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He wasn’t unlikely to sign.

This is actually why they may need AD dealt in offseason and re-sign Kyrie

Ha, that was my question

K% at least above 20% BB% below 6% Whiff % at least league average Just showing that he can actually deceive people, that he is not just relying on luck for outs. It is do or die as far as I'm concerned this year. Not gonna wait for a pitcher for 2 years of being the worst in the league.

Yeah, I'll put up his record against anyone in the majors, it doesn't mean he batted 1.000

Stearns has been unbelievable in getting production from acquisitions so I'm gonna assume he knows what he's doing with 2b.

We paid more for Samardjiza. Reds have more depth than sox had in 2015-16, though their rotation can't handle much in terms of injuries. But their farm is much deeper than ours to get depth pieces in season.

Sit down before you read this, but I believe both Manny and Harper are very good.

That's because people are relying on scouting info + performance whereas this guy just performed out of nowhere and scouts are catching up. I hope he does well.

That makes things interesting though. I like Law for hitters, don't like him for pitchers at all. I like BA for international guys, but they overrate college pitchers like, insanely. I like fangraphs for both, but mainly because they do the best job at explaining their thought process and aren't too dogmatic. Pipeline seems to have a lot of grade inflation to me and it always feels like they are just following the herd a lot. BP, it's there but I don't thinkt hey have the manpower to scout that the others do.

*Ahem* this offseason sucks.

My personal opinion is Covey has higher upside.

Yeah it sucks 2017 they really were at the pivot point for talent. I think they would have gone Hiura/Adell had they been there. And Seisse and Sheets had same amount given to them.

Exactly.

That's a pretty uncharitable reading.

I wouldn't be surprised if nobody has made a "formal" offer for harper yet.

I at least think they have showed meaningful shifts in each years that show they too don't have a handle on things. 2016 was a bunch of players with good walk rates/good power, but higher K rates 2017 was a frick load full of good walk rates and good k rates, but often limited athletes (gonzalez could of course save the whole draft). 2018 showed more of a balance, more versatile athletes and pitchers with some more interesting stuff. But my personal template for all of these years should have been top college bat, high school player, top college player left, save on money, chance on high schooler, whatevers left... I don't like the Walker, sheets, burdi picks because they were primed to spend a little more to get some top high school talent but instead paid sometimes overslot for college juniors. I'll never really understand why the sox needed to go so overslot for a college junior 1b in the second round. What leverage did he have? That said, 2018 was more encouraging to me from a player type perspective, but the 2017 draft (Which I found interesting at the time) just showed the limits of "safer" college production.

Great post Y2Jimmy, This is well said "Players who develop at a slower pace or incur a setback of any variety don't have youth on their side in the same fashion that a high school prospect would. Luckily for the Chicago White Sox though, landing players on top prospect lists at various publications isn't the organizational goal of the draft. It is to supply the organization with enough premium talent to compile a critical mass that will be used as currency in addition to filling holes in Chicago." Sox have avoided HS and really never went for it with a big latam class. Starting to wonder if it's scout preference or acknowledgment of difficulty the org has in developing young, raw talent. Would really like to see more from the pitching side from Hostetlers drafts.

I actually never thought they would be that close in total dollars and wouldn't be surprised if Bryce got 350 where Manny only got 250

But that’s where I read “breaking news” and see it differently. It’s often not about saying 30 minutes before a reporter that a deal is done. It’s often just letting people know what Sox are working on and that something is close enough to mention. A lot of people here want that info, but it often does fall through before execution.

I think what you need to understand is things can be true but also not come to fruition. The Sox may very well have been very close on a Pederson deal, and then it falls through. If the deal never occurs does that mean all the info in the run up is bad? No, deals fall through all the time and people like we are talking about give us info from earlier stages than a reporter like rosenthal would.

Would be pretty easy to verify if #Vegas has done that.

Did something happen to baseball man!?

And they aren't idiots. They'll have a show dedicated to "what would it look like if harper and machado signed" and then at the end they'll ask everyone if they think it could happen and they'll all say "not a chance". I think at the GM meetings after a show dedicated to machado only Garfein predicted he'd go to sox and that was just because he felt he had to. (things have obviously progressed since then).

I still think if they clean house, get the bad reputation out, get a progressive, charismatic guy to lead things it can turn around massively. But will miss out on next few superstar plays.