Chicago White Sox

Madrigal with a BB to add to the K. And Basabe most definitely injured, although I’ve seen nothing official on that front.

Remember when Balta said Jose wasn’t in a slump and was basically donezo? Glad they’ve stopped throwing him fastballs, oh wait...

And there’s the first K for Madrigal

Your need to cast blame on just one individual is fascinating. The reality is multiple parties are to blame for our recent failures, Rick Hahn included. But there is no doubt Reinsdorf put us in a bad spot in his half-ass attempts to go for it those last couple years. He asked the front office to complete a task that would be incredibly difficult without a significant increase in spending and that clearly did not happen. That doesn’t mean Hahn should get a pass for the bad moves he made, but he was most definitely set up for failure. And before you say “we don’t know Reinsdorf was the driving behind going for it”, we do in fact know that KW & Hahn wanted to rebuild much earlier than we ultimately did. If you’ve been paying attention close enough, the facts are all out there.

We’ve never had this much financial flexibility in recent history. When the time is right to spend, there will be no more excuses for coming in second.

Here’s on an article on Bryce Bush from SSS that’s worth a read: https://www.southsidesox.com/2018/8/2/17642278/under-the-radar-bryce-bush-2018-draft-steal

What were the other three times to fire him out of curiosity?

Ventura is one of my all time favorite players and I think it’s ballsy as hell he went after a legend like that, but good god how did he get his ass handed to him so badly?

Great post & 100% agree. It’s going to take some time and it won’t always be pretty along the way, but IMO the kid is going to be a damn good player in this league at some point. People just need to be patient with him, which seems to be a challenge with some posters here.

I have no idea what you’re even talking about at this point as you continue to move the goalposts from post to post. But this idea that Moncada didn’t put up great statistics in the minors is nothing more than a false narrative you’ve constructed to aid in your pessimism towards him. Let’s actually look at some numbers to put an end to this bullshit. Yoan put up wRC+ of 156 & 152 at A+ & AA respectively as a 21 year old. Those ranked were amongst the leaders in both leagues and were very comparable to the numbers fellow uber prospect Andrew Benintendi put up despite Yoan being a year younger. He then put up a wRC+ of 130 in AAA as a 22 year old & actually had much better numbers before he got banged up. Point is, there is a reason almost every single publication had him as a top 1 or 2 overall prospect: he combined elite tools with high end production. The hype was and still is warranted no matter how hard you try to spit it.

Hahn deserves plenty of blame for many of the moves he made, but this is overly harsh and quite frankly a bit ridiculous. Rick Hahn does NOT get to decide the direction of the club on his own. That’s heavily influenced by a man named Jerry Reinsdorf and we all know very well his desire to win but not go above & beyond in terms of resources & risk taking has hurt this franchise tremendously. It’s very clear, at least in my opinion, that we’re finally seeing a direction that Hahn is pushing for. And quite frankly, it’s the path we needed to go down given the state the franchise was in. Having said that, it remains to be seen if Hahn can actually execute the moves to complete a rebuild. The first set of trades were fantastic IMO, but now comes the hard part.

Gotcha, makes perfect sense. That’s exactly why I think people worry too much about where Madrigal will fit. When the times comes, either they’ll make room for him or use him as a trade chip to fill a major hole.

I actually went out to dinner last night with a buddy who’s a diehard Cubs fan and we were talking about this. Theo obviously deserves a ton of credit for the amount of talent he acquired in a short period of time, but completely ignoring the pitching side of things & not having a pipeline of arms has cost him a bit. He’s had to give up some serious ammo & overspend in free agency to fill holes on the pitching staff. Now they have a bottom five farm system and much less financial flexibility to solve for problems going forward.

The Cubs were obviously extremely positional focused, I don’t disagree there. I’m not sure I agree with you on timeline though. Our system was horrific before those trades. Yes we acquired a significant amount of talent in a short period of time, but otherwise our system was barren. I don’t see why our timeline should be that much shorter than theirs.

I think there is a huge misconception that our rebuild is pitching oriented. Moncada, Jimenez, Robert, Madrigal, & Anderson all were or currently are top 50 prospects (and in some cases much higher). Collins, Adolfo, Basabe, & Rutherford are all cracking some top 100 lists. Had Burger not messed up his ACL he’d likely be another high regarded positional prospect in the system. If it weren’t for the Eaton trade I think most people would view our system as being pretty balanced.

Balta, what in the world are you trying to say here?

You’re 100% right on this, I just think in this particular case it’s ridiculous to downvote ChiSox59’s recap of the podcast. I listened to the entire thing and his summary was spot-on and captured every major point. Posts like his are what make this site so great and a step above other MLB team boards IMO. If we’re going to go have a recognition system, posts like his deserve a ton of positive feedback and not this trolling nonsense.

Lol...do you seriously think Vlad Guerrero Jr is a FV 55 prospect? He’s arguably the best prospect in baseball right now and his prospect grade is probably around a 70 FV (the same as Moncada). So no, the Jays wouldn’t trade him for Moncada because he’s a similar caliber of prospect who’s also younger, controllable longer, & hasn’t hit any roadblocks yet. But to answer your question, would the Padres trade a 55 FV infielder like Urias for Moncada? The answer is most certainly yes. GMs aren’t nearly as inpatient as you Flash and don’t drop a prospect multiple grades after posting 2.5 WAR in their first 162 games.

I have no idea what this post actually means, but you are the one who made assinine claims about his trade value when you asked if he could return a 55 FV prospect. Stop and think for a minute before you keep going down this path.

Lol...so damn true!

Unfortunately the meatballs need to see it or it simply doesn’t exist. The proof is in the pudding you know.

I don’t follow at all.

Where do you come up with this nonsense?

Basabe injured? Hasn’t played in a couple of days.

Sure, I’m all for coaching changes, but how about bringing in someone with a track record of success for once. Omar is another guy who overmanages and that’s the last thing he need.