Chicago White Sox

I would be enraged if my time spent a B prospect on James Shields.

Yeah, I agree with this. But I think Nick has far better tools across the board than Eckstein ever had.

I hope he’s much better than Eckstein.

Great recap. Very interesting to see the amount of BA/MLBpipeline top 200 guys we got in rounds 11 to 15. Maybe we're seeing a bit of a competitive advantage later in the draft by being more scouting focused than analytics focused. It's much harder to to evaluate guys that may require mechanical tweaks to unlock their potential by simply looking at numbers.

I like this move. I personally don't think Bummer pitched as well as the peripherals might indicate. I honestly think he could use a bit more seasoning down in AAA. As for Cedeno, I believe he's under control for another year, so he wouldn't simply be a rental. Might be able to get a decent wild card prospect for him if he has a strong month and a half before the deadline,

The plan this offseason should be to bid on both Machado & Harper and hope you can land one of them. Obviously a huge long-shot, but given our payroll flexibility you don't let Madrigal impact our decision to pursue these guys. However, just for the sake of fun, here's how I'd see things shaking out if we added Machado: 1B: Davidson 2B: Madrigal SS: Anderson 3B: Machado LF: Jimenez CF: Robert RF: Moncada DH: Abreu 😄 Collins That lineup would be absolutely bonkers and wound't even include a half dozen high-end prospects (Burger, Sheets, Basabe, Adolfo, Rutherford, Gonzalez, Walker).

Adam Eaton hit one HR in 2014 and still put up a wRC+ of 118 & an OPS of .763. I think that’s the type of player you are looking at if the HR power never comes, which is still fantastic when you account for Madrigal’s defense & speed on the bases. If he can ever get to double digit HRs (which should be realistic with time) then we truly have something special.

That’s pretty terrifying.

Any idea on velocity?

I know very little about this kid, but I’m getting a Bernardo Flores vibe with him.

I actually like this pick. Obviously the secondaries aren't good right now, but at least he's got some velocity and theoretically some upside.

Did you read something or are you just assuming that? Hopefully it's just a guess 😃

Just give me Kloffenstein and I'll be happy!

The only problem with pushing Basabe is he’s in the middle of a cold steak. I’d rather let him get hot for a week or two and then bump him up.

I’m ok with losing out on guys like Fisher & Polo, but Luis Gonzalez is the exact guy that bothers me. He should be up with the Dash by now IMO. The problem if/when they finally promote him is there will be a bunch of legit OF prospects that need to play everyday and they’ll end up trying to rotate in too many of them. I hate how many days off a kid like Rutherford is getting and that’s with one of the current OFs being a fringe guy in Booker. I’d ideally like my top end prospects playing 90% of the time. Adolfo is the only guy actually playing pretty much everyday.

That might work in the short-term, but Anderson will be blocking him if he ever reaches the pros.

So how the hell do we make this A ball OF situation work? Robert is coming back soon and that’s going require at least one promotion from High A to AA. Luis Gonzalez definitely needs to be bumped as well. Walker will be fine in Low A for the year, but man will it be impossible for him to really move fast with all the guys in front of him. I get the always go BPA strategy, but you get somewhat diminishing returns when you aren’t able to play guys at age appropriate leagues.

Yeah, would really suck to only get 6 1/2 years of a young stud like Machado or Harper, definitely not worth the investment given how reliable the draft is 🤷‍♂️

Good points all around. And let’s be honest, he’s going to start 2019 in AA so it does make sense for him to spend some in Winston-Salem this year.

For college or the minors too??

That’s like the exact opposite scouting report from Baseball America. Seems like this guy may have not done his research.

So where does he start? I’m sure he’ll get a token few games at Great Falls, but will he go to Kannapolis or Winston-Salem after that? The IF situation is actually pretty crowded for both clubs. He’ll obviously take precedent over all those guys, but just not sure how aggressive they’ll be with him this year.

I am all in on Kloffenstein now. Please survive the day!

I can’t believe Eierman hasn’t been selected yet. I’d happily take him in the 3rd if he’s still around.

Same here.