Chicago White Sox

He won’t be debuting with Kanny that’s for sure. It’s either Winston-Salem or Birmingham for him next year.

Fuck a Patriot!!!

Bonus pools are no longer based on W-L record but rather market size I believe.

I agree outside the Puig part (unless they are convinced he isn’t the clubhouse cancer he appears to be). Improve the bullpen & bench and then let’s go to fucking war.

I still think he’ll be used out of the pen if / when he comes back next year. And he could be a late season weapon in that role.

The end of that Bills / Texans game was fucking nuts.

I think he wants to win, just in a way that feels right to him (which oftentimes is not the optimal way).

Interesting...thanks for sharing that.

I really hope you’re right, but I’m just not optimistic that Ricky is going to change his ways at the moment.

Still some options out there, but it just feels like Yolmer is gonna happen. The worst part with Yolmer is he will steal way too much playing time from Madrigal because Ricky’s love for him.

What is his prediction?

I think they’d have to call him up and put him on the 25 man roster. I could be wrong but I don’t believe he is option eligible, meaning we can’t control him via the 40 man roster.

There will be plenty of Sox fans excited though. I don’t dislike him personally, just don’t think his skillset is optimal for this roster.

That’s an interesting angle and one I hadn’t thought of.

Oh I 100% agree it’s an absurd use of resources. My question is what has changed that has caused this to finally happen, because historically they spent their entire allotment despite a general risk aversion to LatAm spending. They also focused on younger prospects in their first signing class. Both Sanchez & Tatis waited out until the 2019 class to sign with us. That means we only spent $1M or less on guys that were first time eligible signings in 2019 (the guys with longer lead times). Hahn can say they didn’t like anyone else, but to me it really seems like something went wrong in the recruitment process. IMO, either we were too late to the party with a lot of these guys due unforeseen market changes when the new structure was introduced while we were in the penalty box or Jerry simply said he’s not going to support the recruitment of 13 & 14 year olds. They may have an unwillingness to pay a premium for younger guys, but it’s never stopped them from spending all their allotment before. There is zero reason they shouldn’t have been able to add 3 to 5 more guys in the $300k to $500k if they wanted to. So either they didn’t want to or something systematic prevented them from doing so.

But saying we’ve signed mostly 17 & 18 years simply isn’t true and neither is acting like we haven’t historically spent most of our bonus money under Paddy. What we saw happen with this class is radically different than anything we’ve seen under Paddy and that’s the reason I’m arguing those points above. There is no doubt in my mind that the Sox and/or Jerry view LatAm spending (excluding the older Cubans) as less effective than other forms of spending (which has been proven to be wrong), but despite that they always spent their entire bonus allotment prior to 2017. I don’t believe that they’re suddenly more risk adverse to signing 16 year olds than they were in the half decade prior to going into the penalty box (they signed several this year). To me, there is clearly some other factor at play that impacted their 2019 signing class. As for saying the majority of their dollars went to 16 year olds, I’m excluding Robert from the equation. He is not a typical amateur signing and obviously wasn’t part of our regular LatAm budget. Circling back to 2019, Yolbert Sanchez is a very different signing than anything we’ve done in the past under Paddy. We’ve signed a couple older Cuban guys, but not to anywhere close to $2.5M bonuses. Again, most of our larger signings (with the exception of Robert) have been 16 year olds in the 25 to 50 range of their respective class. IMO, 2019 is a very clear outlier to Paddy’s standard operating model, both in terms of the types of signings and the amount of money spent.

SoxFest surprise...

He’s a minor league free agent, I don’t think we’d have control of Fernandez after the 2020 season unless he agrees to it. This is a move about 2020 and with Collins, Zavala, & Mercedes already in the catching mix, this does suggest a corresponding move is coming.

Your argument was the Sox weren’t signing 16 year olds because of a higher risk factor and that’s 100% not true. The vast majority of their dollars spent were on 16 year olds and they basically spent their entire allotment every year under Paddy until they went into the penalty box. They clearly weren’t cheap, they just refused to go over their allotment for Jerry reasons (similar to how they operated in the draft for years). As for your first question above, I can’t tell you why didn’t sign more guys than they did, but most teams spend far less when they are in the penalty box. The Padres are an obvious outlier. I would like to see you support your claim that most of our signings were 17 or 18 year olds, because I don’t believe that to be the case prior to 2017.

Oh the spreadsheet is great. It’s nice to have all the signings in one spot. Honestly, I don’t get what happened with this year’s signing class. Under Paddy the Sox typically spent most of their bonus pool allotment but never went into the penalty box (likely due to Jerry) until Robert. They signed plenty of 16 year old’s, but outside of Adolfo they typically spread the wealth over multiple B tier guys. Maybe that’s partly due to other teams going over their allotment and being able to land both premium guys and scale. Regardless, not spending our full bonus allotment in 2019 was out of character for us. I personally think something went wrong in the recruitment process. Our two biggest signings were guys eligible to sign in the 2018 class but waited for bigger paydays with us. That means despite being in the penalty box for two years, very little of our bonus pool dollars were tied to guys we recruited at super young ages. I’m not sure if we somehow missed the boat on recruiting or if Reinsdorf has a moral issue now that the recruitment is getting younger and younger (although we did sign several 16 year olds this year), but I find it hard to believe they couldn’t find enough guys they liked when they were able to in every other signing class under Paddy. The only other theory I got is Jerry needed the front office to make a token offering out of respect for the P&L (like when the Bulls sold a 2nd round pick for cash) prior to what was expected to be an active / expensive offseason for the major league team. I expected us to come out guns blazing this year and this signing class overall is very much a letdown. I do think that next year will give us more insight into whether this was a one-time blip or a sign of things to come.

Yes, I believe it was just based on prior year record.

That’s because they only had $2.2M of bonus pool that year.

I think this is the fairest take on Madrigal I’ve seen from you and I fully agree. The offensive profile is way too uncertain to commit to right now. Let’s see what he is and then worry about locking him.

Come on man, we were in the penalty box two of those years. This present signing class was the first time we didn’t effectively spend all our money. As for the age thing, how does 16 or 17 make any difference in regards to your argument that Jerry doesn’t want to sign risky unproven players? Regardless, our 2013 class included at least three 16 year olds (Adolfo, Feliz, & Acosta). 2014 class had at least three 16 year olds (Alfaro, Nunez, & Mota). Our 2015 class included at least four 16 year olds (Reyes, Tatis, Vasquez, & Nova). Our 2016 class included at least three 16 year olds (Guerrero, Mieses, & Comas). I’m sure I’m missing a ton of other 16 year olds as it’s hard to get exact ages for a lot of the lower profile guys at the time of their signing. Regardless, a lot of our big signings were 16 year olds prior to going into the penalty box and they weren’t the rarity you’re making them out to be. Yes, these classes did have quite a few 17 year olds as well, but many of those guys were legit prospects (like Leynyn Sosa) and again I’m not sure how signing them is any different than signing a 16 year old from a risk perspective.

When have we not spent our entire bonus pool outside of last year? And weren’t most of those prospects 16 years old? We just never went hog wild and went into the penalty box like many other organizations did.