14 minutes ago, mqr said:

To be fair, the Sox don't have anyone on staff that was a MLB catcher for a decade as far as I know.

That tweet could literally mean anything though, so I wouldn't read too much into it.

4 minutes ago, Perfect Vision said:

Semien hit .240/.293/.380 in his first taste of the big leagues with the Sox.  In his four seasons with the A's, his prime years, he's hit .250/.312/.407.  So maybe the A's aren't as smart as they think they are.  Just because these teams do things differently than the Sox doesn't make them right.

He was also worth 11.4 bWAR over 4 years because they taught him how to field.

1 minute ago, Dick Allen said:

Yolmer Sanchez seemed to know what he was doing with the glove. Tim Anderson seems to have figured some things out. Tyler Flowers improved greatly. 

 

Sometimes getting better is on the players. As much as we need to find fault with everyone but the guy who sucks sucking, sometimes that line of thought is just wrong. 

I think in the Sox organization, improving defense is ALWAYS on the player. If someone is naturally a gifted defender, it's hard to screw that up.

2 minutes ago, oneofthemikes said:

These kinds of statements make me sad. Baseball has evolved so much in the past several years and the Sox really seem to have fallen behind. It's a fixable issue, but a willingness to admit when we're wrong isn't really a strong suit. 

Cheer up.  They've hired two young, seemingly forward thinking hitting coaches this offseason.

Someone also ran an update on Coop's Ipad so hopefully he can get back on the world wide webs soon.  

19 minutes ago, mqr said:

To be fair, the Sox don't have anyone on staff that was a MLB catcher for a decade as far as I know.

I believe former MLB and one-time Sox catcher Mark Salas is still the bullpen catcher and Mark Parent was a bench coach until 2015.

5 minutes ago, gusguyman said:

He was also worth 11.4 bWAR over 4 years because they taught him how to field.

I think people sometimes forget that just because a team trades a player to another team, doesn't mean the team that traded said player believed he couldn't develop into a good player. Semien deserves credit for improving. The Sox moved him because they thought Samardzija would put them over the top in 2015 and Anderson was their SS of the future. 

Just now, Stealth G.O.A.T. said:

I think people sometimes forget that just because a team trades a player to another team, doesn't mean the team that traded said player believed he couldn't develop into a good player. Semien deserves credit for improving. The Sox moved him because they thought Samardzija would put them over the top in 2015 and Anderson was their SS of the future. 

Semien was a nothing prospect who they developed into the AA player of the year with the help of the White Sox.

Since no one remembers, the trick with Semien was that he put up like 40 errors his first year with the As as shortstop, and a couple months into the season they had to bring Rob Washington in to work with him. They made comments about how he’d just never done drills or worked on footwork as a shortstop. Those comments weren’t made as shots at the white Sox but instead they were explaining why he had so many terrible errors.

but, from a white Sox perspective, how a guy could come up through their system playing SS more than any other position without doing basic footwork training, that was truly mind boggling. 

And out of that, the As developed one of the better fielding shortstops in the league, because they worked at it and the White Sox did not.

thats not a commentary on how stupid the trade was, that was a look inside the white Sox development failures that the As gave us without meaning to. 

14 minutes ago, GREEDY said:

It is ironic because raBBit has been accused of guessing in the past and he was accusing Chilli of guessing.  The irony has nothing to do with Machado.  

I guess when you are "providing insight" on the Machado meeting and make a statement along the lines of "Manny wanted to sign during his visit to Chicago", that's not really guessing, is it? Considering a full month has gone by and terms have not even been agreed to, that statement or guess (call it what you want) is kind of preposterous. 

I don't care if Rabbit has been accused of guessing. He has solid information. Information a lot of times is very fluid. So from my point of view, I'm not really seeing the irony with Rabbit making that statement. 

26 minutes ago, Look at Ray Ray Run said:

I'm not sure what this means; no one said it was easy. The point of a rebuild - this one in particular - wasn't to be competing in 2021, leaving 2-3 years of control over the majority of the marquee assets we acquired with our deals. 

But it was always going to be that way.. we had no minor league system. Even if those 4-5 guys were absolute studs, you'd need to do a lot of supplementing with FA because the minor leagues was such a desert. You're not building this for 2019 or 2020. You're building this to hopefully be the Cardinals or any other really successful organization that it's a constant revolving door of home grown talent, young minor league talent coming up and your occasional big splash FA. The kind where you can let a Pujols leave and not miss a beat. Or where you can make an offer to David Price or Stanton, etc. etc. This isn't trying to compete for a window of 2019-2023. This is building a foundation from the ground up from 2021-2040 type of plan.

2 minutes ago, Balta1701 said:

Since no one remembers, the trick with Semien was that he put up like 40 errors his first year with the As as shortstop, and a couple months into the season they had to bring Rob Washington in to work with him. They made comments about how he’d just never done drills or worked on footwork as a shortstop. Those comments weren’t made as shots at the white Sox but instead they were explaining why he had so many terrible errors.

but, from a white Sox perspective, how a guy could come up through their system playing SS more than any other position without doing basic footwork training, that was truly mind boggling. 

And out of that, the As developed one of the better fielding shortstops in the league, because they worked at it and the White Sox did not.

thats not a commentary on how stupid the trade was, that was a look inside the white Sox development failures that the As gave us without meaning to. 

