Jake

Well he didn't show up hurt as I saw him play in a spring training game.

I absolutely hate the idea of trading LaVine for Lonzo Ball. I really do not want to be a fan of a team whose point guard can't play at the end of close games because he can't beat DeAndre Jordan in a free throw shootout. If dumping LaVine's salary is so valuable, then you will be able to do that any time you need. Otherwise you're giving up the more talented and higher upside player and not getting much back.

A note about Collins defensively: Baseball Prospectus does advanced catcher statistics for the minor leagues, so we have something to work with for Collins. In AA last year, he was rated at -14.5 fielding runs (driven mostly by abysmal framing), was ranked 138 out of 140 AA catchers. This year, he's at -2.0 fielding runs and is ranked 98 out of 118 AAA catchers. He ranks pretty high in terms of innings caught so on a per-inning basis his numbers look better than the ranking implies. The sample size isn't particularly large this year, but he seems to have gone from outlier bad last year to just kind of not so good this year.

Now I'm feeling like people underrate his potential to break out offensively. I wouldn't bank on it, but I still see Collins as someone whose upside is a pretty valuable player.

Decent chance Stephens ends up getting moved off Cleveland's 40 before long as well, so we may see this turn into an Ian Clarkin type of situation

I do think folks are underrating the possibility that Collins is indeed being called up to be McCann's backup for a short time. Seby Zavala looked so bad last time that it's quite plausible the Sox felt their hands were tied and had no choice but to call up Collins.

I do wish we hadn't called him up in the midst of his annual mid-year slump

I'm worried about his strikeouts but let's be frank, Zavala looked so bad when he came up that this is really your only option even if you think it's going to be temporary. Assuming Beef's injury isn't too severe, Collins may have an outside chance at playing Alonso off the roster.

I see it as pretty straightforward: Giolito, Lopez, Kopech, Cease in no particular order and then someone from outside the organization.

He really hadn't been doing very well in AA so it stands to reason they might have just been trying to give him an easy, extended prep by making him the starter rather than planning to have him pitch more than an inning or two. But you have to feel bad for him, this is just a mess. Not a lot of guys have recovered from this kind of thing so I hope he gets some help and figures this out.

Would you do just LaVine for Ball?

What a stupid trade it would be. Would only be justifiable if LaVine is greatly overpaid and it's hard to see how his play last year would have changed the front office's view from "he's worth this contract" to "he's not." The value of moving from 7 to 4 in this draft is very small.

Okay let's settle this (LOL). He finishes with 104 pitches. I can see on Gameday that he threw 11 pitches in the 7th. I'll leave the math to the geeks out there

No, he was at 92.

Honestly I don't see it as some terrible thing that they let Gio start the inning. I don't care about his ERA. I would have liked for him to get a quick 1-2-3 with about 105 pitches for the day.

Appears MLB Pipeline has moved Robert up to 15, Baseball America moved him to 35 (from 49).

I suspect teams don't see Colome a lot differently than they did in the preseason and it's looking like a buyer's market right now. You should listen, but there's no reason for urgency because he may be a big part of a playoff-ready team next year.

For my money I'd rather be patient and see if he can do anything with his defense while he hopefully improves his contact rate by just a tick or two

Eloy is the Giorgi Bezhanishvili of the White Sox

If Delmonico isn't upset with us, seems reasonable to think we might sign him to a minor league deal. He's a good guy, I hope he gets healthy and finds his way back to the show somewhere. I'm kind of intrigued by Despaigne. He's shown an ability to be a competent starter in the past and when I look at his numbers I can't help but wonder if he might be more effective if he simplified his repertoire. He has all these different pitches and some are better than others. With the data available now, he might want to stick with the ones that work.

That team was strange defensively. Had several standouts but also had very bad Konerko, Dye, and (in a small role) Timo who was brutal. Dye hadn't yet become what he'd be in the coming years, which was unplayably bad. For Konerko, his limitations weren't obvious with the eye test. We hyped up Rowand quite a bit but still might not have appreciated how well he was playing.

Yoan is the best and most important player in the organization.

I'm not mad about putting Hererra out there. Have to find spots to let him work through this

Okay, no need to send Reynaldo back out there for the 7th. Don't let him talk you into it.

Seems oddly frequent that guys come through our minor leagues relying on their curveballs and then drop it almost completely upon reaching the majors. That's been true of both Giolito and Lopez.