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Then it becomes 150 innings of Marco Estrada and 50 innings of a guy or two that has established himself in Charlotte. Or maybe Miguel Gonzalez or something.

I think there’s a lot of frustration around here that comes from a whole summer of frustrating baseball from the White Sox. Really, really hard to watch most of the time. But it is the nature of this beast. This is a frustrating process, but we have to let these people do it right, or the suffering we have already experienced will all be for naught. We’ll get through this together @LittleHurt05

Reinsdorf would never sign a free agent for more than he gave Albert Belle, until he did. Reinsdorf would never spend big money on unproven Latin American amateurs, until he did. Reinsdorf would never stomach a full-scale rebuild, until he did. All of that had 25 years of past precedent. The White Sox are undergoing a process theyve never undergone before. Past precedent just can’t apply in the same way it did before this rebuild. Also, your claim about my career/supporting ownership is completely ridiculous and even more baseless than anything else in this thread. It’s like saying “you work for McDonald’s, you have to support Wendy’s executives.” I’ve never met Jerry Reinsdorf. I have no opinion or knowledge of him or his personal tendencies. I’ve been frustrated a lot of times with this team’s direction over the last fifteen years or so, and I’d probably be beating the same drum as you if they’d spent the last two years doing the same half-assed Melky Cabrera bullshit as before. But they haven’t. They said they were going to bite the bullet and try something new for once, something that has recent, objective precedent for being an optimal strategy, and goddamn it they HAVE. They have actually followed through to this point, and they deserve the opportunity to finish what they’ve started. Based on what this team stated and how it’s acted over the past two seasons, I see absolutely zero evidence to suggest that ownership is impeding progress at all. If anything, these people seem more “on the same page” than at any other time I can remember off the top of my head. If this rebuild fails, they unquestionably need to clean out the front office. And if it fails because jerry refuses to provide the resources necessary for it to succeed, then I’ll be the next foot-long T-Longo-Marty43. But let’s give them an actual shot here. Their adherence to their own stated guidelines lately should absolutely buy them some benefit of the doubt, at least in terms of believing what Hahn is saying about spending money.

More bold claims with no evidence.

But again, if we're signing someone in the late winter, it's to literally fill in because we don't have enough actual prospects pushing through for innings. Marco Estrada will work just fine. He'll have an ERA of 4.85, but it'll work just the same.

Yep, precisely 1,000,000.

The Sox will likely need someone like this, but it stands to reason they will essentially wait until February and sign the best of whoever is left as cheaply as possible. There are a million guys that could fill that role.

Right — it seems like there is a whole class of poster who just NEEDS to be able to point the finger at SOMEONE, even if it’s wrong. Some head HAS to roll, even if it’s counterproductive. I don’t understand that feeling. I just want wins. I can’t imagine rooting for my team to fail so that firings can occur.

You can provide zero evidence to attribute any of those bullet points to ownership. This is my point. You’re upset that the team sucks (we all are) but you insist on a public scapegoat, so you just pick a figure to vilify, pretending at reasons. This is what frustrates me. It’s just untruth. I mean look at your first bullet point. You know damn well that the team is publicly rebuilding, has been following a blueprint that has led to the last two championship teams we’ve seen, and that ownership specifically was hard pressed to accept it (ie stop spending money trying to bring you a winner every year no matter how bad it got). And yet you listed “third worst record in baseball this year” as a reason that the ownership group is incompetent. Look yourself in the mirror and try to accept that logic. This team is hard to watch. I hate it too. But please, let’s be BETTER than this as fans. Let’s not make up bullshit. Let’s evaluate what’s actually in front of us.

It’s almost as if there’s more to that job than we fans can see.

The desperation with which you want a scapegoat is amazing. Just making up numbers about value, saying you wish the team was losing money, and generally assuming that you have any clue as to how JR’s ownership actually affects day-to-day baseball operations is just random meatball bullshit. The team is financially stable, staff enjoy working for the group, and theyve shown they have no problem maintaining a payroll in the top half of the league when it makes sense (or even sometimes when doesn’t make sense) to do so. The team can win. There is no reason to believe ownership is the problem.

Good job, Greg Hibbard. You "get it." Sit back, relax, and strap it down. There aren't going to be a lot of wins the next couple years, but if you know what to look for, you can have fun following these players as they do their best to become the next White Sox World Series contender.

I thought everything they said was entirely reasonable. Not necessarily going to be correct, but the argument essentially boils down to: Cease looks good but also looks like he may be maxed out/near his ceiling. So if you still look at him and say he needs to fix some things to be a successful MLB starter, there may actually not be much upside left. Hope they're wrong, but it isn't exactly damning and it's based on actual observation.

Good posts, @gusguyman. Don't have time to join the convo but wanted to support your thought process.

He didn't update the order -- and mentioned at the bottom that Basabe will be much higher when he does update it in the offseason.

It didn't work for Tilson, or many other bad players with fringe tools. It HAS worked for many good players with good tools. Ozzie Albies, for example, has a very similar toolset and body type. It won't happen to all of them, but it is a trend and therefore a factor. I, too, hope he eats more spinach.

Hit tool is a major factor in OBP, and with power more prevalent than ever and contact rarer than ever, the elite hit tool has only become more scarce. They'll be able to buy as many low-OBP, high-SLG dudes as they can fit into the lineup. If he ends up being an empty average guy like Dee Gordon, I'd agree that he'll be disappointing, but scouts are factoring that stuff into their hit grades. Another thing to keep in mind is that the homer surge of the past few seasons appears to be exclusively an MLB effect. Guys that never showed plus power are adding homers after they get to the show. Whether that's a ball thing or something else, there appears to be at least a good chance Madrigal will add 5 or so homers a year once he gets called up -- assuming nothing drastically changes with the ball/league effects in the meantime.

They didn't draft him for "gamer hype," they drafted him because scouts have been reporting a potential future 70 hit tool, which is the rarest and most valuable tool. They may ultimately end up being wrong about that, or he may ultimately bust for being deficient in other areas, but let's not pretend there wasn't good process behind the decision.

FWIW, this is not written by Sickels, though it is on Sickels' website.

Sale had MLB service though, so it's not truly a comparable.

Civil WAR: Is Nolan Gorman still a 50 FV? Any movement now or guesses on where he’ll be in the offseason write ups? 12:24 Kiley McDaniel: Only Madrigal and Mize are 55’s from that draft class, so Gorman can’t really get up there until the positional stuff is more decided, which will take time to see which direction he’s trending. A couple scouts said when Gorman was getting beat up by scouts this spring that he’s Austin Riley and he’s sure starting his pro career the same way.

If firing Ricky will sate the lynch-mob that SoxTalk has become for even a few weeks, then fine. It won't solve anything, of course, but whatever. I gotta be honest, when I was bracing myself for the pain of going through the rebuild, I didn't think SoxTalk would be harder to deal with than watching the crappy games. This place has become miserable.

Serious question: if most of these players actually become good, will you even be able to enjoy it?

At what point do we start worrying?

I think it's just so early to tell. Hell, it's entirely possible that by the time the draft rolls around, both of those guys won't even be considered in the top ten. So much changes with amateurs between drafts. They still have a whole season to play, and they're so young that there can be drastic shifts in physicality and maturity in a short amount of time. This time last year, all the 1-1 discussion were centered on Brice Turang vs Ethan Hankins, for example.