caulfield12

They have four left handed outfielders and only four spots for them, and they need to give Calhoun more playing time. Also, to make Lillian happy with another LH-hitting target. Gallo and Choo aren’t going anywhere...Mazara has only has a couple more years of control and still hasn’t progressed like they envisioned.

http://www.espn.com/mlb/stats/batting/_/maxage/26/sort/strikeouts/order/true/minpa/225 Tons of young players here with huge strikeout numbers but still highly valued or high OPS/bWAR.

Not with two TJ surgeries...

On the other hand, do you want this guy who has been with the White Sox seemingly his entire life as a scout to be in charge of drafting players that will be on the next Sox World Series winner? We really can’t do any better than that? At least Hostetler absorbed a lot from the Braves’ organization...a highly successful scouting operation, historically. Getz had one or two seasons with the Royals and Dayton Moore, etc. Just seems like settling, we don’t need a one year wonder team like 2012. Final point, many of the players he drafted are from the Midwest....stretching to KY. That’s one of the areas with the fewest major leaguers per capita, compared to Florida, Texas, California, etc.

At this point, I would almost be elated to see Jim Thome named but it’s way too much work for a family man who’s already set for life financially...somehow this Shirley dude who signed Chris Getz makes almost too much sense not to happen. The list of his other signings is like a wasteland of Sox mired in mediocrity for the past 15 years. When Clayton Richard and Nate Jones are your two biggest successes in life, well, why should it be surprising at all when he gets the nod?

https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=guest-001den And Garrett Guest is a 37 year old from Providence Catholic who was drafted in the now non-existent 49th round as a scrappy 2B/3B and whose career topped out at Winston-Salem in 2006.

https://www.mlb.com/news/white-sox-moving-forward-with-mlb-draft-plans-c272308110 Mike Shirley is national cross checker and has been with the White Sox as a scout forever (lol). Most interestingly, he signed Getz. Outfielder Mike Shirley was selected by the Cleveland Indians in the 45th round of the 1989 amateur draft and played in the Indians' chain from 1990-1992. Shirley also spent 1995-1996 with the Anderson Lawmen. After his playing days, Shirley has been a Chicago White Sox scout. He was involved in the singings of Clayton Richard, John Shelby III, Chris Getz, Matthew Long, John Ely, Brian Omogrosso, Josh Phegley, Tyler Kuhn, Nate Jones, Charles Leesman and Jake Petricka among others.

“But it was after those two drafts drew sharp criticism from the outside that White Sox leadership strongly endorsed Hostetler and had him run their two most important drafts of the rebuild — where they picked fourth and third overall — and to more favorable reviews. Nick Madrigal and Andrew Vaughn both have lived up to the billing so far, have been widely evaluated as top-50 global prospects, and have clear paths to becoming franchise cornerstones at their respective positions. Despite both being polished college bats, the last two drafts have also found the Sox displaying newfound creativity and a willingness to go overslot to land higher-end high school talent. Going overslot to land Bryce Bush and Lency Delgado in 2018 proved to be just a prelude to centering a large chunk of the non-Vaughn draft budget on landing prep right-handers Matthew Thompson and Andrew Dalquist, to squeeze value out of a pool that was deemed to be light on college pitching.” From theathletic.com Mike Shirley and Garrett Guest are apparently the two names to watch inside the organization, the two assistant directors for this past year’s draft. Interesting that the spin so far is that it’s not a demotion 1) because trades and FA will figure in more the next two years, 2) the draft picks won’t be in the Top 10 much longer and 3) the last two paragraphs highlighted above. “The quickest and likeliest way to fill it would be internal promotion, which is how Hostetler initially got the job in 2015, when he was promoted from assistant scouting director to replace Doug Laumann, who similarly still holds a senior advisor role in the White Sox front office. Mike Shirley and Garrett Guest served as Hostetler’s assistant directors for this past draft.”

I would love to know exactly what Chris Getz is doing well...in their opinion...since he was hired.

