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Where Madrigal was drafted is completely irrelevant at this juncture. Madrigal isn't a power hitter. When this lineup is healthy, it is oozing with power and the last thing they need Nick to do is provide power. They need him to play good defense, hit .300+ and not strike out. Madrigal is struggling a bit the last two weeks, but he is going to be fine. He just needs to become the best version of Madrigal, not some power hitting 2B or whatever mold fans think they need to get with the #4 overall pick.

If you’re pitching a fielder and he’s throw slow pitch softball style, you’re the one making a mockery of the game. Screw it, swing away!

I like Benetti

Steve Stone right now:

Steve Stone needs to have his fucking head examined ripping Yoan there. Yoan was taking his secondary lead, he's sorry he didn't get back to first on a missile down the line that was caught right at the base. Jesus what a dick.

According to this forum its not a problem for players to go through cold spells unless its Nick Madrigal. He had a .790 OPS in April and you all forgot about that. 2 Weeks is all it takes for you all to go rabid again. I look forward to laughing at you when he comes out of this and goes on a tear.

Remove gioLito from the banner and replace him with TLR. Preferably a shot of him with his mask below his nose, half asleep for the haters.

Eat shit Twinkies.

I would as it's the IL now you bigot.

Can Steve start talking Twitter shit about Grandal anytime soon?

Wow imagine that, 2 weeks doesnt define a player. Who would have thought?

Stone should get after Leury for being bad

Was gonna avoid thread tonight but wanted to say congrats Madrigal

NICKY BIG STICK! TAKE THAT HAROLD!

also relevant: The league where all of our youngest and guys most in need of development are struggling, the others with a lot of older, college players are having early success. We need to give these guys time, kanny is always the hardest jump.

What an interesting/unexpected start to the year. Kanny has always swallowed up players, and not necessarily ended them (remember Robert sucked in Kanny). But the success of so many older position players across every other level is intriguing. Star power? Probably not, but these are certainly the types of guys that can still net you a middle reliever (think ryan cordell for swarzak). And with Sheets, who knows. Props to those that stuck with him, I was not at all interested in a 1b struggling with power at an age appropriate level. But his base level was a guy with a great approach and build for power. Power came, he has great bloodlines, and if you've ever heard sheets talk you'd want him to succeed. Maybe he is real. Probably a broken record here - but it really is time to wonder if there is something very right with our player development for the first time. Some food for thought: - Our hit rate on our most talented players is looking very, very impressive - Kade McClure and Konnor Pilkington, two "gutty" strike-throwing college pitchers who seemed stalled out in A-ball found velo jumps and are now on the radar as legitimate bullpen/5th starter (optimistically) pieces. Lambert and Fry I think fit in similar profiles, and Stiever is maybe the reason to not get too excited about a temp velo jump (though he may have returned) - Sheets star fades as he fails to find any power in an easy power park, has a nice season in AA, then finds his power stroke while also losing weight and reportedly being an ok outfielder. - Rutherford's swing was not near enough to justify corner outfield, last year we hear his exit velos are strong, and this year to date a lot more power. Do I think he's a future starter? No but consider a few years ago where failed first rounders would just become zombie prospects in AAA hitting .130. - I'm even impressed by Curbelo right now. He was such a tease and so consistently bad, I was surprised he was even still in the org. That he was placed at his highest level and is crushing it shows they are self-scouting much better and improving these guys. Basically, I'm impressed at how they are finding more value out of guys with core, boring skills, while also having succeeded with such explosive talent profiles that are currently in the majors like Kopech and Robert (and looking good for cease). Keep it up sox.

It's amazing how much grace he gets around here. No, being a 1 WAR player isn't "fine" or "what he was expected to be". I've praised the guy because he's played well at times but overall he's underwhelming and physically after watching him everyday for 60 or so games now he just doesn't have a lot of ways he can improve. Defensively there's just not a lot of "there there". He really needs to hit 320 to be an average starter. That's going to be hard. Hope he proves me wrong.

Quick PSA for the board: post your game threads early in the day, do not wait for lineups or for the late afternoon, we need a place to discuss the day's game, you have dibs, get the game thread out there. Anyway, Abreu is not in the lineup.

A lot of good things happened. Kudos to Madrigal on a big night same with Yoan and many others. Mendick GS, Grandal continues to just get on base, Vaughn continues to show out. Yermin, yada yada yada. Even Leury joined the party. Billy gave us a lot of fun in 10 seconds of baserunning on a ball into the corner that we'll not soon forget. Dallas was solid, bullpen eh, did well enough. FUCK THE TWINS!

Yermin is also a career minor league player who is having a season that could set him up for life. Every hit/hr is important to him so I think its completely justifiable that he does as well as he can this year.

What a bunch of BS. Fuck them. Here's a guy who is a catcher who can clearly throw the ball more than 47 mph. He's clearly trying to embarrass the hitter by making them look like a chump swinging at a pitch a little leaguer could throw. That is disrespectful. I wish they'd all hit home runs.

