TomPickle

He is much more likely to lose his spot in the rotation than win the Cy Young. Of course I will also use this article to say KIKUCHI HIVE STAND UP so take my opinion with an extra small grain of salt.

Sun-Times says 20%

Steven Hajjar made his debut tonight for Michigan 6.2 IP, 6H, 2ER, 1BB, 8K Mostly seen him mocked in the second round range (usually to the Tigers as a lazy pick since Fetter is their pitching coach now). Only his 5th start in college since he missed 2019 with an injury and only got 4 starts last year. Didn't get to watch the game, but from the highlights seemed like he was spotting the fastball pretty well. I'll be interested to follow him this year and see if he moves up the board at all.

Okay, I'm done. We don't need two people doing play by play lol

Eaton strikes out swinging on a breaking ball up in the zone

Feel like I should say to subscribe to The Athletic using all this Fegan content.

This is terrific and I would absolutely buy one.

My biggest worry about Cease is that he's already tried a lot of the new wave pitching training and he still can't throw strikes. Maybe he will find the thing that clicks for him and unlocks his potential, but personally I have almost no faith he's going to be a useful starting pitcher. I have real worries about Cease and Rodon pitching back to back days given both have routinely left the game before the 5th inning. If Lopez can throw strikes and wear it for 6 innings I would rather have him in the rotation.

If he never improves his approach at the plate then he's probably already bordering on his peak. I think he will end up being something like Alfonso Soriano if Soriano was a gold glove CF on the high end or pretty much the same as Byron Buxton on the low end. He will probably be about a 5 WAR player when healthy with a season or two where he might be a 7 WAR player. If he can drag his K to BB rate from nearly 4 to 1 to closer to 2 to 1 he has basically unlimited potential. I would not be surprised by multiple 8+ WAR seasons in his peak. That peak would likely arrive a bit later than the first scenario, maybe closer to the end of the decade than the beginning of it where he still has about 90% of his raw tools, but knows exactly how to attack pitches.

Kinda sucks 2 of the 6 games on TV will be 6 innings only.

This is not a prediction it is just taking what happened and adjusting for the ball. Maybe *I* am making a prediction based off on this information, but what I posted is not forward looking in any way. Even If the caliber of pitching is down across the board guys hitting paint scrapers are still going to be more negatively effected by a deadened ball than the guys hitting no doubters all the time.

This is 2019 and 2020 combined, so not just projecting out a shortened season into a full one.

This seems like the best spot for this info. Another reason to hate the Adam Eaton signing, hooray!

This quote is great. I would love if the Bulls drafted Wagner. I have no idea how he fits on the roster, but he's projected as a late lottery pick right now and that's probably about his ceiling since he doesn't have otherworldly athleticism.

They purposefully didn't learn anything by not cutting him and giving someone younger ABs. Now they can pretend like Collins isn't a waste of a roster space until they want to bring up Vaughn.

The Dodgers have 7 quality MLB starting pitchers and the White Sox have 3. Delusional.

Not to say that this is inherently the wrong decision, but if an injury to Jace Fry helped push them in this direction instead of giving Justin Wilson $4 million or something then what was even the point of the rebuild? Also, thank god they DFA'd Ross Detwiler for some reason last year and decided not to bring him back.

Bryant could definitely be a fit in RF and I don't know why the Sox would be out on any of the available SS other than the front office is allergic to building depth. Semien and Simmons both are signed to one year deals this year on top of the 4 listed in this article. If Madrigal can up his ISO closer to .100 then I would be fine passing on adding another middle infielder, but if he's the same guy as last year I would see what type of value you can get for a slap hitter under team control for 5 years in a trade.

The only teams that would bother messing with their rotation to avoid a lefty starter pitching against the White Sox would likely be divisional rivals vying for a playoff spot. That leaves the Indians (who have zero lefty starters) and the Twins. I could see the Twins trying to avoid Happ getting lit up if they can, but depending on days off and the health of their rotation at the time they might not be able to avoid it. Then maybe in September teams outside the division might try to avoid starting a lefty, but again only if they are fighting for a playoff spot. I'd guess the number of times teams purposefully skip a lefty starter is significantly smaller than the amount of lefty starters the White Sox do face.

I think the most likely outcome is that Lucroy spends the year on the taxi squad and filling in when needed. He's a guy that can at the very least come in and competently catch a game here and there without getting regular playing time as a backup or in AAA.

Finally, Mazara does something that will help the White Sox win baseball games.

Benintendi doesn't seem like a good fit for Kauffman. He's pretty iffy in the outfield and there's a lot of ground to cover there. He'll also probably be lucky to get to double digit HRs this year playing half his games there.

Probably better opportunity for playing time in Detroit, but he would have been a decent cheap option to hold down DH until Vaughn is ready.

I'm just guessing here, but it probably has to do with a combination of the Tigers and Royals both still being terrible and an ability to outperform their pythagorean win expectancy due to their very good bullpen.