bmags

TBH what stands out for Pillar is actually succeeding after it. I think sox Player Dev is what has destroyed the decade, but for the vet stuff I think that's just a mixture of bad scouting and needing to take chances on cheaper players who were cheap because they were 30+ You could just feel hahn walk around like "I have $12 mill, who will take it? Castellanos, no? Moustakas? no? Ozuna? Edwin? you'll take it? You were pretty good, we'll give it to edwin"

One question I struggle with is - have the sox actually performed better than you'd expect with pitchers like Smith or worse? I actually lean a little better - feels like they did better harnassing stuff then getting guys with command to play up as well as the guardians do. I'd be ok going smith. Would be nice if we could supplement it with an intl class with some big swings.

I wanted vaughn (though I was also not anti-abrams which was actually good because he was viewed as the devil on this board) and sigh, also madrigal, but one thing I"ve had to check myself on is a lot of the baseball writers that scout are pretty romantic about college baseball. His size and length of his swing, his 18% k rate, those are just kinda scary to me at 5. At 15, at 20, it would be sweet. I am not sure I understand how much I see his size and think "he's maxed out" and if that's even true, he may still be able to keep his speed I have no sense for that stuff. But the swing, just not sure. He's fun as hell though, and I'm scared some of the scout writers just want to see that in the mlb.

I just couldn't do it with a top 5 pick.

damn. My boy.

BA is typically good for a June update and I know they’ve been to a bunch of Birmingham games.

Luis Robert, Lenny Sosa homered

I like this a lot from the players. You can see why it'd be so annoying, your offseason being broken up with really short / mandatory stays rather than just straight thru. But then in exchange improve the issue with their likely not being enough contact/coaching in the offseason by increasing the ramp up

I don’t really think there is a dearth of Chicago sports coverage to lament about. It’s just not happening from, specifically, the trib. Though their Bears writers are important.

All aboard the nastrini train woo woo scared money don’t make money

I won’t do a full “he’s sucked forever”…but so think he liked the taste of not having to scout classes in 17 / 18 and never looked back. Nobody with ambition joins the white Sox. Just horses looking to stud.

It is kinda nuts how crochet has both operated as a normal starting pitcher (not a hybrid opener/bullpen game) and also been very very good. Hope that the shoe doesn't drop so soon.

Marco Paddy sucks

Nice to see no ks from George. Two games in a row.

At least it's been steady improvement so far. April was slightly better than the handfull of games in march, May now .260 / .377 /.520

No Ks too

Right, my quibble isn't the tax avoidance, it was the time that lapsed from when they were able to leave Cuba, enter the signing period, and then finally get stateside. Those were crucial development years, and the putting the whole class on just a few guys that then couldn't play for 2 years...It sucked imo.

It led to us having extremely sparse international scouting classes for 3-4 years, and wow, we have a pretty shallow farm. I'd say in fact the strategy was bad.

it is once again that time of year where I think 'huh, sure would be the perfect time to get an influx of, perhaps, college aged/high school aged athletes into the system" but alas, mid july it is.

Hmm. ok.

I totally get it's how we may have won the bid, but at some point sox should have recalibrated to "is this a good deal for us when we are getting one player, and then agreeing to not let him play in organized baseball (DSL) for 2 years (1 year waiting to sign, 1 year in DSL), rather than a different strategy?" But they kept doing it, and would end up with these 23 year old dudes in single A, absolutely ripped from only lifting weights for two years, and oft injured, way behind, and few that caught up.

It is low stakes, I just think in terms of getting lucky, the prospects we could feasibly get from a surprisingly strong few starts from keller would not be much more than we could buy right now anyway, at least *after he showed what he was in charlotte already*. I think Julks etc is fine, hell, I think the fletcher stuff WOULD be fine I just didn't like the price. There are players like Kam Misner who I will tell you absolutely probably sucks, whom I'd bet you could get for a song and I'm interested to see if he can provide things like defense + walks + power (his power is gone this year). But they are all really low probability stuff, I just think you are better off finding a cheap waiver guy who may provide a few years of starter level play and benefit more from that then "trade brad keller for 24 year old reliever in single A"

I think my big gripe with our era of "give our entire bonus pool to a single Cuban player" is how little thought went into what may happen in development when we have these guys spend 2 years in their late teens/early 20s missing out on any real baseball so that we could stash them and help them with their tax burden. It worked out with Robert, thank goodness, who also had the most to gain. But Colas/Cespedes/Norge Vera...I think we even gave the DR treatment to Yolbert. They were inactive for years. Do we really think that set us up better than signing 10-12 players that were younger? One thing that saving some of their tax burden would do is allow more of their signing bonus to flow thru to some handlers. I'm sure everything was above board with the sox main international scout.

I don't think anyone disagrees, it's just we are turning over with players that are on the retirement side of their career, not waivers of players who have yet to have a chance and may pan out. The only thing you could argue is maybe they were more assured with a Keller spot start of not stressing their bullpen...but who cares?

Todd Steverson was instrumental in that and I believe is out of the org. Regardless last 5 years there isn't a single prospect we have now interesting in their plate approach or discipline. Org wide it's awful.