Jake

Funny thing about the tweet is judging from the replies, it may have gotten Tim what he needed, aka "the love"

QUOTE (beautox @ Jul 27, 2017 -> 03:30 PM) 2018: $4M 2019 Team Option: $4.6M ($1.2M buyout) 2020 Team Option: $5.2M ($1.2M buyout) 2021 Mutual Option: $6M there are worse ways to spend 5.2M if they choose to buyout in '19 FYI: I don't recall all details, but Jones getting elbow surgery reduced the value of his contract. I know for certain that his pay in one year goes to league minimum and I think his team option in another year is cut in half.

If the team has Lopez, Giolito, and Rodon all pitching to potential (a hypothetical posed by another poster), the team won't lose 100 games no matter how bad everyone else is. Kopech will be knocking on door next year if he starts well in AAA, too.

I'd try demoting our 2015 first rounder to an appropriate level before trading him

Melky has a fantastic arm. Maybe, MAYBE, it's a tick below elite velocity but that would be more than made up for with his throws' carry and accuracy.

If Jimenez really has that special level of talent, I wouldn't want to put a whole lot of money on him taking X amount of time to make it to the show. The great ones have a tendency to just start kicking ass and forcing their way to MLB.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 27, 2017 -> 11:35 AM) Remember how fast Fullmer collapsed...well Gillespie has kind of done the same thing, but from the hitting side. That said, certainly worth the flyer. Yeah but we also know that Fulmer could have 4 good starts and suddenly be looking like a real legit prospect again. A good couple months out of Gillaspie and the same is true.

Gillaspies numbers this year are a puzzle. Struggles have been remarkably consistent. Not much variance month to month. A little bit of a home/road split, but not overly dramatic. No difference facing righties vs. lefties. BB% and K% not much different from career norms. It's like he has simply just been hitting the ball worse without actually swinging and missing or failing to draw walks.

Holy christ is that selling low on Casey Gillaspie. Is there something we don't know about why he's struggling in AAA this year?

Courtney Hawkins made a change that cut his strikeout rate from about 50%, which was on the verge of getting him booted out of pro baseball, by half to below 25%. What does it mean? Well, it means he may have gotten things figured out enough to play minor league baseball until he's sick of doing it rather than until he gets released and exiled.

The question about demotion or not is solely about what's going to produce the best outcome for Tim. The 2017 White Sox can sustain s***ty shortstop play. So if the Sox believe a demotion would be very bad for an already negative state of mind, keep him up here. If they think they can sell a demotion to AAA to Tim as something that's good for him and not a reflection of the Sox believing he's a terrible player, then consider that instead. The right move will be hard to know from the outside. With that said, he should start getting more frequent rest in the near term and by next season, he should have a short leash regardless of what may be going on emotionally/mentally.

I don't think Tim has earned the "lazy" label based on his full body of work. I think what we've seen recently is a player who has gotten his head stuck up in his ass because he's struggling to deal with his bad play. When your head's up your ass, you sometimes find yourself walking out of the box, angry at yourself instead of running out a grounder.

Cordell seems to be surprisingly talented for a "low ceiling" guy. He hit 19 homers in 107 games last year and 18 HR in 125 games the year before. He has 10 this year in 68 games. He's a 20+ HR/year bat who doesn't have major strikeout problems, is a good runner, and a solid defender in all 3 OF spots. His production in AAA this year tells us there really isn't much risk in terms of whether he's going to be a MLB player, though obviously there's never a guarantee about whether he will be a regular...it's the hardest thing to know for any prospect, of course.

You get a guy who is 100% cinch to make the major leagues, has a very good chance to be at worst a nice bench piece, but has realistic upside as a good everyday player. What the hell is the problem? You just traded Anthony Swarzak! The skeptics of these reliever deals always seem to think about the what if's based on the reliever pitching that good indefinitely into the future. Swarzak was 2 or 3 s***ty outings from losing all of his value. You have to get something for him and we got a real piece back for him.

If you never looked at the statistics and only read this site you'd think Collins had a .500 OPS

I felt that Trayce Thompson reaching the MLB was a pretty significant accomplishment for the Sox minor league system. He came in as a high school with major contact problems, dealt with persistent strikeout issues throughout the minors, but slowly but surely got his bat to an acceptable level. It also made him one of the few draft pick position players to make the majors in a long time and look like a major leaguer. He's joined now by Saladino and Sanchez, who were lower on talent by quite a bit but still had to be developed in our system. Engel is looking like he might be another player who we can say we improved as a system. He is one who has undeniably been a better minor league hitter than college hitter in spite of his inconsistency.

If they let Lackey bat again they've got to hit him

Can someone fill me in on Lackey's off field actions that are supposed to make me not like him? Not to say I would have liked him anyway, he just has one of those faces, you know.

Yeah the ump has no clue what he's doing. And what a weird game for Rodon...

QUOTE (StrykerSox @ Jul 25, 2017 -> 02:48 PM) Rodon is irrelevant. If our contention window starts in 2021, he won't even be here. Right now, we should focus on Moncada and Anderson, neither of whom look very good, at this moment. If we aren't contending by 2020, something has gone very wrong.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Jul 24, 2017 -> 02:44 PM) Yoan looks a bit overmatched. Dude is always down 0-2. I honestly think he looks pretty good, but he's got a nasty habit of taking the first pitch every time. You will have some trouble when you're down 0-1 in every count

QUOTE (Lillian @ Jul 23, 2017 -> 03:37 PM) They better be. They cost the Sox one Super Star pitcher and another, pretty close to that. FWIW, I don't think they have to be superstars for the Sox to get what they needed out of those trades. Sox want not just good play (which is what the players they lost will give any team) but they need it at a particular time and a particular price. If the Sox weren't going to be good until 2019, then you'd be starting to get good right as your superstars are about to depart in free agency. With how things are shaping up now, Sox may have the players they got back hitting their stride and under control for many years at that point. Likewise, by 2019 or 2020 we could plausibly sign Sale or Quintana if that's what we needed to put us over the top. And of course there's the other players to consider as well. While I think having ten 1 WAR is not the equivalent of having one 10 WAR player, there's something to be said for having a glut of average to above average players rather than a couple of really good ones.

If Swarzak goes to LA, I'd like to get my old teammate Brock Stewart.

I was commenting to a friend last night how as soon as I get down on Anderson, he'll do one of those rangy grabs where he just turns his hips and fires off a hard strike to first while running sideways like it's the easiest thing. At the plate, the ball really flies when he squares it up and his swing just looks quick. Of course, as of late he rarely squares it up and as another poster said, really seems to be going up there without a plan. But I've grown more confident that the underlying talent is there—not just athleticism, but baseball talent.

I don't know how much of it is his grief, but he's clearly not in a good place mentally. It's easy to let the struggles pile on each other until you can't really play well anymore. I've been worried for a while that he's let the season get away, but I do worry that a demotion would be such a shock to the system that he might just flounder down there.