Chicago White Sox

Where are you seeing this? If the Braves DFAed him he’s a no-brainer.

Alright, with less than two weeks to go to the trade deadline, it’s time for a predictions thread. Pick who you think we’ll end up acquiring and if you’re feeling bold take a guess at the cost. Here are my official predictions: Eduardo Escobar & Joakim Soria for Micker Adolfo, Jason Bilous, Luis Mieses, & Reynaldo Lopez Starling Marte for Konner Pilkington, Lenyn Sosa, & Isaiah Carranza Raisel Iglesias for Jimmy Lambert & Jose Ruiz

I think this is smart as Zavala isn’t close to a major league hitter. Obviously you don’t overpay if you’re confident Grandal will be back, but can’t hurt to have a better backup option on the cheap.

His peripherals were never good and now we’re seeing the recession come. If Bummer can’t figure his shit out soon, then we definitely need two relievers.

I would have expected a big bonus, but awesome if true

Now this is a trade I could get behind! ?

Not only is that tool blatantly broken in certain areas, the player & prospect values are significantly outdated. Trading five our top 10 prospects for 1.3 years of Frazier is absolutely bonkers.

That would be a horrific trade...where did that proposal come from?

That would be amazing.

Both seem like no-brainers to me. The Story stuff seems like a plant to drive down the price on Escobar.

I think Fangraphs’ view of the system is very outdated and I don’t think he’d be anywhere close to our top 5 even before the draft IMO.

We’re only two weeks away from the deadline, so it’s very possible we start seeing some action soon. And I don’t anticipate the D-Backs holding a guy like Escobar to the deadline if they can get a reasonable return, especially when he’s been dealing with an injury.

I’d think that’s enough for Escobar, but probably not enough for Story.

Also, weren’t people speculating that that Dayton guy was Not Steve Cishek? If so, that means Maloney has to be the Portillo’s and we finally solved foodies mystery.

Wow, I can’t believe Orlando was pretending to be an insider. I really liked that dude too and was wondering why he didn’t post here anymore. Pretty damn crazy.

Imagine adding Conforto to this lineup. Like holy fuck it’s hands-down the best lineup in baseball. Tim Anderson, SS Yoan Moncada, 3B# Eloy Jimenez, DH/LF Michael Conforto, RF* Jose Abreu, 1B Andrew Vaughn, LF/DH Luis Robert, CF Yasmani Grandal, C# Nick Madrigal, 2B Please don’t go cheap Jerry!

It’s going to be interesting to see where Jerry will be willing to take this payroll. If we’re 100% healthy, the biggest needs heading into the offseason will pitching and RF. Resigning one of Lynn or Rodon is an absolute must and adding a high leverage reliever would also be ideal (plus maybe a lesser one as well). I think it’s pretty clear that the bulk of the offense looks to be in place, but adding a left-handed power bat for RF is what a serious contender would do. The challenge is we may be looking at a roster cost of nearly $125M before we even consider these three last holes. I think Jerry will definitely go up to at least $150M or so, but that’s not going to be enough to resign Lynn/Rodon and add a high-end reliever. Now, if he’s willing to go to say $170M (which would rank 10th in baseball this year) I think you can suddenly add someone like Conforto to play RF.

I don’t get why Rodon doesn’t resign if we have Wheeler instead of Keuchel.

The Sox desperately need to give Kopech innings and I don’t see how we make seven guys work. I’d definitely prioritize a RH setup man and a bat of some sort.

As much as Harper or Machado would be awesome, I will say losing out on Wheeler really hurts because we finally offered market value to a relatively high end SP and got turned down. The difference between him and Keuchel would be massive right now and heading into next year.

Duane Shaffer, the guy who notoriously drafted low ceiling pitchers Lance Broadway & Kyle McCulloch in the 1st round of back-to-back drafts.

No, that was Doug Laumann, who was the scouting director from 2008 to 2014. Timmy, Rodon, Bummer, Fry, & Engel are all current White Sox that were selected by Doug. He also drafted stars in Sale & Semien, but outside of a few others (such as Daniel Hudson) there isn’t much to show for his 7 drafts.

If my options are playing Engel in RF or Leury at 2B, I’m taking Adam 100%. But assuming Engel is suddenly a 3 win player seems premature. That also doesn’t consider the fact the dude frequently gets injured. To me, Adam is a tremendous 4th OF, but not someone I want to bank on being an everyday guy.

Good stuff bmags. I’ve been wanting to say that the recent “Sox are great at drafting” stuff in the media is a little overblown, especially under Hostetler. Here’s what we have to show from his five drafts: 2015: Backup infielder (Mendick) & 3rd string catcher (Zavala) 2016: Backup catcher (Collins), potential reliever (Burdi), & potential swingman (Lambert) 2017: Potential 3B (Burger), potential 1B/OF (Sheets), potential 5th OF (Gonzalez), potential reliever (Johnson), & potential swingman (McClure) 2018: Starting 2B (Madrigal), setup man (Heuer), & the rest being too early to call 2019: Starting LF/1B (Vaughn) & the rest being too early to call I will admit that I think he started hitting his stride a bit with the 2018 draft, where Nick focused on power arms and started introducing more HS talent into the mix. While I don’t think we should give too much credit for top four picks (although scouting directors do get these wrong all the time), Madrigal looks like a 10 year starter at 2B, Heuer in the 6th was a great pick, Stiever in the 5th was a great pick, and there still remain several players who could be contributors down the road in Pilkington (3rd), Weaver (7th), Remy Gonzalez (18th), and possibly some of the over-slot college arms that were taken in rounds 12 to 15 (Carranza, Bilous, Martin, & Shilling). That doesn’t include the selection of Steele Walker in the 2nd (who was traded for a major league piece), which is probably my biggest issue with the strategy of this draft. He then followed that up in 2019 with a guy who looks like a 10 year starter in Vaughn (a top four pick again), an infusion of HS talent with Thompson, Dalquist, Beard, Torres, Gladney, & Krogman who are all active parts of a young Kannapolis roster, along with some college arms in Freeman & Weems (who helped us land Lynn). Given the youth of this draft, it’s way too early to tell how it will all shape out, but ultimately the system needed to get younger and this draft accomplished that in strides. The 2017 draft could work out in the end, but I will say after the top two picks the rest was very meh. This was one of the safest drafts in recent memory with us taking a ton of low ceiling college players throughout. But if Burger & Sheets can become legit major contributors, then Nick deserves some credit. I would argue that the 2015 draft was just plain bad, although Fulmer wasn’t technically Hostetler’s selection and he didn’t have 2nd & 3rd round picks. The 2016 draft also looks pretty bad in hindsight unless Burdi & Lambert can actually become key members of our pitching staff going forward. That being said, there was a time we could have capitalized on this draft and moved a guy like Alec Hansen (who was a legit top 100 prospect) for a major league piece. Also, I do think Nick was to some extent the victim of a poor / developing player development system, as that may have dictated a high floor strategy with some of these earlier drafts and limited the results of those that were selected. I think Getz has mostly righted that ship now and that could really help the more recent HS heavy drafts be far more productive than his earlier drafts.