Chicago White Sox

He was well outside the top 30 at this point. Might not be in the top 40 in all honesty.

I think Baldwin will finally reward our endearment this time.

Good plate dispute, decent power, bad BABIP. But yes, let’s the randomness of baseball and overreact to a 30 game sample of batting average.

For me it just comes down to sample size. McDougal has been great so far and if he can finish the year at this pace, then I think he will be in the top 10 (especially with Teel at minimum graduating). The same applies for Antonacci, although I need to see more out of him as he’s not an overly tooled up player and the sample this year is even smaller.

I would certainly entertain trading him for a quality OF prospect if the Mariners have one

How do you think he got Jerry’s mailing address?

You’re looking at them

Rosenthal said they would eat cash to move Benintendi

As we hit the mid-point of the season, I thought it would be fun for the various contributors of this sub to share their updated Top 20 prospect lists. For this exercise, let’s exclude any players who have reached rookie eligibility thresholds. This would include Chase Meidroth, Edgar Quero, Brooks Baldwin, Sean Smith, Sean Burke, & Mike Vasil (all in pre-season top 30). Below is my mid-season Top 20 list and a handful of “just missed” guys. I’m sure some of these picks will be ridiculed and by all means flame away! CWS’ Top 20 List: Noah Schultz, LHP Kyle Teel, CA Braden Montgomery, OF Hagen Smith, LHP Caleb Bonemer, SS Grant Taylor, RHP Colson Montgomery, SS Drew Thorpe, RHP George Wolkow, OF Bryan Ramos, 3B Mason Adams, RHP Ky Bush, LHP William Bergola, SS Tanner McDougal, RHP Christian Oppor, LHP Jacob Gonzalez, SS Sam Antonacci, 2B Jeral Perez, 2B Javier Mogollon, 2B Samuel Zavala, OF Just Missed in No Order: Peyton Pallette, RHP Jairo Iriarte, RHP Wikelman Gonzalez, RHP Aldrin Batista, RHP Alexander Albertus, 3B Nick McClain, OF

Should be 5 years of team control left for each of them.

I believe as soon I formally wrote him off he’s gone on a tear. Hopefully he makes me eat a lot more crow.

He’d be a good swingman that can give you bulk innings without embarrassing you in the event a better starter goes down. But this version of Cannon leaves much to be desired and not sure I’d want to start a season with him as my #5 if I’m serious about competing.

We’ve reached a new low when Fegan feels compelled to type that sentence

There is simply no hope for the Bulls as long as AKME are in charge. Their “plan” is to just be competitive most nights and hopefully be a play-in team or low playoff seed on a regular basis. Winning championships are not important to them and therefore stars aren’t necessary. Just build a deep roster of solid role players that battle for 82 games so you can continue to sell out the UC every night and rake in the profits for Uncle Jerry and his goober of a kid. Insane that these assholes were recently extended despite years of failure and no vision. But alas, when you have Michael Reinsdorf in charge, stupidity becomes a guiding principle for the org.

Man Cannon has some ugly looking Statcast figures. Just doesn’t seem he has any sort of out pitch and doesn’t generate a ton ground balls either. He’s probably fine as a passable #5, but he’s got to make some pitch / repertoire changes if he really wants to hold that spot or ever be more than that. Having a diverse arsenal of bad to ok pitches will only take you so far.

The plaintiff claims to have been shot in the stadium and has the wound and a casing to support their claim…not sure what other burden of proof is needed here. Also, what animosity have I shown towards public school teachers? No idea what you are talking about there.

Not sure if you’re American, but guns are literally everywhere and oftentimes they are brought into places they shouldn’t be. My brother in law brings his Glock into the movie theater because he’s fucking paranoid like half this country. It’s wild to think someone would try to sneak a gun into a sporting event, but there are plenty of dumbasses out there who don’t think before they act. It’s why every once in a while you hear about someone getting caught by TSA trying to sneak a handgun through at the airport.

How is that scientifically possible?

