't want to develop a 21-year-old DH, which is of course an unnecessary cheapshot against such an important figure and totally asinine — as if he'd be unable to get better at defense while playing every day in Chicago for a month rather than sitting on his hands. I haven't seen this shared here, but I found it to be an excellent argument about how the Sox bungled this: https://www.soxmachine.com/2018/08/31/the-business-case-against-suppressing-eloy-jimenez/

Hawk about Frank Thomas's endorsement deal: "Eugenics, is it?"

Both Giolito and Lopez were praised as minor leaguers for how good their curveballs were and they both reached MLB with the Sox having cut back drastically on the use of their curveballs in favor of a slider or changeup. This has been a very consistent pattern with the White Sox — I don't know if this is common in other organizations. I even remember Nate Jones having a strong curveball as a minor leaguer only to see it completely gone as a major leaguer.