Chicago White Sox

That’s terrifying. Hopefully Cease is ok.

I remember there was a Shields game I went to that was like 8-0 after two and I hadn’t even entered the park yet. Easy to say that was one of the worst game I have ever been to.

The Sox should also be targeting more prospects like Ti’Quan Forbes. Guys that are really raw and far away from the majors, but have some upside.

The Sox should move fast with their relievers. The A’s moved quickly with a couple arms last year and were able to get Luzardo. Given we don’t have any elite relievers to trade, patience won’t be a virtue IMO.

Rolling the dice on Rondon made sense given his ability and the fact he was under control for a few more years. Obviously it didn’t work out, but I think it was easily worth a shot.

The problem for me is the complete lack of guys reaching full season ball and actually being productive. I’m not expecting a ton of these guys to turn into quality major leaguers, but more of them should be reaching High A or AA before flaming out IMO. I can count the number of LatAm signings under Paddy that have even reached High A.

But that’s where it becomes a numbers game and you simply throw lots of money at a bunch of kids and hope you hit on a few. The fact we never went into the penalty until Robert (and didn’t exactly go crazy beforehand) shows a lack of creativity & strategy IMO. Not sure if that’s because of Paddy, our front office, or Reinsdorf forcing his old-school ways, but it has definitely put us behind the curve. Thank god new system prevents these loopholes and will allow us to be competitive.

I’ve been somewhat down on Paddy given the overall lack of results IMO, but I can fully admit that he started with a clusterfuck of a situation due to the whole Wilder fiasco and probably had to build the operation from scratch. He probably deserves a bit more time before jumping to any conclusions.

Sure, and he deserves credit for that. But I’m also concerned if this guy had superstar potential why didn’t he push Hahn harder not to give him up? Were the Padres not going to give Shields up if we offered some other LatAm signing instead? I don’t think our organization realized what kind of talent they had in Tatis. Obviously most organization a didn’t or he would have signed for more than $800k, but it does seem like a case where Preller knew the player better than we did.

Hostetler has only lead 3 1/2 drafts and has been adding people to his team the last couple of years. We’re just getting to the point where we can maybe start evaluating him.

The narrative used to fit, but they’ve at least attempted to make changes. It’s just insane that some people can’t give these changes an actual chance to work out. Creating a strong scouting & development isn’t going to happen overnight given where we started from. So far, I’m optimistic on Paddy & Getz. The last couple of drafts look promising to me, although way too early to declare anything with any level of certainty. And I was probably was one of the more vocal anti-Getz guys when hired, but I think it’s apparent he’s brought some best practices into the organzation like IDPs. Plus overall we’ve seen quite a bit of favorable steps forward this year in our prospect base (health aside).

Christ Getz & team have been around since 2006?

The Sox have some pretty high profile relief prospects in Burdi, Hamilton, & potentially Vieira & Tyler Johnson. Plus some of our starting pitching prospects are going to fail and potentially fill roles like Fulmer, Covey, & maybe Stephens. They will no doubt need to add a couple of relievers to anchor the pen, but I’m far less concerned about that area than any other part of the roster. Having two young promising young lefties in Fry & Bummer also helps matters.

From I’ve seen, teams are simply sitting on the fastball the second time around. It’s still a quality pitch, but he’s got to mix it up more with his secondary stuff.

If the All-Star break wasn’t coming up I could see it, but I think they’d rather just give him a couple starts in AAA and call him up once Shields is dealt.

It’s got to be him or Gomez IMO. I think they’ll give Hamilton a bit more time in AAA before they call him up.

He did seem kind of nervous.

Is Tilson’s arm that weak that you can take second on that fly ball?

I’m not sure how Anderson doesn’t count as a success story but whatever.

Covey really needs to bring it tonight.

IMO, Moncada is close to untouchable. Too much potential and too many question marks (cause of his recent struggles) for a team to give you fair value for him anyways. The other factor here is I’m not sure giving up assets for Arenado makes sense at this point. I think we’re better off taking a swing at Machado this offseason and assuming we miss, hope we can lure Arenado the following. If not, Rendon is also available after the 2019 season. Point is if we can use our excess cash to fill a need, that should be explored first & foremost.

Oh I agree, I wouldn’t want to execute this plan just yet. I think we’ll be a much better place to make some major moves after the 2019 season. I would still go after Harper & Machado now because guys like aren’t always available.

Robert’s injuries this year probably delay his timeline a bit. I see him as more of a mid 2020 guy than an early 2020 guy. Also, the way I viewed this hypothetical team is several veterans would leave or be traded after the 2019 season to make room for escalating salaries. Avi would probably go with Basabe being his immediate replacement. Castillo’s option would not be picked up and Collins would take his place. Someone like Rodon could be moved to open up a spot for Dunning. Obviously I didn’t think through all of it but that was the underlying logic. Adding Marte would allow us to theoretically not rush Robert to the big league.

Good point & very true.

I think people clamoring for Machado want him at 3B.