Chicago White Sox

I’ll give La Russa some credit, he makes all his responses about the players and not himself. And he clearly realizes how lucky he is to come into a group like this. I obviously won’t endorse his off-field issues, but I’m really hoping he can be everything Ricky wasn’t when it comes to the in-game stuff.

Yup, that’s him with my younger son a couple years back at SoxFest. Dude was super nice and I’ve been a huge fan of his despite his known flaws. I really hope he gets a shot and cements himself as some sort of long-term piece, whether as our backup catcher or regular DH.

Great frame job by Collins!

Abreu misplays a ball at 1B to put the leadoff runner on.

Double steal for us while Kelly loses track of the outs, puts ducks on the pond for Collins.

Moncada is pretty much the fulcrum of the offense this year with Eloy out. We really need him to step up and return to 2019 form.

Didn’t realize that, but also a good call-out on the accuracy of that throw.

Leadoff single for Timmy.

Yeah, someone said he had a noodle arm and from what I could tell it looked perfectly fine.

Sox down 0-1 after a sac fly.

Isn’t MLB moving to an international draft at some point? That’s basically what we need to be on an even playing field and hopefully allows Paddy to his thing without Jerry interfering.

I’d rather have anyone in baseball over Billy Hamilton as my everyday LF, with the only exception being scumbags like Puig.

Just give Giolito all the tank money Jerry is currently pocketing and lock him up forever

Thank god that scumbag is long gone

Leury & Engel both hit LHP well, so you probably rock both of them (when healthy) in the corners against LHP and go with Vaughn in LF and Collins at DH against RHP. Lucroy should never be part of the DH plans IMO.

Like as in major league ready? Probably Luis Gonzalez. Obviously Nick Williams is another option theoretically.

What are you suggesting exactly? The reason the Sox are trying Vaughn out in LF is they think that him plus Collins at DH gives them a better chance to win than Leury in LF everyday and Vaughn at DH?

The one real failure of the rebuild was drafting a bunch corner college bats with reasonably high picks because they were “safe / advanced hitters” and then failing to develop them. Hopefully, we are starting to rectify that a bit with Collins & Sheets as I previously mentioned, but there was a lot of potential impact talent at the HS level we passed on early in the rebuild and it never made much sense to me.

Sorry, meant HS bats. We’ve started taking way more HS kids, but we still haven’t used a 1st round pick on a HS kid since Hawkins. Can’t keep playing it safe at the top and hope to add high impact talent up the middle, especially when you’re going to be drafting in 20’s hopefully. We should be taking the Carter Kieboom’s of the world in the late 1st and not the Zack Burdi’s.

This is also a good point. The system has been way too thin up the middle for far too long and that also needs to change for us to be on par with other clubs. The problem there is the best way to gain a critical mass of said prospects is signing teens out of Latin America and that’s no bueno with Uncle Jerry. Hopefully we start taking some HS bats in the 1st round at least to help address the problem.

We had some great stretches of talent evaluation IMO, I personally think player development has been the larger issue over the past decade.

One consideration here is that our player development function was well behind the times for years and appears to have caught up quite a bit under Getz, even if it took a long-ass time. We’ve already seen some success stories on the pitching side (Stiever, Lambert, etc.) and hopefully the position player side will soon follow. We invested a ton of draft capital in Collins, Sheets, & Burger and these guys have gone from likely lost causes (which killed our depth) to possible contributors. Obviously it’s way too early to call any of them successes, but at least we’ve seen work / changes Collins & Sheets have made to address weaknesses and improve their chances to contribute. The real test will be all the young guys at Kanny and to a lesser extent Winston-Salem. If we can develop enough of those guys into potentially serviceable players we may finally start seeing an acceptable level of depth in the upper minors.

If the Bears don’t find a way to trade up in the draft for a QB, which is admittedly looking harder by the second, then it might be two years before we find a possible long-term option. Next year’s team shouldn’t be good, but will they be bad enough for a top 5 selection? I really doubt it. And assuming the 2022 class isn’t nearly as deep, it should be much harder to move up if there are only a couple high end options. Point is, keeping Pace & Nagy around is simply delaying the need to tank for a high end QB prospect and we’re going to be stuck in purgatory until that happens. I know many here don’t want them taking a shot at another QB prospect, but IMO we’re just spinning in circles until we get that spot fixed once and for all.

Sheets didn’t even get assigned to Schaumburg last year, he’s still got to prove himself with the bat. Vaughn clearly flashed enough last year that they want his bat in the lineup somewhere. None of this ideal, but alas with the way Collins has looked in camp it’s worth a shot.

He was a league average bat against RHP in 2019 in his second stint with us after making his swing changes. I think he can be much better than that as a platoon hitter if given the opportunity.