bmags

that's great to hear

oh no, was hoping the activity here was good bears news. Hate to see this.

Yeah, can't get over this part of it though. Part 1: 2013-2015 - Hahn inherits Doug Laumann as scouting director - 2013: Laumann selects Tim Anderson (all star) - 2014: Laumann selects Carlos Rodon (all star) - 2015: Laumann selects Carson Fulmer (awful) Hahn then knows he's going into a rebuild, and handpicks Nick Hostetler to lead the draft where we'll have 2 top 5 picks and 2 top 12 picks. Hostetler picks (in the top of the draft where you can get super athletic players with some bat skills): A maxed out 1B/DH (Collins) profile A reliever (burdi) A maxed out Corner Infielder (Burger) A zero power, weak armed 2nd baseman A maxed out, unathletic first baseman with middling power (Vaughn) Atrocious. He tore the roster down to studs and was unable to supplement any of his rebuilt team with players from the draft as anything special. He then took hand picked Hostetler to get him some top free agents. OK. He attacks RF with full force of Nomar Mazara, Adam Eaton and AJ Pollock.

I'm not sure any strategy will work with a group this ignorant of scouting and player development. KW lived in a time of ageless veterans still available on free agency. It's over. We need to convert lots of prospects with JR. He thinks they are stupid.

sure wish Fegan was back to ask these questions. Realized how bleak it was with our latest call-ups

can someone remind me what happened to Sean Burke?

lol

I"m sympathetic to all sides here. On one side, fans know the team needs to get better and align to avenues to do that. On the other side - you have an absolutely incompetent set of people in charge that will not be able to execute even if they take said paths. And so maybe you say "well it's better the wrong people take the right path then wrong people take the wrong path to get competitive" But to be honest I did that in 2017, and I just can't do it again. They don't deserve to make decisions right now. And any one they make I"ll ridicule, because they are too stupid. For christs sakes, we are only 2 years removed from the victory lap of Hahn and Kimbrel and passing the cubs torch. It turns out that was the end, we have a bad farm, a high payroll, and a bunch of players who will be gone with no replacements. I don't know what to do except talk about the same thing over and over again, but it's true that the only thing productive that can happen is them leave. Not saying people shouldn't talk about it or be entertained by an entertaining thing (trades r fun), just I cannot believe we are here! How the hell is this group not completely repulsed by the situation and doing a paxson?

This is more optimistic than me. With collins, he's not a catcher. Everyone was saying "he's not a catcher". The white sox said "he IS a catcher", and then when we saw him with our eyes we saw he was not a catcher and everyone was right. Narvaez developed his bat on the sox. There is an interesting retrospective that i think about a lot on if Steverson/Sparks - who actually tried to create an organization-wide hitting philosophy - were pitched to the side just as they were starting to see dividends. But the sox said Narvaez couldn't develop enough defensively to make his bat work. This board agreed, I disagreed and said sox should have tried. Seattle started and then Milwaukee finished it. Seby was said to be an average catcher defensively, the sox play him like he's yadi molina. The sox took Wellington Castillo and said "framing is now important to us, we are going to pay for this guy who for one year showed he can frame well and do nothing else well defensively". He immediately reverted under sox tutelage. We had a great success story with McCann, who reworked a swing (under Steverson) and showed that a catcher who can handle a pitching staff can be really great even if other defensive metrics aren't great. They then signed Grandal. I think overall the sox have shown they really REALLY want offense from the catcher position and will overlook defensive liabilities there. THey have often still not gotten offense from the position consistently, but still live with no defense. This kid, what he struggles at, is handling a pitching staff. That's a big part of catching. He needs to practice receiving, but is athletic. He's young AND had COVID years taken from him where catchers develop. He could be fine where he just learns on his own. But the sox won't know if he's good or bad, they'll only know if they like his bat

