Jake

I'll be rooting against him until the bitter end

Those who know me around here will know that I'm not prone to despair. I'm not big on firing management as the solution to problems. I'm big on patience. That being said, I think we're at the point where we can say the 2019 season has been an unmitigated disaster for the White Sox minor league system. Pitchers Here are our top pitching prospects after last season, per FanGraphs: Michael Kopech (had TJS last season) Dylan Cease (fine) Dane Dunning (TJS during spring training this year) Jimmy Lambert (TJS just days ago) Tyler Johnson (just now returning from injury that has kept him out so far this year) Jordan Stephens (pitched like ass in AAA, lost to waiver claim) Konnor Pilkington (no change in status; good in A, mixed results in A+) Alec Hansen (has the yips) Zack Burdi (out for season with knee injury, was returning from TJS) Codi Heuer (doing fine in low minors) Add to them Ryan Burr (TJS), Ian Hamilton (a series of unfortunate events), Caleb Frare (poor performance that comes close to yips level). Players of note who have only recently lost prospect status are Bummer (great story), Jace Fry (mixed bag), and Fulmer (no change from last year). We've been ravaged by injuries and nobody has increased their stock to make up for it. Lambert was coming close to doing that, but he got bitten by the TJS bug as well. Kyle Kubat is sort of a feel-good story, but one that's hard to really believe in and is really more the type of guy we would pin our hopes on 10 years ago when the system was completely barren. Hitters Top prospects per FG: Eloy (doing fine in MLB) Nick Madrigal (doing well in AA; felt like a disappointment until 3-4 weeks ago when he caught fire) Luis Robert (most positive development in the system this year) Micker Adolfo (re-injured TJS elbow, out for season after brutal play in AA) Luis Basabe (missed 2 months with injury, poor performance thus far in AA) Blake Rutherford (brutal start to season in AA, getting better lately, but still major disappointment at this juncture) Luis Gonzalez (ditto everything about Rutherford) Zack Collins (hot start, slow June, but got the call to MLB; jury's out) Jake Burger (vaguely defined heel injury going to cost him most or all of season) Steele Walker (tore up A, catching fire in A+, solid year) Seby Zavala (very uneven performance in AAA, absolutely overwhelmed in brief MLB stint) Gavin Sheets (similar story to Rutherford/Gonzalez, but a sadder one because he's a 1B; he has gotten to his power better) Luis Mieses (who? Just started short-season ball) Outside this group, we can mention just to make ourselves feel better that young MLBers Moncada and Anderson have had breakout seasons. Danny Mendick made an impression in spring training and is playing fine in AAA, but he's old with limited upside: think Tyler Saladino. Bryce Bush has shown flashes in A ball, but seems to have already moved off 3B and has had some runs of truly terrible play. Overall We've had one major minor league story this year: the breakout of Luis Robert. And let's not understate its importance because Robert is approaching the god-tier of prospect status. Depth is great, but one Moncada/Eloy/Robert level prospect is worth several Blake Rutherfords (on his good days) at the least. Nick Madrigal was spinning his wheels for much of the year, but he has caught fire recently and kept things up in AA. His limitations are still quite evident, but at least his strengths are as well. He's on a timeline that could see him in MLB next year. Dylan Cease started out very strong and has struggled recently but not enough that it should cause great concern. From the sound of it, he'll be in MLB soon for better or worse. We drafted Andrew Vaughn. Neat. After that...yikes. There's still a couple months left, thankfully, but as of now on both sides of the ball we've seen the utter decimation of everything. It's difficult to argue that there's any meaningful depth in the system at this point. The HS pitchers we drafted are nice, but for now I won't be considering them as too much is unknown. We badly need a couple of these young hitters in AA to turn it around. The pitching is so devastated by injuries it's hard to even wish any success because all the starters with solid MLB potential are hurt. I'm not here to offer solutions or even blame, but it should be recognized that Luis Robert is carrying a lot of freight in making it seem like the farm is going to give us good players. Under the surface, it's a sinking ship.

