Dominikk85

Let's just give him a year. Sure nobody saw zero power coming but he had a long season and a wrist injury. It is not unusual that college players are a bit down the first year and then take off the second year. Bregman hit 4 homers his first year and then 20+ the second. Sure madrigal doesn't have that much power but I wouldn't be suprised if madrigal hit .300 with 13 homers this year. Sure if he hits 4 homers this year it would be a concern but let's give him this year before making a judgement.

He probably did mostly upper body lifting during most of his recovery.

43m is a lot but if he becomes a top30 hitter he will easily make 35+ in arbitration. Of course he could bust but I don't think this is a bad deal especially since they get two options.

I agree. His age means he has less potential to increase his power in the minors but his power already seems to be pretty good. He just has some growth behind him that others have still ahead of them. His age would be more scary if his power was yet to develope but his power seems to be pretty well developed already for a HS guy.

He is raking but also just a year removed from hitting 250 with 50 Ks. The improvement is good but how much of it will stick? At 3 I would prefer a player who performs and has more track record.

To be fair his k to bb ratio looks better than that, some bad luck with babip was probably involved. However you need to consider that maybe his batted ball profile is conductive to low babips. Everything is pulled, lots of fly balls and a lot of pop ups too. Brian dozier and jose Bautista had a similar profile. It is good to maximize your raw power but hurts the average. That is the issue with him, he has some pop but maybe not enough to make this very polarized pull flyball profile work. I mean Bautista was great despite consistently posting sub 270 babips but he also hit tons of homers and walked a ton. With 30 homers the profile is great with 15 not so much.

Also kiley on the rebuild: 2:27 Will: Too early to panic about the direction of the White Sox rebuild? 2:31 Kiley McDaniel: I would say yes, but things haven’t been going super well the last year or so. Kopech was going well then he blew out. Eloy is still going well but the body is pointing to 1B/DH pretty soon. The college corner bats in the draft (Collins, Burger, Sheets, Fisher, Call) haven’t done much. Dunning, Burdi, and Adolfo blew out. Robert hasn’t had a breakthrough yet. We believe in Madrigal but his debut raised some questions that weren’t really there before. Basabe and Rutherford don’t look like likely regulars to us anymore. Hansen got hurt and regressed. Moncada, Rodon, Giolito and Reynaldo Lopez haven’t been as advertised. 2:33 Kiley McDaniel: So, yes that a lot of bad fortune all strung together and not necessarily bad planning or picking the wrong players, as we were on Kopech, Eloy, Moncada, Dunning, Burdi, Adolfo, Robert, Madrigal and Rodon too. But when you’re trying to have a bunch of assets appreciate and form a core and most of the top assets depreciated, that’s just making things harder, even if it isn’t necessarily any one person’s fault.

Weren't they going pretty much mid 2000s moneyball type of picks the last 2-3 years? I.e. basically picking high on base college performers while ignoring defense a little (collins, burger, sheets even steele walker)

I think it is a quite deep draft with the bats. There isn't really a guy who has a good chance to be a 6 win player but a lot of guys with a chance to be 2-4 win players.

I think 3 is fine. Rutschman is probably half a step ahead of the rest but I feel the difference between vaughn, abrams and witt is pretty small albeit the timelines and the way they contribute differ a lot. I only would be pissed if rutsch and vaughn are off the board and they take the "safe" college pick instead of the HS guy. But I think as long they take one of the big 4 they are fine. Just don't try to get too cute and take the best guy especially since they don't have a high second pick warranting over and underslot cap games.

I would like them to take a hs pitcher in the second round. At 3 you have to take the bat this year but the good pitching depth has thinned out quite a bit and with teams having multiple comp picks the high upside hs bats might be gone too.

Average return time is 18 months https://tht.fangraphs.com/ten-interesting-facts-about-tommy-john-surgery/ albeit there are cases under a year. With a prospect they likely will go conservative though, maybe we see hin at the end of the 2020 season.

They don't have many good young players anyway. Ohtani and maybe addell if he turns out good.

Yeah it isn't bad albeit you have to consider college K rates are lower. It is not unusual to have a 10 points higher K rate in pro ball than college. I think you have to watch him closely against the better college pitchers.

Rutschman has been even hotter than vaughn so far this year hitting 456/619/895. Imo there is no doubt he will go 1-1, he could be buster posey.

Zavala is a nice prospect but he won't be blocking collins. Zavala is rated a 40 fv by fangraphs, that is basically a backup catcher. Both have contact issues but collins has the pop and plate discipline to work around this and still be an above average bat.

Yes, it is a lot more subjective than college scouting, basically it is still the "old school" scouting. Still the uncertainity is bigger than for college players because there are many guys with good swing who are not hitting pro pitching.

There are prospect showcases like perfect game were they face the top HS pitchers. Those are a small sample so stats don't mean much but scouts use the eye test to evaluate how the players do against top pitchers. If there are lots of Ks and pop ups it is a bad sign while consistent and strong contact is a good sign. Can't really judge ops or Ba though since the sample is so small so it is more eyeball scouting. Hs scouting is always more eyeball scouting than stat scouting which is why some modern sabermetric GMs don't like drafting them high. You get a few stats like tee exit velo or throwing velo but mostly it is eyeball scouting while with college stats you can do more "moneyball" kind of scouting and measure production.

It is quite normal that hs draftees hit above 500. Zack Greinke hit over 400 with tons of homers in HS https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zack_Greinke

Imo there is no doubt the sox won't pass on either of rutschman or vaughn are available and rightfully so. It only becomes interesting if both are gone. Would they take the hs guy? Or an inferior college bat?

To be fair eaton played well when he played but was injured all the time and is a big risk to go down again. 2017: 23 games (125 wrc+, 0.5 war) 2018: 93 games (123 wrc+, 1.9 war) Of course the white sox return didn't exactly lit the world on fire so far albeit dunning did become a top100 prospect and even with TJ could become a solid mlb pitcher.

Extensions worked pretty well with eaton, sale and Quintana.

The mound actually was moved back in the 19th century. It used to be like 50 feet.

I think at 3 I would prefer a guy with track record who did it all 3 years (like vaughn) and not a performance riser who figured it out this year. College season is short and there always is a chance a single season performer was a bit fluky.

Mlb is paying the independent Atlantic league to experiment with rule changes: -robo ump -no mound visits except p change -3 batter minimum for pitchers except for injury -no shift allowed -mound moved back two feet in second half of season -