Chicago White Sox

QUOTE (GenericUserName @ Jan 26, 2018 -> 12:04 AM) He's the type I would be willing to buy low on because he does have the tools, but you know if you take him that he is a project and not someone who just has small things to work on. The problem for us is diminishing returns. We really don’t have a spot for him in our A ball OF.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jan 25, 2018 -> 09:42 PM) Brewers insider claiming they are working on two trades. Santana to an AL team tomorrow and one other. These moves also validate Crasnick’s tweet, which means we’ve been talking with the Brewers about something. Sanchez still makes the most sense for them IMO, but Brewers fans seem enamored with Abreu anchoring their lineup. I still think there may be some smoke here. Maybe something happens this weekend and it gets announced during SoxFest.

He could suddenly fall off a cliff and I’m sure those last few years will be rough, but that seems like a reasonable deal for Cain. He needs to provide 9 WAR over the life of the deal to basically break-even. Seems like a good gamble to take for the Brewers.

QUOTE (soxfan2014 @ Jan 25, 2018 -> 05:38 PM) It was floated out with more pieces of course. I’m pretty sure I floated what you’re referring to and it was essentially Brinson for Chance Adams & Dillon Tate and Diaz for Sanchez. Suggesting it was “Brinson for Sanchez” like Dick Allen just did is simply being disingenuous. But Dick loves arguing against false narratives.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jan 25, 2018 -> 05:27 PM) Would you agree Sox equivalent is Robert, Hansen and Rutherford? I definitely would say those packages are comparable.

QUOTE (Sleepy Harold @ Jan 25, 2018 -> 05:16 PM) Milwaukee Brewers @Brewers The #Brewers have acquired OF Christian Yelich from Miami in exchange for OF Lewis Brinson, OF Monte Harrison, INF Isan Diaz and RHP Jordan Yamamoto. That’s an incredible return for the Marlins.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 25, 2018 -> 05:14 PM) So Brinson for Yolmer isn't going to fly. Damn. Said no one ever?

QUOTE (soxfan2014 @ Jan 25, 2018 -> 09:57 AM) This kinda stuff just doesn't do it for me, personally. Never really into conventions and don't really care about getting autographs. I used to go with my brother, cousins, dad and uncles every year when we were little though. The Q&A sessions with Hahn are worth the price alone IMO. Some of the other seminars are really good too.

Unless they’ve changed it, you get a wristband at the entry to the line and can literally come back right before it’s literally wrapping up to get your autograph. I spent maybe 5 minutes per autrograph in line last year, although I did have to check the status of the line a few times.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jan 25, 2018 -> 07:41 AM) Nothing really. He made some pretty icky comments the other day and said something like “hopefully they got the right guy”, but he isn’t gonna get fired Gotcha, thanks.

I’ll be there Sunday with a couple buddies and my two sons. Have they released the schedule yet?

As someone who hasn’t followed the details of this horrific story too closely, what does any of this have to do with Izzo?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 24, 2018 -> 07:16 AM) If the White Sox "Aren't as deep as we'd like to think we are", that points to a much larger problem. There is a ton of 2nd tier talent in this organization: Cease, Collins, Rutherford, Burger, Adams, Adolfo, some of the other guys down in A-ball, the other catchers. I don't think all of these guys are going to have breakout years next year, but there's so much talent in that range that some of them should. If all of these guys flop, that's a sign of a much more serious issue - that we still haven't fixed either the player development or the player scouting issues that plagued us for the last decade. The best proxy for the strength of any given farm system is looking at how many 50+ FV prospects they have. How many of those do you think we have right now? If you exclude Moncada, Giolito, Lopez, & Fulmer, we have four guys remaining who met this criteria last year per Longenhagen: 1. Jimenez, 60 2. Kopech, 55 3. Rutherford, 55 4. Collins, 50 5. Burdi, 50 My guess is Rutherford & Burdi fall to 45's, which would leave just three holdovers. The question then becomes how many guys will join the list after 2017? Here are my guesses with predicted FVs: 1. Hansen, 55 2. Robert, 55 3. Dunning, 50 4. Burger, 50 Cease was a 45 last year and I don't see him making the jump. Sheets will probably be a 45. Same goes for Adolfo & Adams. So in summary that's only 7 50+ FV players. That's not horrible, but the deeper systems have closer to 10 from what I've seen. Again, this is simply a good proxy to measure the strength of the farm system. The fact we have two guys that should be in the 60 to 70 FV range (Eloy & Kopech) and a guy that could join them in a half season (Robert) needs to be taken into consideration. But the flip side of the coin is how many guys in our system have a legitimate change of becoming 50+ FV prospects by the end of next season? That's the real concern IMO as I'd only probably put it around five to seven (Rutherford, Cease, Sheets, Burdi, Adolfo, & maybe Basabe or Curbelo). If you look at other high-end systems, I bet you they have many more guys who could conceivably make that jump. Unfortunately, our system lacks the high-school & LatAm talents that can radically improve their future value in a year.

