Chicago White Sox

You’re nuts bro. The Tigers, Royals, Orioles, & Mariners will legit be horrible and way worse than us. We play those teams a combined 50 times this year. We will likely suck, but we won’t be historically bad.

It may be the softest first 30 day schedule in baseball history and that honestly might not be an exaggeration. 22 games out of 30 against four full-on rebuilding clubs.

Getz said Winston-Salem

If we’re trying to be objective, here is the likely breakdown by FutureSox’s top 30: Charlotte: (3) Cease, (8) Collins, (13) Burdi, (16) Zavala, (19) Stephens, (30) Adams, (HM) Thompson, (HM) Vieira, (HR) Mendick, (HR) Ruiz, (HR) Guerrero Birmingham: (7) Adolfo, (9) Basabe, (10) Gonzalez, (11) Rutherford, (18) Sheets, (20) Johnson, (22) Lambert, (23) Flores, (25) Rivera, (29) Medeiros, (HM) Booker Winston-Salem: (4) Robert, (5) Madrigal, (12) Hansen, (14) Burger*, (HR) McClure, (HM) Henzman Kannapolis: (15) Walker, (21) Bush, (24) Pilkington, (26) Sosa, (27) Curbelo, (28) Stiever, (HM) Nunez Birmingham is the clear standout here, especially since Robert, Madrigal, & Hansen should all get first promotions. Charlotte & Kannapolis are probably tied for second (for completely different reasons) with Winston-Salem a distant fourth IMO

Hansen at W-S as well and won’t begin the season in a starting role.

Chris Getz

Thanks...should have read these posts in order lol.

Thanks. Do you happen to know what he was throwing back then?

Was that general concensus or just how Hostetler had him ranked?

I’ll say we go 15-15. That means we go 2-6 against the three good teams (NYY, CLE, & TB) and 13-9 against the four dogs (BAL, SEA, DET, & KC). Give how bad those latter four teams (and they really suck), being .500 after 30 games really doesn’t seem unreasonable.

Josh Donaldson not great? What in the fuck...

Lat injury like Burdi. Doesn’t sound overly serious, but will miss a few weeks to start the season.

That Kannapolis infield will be fun to follow, but still can’t believe Walker is starting there. Just seems like way too conservative of an assignment for him. Also, that Pilkington write-up has me super pessimistic about the pick. How can you take a guy who throws in the upper 80’s in the third round?

And my worries were correct...Walker is starting the 2019 season in Kannapolis.

Add Tyler Johnson to the list.

Yeah, no fucking kidding.

I like KATOH, but you’re using it wrong if you’re trying draw conclusions about a guy like Moncada who is a top 5 physical talent who also has a plus batters eye. As I mentioned in my previous post, Yoan was legit bad last year relative to his potential and he was still a league average player. Like most top overall positional prospects, he is both high ceiling and high floor no matter how you try to spin this. I don’t really care what KATOH or any projection system has to say about it.

I don’t even know what “wasn’t top 25 in MLB production” even means. He was literally one of the top hitters in both his respective leagues in 2016 as a 21 year old. If you’re suggesting his elite tools caused him to jump from 25 to 1 in terms of prospect rankings, that still doesn’t suggest he’s a low floor guy. Like we saw the absolute worst of him last year and he was a 2 win player. A guy who can be league average while striking out 200 times and playing well below his defensive capabilities is the definition of a high floor player.

Didn’t Buehler have significant health / durability concerns at the time? Not everything is black and white unless you’re using the benefit of hindsight.

Fulmer wasn’t a high floor guy, but he wasn’t drafted by Hostetler so it’s not really reflective of our current draft strategy IMO.

Moncada put up a wRC+ of over 150 at both High A & AA prior to the trade, so he was in fact blowing the doors off in the minors.

The Sox acquired high ceiling guys in their trades, but they were also trading premium talent which allowed them to target more developed prospects that provide less of a trade-off between floor & ceiling than you typically see in the draft. Moncada was legit a top 2 prospect and had both a high ceiling and high floor. The same basically applies to Eloy with a little bit less upside. Lopez, Kopech, & Cease all looked like they had floors of back-end relievers but with TOR potential. Only Basabe was a true high ceiling, low floor type prospect.

On the offensive side, college guys with good on-base skills or a polished hit tool but without elite power or speed and don’t play a premium position are what I’d deem a high floor pick. Unless you think Walker can play CF, he’s the defition of a high floor guy. There were definitely HS guys or pure college athletes we could have taken in the 2nd round that provided far more upside.

Luis Gonzalez looks like a great pick, although it seems like he had a bit more upside than many originally thought. Burdi looked like a decent floor pick floor prior to his injury, as he appeared to have top 5 reliever upside (and given the going rate for relievers, there may have been some arbitrage value there). Still too early to write-off Burger and Sheets, but the initial returns don’t look great, especially when you consider they’re bat first guys. Call seems like a wasted pick as he a tweener with a 4th OF type ceiling. What’s funny is a year ago, Hansen would have looked like the best pick of the entire 2016 & 2017 classes and he was the only true “ceiling” guy we took.

This argument is pretty ridiculous. He are all the top 3 round picks under Hostetler (Fulmer was not his pick FYI): 2016-1: Zack Collins (in between) 2016-1: Zack Burdi (floor) 2016-2: Alex Hansen (ceiling) 2016-3: Alex Call (floor) 2017-1: Jake Burger (floor) 2017-2: Gavin Sheets (floor) 2017-3: Luis Gonzalez (floor) 2018-1: Nick Madrigal (floor) 2018-2: Steele Walker (floor) 2018-3: Konner Pilkington (floor) Out of 10 picks under Hostetler, there have been 8 clear cut “floor” picks and only one true “ceiling” pick. I’ll say Collins falls in between while he was high risk as a catching prospect, there was belief at the time his fallback would be as a passable 1B. Either way, it’s pretty clear we’ve gone with a safe draft strategy under Hostetler.