caulfield12

If you look back to just a year ago, Fulmer, Burger, Rodon, Collins, Burdi, etc., all looked like failures. Sheets, as well. Yermin had 2-3 outspoken defenders who wanted to give him a shot at DH, and that was pretty much it, besides the big four guys graduating from rookie status this year. The crazy part to me in all this is that Madrigal was starting to look in many ways like the second best of all those draft picks after Anderson. He hardly gets mentioned anymore because of the Disney-ish Carlos and Burgatron storylines. That and the draft “miss” on Fulmer versus the less highly touted Vanderbilt teammate at the time Walker Buehler.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/bill-madden-driving-white-sox-211700294.html NY Daily News story…looks at Sox success with scouting picking high character college players like Rodon, Burger and Collins We’ll get to that in a minute. In the meantime, to put the White Sox‘s unparalleled draft success in perspective, after failing to sign Gerrit Cole (their No. 1 pick in 2008), the Yankees have had 16 first-round draft picks, with only one — Aaron Judge in 2013 — even making it to the big leagues with them. On their present roster, there are only five players who were drafted by them — Judge, Brett Gardner, Kyle Higashioka, Jordan Montgomery and Nick Nelson. At the same time, there are the Houston Astros, who under analytics guru Jeff Luhnow, executed a tear-down back in 2012 with the idea of using all their analytics data to build the team up with high draft picks. When they won the World Series in 2017 (before it was compromised by their cheating scandal), Luhnow and the Astros were acclaimed throughout baseball for their analytics-first approach to building a ballclub — at the same time they were gutting their scouting department. But upon closer inspection, it’s hard to see how analytics had anything to do with the Astros’ rise. On that 2017 team, there were only four players — Carlos Correa, Lance McCullers Jr., George Springer and Dallas Keuchel — who were obtained through the draft and Springer was a No. 1 pick by Luhnow’s predecessor, Ed Wade, who also had signed Jose Altuve back in 2007. Moreover, Luhnow had three straight overall No. 1 picks in the draft from 2012-2014, came up empty on two of them (pitchers Mark Appel in 2013 and Brady Aiken in 2014 who never made the majors) and nearly blew it in 2012 when he had decided to take Appel over Correa, the universally acknowledged best player in the draft, only to back off when Appel’s rep Scott Boras wouldn’t give him a discount bonus. Also, in all fairness, Bregman was pretty important and Cameron was an integral aspect of the Verlander deal.

Let’s see how he does during the tough stretch coming up with much better RHP on .500+ teams. Hopefully the recent success is sustainable.

You really want to pick the Alex Rios hill to die on? Why not Javy Vazquez too?

Not to mention the likelihood of at least one affiliate being in post-season play, extending by at least a week the possible number of games for someone in rehab.

Health is the only question mark...and how long he continues to try to pitch and play a position.

We can send back Liriano. That damned guy had one of the best sliders ever in 2006.

Indians starting to come out of tailspin with two home walk off wins on homers (Reyes/Bradley). McKenzie looked good, but KC has now lost 11 consecutive on the road. Ouch.

Well, at least Ron is making himself more and more famous. Taking some of the heat off Ray Ray, just like the best big league managers take the focus away from their teams. Nevertheless, he might need to surrender the voluntary hall monitor position.

Seems their Sunday starter should be an easy one but not expecting a sweep with Cease and Giolito going.

The dreaded Pods/Pierre arm…

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/southwest-passenger-accused-knocking-out-flight-attendant-s-two-teeth-n1268909 Missed this story. Flight behavior is becoming increasingly scarier…at a time nearly everyone wants to fly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGQBYlwZ08Y

The dreaded calling out an individual poster in a thread title SoxTalk Violation 2-C. Penalty=one month watching Reynaldo Lopez Charlotte starts on MiLB.com.

Luhnow and Hinch didn’t even manage to knock one year off the Astros’ competitive window.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/07/opinions/its-time-to-mandate-vaccination-zelizer/index.html This essentially is the only answer…but Western democracies won’t dare do it. Heck, the airlines and world airports aren’t all that excited about vaccine passports, either. Their workers might be another story.