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ Jan 23, 2018 -> 11:23 PM) Anyone with knowledge of the system can answer this. Would you say that the current group of position player prospects and their success or lack thereof would be an indicator to evaluate those who develop that talent ? I'm just curious with our lack of success in recent years with position player prospects and with changes made to the system if any one truly thinks the Sox have what it takes to develop these players or even draft well enough and recognize talent that basically just develops on its own. I think so yes. The last two drafts under Hostetler we’ve drafted “ball players” over athletes for the most part. Collins, Call, Fisher, Burger, Sheets, & Gonzalez all fall into that bucket IMO. Those guys should be much easier to develop than the Courtney Hawkins of the world who have serious issues with pitch recognition & plate discipline. That doesn’t mean they should eventually turn into stars or even major league regulars, but we should see productive seasons out of them as progress up the system. At this point it’s impossible to say if Getz and of the other any player development changes have made much of a difference thus far. While Call gets a free pass due to injury, Fisher played himself out of top 30 lists with a very disappointing season. Collins raised red flags with his bat to ball issues. And obviously it’s way to early to judge, but Burger & Sheets didn’t exactly demonstrate the plus power potential we’ve been hearing about. Next year will be huge though as the Sox have actively working with these guys during instructs & the off-season to fix issues. If Collins can come back in 2018 with the hitch even semi-corrected and Burger & Sheets show signs of lofting the ball more, I’ll start getting a little more optimistic that Getz may be driving some real change.

QUOTE (GenericUserName @ Jan 23, 2018 -> 09:49 PM) From Longenhagen's prospect chat today when asked about Collins and Rutherford: Only 45/50 raw power is really disappointing. It really looks like we're going to have to do some work on him for him to reach anywhere near his potential. If he is able to regain his old form, I think that also answers a lot of questions about our abilities to develop bats. Someone should ask Hahn about this at SoxFest. I was less concerned about his s***ty numbers when he came over, but the fact that Longenhagen has dropped his raw power score and publications are completely dropping him from their top 100 lists suggest real scouting concerns now. I’d really like to know Hahn’s reasons for optimism here, because it almost comes off like they went off pre-draft scouting reports and not the latest intel.

QUOTE (GenericUserName @ Jan 23, 2018 -> 11:04 PM) I'm actually slightly encouraged. He said the Braves wouldn't give up Acuna, so if the Nats also don't give up Robles, the prospect value is lower. I think people are down on Brinson because he struggled in the majors. The Brewers fan were more concerned about Monte Harrison and the insider said Josh Hader was untouchable. If Brinson isn't viewed as good and he is leading the package, maybe we could get by with an offer based around Rutherford + Cease ++ if we take back some contracts. Thats something that we have over the Braves, Brewers, and Nats, though not over the Padres probably. The problem is even if you’re down in on Brinson a bit, he’s still a top 40 to 50 prospect. Rutherford has seen his stock plummet and Cease has huge question marks. Those two combined are worth far less than Yelich IMO are not headlining a trade for Yelich. Still think we’d have to add Hansen with those other two to have any shot and I don’t think that would be wise for us. We’re simply not as deep as we’d like to think we are. Let’s hold the prospects for one more year, try to sign some free agents to fill holes first, and then consider a move like this once we have a better idea what we have/need.

I’ll keep repeating it, thanks but no thanks. If Acuna or Brinson is actually involved, then let’s end the discussion right now. Giving up that caliber of a prospect at this point in our rebuild (plus more) would be insanity. Marlins aren’t taking our secondary pieces for Yelich.

QUOTE (yesterday333 @ Jan 23, 2018 -> 11:33 AM) I got to see Curbelo play in a couple games at the beginning of last season before he got hurt. He was the best athlete on the field and its too bad he got hurt. I wonder if he will be assigned to Great Falls again this year. I really hope they push him to Kannapolis TBH.

QUOTE (kwill @ Jan 23, 2018 -> 11:20 AM) I don’t get the Casey Gillespie love. Agreed.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jan 22, 2018 -> 11:17 AM) I'm going to guess 3 white sox. Eloy, Kopech, Hansen. I don’t even think Law would exclude Robert from his list, but you just never know with him.

So we’ll probably have the big 4 in this list. We had five in BA’s list. Callis hinted at six in his list. Honestly, it’s a bit concerning that we’re in year 2 of our rebuild and that’s all we got. And I’m fully aware we had three top 50 prospects graduate last year, but sucks to see Cease & Rutherford completely fall off these lists.

QUOTE (2005thxfrthmmrs @ Jan 22, 2018 -> 09:51 AM) Hindsight is 20/20 but it’s not like we didn’t see this one coming. We gave up 3 productive ML’er (one of which had immense trade value) for a guy who was hyped as a Top 30 guy at that point. Some 200 ABs later he fell completely out of Top 100. Not saying he won’t bounce back inside T100 going forward, but I think it will be hard for him to sniff the top 30-40 status again. Return seemed light then, but even more so now. I think most of us felt this way when the trade was announced. I personally never understood the Rutherford hype (being a top 40 prospect), but was willing to give the Sox the benefit of the doubt. Obviously the early returns aren’t great on Blake, but 2018 will really tell us what we might have in him. I’m also disappointed that the second piece in the deal was Ian Clarkin. Not a huge fan of his despite the 1st round pedigree.

QUOTE (GenericUserName @ Jan 22, 2018 -> 09:33 AM) He probably has the same grade as before, other guys just got better and jumped him. I get that’s possible, but some of the guys ahead of him should of graduated as well.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jan 22, 2018 -> 09:40 AM) I've been consistent so I'll say it again: Not a fan of these tweets from crasnick. Meaning you don’t think they’re realistic? He broke the Soria trade in the same manner.

QUOTE (GenericUserName @ Jan 22, 2018 -> 09:31 AM) I'm perusing one of the Brewers fan sites and a guy that they all see as a reliable insider just said this when asked for an update: The contract issues part makes it sound like maybe it is Ellsbury because the NTC. He also just said that Braun is not in the trade. Definitely points to a potential Ellsbury deal, obviously doesn’t mean we’re involved. Still can’t believe the Brewers would take on that kind of salary. Would think a team like us or the Phillies would have to be the ultimate landing place for Ellsbury.