maxjusttyped

Dodgers make a ton of sense to me. Any contender that has rotation depth but needs high quality innings rather than an innings eater type would seem like a good fit for him.

I think that ship sailed the moment the Sox didn't offer him a qualifying offer. If the Sox wanted Rodon back, they would have offered it to him and either hoped he would accept or negotiate a long-term deal based on that starting point. Kopech is clearly slated to take his rotation spot and I think they'll sign someone cheaper as a swingman type for additional starter depth.

A frustrating thing about the system is that even the Sox version of Lambert is very underwhelming compared to most teams depth SP options. I hope that's an area they aggressively attack once the lockout is lifted. Maybe this is too in the weeds, but Cleveland acquired Tobias Myers from the Rays for essentially nothing. He would have been an upgrade over Lambert/Stiever.

That would be my guess as well. I can't imagine Padres fans reaction if the rumors about him being used to help salary dump Hosmer's contract ended up coming true.

Coors would have me breaking ties in favor of Veen

I think that's the floor for him if he can stay healthy, but there is a ton of upside left in his bat, imo.

LA falling to 3 and Queens to 5 gives off vibes of Michael Jordan or Patrick Mahomes "sliding" in the draft. You still need to be a well-ish run franchise to capitalize on being in those markets, but being in Queens, LA, Boston etc is such an enormous head start over the rest of the league. All of the top picks should have been cities or GMs, I completely agree. This article/idea was definitely a fun thought exercise.

Maybe BP is very generous relative to other publications, but their grade on Burger is positive OFP: 55 / Above-average third baseman Variance: Low. There’s a chance the swing-and-miss eats up some of his offensive value in the majors—and his underlying swing stats in his Southside cup of coffee weren’t great—but given the time off, some adjustment period is to be expected. —Jeffrey Paternostro I'm a huge Burger enthusiast, but if he can become an above-average 3rd basemen that's a ~3 win guy and would make him an immensely valuable member of the core going forward. I find it strange to say his underlying stats weren't good when he posted the highest average average exit velo in baseball (if you lower the qualifiers to 42 PA) and had an excellent barrel rate, strong expected stats, etc. The quality of contact he displayed in the majors was high level stuff and I'd have to imagine he was doing the same all year in Charlotte.

I figured this was worth starting a thread about, since people were curious Colson Montgomery, SS Yoelkis Céspedes, OF Jake Burger, IF Norge Vera, RHP Jose Rodriguez, SS Wes Kath, 3B Matthew Thompson, RHP Jonathan Stiever, RHP Jared Kelley, RHP Micker Adolfo, OF Sean Burke, Andrew Dalquist, & Bryan Ramos were in their "prospects on the rise" just outside of the Top 10. https://www.baseballprospectus.com/prospects/article/72289/2022-top-10-prospects-chicago-white-sox/

Yes, I do. I was going to post it but I'm not sure how much of that is allowed given it's all (I believe?) behind a paywall.

Maybe Law has finally come to the correct (imo 🙂) conclusion that the all contact, minimal/zero power, average to plus base running and defense profile is significantly more valuable than he has given it credit for in the past. One of his my biggest gripes with him as an evaluator is him acting as if players with that skillset couldn't be productive or "impact" major leaguers when it's been shown consistently that they can be. It seems odd for him to have an epiphany with Xavier Edwards and Steven Kwan (!!!) of all players though, lol. I remember Eric Longenhagen posted Steven Kwan's exit velo numbers in a FG chat and from what I recall they were actually worse than Madrigal's. He has 20 grade raw power/exit velo/max EV etc. I'm hoping KL goes into more detail about what's caused him to give these 2 players such positive writeups relative to similar prospects of years past.

Not being able to turn a single non premium pick or cheaper international signing into a top 100 guy pretty much at any point since the rebuild began is brutal. I also have no idea how Law can not ever rank Madrigal inside of his top 100 or just missed yet put Kwan in his just missed column. Normally he isn't into the extreme contact zero power profile regardless of how productive the individual player actually is.

Same is true for a lot of guys that are objectively much better players.

Completely agree. Almost every player from that era was seemingly on steroids. Penalizing guys like Bonds or Clemens because they were so much better than everyone else makes 0 logical sense to me. Either PED guys are in or they aren't and the ship on whether they are or not has already sailed.

I wonder if so many overqualified players (from a production standpoint) being on the ballot really worked against him this year. These types of voters aren't the majority, but it seemed like a lot of younger/more progressive voters said they would have liked to vote for more than 10. I think he's someone who will benefit with so many deserving players falling off the list this year.

He played for the Red Sox and seems to be a great guy. By all accounts Bonds, Clemmens, ARod, & Sammy Sosa are not. Good luck drawing a distinction between Sosa & Ortiz on PEDs, because you can't.

The Royals being one of the worst teams in baseball within that decade but still making the WS twice and getting a ring is wild. Proof even the worst run organizations are capable of stumbling into success with the right amount of luck.

Only the best organizations in baseball are capable of doing both, I'd agree. The Rays graduated 4 prospects off BA's top 100 last year and still managed to sneak 5 more on their 100 this season. The Dodgers, Braves, Astros, Yankees etc are other examples of organizations that consistently win in the majors but keep their farm systems strong. I'm not looking for the Sox to be on that level, but they're likely to be the only team in baseball that won't place a single player on any of the top 100 lists that come out this winter. Very few prospects in the system took meaningful steps forward last season, which is how you end up in a situation where the Sox are forced to deal from their big league club at the deadline last year and likely would have to do so again if they want to make a meaningful addition via trade. It's not unreasonable at all to expect the team to manage being a contender with a top ~25 system, which would just give them enough ammunition to make trades without having to deal away players that are essential to winning over the next few seasons.

It's pretty depressing that the system is (and was last trade deadline) at a point where the Sox can't make meaningful additions via trade without dealing away pieces that are essential to the big league club in '22.

They're streaming on MLB.com and I believe mlb.tv as well. Here's a link to tonight's game https://www.mlb.com/tv/shows/mlbtv-featured-svod-video-list/1-19-gigantes-vs-estrellas-lidom-4089

Burger being able to handle 2B in a pinch would be great. There's no downside in working out there and giving him reps in ST/AAA to see if it sticks. But my fear is this will give the Sox even more confidence they can cheap out at 2B with Burger waiting to replace whoever the Cesaresque player they add as a stop gap option once the lockout ends.

I'll admit this isn't the best way to look at things, but ending up with 0 HG players at the end of 2 years of tanking would be pretty brutal. When you're tanking seasons so you can draft college bats in the top 5, those should be building blocks of a healthy franchise, not trade pieces. I think the Astros and Cubs are glad they didn't trade away the college bats they spent years tanking to draft. Not trying to derail the thread, but the thought of dealing Vaughn away is so unappealing to me for a variety of different reasons.

Not sure I really see the fit for Burger or Sheets on the Mets roster, anyways. They already have JD Davis and Dom Smith as more established versions of both of those guys. If the Mets were interested in a potentially"expendable" (I don't think he is) player with long-term upside on the Sox ML roster I think it would have to be Crochet.

Continuing to subtract valuable long-term pieces from the big league roster to (theoretically) make the 2022 team better is a great way to just shorten your window. If Kimbrel and prospects with non 2022 ETA's aren't enough to get a deal done (it probably isn't), then the Sox should look elsewhere.