Well done, fuck the twins!

If he had hit a grand slam, I was putting a White Sox shirt on and heading to the casino.

I'm disabled and I think it was a stupid change. I don't claim to speak for everyone though. Just one man's opinion.

I didn't just pull that out of my ass but I really don't feel like putting in the time to find the source right now. Maybe in a few weeks, I'm busy af right now.

Before this thread goes off the rails, I'd like to remind everyone it is totally possible to think Madrigal has a good chance to develop into a solid or better major leaguer and also not think a single home run proves anything.

People who complain about Benetti only do so because they can't whine about Hawk anymore. Hawk would still be announcing if his vision didn't deteriorate so badly. Kwitcher Bitchin' and enjoy having a TV announcer that is actually good at his job.

Hawk would have called him on his BS, Jason never will.

Let’s start a thread about Leury now.

No way, we were told his confidence enraged the entire team and they hated him because of it!

Madrigal haters just shit themselves. Priceless ?

CALL YOUR NEIGHBORS, CALL YOUR COUSINS

Nick says FUCK the haters!

Even the team is so shocked that they forgot to give him the silent treatment!

OMG IT HAPPENED!!!! MADRIGAL HOME RUN!!!! HE LOOKS SO CONFUSED LIKE WTF THIS IS ALLOWED??

Soxtalk on suicide watch

We have a lot of new posters, there's going to be new people making game threads, it's a word of advice. People have thoughts about the game hours in advance of game time, we must give them a place to express themselves.

So we're assuming genders now? Show some respect. It's Danny He/Him Mendick.

With the Sox missing 3 out of their 5 best position players, I‘d be okay with taking one game this series.

Every day I look at the lineup card and wonder how a team can win trotting out that outfield instead of the one we were envisioning two months ago...and yet they keep winning.

This is such a BS take. I just looked them both up on MLB.com. Yolmer has a career batting average of .245. Madrigal's is 301. 301!! You guys coming on here saying a guy this early in his career that is batting .301 is terrible or bad is just ridiculous. And he's scored 21 runs so far this year, only Abreu and Anderson have scored more runs. And he scoring that many when he's batting 9th a lot of the time, getting less at bats. Aren't runs important? Don't teams need runs to win. Why is hitting a home run of more value than scoring from second on a single. Do home runs count for two runs? Somebody has to be on base to get driven in. To dismiss a .301 batting average because of some other stat is silly. Again, totally not seeing the forest because of the trees. You can give me OPS all you want, but if it dismisses the value of a .300 hitter for not hitting home runs, it's a very, very questionable stat. How about Madrigal's war? Again, war kills me. I always love making fun of war. Right off of "Baseball Reference", from 2019, the year Abreu led the AL in RBIs, his war was 2.3. 2.3, what a joke!! Look it up. He leds the league in RBIs but has a low war. War is a stat I place very little value in. In 2019 and the couple years before that, MANY people on here were quoting Abreu's war for the reason the Sox should trade him for whatever they could get or used it to say the Sox should not, not, not to resign him. How did that turn out? Colome always got a ridiculously low war also, and I'm pretty sure he had the best save (or very close; I looked it up to make fun of war before) percentage of anyone in baseball in his two years with the Sox. Does anybody remember this one? It was a few years ago. But Abreu, in late summer, had a string of like 11 or 12 solo home runs in a row. 11 or 12 home runs with nobody on base. What an embarrassing stat that was for the White Sox that year. You need guys on base to score runs. Earl Weaver, "The key to winning baseball games is good pitching, fundamentals, and three run homers." It's kind of hard to do that if no ones on base.

Because how we value players is largely based on WAR and wRC+ and extra base hits are huge in determining that. Even if Madrigal is a .320 lifetime hitter, if he’s one who hits 87% singles, with about 10% doubles and 3% triples, (Madrigals current percentage), that doesn’t generate nearly enough value to outweigh the typical replacement level 2B. Especially if Madrigal only walks 25 times a year. We would be looking at a .320/.355/.355/.710 hitter. Mendick is already a .712 hitter, and it’s not like Madrigal is adding value in defense or baserunning Being able to put the ball in play is only meaningful if you hit an absurdly high average or hit for power or are a decent mix.

Madrigal isn't very good. For him to be useful, his OBP needs to be in the 350-380 range because he has 0 power. If he gets on base at a 300-330 clip, he's Billy Hamilton and that is a failure at the #4 pick. Madrigal has already proven his defense has been average at best and the dude swings at anything. He needs to pick it up or we'll be looking for a new 2B in a year or two.

I can’t stand this type of BS meatball armchair psychology. Stone should stick to sparring with 14-year-olds on Twitter.

This made me laugh

He sucks. Shut up.

Everybody doesn’t have the same body language. Sometimes I think people judge Moncada unfairly because of his