To be fair, Semien graded out the same had with the Sox every year in Oakland until this past year. So it took Semien 3 years to improve with all that "coaching." Or, Semien just worked hard and bettered himself. Semien is one of the few players the Sox actually developed who turned into a decent MLB player - it seems hyper critical to attack their development of Semien. 

1 minute ago, Stealth G.O.A.T. said:

I guess when you are "providing insight" on the Machado meeting and make a statement along the lines of "Manny wanted to sign during his visit to Chicago", that's not really guessing, is it? Considering a full month has gone by and terms have not even been agreed to, that statement or guess (call it what you want) is kind of preposterous. 

I don't care if Rabbit has been accused of guessing. He has solid information. Information a lot of times is very fluid. So from my point of view, I'm not really seeing the irony with Rabbit making that statement. 

Google: Pot Kettle Black and stop @ing me

39 minutes ago, fathom said:

Don't know where else to put this, but you want to talk about rebuilding, maybe having a competent coaching staff would help:

 

 

Well, maybe they told him he should catch the ball more.  Which in the Sox defense, it is the name of his position, so you would have thought he'd have known.

9 minutes ago, Look at Ray Ray Run said:

Semien was a nothing prospect who they developed into the AA player of the year with the help of the White Sox.

I agree. Then he continued to develop, as good players do, over the next 3 seasons on a different team. I don't think that's a knock on the Sox player development. I just think good players put in the work and better themselves. 

3 minutes ago, Look at Ray Ray Run said:

To be fair, Semien graded out the same had with the Sox every year in Oakland until this past year. So it took Semien 3 years to improve with all that "coaching." Or, Semien just worked hard and bettered himself. Semien is one of the few players the Sox actually developed who turned into a decent MLB player - it seems hyper critical to attack their development of Semien. 

I agree with this.

5 minutes ago, GREEDY said:

Google: Pot Kettle Black and stop @ing me

No Google search required for me. Not seeing the irony in Rabbit's statement. 

8 minutes ago, Look at Ray Ray Run said:

To be fair, Semien graded out the same had with the Sox every year in Oakland until this past year. So it took Semien 3 years to improve with all that "coaching." Or, Semien just worked hard and bettered himself. Semien is one of the few players the Sox actually developed who turned into a decent MLB player - it seems hyper critical to attack their development of Semien. 

That’s not true if you use more numbers. He improved substantially from 1st half of 2015 to 2nd half (check his error totals once someone coached him), his UZR made him an average defensive SS in 2016 and 2017, he missed half of 2017 with injury, and then improved further in 2018. 

For a team that has struggled with guys doing anything when they come up, remarks about lack of basic drills followed by rapid improvement when they were done should have been an indictment, and that’s why this remark about Narvaez rings a bell.

38 minutes ago, oneofthemikes said:

These kinds of statements make me sad. Baseball has evolved so much in the past several years and the Sox really seem to have fallen behind. It's a fixable issue, but a willingness to admit when we're wrong isn't really a strong suit. 

It's hard to figure though, sox appear to be very influenced by trackman data in their drafting.

Hypothetically...

 

C- Beef/McCann

1B- Jose

2B- Moncada

SS- Anderson

3B- Manny

LF- Joc

CF- Jay/Engel 

RF- Palka

DH- Alonso

Luery and Yolmer as super subs

 

That’s actually not too bad if the front office can pull it off. We would still need another SP before we are any kind of real contenders, but definitely reason for optimism 

21 minutes ago, TheFutureIsNear said:

Hypothetically...

 

C- Beef/McCann

1B- Jose

2B- Moncada

SS- Anderson

3B- Manny

LF- Joc

CF- Jay/Engel 

RF- Palka

DH- Alonso

Luery and Yolmer as super subs

 

That’s actually not too bad if the front office can pull it off. We would still need another SP before we are any kind of real contenders, but definitely reason for optimism 

Eloy

19 minutes ago, TheFutureIsNear said:

Hypothetically...

 

C- Beef/McCann

1B- Jose

2B- Moncada

SS- Anderson

3B- Manny

LF- Joc

CF- Jay/Engel 

RF- Palka

DH- Alonso

Luery and Yolmer as super subs

 

That’s actually not too bad if the front office can pull it off. We would still need another SP before we are any kind of real contenders, but definitely reason for optimism 

steamer projects that lineup to be somewhere around 13-14 WAR. That's worse than last year's war from the starting lineup

2 minutes ago, whitesoxwinner said:

steamer projects that lineup to be somewhere around 13-14 WAR. That's worse than last year's war from the starting lineup

I've never heard someone cite steamer and thought to myself, "Yeah, that makes sense"

12 minutes ago, Tony said:

LF- Eloy

CF- Joc

RF- Palka

Slowest worst defensive outfield ever.  Literally, ever.

1 minute ago, bschmaranz said:

Slowest worst defensive outfield ever.  Literally, ever.

Did you see the 2018 Chicago Whitesox? Can’t get much worse than that.

6 minutes ago, Nardiwashere said:

I've never heard someone cite steamer and thought to myself, "Yeah, that makes sense"

Ha!  True...I have noticed that they always seem to come in low.  How a lineup with Manny, Jimenez and Jay would be calculate lower WAR than a lineup with Davidson, Engle and Delmonico I'll never know.  Those would be the 3 most notable changes.