Jake

The way I see it, he should be the last guy on the bench. He could have helped his stock by picking up the ability to play OF, but that's obviously easier said than done. He's a better defensive replacement than Leury in the infield, but given what we saw last year Leury is the better bat and offers OF defense as well. The main concern with keeping Saladino around is whether Renteria can resist giving him too much playing time.

Big story of the night for me is Fulmer's stuff, which looked premium. Good velo on the fastball, lots of run. Cutter gave lefties a hard time, used the change as well. Didn't always stay on top of his curve but when he did it looked good. Still fought his command, which he's going to do for a while (if not for his entire career) but he looked like a different guy out there.

QUOTE (fathom @ Apr 4, 2018 -> 08:17 PM) Easily best he's ever looked, regardless of results Even with uneven command, he's showed the first round round stuff tonight so far.

I won't compare him to Hawk, who I love, because there won't be another Hawk and if someone was going for that it would probably be bad. That said, I like Jason. He knows what he's doing, he knows baseball, and his fondness for the Sox is obvious. It's endearing that Hawk loves the Sox, but Benetti is a lifer. He was a Sox guy before they paid him money. The jokey stuff can get old but to me that's mostly a Stone issue. Jason will goad Steve into it or play along but it's Steve's actual jokes that are hard to understand or not funny. It's not that everything Jason says is funny, but the whole bad humor schtick is emanating from the super deadpan way Steve does it. QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Apr 4, 2018 -> 01:58 PM) I haven't noticed this at much this season, but it is really annoying when the broadcasts become a glorified Q & A session with Stone. There's a difference between deferring and acting like this is the first time you've ever watched a baseball game. Yeah, Jason knows a lot about baseball but sometimes seems like he's afraid to give analysis because that's not his job. With Hawk he was so self-confident that you never had that weird dynamic of one guy who can't make any subjective claim without running it past the other. I'd like to see Jason at least get more confident about making simple evaluations about what's going on — pitcher made a mistake there, that was a bad decision by somebody, etc.

The most noteworthy thing for me is the White Sox were smart enough not to do a rebuild that was predicated on losing. The dumbest game you can play in MLB is jumping through hoops to get the highest draft pick possible. If you're trading your veteran assets for good young talent, you won't be picking late in the first round. But the marginal value of a few spots is rarely going to be worth jerking your players and fans around. QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 3, 2018 -> 11:50 AM) Infield and Catcher are much more scary. I am not sure if we have another guy in the system that actually projects to be a starting catcher defensively, with any real chance to hit at the major league level. I know your comment mentioned defense specifically, but I think we have a pretty deep system at catcher. On the MLB club you have Narvaez who is a solid MLB regular and under control for a long time. Then in the minors you have Smith, who is more of a backup MLB type who we may never use much because he's rather old at this point. Moving on through the minors you have Collins and Zavala, both promising bats but as you say there are questions about defense. Of course, you don't typically find too many catcher prospects who play good defense and hit.

Lopez looks great.

QUOTE (fathom @ Mar 31, 2018 -> 08:26 PM) Gavin way better hook, Giolito better change so far Yeah that's been a more recent development for Giolito. Gavin's change had some moments but he didn't trust it.

Giolito continues to remind a lot of Gavin Floyd. Similar talent, consistency issues, struggles pitching out of the stretch.

Giolito threw zero fastballs below 90mph per Statcast

The WGN strike zone graphic is ludicrously wrong.

The problem is Steve Stone. The broadcast will get really good when Stone moves on.

QUOTE (SouthSideSale @ Mar 29, 2018 -> 06:40 PM) Dang. Moncada gave that one a ride 105mph, 80% hit probability per Statcast

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ Mar 29, 2018 -> 04:42 PM) A negative WAR season and Davidson has "solidified" his position in the clubhouse. I'm already tired of Jason. It's just a statement of fact. If you don't like his solid position in the clubhouse, take it up with Hahn.

I was super impressed with how poised and polished he looked against MLB talent in the spring training. You don't see that often with a guy with so little experience against top talent look that good.

Yeah I also found it very curious that we sent him to A-ball. Would make more sense if he hadn't been in camp for a while and this was going to basically be his "rehab" stint.

I've always had a fear that at some point things would change with our browsers, the web, the underlying software, etc. and it would lead ST to not really work...and perhaps it would be too hard by then to upgrade. Glad to see we're going to be brought up to date.

If it were me, I'd definitely keep Narvaez. Thanks to the poster who mentioned they have options, for some reason I was thinking they didn't. I wouldn't put a ton of money on Narvaez being better than Kevan Smith in the long term, but if I have to pick one I'm picking Narvaez. The way I see it, Narvaez has pretty limited upside in that I don't see any potential for even below average power. But his downside is limited, too. I have to think there are 20-25 MLB teams that will always have a place for a guy like him. Smith has to tap into his power or else his other warts will be too much of a problem long term...and at this point he's 29 and hardly younger than the veteran we just signed. Just watching last season, though, the playing time he got made me think the Sox might have preferred him to Narvaez.

I've been puzzled about the Wellington Castillo signing from the start. It's not that there's anything wrong with him, but given how young of a team we have and how relatively strong the catcher position was last year, I didn't really get it. But that's not what this is about. Who is our backup catcher? Narvaez was a better hitter last year and seems to be a clearly better defender. Smith seems to have more upside but is older and has more downside, as evidenced by his being a worse player last season. But I get the feeling that the Sox aren't high on Narvaez. He does have the lefty matchup advantage. I don't think either player stands to benefit from more time AAA nor could you justify carrying any of them as a DH/1B/anything like that. So...who will it be? What happens to the loser?

Sounds like Tommy John surgery is likely, but if it doesn't look terrible on the MRI they might try to rehab it before putting him on the operating table.

Yikes, 55 games on WGN will screw a lot of downstate folks. Were there that many last year?

I suspect this may be the amount of distance before the pitch begins to drop, relative to the hypothetical non-spinning ball used for other PitchFX metrics. If I'm right, then 10 inches of carry would mean it doesn't begin it's gravity-induced drop until about 10 inches later than a non-spinning ball thrown in a vacuum would. It may also mean simply that it would literally travel 10 inches further (if not caught by the catcher first) than that hypothetical non-spinning ball. In that case you'd interpret carry the same way you would when you talk about an outfielder whose throws carry.

Note that nobody has confirmed the amount of drugs or even which substance yet. The charge means *at least* 20 kilos, but it could plausibly be much more. We also don't know what substance is per the reports as the concern about Fentanyl exposure led cops to not test it themselves but instead wait on a lab. His (ex-)wife's death is interesting in that the exact cause of the plane crash was never determined because the plane crashed at such a high speed there was basically no physical evidence. The plane was thought to be in tough shape, though, and the pilot was 78 years old. On the other hand, the company that owned the plane (and was the manager of the now-deceased wife) had multiple planes seized by the DEA for unspecified reasons around that same time.

The problem with the FA market, besides the end of the steroid era, is that a third of the league has no interest in adding good veterans long term and more teams than that aren't seriously trying to improve their teams for next year. A player has to be very lucky to have multiple teams really competing for them.

NBA has to get more aggressive in reducing the incentives for losing, in particular reducing the incentive to be the worst or bottom 3. Not good for the league to punish a team like the Bulls to finish the year with a .400 W-L just because they didn't intentionally avoid having any talent. And of course anyone who likes to watch games hates that so many teams aren't even trying.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 17, 2018 -> 06:18 PM) I kinda feel like we're having this exact same discussion about Leury and I feel like he added some muscle and slowed down a bit. This happened to Yolmer and he was already not that fast to begin with.