Chicago White Sox

It’s 100% happening. Kopech will be up later this week too.

Kopech looks like an actual pitcher today. Getting ahead in counts and inducing a ton of ground balls. Still sitting 98 to 99 but with quality command of his pitches.

No Jimenez?

I really hope Kopech brings it today.

Wow, we may have two affiliates no hit today...that would really suck.

Very true. I’m still hoping Cordell finds a way to get things going and serve as our 4th OF at some point.

Please don’t be hurt Luery. Can’t take more Engel.

I think it’s the combination of the two. We traded a guy who ultimately became a top 3 prospect in baseball for a pitcher that was beyond terrible. I don’t blame them entirely for giving up Tatis as no one really knew what he was (except maybe Preller) or he would signed for a much higher bonus. Had Shields been even a solid #3 starter I think we could attribute it to bad luck. But as it stands, it generally reeks of desperation & a lack of due diligence on our end.

Hey we were able to get out of that inning with a tie! It only required half our bullpen. Hopefully this one doesn’t go into extras.

I agree, Rick is very calculating in how he responds to things. The “there was no question” was an easy out for him.

His official response was “there was no question”. Was a bit peculiar he didn’t say “Ricky’s my guy”. Doubt it means much though.

Kanny no hit in game 1. Madrigal 2/3 so far today.

Cause Ricky is bored and wants to feel like he’s important by over-managing.

Down two in the 4th with no outs & Shields pitching and we bunt. I don’t care that we just scored there, it’s just such a stupid moment to bunt. I really can’t wait for the Renteria days to be over.

100% agree. Also, this indicates to me they plan on putting a competitive team out there next year.

Anything else interesting?

Looks like Ramon Beltre got a promotion to Kannapolis. Starting at 2B & batting 8th today. Glad to see them pushing him a bit given his age.

Situational hitting is fine, but the bunting has to go. Unfortunately it sounds like Ricky doesn’t want to get rid of his old school tendencies.

So everyone remembers Hahn’s trades during the rebuild, but I thought it would be fun to look at Hahn’s prior to the official sell-off (which I view as the Duke for Tilson trade). I’ve included my scoring each for the hell of it. Jeff Soptic to the Giants for Conor Gillaspie (9/10) Matt Thornton to the Red Sox for Brandon Jacobs (7/10) Jake Peavy to the Red Sox for Avi Garcia, Frankie Montas, Cleulius Rondon, & JB Wendelken (7/10) Alex Rios to the Rangers for Luery Garcia (8/10) Hector Santiago & Brandon Jacobs in three team trade for Adam Eaton (10/10) Addison Reed to the Diamondbacks for Matt Davidson (7/10) Gordon Beckham to the Angels for Yencey Almonte (10/10) Marcus Semien, Chris Bassitt, Josh Phegley, & Rangel Ravelo to the A’s for Jeff Samardzija & Michael Ynoa (4/10) Andre Rienzo to the Marlins for Dan Jennings (8/10) Yency Almonte to the Rockies for Tommy Kahnle (9/10) JB Wendelken & Zack Erwin to the A’s for Brett Lawrie (7/10) Trayce Thompson, Micah Johnson, & Frankie Montas in three team trade for Todd Frazier (7/10) Erik Johnson & Fernando Tatis to the Padres for James Shields (0/10) Honestly, looking back at those moves there are only two I would consider questionable. Shark wasn’t a great idea from the get go, but at least we ended up with a 1st round pick out of it. The Shields move is obviously a disaster and looks like it may be one of the worst trades in franchise history. Otherwise, I think he’s done pretty well on the trade front with the Eaton & two Almonte trades being big winners. Obviously this doesn’t excuse the misses in free agency and some other mistakes, but his track record isn’t as bad as some people would have you believe.

? I’ve never gotten that vibe from him at all. He seems to be higher than most on a lot of the secondary prospects and loved the Steele Walker pick.

I agree. And one thing I think has gone unnoticed a bit here is Sox have greatly improved the depth of the system. They may not be Padres, Braves, Yankees deep just yet, but there are now a good 40+ guys in the conversation when doing a top 30 prospect list. And that’s primarily related to better drafting. The one thing really setting us back at this point is our LatAm operations and we should be in better shape there under the new CBA once we exit the penalty box.

None of those guys were sign & dumps like your suggesting.

I worry about his BB rate a bit. The age thing would be less of a concern if he wasn’t walking only 2% of the time.

That’s what I’m envisioning, although I’m guessing that one of Nunez or Beltre is promoted and used as the backup IF and part-time DH from the get go.

That didn’t take long.