Best guess is they have done something to reduce the workload of the pitchers that has had the ironic effect of increasing their risk by leaving their arms untrained. Was an article in The Athletic about the Rangers having attempted a program for draftees in which they really scaled back their in-game workloads at first and they had an alarmingly high TJS rate with them. The Rangers were using some Driveline training programs as well FWIW but separating cause and effect is difficult with these things (and there are some claims that players may not have been doing the Driveline program correctly)

The one way in which it would make sense is if you plan to have Leury and/or Rondon covers all the innings at SS and just need a bench guy. In that case, no reason to call up a semi-prospect in Mendick just to have him sit on a bench for 2 or 3 weeks.

That would mean that Palka never plays except for the rare day that Collins catches and you don't want McCann in the lineup as DH

I feel like people have somehow forgotten how horrendous defensively Palka has been. His performance last year is one of, and perhaps *the* worst of any outfielder in the Statcast era. Playing him in the outfield every day is like playing late career Adam Dunn out there. If the Sox play him out there again, it will really worry me about their ability to evaluate their own talent.

Palka cannot be allowed to play the outfield again. That was an embarrassment to the franchise and cost our pitchers dearly

Doesn't make any sense to call Palka up because that just steals ABs from Collins. If Palka was right-handed, maybe there'd be a role, but he's not.

FWIW, I saw a snapshot of a dugout celebration today where you can see Robert in the background. Appears to just be a routine day off.

Hard to guess what the long-term trajectory is for Tim at SS. His career has been characterized by long streaks of clean play defensively followed by sloppy runs of play like the beginning of this season. Perhaps he'll finish this season like he finished last year, with a long stretch of play with relatively few errors and several very good plays. Most guys aren't "streaky" fielders so it's hard to know what the real Tim is.

I feel like it's pretty well established that Moncada almost always overreacts to acute injuries (or pains you might say). Not dissimilar to his countryman, Alexei

criminally underused!

Kevan Smith does have an .850 OPS this year...

Fulmer has gotten whiffs on 7 of the 20 swings against him today.

Collins struck out in nearly half his plate appearances against lefties in AAA this year. For his development, it might be best to go ahead and let him try against them...but looks like contact will be a serious problem. Worth noting he did not have such an acute problem against lefties in AA last season although he was still clearly worse against them

Yoan entered the night with a .725 OPS from the right side. That'll do.

All things considered, a solid inning for Fulmer

Fielded a ball in the hole and threw it on the run, missing wide of first base by 10+ feet

Eloy had a nice run of defense going before that head-scratcher. Continues to struggle around the wall

This is all true and it would be interesting to see an attempt at accounting these things. That being said, I really do not believe the effects on academic budgets are very substantial and are on the order of fringe benefits. Of course, most of the university budget goes to purposes other than student instruction, so there's that... Also, must be nice to have At my institution, those revenues go to the private corporation that runs the parking ?

At my B1G uni, the money made by the sports programs stays within the athletic department. Now it saves the school from having to fund the athletics programs, and it may be the case that having the sports teams keeps alumni engaged to make donations, etc., but the revenue doesn't directly go to anything academic. Of course, the vast majority of D1 schools do not get enough athletic revenue to cover costs so tuition money ultimately funds the programs. This was the rationale behind UAB shutting down its football program, where the school paid $20 million to the athletic department to cover its budget deficit every year (although football is/was proportionally closer to covering its costs, the raw dollars are bigger than every other sport).

This is weird: Baseball Reference lists him at 5'7": https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=cesped001yoe This article in the NY Post calls him 6'1": https://nypost.com/2017/01/30/yoenis-cespedes-brother-is-an-intriguing-mystery-about-to-be-revealed/ This article in the NY Times calls him a "little shorter" than his brother, who they say is 5'10": https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/09/sports/baseball/yoelkis-cespedes-cuba-world-baseball-classic.html The Cuban sites I've looked at don't list height and weight. At any rate, the statistics sure don't make you feel great about his power although he's Babe Ruth compared to Yolbert Sanchez

This would make Sanchez close to the highest paid player in the class, I would think. I just don't see it...where's the upside? Does it not mean anything that he played terribly in the Cuban league?

Not often discussed, but if you buy into Statcast's xwOBA, Tatis Jr. has been ludicrously lucky so far this year.

5'7"