Chicago White Sox

I’m super excited as well, but we kicked off the rebuild with a pretty insane group of pitching prospects.

They are taking Schultz off the once a week schedule?

Thorpe getting called up allows one promotion. At some point, someone has to be pushed to Charlotte. I get not making it a mandatory spot for all pitching prospects, but you also can’t completely avoid utilizing it.

Which means that Chris Getz is a complete fucking clown like many of us fear

Sheets has actually hit well this year. I don’t he changes the calculus on a Robert trade, but I don’t think he has negative value.

Only if they trade Robert. I’m still skeptical that someone will go all in on Crochet given the massive workload risk. I think he’s a dude you’re probably better off selling in the offseason. I’m still optimistic that Fedde will bring in a top 100 prospect, but that isn’t going to vault us to the top of the pack, even if we deal a bunch of the other less exciting pieces we have.

When you say much more than that, can you give an example of what you’re thinking? From my perspective, let’s take an optimistic approach and say that Robert is viewed as a 5 win per year player. At $9M per win and with $61M in salary, his surplus value would ~$100M over the next 3.5 seasons. Let’s even assume a 25% premium because he’s a star and those should be worth more on a dollar per win basis and say he’s worth ~$125M all in. My proposal was Emerson, Montes, and a 3rd good prospect. Emerson is now ranked 15th overall at BA and is a legit 60 FV prospect (which based on an old FG analysis would be worth ~$55M). Montes is now ranked 49th overall and is probably a 55 FV prospect (worth ~$46M). As for the third piece, perhaps I undersold it a bit as being simply a “good” piece, but I was thinking a 50 FV type positional prospect or someone roughly in the 60 to 100 range (worth ~$28M). I was originally thinking Tyler Locklear (now 83rd on BA’s list) but I didn’t love pairing him with another bat only prospect in Montes so I kept the specific piece vague. Regardless, that package would be worth a theoretical ~$129M in surplus value vs. the ~$125M for Robert, which feels within the ballpark. I’d expect a couple of lottery tickets to be included as well, but nothing earth shattering there. That does feel light relative to the first Soto trade, but the market is going to be constrained due to few teams having the prospect capital to get a deal done in the first place and even fewer GMs having the appetite to give them up.

Nothing this lifeless team needs more than Zombie LaRussa!

Which two are ranked top 5 and based on what criteria?

Definitely feels like Robert to the Mariners for Emerson, Montes, and a good 3rd piece needs to happen.

If Kenny Williams can win a World Series despite the shitty owner, then Chris Getz should be able to assemble a team that isn’t the worst in baseball history.

I don’t know how anyone can defend Getz after witnessing this atrocity. This is the most pathetic team in Major League Baseball history and it’s not even close.

Colas on the bench is frustrating

I’m sure most will hate, but I support these efforts.

He hit .244 but just keep making stats up. And yes, let’s ignore the .400 OBP that came with that BA because Adam was an incredibly productive three outcome hitter who didn’t appeal to your baseball sensibilities 15 years ago.

Colson? A 129 wRC+ as a 21 in AA is doing “not well”? Where do you come up with this stuff.

You realize how much we spent on Yolbert Sanchez correct?

Dude has nothing left to prove in AA. Might as well send him to Charlotte and see how he does in that offensive environment.

I think the point you and Nardi aren’t acknowledging is if we trade Robert then we literally have to fill an entire lineup from scratch. Yes, there are some prospects at AA and above who should be ready by next season but it’s very likely a chunk of them end up failing. And yes, we should certainly get some more positional prospects via trade, although the same hit rates apply. The reality is we will need to sign multiple impact to free agents to go from what will likely be a 50 win team to 80 win team in two years. The challenge there is threefold. 1) The market has to have players of need. 2) We have to hope Getz & Watson can identify the right players. 3) We have to hope Jerry and Getz can actually get them signed. While not theoretically impossible, it involves a ton of pieces and many of which are out of our control. And I’d be much more optimistic if Jerry were willing to sign legit stars like the Rangers did instead of the Andrew Benintendi types who can fall off a cliff on day one. Personally, I think 2027 is a more reasonable goal to reach .500 unless we hit on a huge number of prospects or Jerry goes hog wild in free agency for the first time in his life.

Quero has a 127 wRC+ in AA. Are you overreacting to a low BABIP? Why is Gonzalez a “bench IF at best”? Power hasn’t been great but has shown elite plate discipline and should be a very solid defensive player.

In my mind, there are some very basic changes that should done be ASAP. The first is releasing Maldonado and going with Korey Lee as the primary catcher like you suggested. The Chuckster can be the backup option for all I care as anything is an upgrade from Martin. Next, Vaughn should be optioned to AAA and Sheets should be given the 1B job. This version of Andrew simply doesn’t work and Gavin has been useful against RHP. Make Vaughn dominate AAA before getting another shot. Finally, give Colas and Sosa everyday opportunities the rest of the way. It’s now or never time for these two and let’s give them an extensive evaluation period so we can make proper 40 man roster decisions when the time comes. IMO, Colas deserves playing time over Fletcher in RF. He’s got the louder tools and has improved his plate discipline quite a bit this year in AAA. And Sosa should easily get opportunities at 3B and 2B over Lopez & Mendick. The Sox won’t suddenly be good by making these moves, but at least they would be more watchable.

Rosenthal with a status update article on Grifol. Suggests that Grifol might be around for a while longer, at least until the first wave of kids are ready for a call-up. I think that feels right unless they hit a 20 game losing streak and Jerry is finally motivated to take action out of embarrassment.

I’m not even trying to be mean, because I had one of these rah rah threads ahead of the 2023 season, but nearly every prediction here is wrong outside of the Fedde one. It’s really impressive just how bad this time has been.

ISO wasn’t great, but much better BB & K rates. And honestly, the biggest thing preventing him from being a productive major leaguer was his chase rate and it appears he had made progress there.

I can’t wait to hear Grifol’s post game presser