Surely they have more important things to do with their lives. Nobody wants to have written on their tombstone, “spent countless hours dealing with Ron883’s voluminous reports of supposed SoxTalk infractions.” Plus, it has a The Boy Who Cried Wolf vibe to it. You should be able to identify a REAL personal attack by now. It goes with the territory of starting threads.

Well, probably more like putting him in a 5k road race…

Will Bauer be criminally charged? Lawyers told The Times last week that in this case, obtaining a conviction could be hard because the woman returned for a second sexual encounter, and because of text messages released by Bauer's camp showing the woman encouraging rough sex. The bar for guilt in a criminal court is proof beyond reasonable doubt, and while a "he said, she said" case might find Bauer guilty in the court of public opinion, that will be much harder in a courtroom. The district attorney’s office could also hesitate to prosecute a high-profile case it may not win. If more women come forward alleging similar acts by Bauer, however, it would increase the likelihood of a criminal case. According to theprosecutors and defense lawyers with whom The Times spoke, it seems more likely that the case will go to civil court, where the bar for conviction is a preponderance of evidence and Bauer could face a large indemnity if found guilty. How long will this take to play out? Though there’s been no timeline set for the completion of the police investigation, a case like this can take a long time to work its way through the legal system, particularly with a high-profile client whose lawyers will be adept at holding things up. Whether or not more women come forward will affect the timeline of both investigations as well. From the MLB side, a lot depends on whether the MLBPA consents to extending Bauer's administrative leave past next week. If it does, that gives the league more time to investigate the woman's claims. If not, then it's not entirely clear what would happen, as there is no precedent for the situation. Any MLB investigation also faces the barrier that the league, unlike law enforcement, does not have subpoena power. from the LA Times https://www.yahoo.com/news/faq-know-trevor-bauer-case-130039375.html

No, no, no….no horseback riding, are you seriously thinking he could ride a horse without awkwardly falling off or jumping into a roadside net?

That’s going to be called out pretty quickly…1-2 starters, maybe 3, but can’t recall an entire starting rotation deliberately ILed down the stretch. You have Lynn and Rodon heading towards FA and Keuchel with bonuses/incentives/vesting related to being on the mound…so the players’ union would clearly not go along. At least this is a more interesting and nuanced debate as Ron-generated threads typically go.

Better to ask Boras Corp. I’m sure they made some kind of gentleman’s agreement when he signed about what to do in such a situation…but luckily their interests are aligned, as both sides want him as healthy as possible for the postseason. PTAC? What would you do? In the past, your were somewhat critical of his mechanics and repeatability/control. Would you keep him on a throwing program but only pitching 2-3 innings in games once or twice a week for 4-6 weeks or just let it rip and see how ling you can ride him?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/former-mlb-stars-grandson-badly-175800270.html GoFundMe seems to be used by almost everyone in the US…would have thought a player of his caliber would have a better pension and/or liability insurance policy covering his son.

Can’t go around Ramirez with Reyes behind now. Hard to blame Matheny. But Franmil’s the quintessential streaky hitter. Makes Carlos Lee look consistent. It still comes down to Civale and Bieber. They got back off the deck twice tonight with two outs in the bottom of both the 8th and 9th. The other issue is a 10+ game division lead gives no incentive for Hahn to do anything. Need to at least keep the Sox honest.

Has it been that many anti-Jose, anti-tobacco threads? The most recent one is that he’s not clutch…seems a bit low. The all-time record must be Lilian posts salivating over left-handed hitters. Can’t imagine how she survived that one spring training when Ryan Sweeney was the constant recipient of Hawk adoration.

This must be a SoxTalk record for setting up the easiest collection of likes in one fell swoop. The big question is how you beat Fathom and Dick Allen to it. Maybe Vulture went to a medical or chiropractic school…teachers are used to getting second guessed, but this is the first athletic trainer attack I’ve seen. If anything, he should be talking about what the White Sox training staff could have done better or differently, that would be more interesting but hindsight is always 20/20.