Jake

Dylan Covey is more than two years older than Fulmer. What Covey's doing right now is good evidence of why you don't take a guy with good stuff and convert him into a reliever because he gets beat up after getting rushed through the minors.

Carlos is back.

Per Statcast, that'll be the 10th time this season that Davidson has had a pitch outside the zone called for strike 3. That's 2nd in the league behind Paul Goldschmidt.

Davidson's horrible luck with strike calls continues, this time bailing Sale out of the inning.

This is really a bit of a headscratcher to me. Weird message to send to Bummer that you can pitch fine but if an older guy in AAA pitches well the team needs to trade him so you get demoted.

I think the strategy for now is to let him be a butcher in the OF so we can get a longer look at his bat. If you give up on his glove so much that you don't play him in the field, you are taking ABs from Davidson who has out-hit him this year and has a similar pedigree. The optimal lineup for winning right now would probably be Yolmer in LF, Davidson at 3B, and Palka at DH, but Yolmer playing outfield is more hypothetical than anything else right now and Davidson's 3B defense is somewhat of an unknown quantity by now. I worry about a guy who is on a hot run with no walks, though it's encouraging that he has hit the ball so hard. The comparison to Delmonico isn't perfect because there were signs last year that Delmonico was on a lucky run. Look at the hit probabilities on Nicky's homers: most of them were worse than 50/50 and his average exit velo was not good. The main negative with Palka for now is that his defensive problems affect more than just his fWAR, it hurts our pitchers too. A couple of our young starters have had outings undone partly by bad plays from Palka. I think we're going to just tolerate that for now, hope he improves, and hope that the continued exposure helps us figure out what he's got. A final note about his minor league track record: It's not great, at least lately. Summarizing: 2015 in A+ (129 G): .890 OPS, 29 HR. 29% K%. Also, 24 SB???? 2016 in AA (79 G): .890 OPS, 21 HR. 29% K%. 2016 in AAA (54 G): .780 OPS, 13 HR. 39% K% 2017 in AAA (84 G): .760 OPS, 11 HR. 22% K% 2018 in AAA (17 G): .860 OPS, 3 HR. 29% K%. What stands out to me is that he hit a wall in AAA and hasn't really produced at that level. This was predictable from his high K rates at the lower levels where his overall numbers were still good. There was a positive development last season despite his worse production in that he did cut his strikeouts. They were back up this year in AAA but the sample is small and the difference from last year wasn't large. Strikeouts haven't been a major problem in MLB. Still, I'm always suspicious of guys who hit better in MLB than in AAA until I've seen them do it for a while or if they were called up young/inexperienced.

This is a good post. When you evaluate the player, you evaluate the player. We don't know what players will be on the White Sox when/if Madrigal is ready. There might be some wisdom in thinking about how the skillsets of players complement each other, but when you're drafting in the first round you just get who is best. Madrigal either is the best choice or not, it can't depend on how many homers Yoan Moncada and Tim Anderson hit.

Worth noting that Collins currently holds the third-highest wRC+ in the Southern League, ahead of Eloy. Right now he's hitting really well regardless of position. Note: Eloy's OPS is about 50 points higher, but wRC+ adjusts for ballpark effects. I can only assume that Eloy's production has been more concentrated in hitters' parks.

The main thing for Carson is that he's at a level where he can stay in the game and work through the stuff. Problem in MLB wasn't so much the production so much as getting pulled so early that he couldn't actually throw enough pitches to improve. Hopefully he's getting his feel back in AAA.

I will say that in my recollection Melky Cabrera made a very similar statement after his suspension went public. It wasn't long afterwards we learned that he had attempted one of the most wildly dishonest (and hilarious) appeals of all time.

On the bright side, if all he's ever done is take EPO I suspect it may not have helped his play at all and he shouldn't have any serious issues playing out his contract.

Hopefully the Sox have word that Smith will be ready after the minimum days on the DL and we're just planning to ride it out without giving any time to Gonzalez.

That's a weird one. I'm not sure EPO would offer much benefit to a MLB catcher. Maybe he was trying to get more out of his training with it.

I don't know about Brett Austin's defense, but unless it's very good he looks like a great example of someone who has failed upward all the way through the minors.

That said, they haven't had much time knowing that their AAA catcher and one of their AA catchers are hurt.

It's not obvious to me that Swihart is any better than the no-name AAA reserves we have.

I think there's a pretty good chance that Welington is the one who told the reporter. As far as the appeal process, I think while it's not great for the fans you just can't have anything be made public by the league until the player is being punished. It would be very difficult for a player to rehab his reputation if it turns out he had an alibi or it was a false positive.

Yeah I don't know what I think about the idea of Collins being called up other than the fact it is plausible given the current circumstances. I'll be happy to see him live and wouldn't be surprised if he was good from the get-go and wouldn't be surprised if it went very badly.

TBH while it briefly looked the other way I think Collins's bat is ahead of Zavala's. Sounds like neither of them are very good on defense, but it's always hard to get reliable information about that for minor leaguers. Yeah it could be a masking agent though I'm not sure if a drug of abuse (weed, cocaine, etc.) is punished under the same scheme.

Might have to give some thought to Zack Collins, though it would be a risky move. FWIW, it may be similar to Cano or several others who test positive for drugs associated with steroid use (e.g., Manny Ramirez testing positive for a post-cycle therapy drug)

Really nice outing for Covey. Hopefully it's a sign of things to come for him.

Will be interesting to see how Sox divvy up playing time between Narvaez and Kevan Smith.

Yeah I closed the book on him a night or two ago. I just don't see anything there. Not sure if it's his injuries, his head, or some combination, but he doesn't look like he has any of the pieces of his game that are needed anymore.

I think it's a good philosophy as a manger to err on the side of under-managing and he failed in that regard. Also, I think I'm ready to close the book on the Trayce Thompson era.

Leury is fine in the outfield but does make mistakes that you'd expect from an infielder playing the outfield. He generally makes up for it in my view by making some exceptional plays and using his speed to make some tough plays look easy. I think it balances out to about an average defender. I mentioned this in the game thread that it seems like he's been making many more mistakes in LF than CF this year, but I don't know what good reason there would be for that and it may just be coincidence.