Total Quality Management/Lifetime Tenure. That said, he can probably take Buddy Bell's old office. If Hostetler and Hahn are good at anything, it's giving positive/uplifting interviews (Hostetler) that get you charged up or giving interviews that need to be parsed by Constitutional law scholars because they don't really tell you much at all while seeming to be candor-filled. Except when he said "I'm a jackass" or whatever.

And, while Schwarber/Russell/Almora/Happ have struggled...they've all at least had significant impacts at the major league level, and even Jorge Soler's not a lost cause, having a nice bounceback season for the Royals while toiling in almost total obscurity.

~ THEO EPSTEIN (17 PLAYERS TOTAL ON 40-MAN ROSTER) THEO EPSTEIN DRAFT PICKS (13) Dustin Pedroia: 2004, second round, 65th overall Clay Buchholz: 2005, first round, 42nd overall (compensation pick for Pedro Martinez signing with Mets) Christian Vazquez: 2008, ninth round, 292nd overall Bryce Brentz: 2010, first round, 36th overall (compensation pick for Billy Wagner signing with Braves) Sean Coyle: 2010, third round, 110th overall Matt Barnes: 2011, first round, 19th overall Blake Swihart: 2011, first round, 26th overall (compensation pick for Adrian Beltre signing with Rangers) Henry Owens: 2011, first round, 36th overall (compensation pick for Victor Martinez signing with Tigers) Jackie Bradley Jr.: 2011, first round, 40th overall (compensation pick for Adrian Beltre signing with Rangers) Williams Jerez: 2011, second round, 81st overall Noe Ramirez: 2011, fourth round, 142nd overall Mookie Betts: 2011, fifth round, 172nd overall Travis Shaw: 2011, ninth round, 292nd overall

Would be more interested to see who we would have picked if we were bumped up one from Fulmer's spot (Benintendi), one or two from Burger's spot in 2017 (Hiura/Adell)....could have picked Kyle Lewis, Groome, Kirilloff or Whitley in 2016 instead of Collins at 10. Obviously, every team would have picked Walker Buehler if they had it to do over...but what did they miss? My question is were those the choices, (Benintendi, and either Hiura or especially Adell)...? If not, why? We all know that Hostetler has said that he would have taken Collins 1-1, but why?

Not to mention the Mets were DESPERATELY trying to convince their fans they could compete in that division this season with the additions of Cano and Edwin Diaz, calling up Alonso...but it's also not like they have a YOUNG team, they've got some younger players like Alonso, McNeil, Rosario and Comforto, but Cano/ and deGrom are all ticking away in terms of fighting father age or nearing free agency.

Even now, he still has doubters because of his 2018 season...at any rate, just for baseball smarts, work ethic, baserunning, defense and fundamentals alone, he's worth at least 1.5 fWAR without even setting foot on the field of play.

The ONLY thing that makes sense about this is putting Madrigal closer to his California/Oregon State home...but it's not like it's going to cause Mariners' attendance to increase by 1,500 per game. Kalenic would probably prefer to be closer to home, too, but that's not a good reason for either team to trade one of their future franchise cornerstones.

Bumgarner really likes the West Coast and he also enjoys hitting...think it's around 75% or higher he stays in the NL.

Then you should fire Hostetler, lol... In all seriousness, what team is going to give us a TOR young/cost-controlled starter for Madrigal? What team does Madrigal have more value to than the White Sox? (The answer might actually be the Cubs, because they have strong hitters at almost every position in the line-up, whereas he would be expected to contribute a lot more to the Sox offense.) Of course, Hahn's not actually going to make that trade, let's say for Schwarber, Happ, Strop/Edwards Jr./Chatwood. (Won't even mention Addison Russell, he's that far in the doghouse that no team in baseball will touch him after what Epstein went through vouching for him.)

Why can't he play winter ball, in the Dominican, for example? He could even play right next to Jimenez on the same team if they wanted to make it happen...obviously, there's going to be a heightened concern about injuries when they're outside of the control of the MLB club, but you can't keep putting Jimenez out into LF and then worrying everytime he's out there. If you're going to do that, just make him a permanent DH now, but that's not what he signed that long-term extension with the intent of sitting on the bench for 6 years and watching the games.