Not in a million years did anyone expect Thaiss to be moved for anything of value. He was simply brought in to buy some time for Teel & Quero without being a total disaster. The fact he performed as well as he did should be viewed as a scouting win vs. a trade shortfall. I do wish we got more for him, but the right call was to sell for what you could and call up the blue chip prospect. As for Slater, he has a .351 xwOBA (50 points higher than his wOBA) and strong quality of contact metrics. As a weak side platoon player, he has been the victim of bad batted ball luck. Doesn’t change the fact that he offers a good bat against LHP and appears to be worth his measly salary. As I have pointed out numerous times, he is blocking no one of importance and there is some value in having veterans who offer professional at-bats and improve the floor of the team.

I have read the Vargas has been bad the past month, but since June 1st he has put up a 10% BB rate, 14% K rate, and a .174 ISO. His hard hit rate is 44% during this frame and yet his BABIP is only at .243. Based on those peripherals, I will believe he’s been unlucky more than bad. Teel has a 119 wRC+ as a rookie catcher despite his xwOBA being 45 points higher than wOBA. Meidroth has been close to a league average hitter based on the skill set he was advertised as having and has shown enough at SS to look like he could stick there if need be. Regardless, he should continue to improve with time. Sosa has flashed being a decent 2B option on the cheap. The latter two guys won’t be stars, but having 1.5 to 2.5 win players is needed to go from terrible to average. And on the pitching side, Smith has been a tremendous pickup and Burke has flashed a ton over the past month to believe he can be a rotation mainstay. I’d add that Taylor has shown to have a hell of arm and will be an impact player in some capacity, whether that’s in relief or eventually as a starter. There are couple of other young guys like Martin & Vasil that have pitched well, but the peripherals don’t look great so won’t count them as wins just yet. By no means should anyone be doing cartwheels over these “wins”, but during the second half of Hahn’s tenure we had very few young players perform even close to these levels outside of the elite prospects acquired at the front end of the rebuild.

Many of the guys you list weren’t planned additions, but rather waiver wire fodder to fill out a roster. IMO, Tauchman, Slater, & Thaiss have all delivered as cheap veteran placeholders. Taylor is at 0.3 fWAR although I wouldn’t really consider that as a win. Rojas has flopped pretty hard and should be included in your list above. Three of out of five scrap heap signings more or less working is about as good as any GM is going to do and is much better than anything we have seen under Hahn.

Lol…context certainly matters when assessing the performance of a team. As you have noted many times, the team last year was historically bad with few building blocks and since then our owner has further gutted the payroll. I’m not sure what your expectations were for this season, but this team was going to be incredibly bad again from a W-L perspective in pretty much any scenario. As such, “success” really comes down to winning on the margins rather than being a non-terrible club. Young players showing some signs of life is by far the most important outcome this year and we have seen a decent sized group of kids that look like legitimate pieces even if most of them lack star upside. Regardless, it’s just a first step in a long-term process but ultimately a necessary one to get back to even normal bad. Veterans performing at or above expectations is a lesser but still important objective. I think the reality is Robert has flopped hard which will hurt quite a bit come the deadline. None of the other vets really have the ability to move the needle much in terms of return, but I am pleased with some of Getz’s dumpster dive pickups as they have been more productive than what we typically got from his predecessor and is hopefully a sign of the progress made behind the scenes. Finally, watching Venable and his coaching staff not completely implode in the wake of another tough season is a positive. It appears that the players actually respect him and as bad as things have been we haven’t really seen guys quit like they did under Grifol last year. Ultimately, none of this should qualify as “exciting” because we are still multiple years away from being mediocre, but objectively speaking it’s been an ok 1st half if you contextualize your expectations.

What statistical analysis are you referring to that was discredited? The use of a 20 year sample to suggest that the Sox were good to the very end of Hahn’s tenure at developing pitching?

Who is celebrating Edgar Quero’s -0.1 fWAR?

Bad…yes. Another 100+ season? Way to say that with any level of certainty.