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Yeah it's an interesting question. I think given sox preference for college players under Hostetler your baseline assumption should be sox will still go college. If I were to go just based on profile and said there was a player in the premier baseball conference and team with plus plus power and more walks than strikeouts, but is a corner outfielder, that seems like a sox pick (this applies to Bleday or Misner), you'd have to say that's the sox pick right? But, I think the college picks aren't as prescriptive as we think. I believe, in my charitable, sweet kind heart, that Hostetler actually is trying to be innovative. That he values the trackman data and has been so college heavy because they have (likely OVER) valued that data set and it consistently made the college players with it more valued on their "boards" than high schoolers. And with that I say if it does appear that Witt is a tier above, talent wise, the next group. That he doesn't sink at all, gets more positive reports in whatever good competition he sees, that the white sox will draft witt. But if witt gets injured or some negative reports come out and it blurs, I think sox go college. That's my psychoanalysis of the chicago white sox. Basically, if the draft was today, the sox would take Witt. But who knows if things blend. I don't really have a grasp on Stott so I'd leave that up to some better draftheads than me.

Great article. Looking forward to draft coverage this year more than ever since...you know. Write-ups were great.

Well, looks like even driveline can't solve Fulmer.

I agree, but I do think it's important to keep in mind his caveat that he's not really able to gauge player dev of other orgs. He's seen sox modernize in last two years, but pretty much every team has when it comes to technology from what I understand. Even the marlins are doing so under new ownership and they were the one I usually heard as being a very old school org. Ben Lindbergh (one of the co-hosts) has a new book on player development coming out soon which I'm excited for. I don't expect sox to be in it. But I don't disagree with premise of your post. The sox totally seem like an org that chases the pack rather than sets it (understatement). So when others have success with rapsodo or trackman, yeah they'll take a look. But are they going to push it beyond that? For the sox to succeed at their self-limited payroll, they need to squeeze every ounce of value out of their personnel. They need everyone to be that 5% better, so they can either avoid paying for that on market, get 5% more return on the market, or have a team overperform its baseline. Instead they seem to think they are similar to the astros type org, in that they will spend more when they win and it makes sense, without learning any of the other lessons.

and phoenix is quietly putting together a nice run recently, if they beat the bulls tonight (which big men have been destroying bulls since blake griffin did a week or so ago), the bulls are only 1 game back of them in tankathon. Edit: and with exception of 2 games vs knicks and 2 games vs wizards, there are very few winnable games left on schedule. 76ers, raptors, blazers, jazz...bulls may be in good shape to get in top 3. I hate losing while markannen looks so poor suddenly, but we have 11 games left and Zion looks like that once in a long while type prospect. Worth the margins for a 1.5% increase at this point.

Did that get anymore legs after that note last friday night?

This only comes after saying that going through moncada and the pitchers has made him temper expectations, but he is older than acuna/etc so he may not have same struggles.

He was only tempering expectations on Jimenez rookie season.

Thanks!

So just something to listen to, good breakdown of the sox from a more national perspective. Sox starts last third of episode, I want to say at the hour mark. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/effectively-wild-episode-1348-season-preview-series-indians-and-white-sox/ It is pretty depressing but a good high level view of how difficult a place in the rebuild we are in. At one point Fegan basically says "this is about as critical as I can be while being a beat writer" (this is a paraphrase).

So here's the thing for me. I've been pretty conservative in being worried about Collins moving positions as I have found projections of defensive liabilities to often be way overblown and less informative than hitting and other tools. My stance was that I'd only start to be worried that literally nobody outside the sox org feels he can be a catcher when the white sox start to move him off catcher. So sure, it's just part time for playing time with both on roster. But if they were really still prioritizing his defensive development, I'd just have him DH on seby days, have him work with a coordinator calling game plan in the dugout while on defense, and give him drills on drills on those days. Instead he'll be focusing on being a 1b and maybe that will help in a different way, but I'm skeptical.

Ever since the 4 OT game he’s been awful

This comes after a BA chat where Kyle Glaser said he has not come across anyone in baseball not in the white Sox org who thinks Collins can be a catcher.

Will be interesting. That recent ty Cobb bio showed how crazy it is where myths established in the era of more modern media could stick as fact for generations later. Basically if a movie or whatever was put out in the fifties or later with a bunch of tropes about a pre video time period that became the statement of record.

There’s things like trackman though that do modernize it. In the wrong hands though...

Is this true? Though production is hard to measure, I would imagine they value the type of athleticism and other spare-like metrics that you need to draft high school or international to get because college gets so picked over before they start. With HS you are judging them on where they are going to be if you develop them, which as I’ve said, is great because you are challenging them with tougher competition as they are improving both physically and mentally. I am not against college players but the focus on them means you miss out on players with high upside.

I think more than anything, how they’ve handled 2nd round/1st round comp picks has been my largest gripe. But regardless, there was huge importance on getting these draft picks right. The difference between 11 and 17 in a draft isn’t huge. But the rebuild just looks so different if you draft Kirilloff and not Collins. Or Kieboom and not Burdi.

Thanks that makes sense.

Sucks, looks like if bears gambled they could have had him. I don’t blame them for ensuring they got a guy they liked but personally not crazy about Skrine.

I tuned out after that, lotta like people are doing well. Name a player, they are doing well. Then he mentioned ADolfo would start season on opening day as DH and I listened.

Okay, kind of a big if. This wasn't a 17 year old kid, he's a 22 year old mass of a man in one of the best hitting parks we had who in 437 at bats had less home runs than Laz Rivera had in 225. He was 8th in homers despite being second in at bats. He had only 4 more doubles than Luis Gonzalez in 200 more at bats. He's not a center fielder. He only has a route to the big leagues with power. You have guys like Brandon Belt in the mlb, but he had 23 home runs across three levels in his first year.

The sox want us to be very impressed that they scout players when they are young, as opposed to every other organization.

If y'all want news, Micker Adolfo will start the year as a DH it sounds like on time.

RH is on. Spring training has been incredible. Very positive one.

No the good results are real and the bad results are fake.