Who would you play at 1B when they're competing for the division in 2021/22/23? Certainly not Abreu... Who are you going to be able to trade Vaughn for that's going to be a guaranteed frontline starter? Until he's an established big-leager, all these guys...even Robert...are going to have less value than someone with a big league track record. Even then (and I only mention this because it was a suggestion here or another thread), trading the likes of Moncada, Madrigal or Jimenez aren't going to get you the equivalent frontline pitching prospect without red flags...and then all you end up doing is creating another hole in your line-up. It SHOULD be easy to find a decent two-way player in RF, or a DH...but, for some reason, it's something the White Sox under Hahn have struggled with the last couple of seasons. Granted, they traded Eaton and then let Avisail Garcia go, but it's not exactly rocket science either. We SHOULD be able to do better than Cordell, Tilson, Engel, Delmonico, Palka, etc.

Well, that's easy....just do what the Twins, A's, Rays, etc., do. I remember the idea of signing Nick Markakis at any point (in the last 2-3 years) being almost as heavily criticized as signing McCann, but he's been much better than expected for the Braves, for example. With the Twins, I think they added Schoop, CJ Cron, Pineda, Martin Perez, Nelson Cruz...traded for Jake Odorizzi (who the Rays weren't willing to even pay $6 million, while we're paying Nova $9). The majority of these movies have been pretty solid, although Pineda has struggled. They were smart enough not to hold onto E.Santana any longer, as well. With all of that and a young core of position players, they're STILL no quite good enough to overtake the Yankees. The irony is that it was former "unaffordable" player Aaron Hicks who beat them in perhaps the best game of the season with a "walk-off" diving catch in CF to end it in the bottom of the 12th.

Thanks for the idea...at this point, I'm okay to control the risk completely if it's just a matter of a couple of percent. Over 20 years, that would make a huge difference, obviously. The rest is in individual stocks, mutual funds (Vanguard, Legg Mason, Oakmark, Fidelity), so I think it's okay if the major portion of the portfolio can keep trucking along at 6-10% per year. I actually don't believe that we're likely to keep seeing such high returns over the next decade, and am prepared to deal with the likelihood it's going to be 4-6% as the new normal for quite some time. Who knows? Nobody thought three years ago that this would continue as long as it has, but I've seen enough warning signs (the canary in the coal mine) living in China for most of the last decade to know the days of "easy money" are long gone and things are quickly tightening up. Maybe the biggest example to me was three huge bicycle rental companies in China with billions of dollars of venture capital flowing into them while 90-95% of the bikes were haphazardl lying around the subway entrances and street corners blocking traffic and creating a huge eyesore everywhere you go in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities. At that point, they were talking about renting umbrellas and basketballs, even. Now the buzz word is click farms...to drive traffic, to create the illusion of traffic or positive reviews or whatever they are programmed to fake in order to create value out of nothing. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/click-farms-internet-china-154440209.html What's amazing is how much effort goes into faking everything when it would be easier to invest in an education system that teaches creativity and innovation, rather than replication and reverse engineering.

• Hahn said Luis Robert’s major-league debut likely won’t happen until 2020, despite the young star announcing his arrival to Triple A with a .440/.500/.960 batting line and three homers in six games. “It’s been six games, so let’s keep a little perspective,” Hahn said. “I’m fine with the calls getting greater or the excitement getting greater to see another potential premium piece here at the big-league level. I hope he keeps this roll going. It’s probably unrealistic to hope he rolls like this all the way through Triple A.” James Fegan, theathletic.com Also said that Eloy Jimenez won't be changing to 1B/DH...

And you just know that Madrigal would somehow manage to outproduce Dustin Pedroia's career numbers and be even more beloved by Red Sox fans, lol...

They tried to do that with minor league placements in 2018...especially with Vizquel's Winston-Salem team last year, but then they haven't really kept that team together with all the injuries/adjustment problems and then Robert getting pushed so quickly to Charlotte after he started to take off. It would actually be nice to see the Barons make the second half playoffs, but they might not be possible due to the dearth of pitching in the system right now.