We should buy them

The problem is we really are in a place where none of that matters or can be pre-celebrated. There are some prospects on other teams that I love and follow and would be happy to acquire. This wasn't one of them, I never see much of the leagues this guy plays in. But, for example, I was reading Rosenthal's rankings of execs on the pressure cooker this deadline. One was Mike Elias of Baltimore. I had many accurate opinions on where the white sox were falling short during the rebuild, but I also thought the Orioles were consistently underwhelming compared to what Cherington was doing with PIT (and I still think he's doing good and he had a later start). Thought the hjerstad draft in particular was silly. But anyway, people like Elias run their orgs trying to maximize every aspect all the time to be the best. PD, college scouting, major league scouting, international scouting. All of it. And so they can have a Hjerstad draft and its fine. Rosenthal had a line that the Orioles had more major league caliber players than they had room for major league caliber players. An honest to god surplus. They had shown they could organically build something like that up. The sox were bone dry already in 2020. Their only trade chips were major league roster components they needed soon, so we hung 2020 out to dry because we could only have traded vaughn. So - maybe this catcher is good. Cool. But I am not pre celebrating just because there are some outside accolades. The very fact that Hahn traded for him makes me downgrade my priors that he's good. And that's not being dramatic...it's kinda the same that any guy the dodgers trade probably means they aren't as good as ranked.

What are the scare stories of trading for major league catchers? In my head you have Realmuto, Contreras, Murphy as recent blockbuster examples that all seem pitch perfect. Even deadline trades like Realmuto seem good. Grandal to dodgers as well. But I agree the high profile catcher prospects have been severely underwhelming, from Mejia, Nola, Ruiz.

I remember counting top 100 prospects.

We are in pain mitigation mode. The best thing IMO is they do nothing, JR is forced to eat the entire rosters payroll for a full year for a team that is likely to be bottom 5. This sucks because you could potentially get Hahn into "goodwill" mode, where he successfully sheds a bunch of contracts and maybe gets Reinsdorf into a position where this year nets out fine financially. Then Hahn/KW could blame the players and managers for failing, which JR is sympathetic too. But what would suck worse is trading Cease and having Hahn haggling with another GM who has earned their job, and forcing future us to swallow his pitiful decisions. God bless Giolito. He is onto greener pastures.

This trade is good in that it lets players go to actual baseball organizations and let the rest of North America enjoy the game while reinsdorf can just focus on what he loves about this team which is its purpose as a rent-seeking investment vehicle.

That still seems ok even though that’s not a very good comp for this guy.

I do think this shows the influence of Shirley instead of hostetlers era. Us getting younger ascending players sure is better than 24 year old players near 40 man roster crunch with back injuries that have a few months before they lose all value.

Oh man… this is so on point. Well done.

However - Keith Law was much higher on his defensive skills - which need to develop - than his power. He thinks the league he was in last year inflated optimism on the power and he may not have much more strength. Ill leave it up to you all if you think this org can develop a raw defensive catcher. Id say it’s possible, they sure have focused a lot of energy on developing catchers who clearly had no shot. Quero on the brewers? Look out.

There was a big guarantee Hahn would target players with a top 100 ranking and a high org ranking. He doesn’t know how to scout talent and doesn’t trust his scouts he hires and doesn’t fire, so it’s important for him to get outside validation. I like Quero though. Sox fans think we are aggressive with assignments. But AA for Quero who lost so much time with the pandemic stuff is crazy aggressive.

A favorite of the Rick hahn era is his love for ground ball relievers and also love for horrible defensive infields.

I have liked for the most part how they have pretty much dumped everyone into ACL the next year worthy or not. GIves more room for DSL classes, and you have the extra month now with the draft to see what the players have and can always just put them in extended spring training. I know his average is bad but I think Rafael Alvarez has had a pretty interesting first year. He's 18, and with his size you'd expect more power, but he's gotten on base a lot and had some extra base hits. You could see him adding 20 LBs and maybe finding an interesting profile.

Good man. That show is good, but I do want to reiterate the bears 1920s series is very well made (propaganda).

Jeremy Gonzalez possibly injured but nonetheless an awful outing where he lets 4 straight batters up and all 4 touch the plate before he leaves. Javier Mogollon with a homer, excellent season for him. Great BB rate, sub 20% k rate, and a decent iso for DSL probably closer to .180 at end of this game. 3 homers!

man, i kinda forgot how ridiculous it was that our trade deadline last year netted us just diekman lol. And all the huffing and puffing from Hahn. I love how they are probably this season sitting back like "Well we put it on the players to prove themselves and they didn't!" just acting completely removed from the failure.