Jack Parkman

There really are a lot of schmucks in this lineup. Go figure as it is created by Schmuckalufugus himself, Ricky Renteria.

Wow, Fathom says something positive. Somebody call an exorcist. I think he has been possessed by a demon. That is what we need to see from Moncada way more often. Personally, I think leadoff is a bad spot for Moncada. He needs to be hitting 3rd-5th because he's a run producer and not a table setter. I understand why they placed him there in the lineup, but maybe it was counterproductive. He should be hitting cleanup vs RHP and 6th vs LHP.

It looks as if you are correct.

That was fucking ridiculous, 3B ump. Moncada barely took the bat off his shoulder and you're going to call it a swing?? Woof.

Noice. I'm really high on Gonzalez. The Sox are just absolutely loaded with quality OF prospects. For the purpose of this exercise, I'm not counting Jimenez. Robert Rutherford Gonzalez Basabe Walker Adolfo Call. And that isn't even including the Sox Best OF prospect

I meant more of a super sub than utility player. Wrong choice of words.

With LaMarre/Engel behind him, Moncada isn't going to get much to hit. 8th is probably the worst spot to drop him to. Maybe they should move him to 6th instead. He has to have some sort of protection.

Rodon with 2 walks and a K through 1. Walk issues are starting to creep up again.

Absolutely.

Two worst organizations in baseball, bar none. I don't think it is a coincidence that the Sox/Angels/Mets are among the most dysfunctional of organizations these days. Gee, I wonder what they all have in common? I include the Angels because they're wasting Mike Trout, similarly to the Sox wasting Chris Sale. I think it is time for the Angels to listen on Trout.

I don't like starting guys who get on base at less than a .300-.310 clip. This is just one man's opinion, but the amount of outs he makes saps a lot of his value in other areas away. Doesn't mean he can't be a super sub or something like that, playing SS/2B/OF. But in my book, he's best used as a super sub playing roughly 100-120 games.

He doesn't get on base enough to be an everyday player.

Right now, the answer is zero. Talk to me on 7/15/2019 and that may change. This is really fluid for Giolito/Moncada/Lopez. They haven't shown enough at this time to be considered part of that group. By the ASB in 2019, hopefully a couple of these players have taken a step forward. I'm about ready to write of Anderson. He is what he is. Nothing more than a utility player at this point. We've had 2.5 seasons to see what he has now.

Hahaha

I'm glad to hear that, as I have been arguing that a lot of Moncada's errors are because he surprises himself that he got to that ball. His range is absolutely ridiculous. I don't think it is out of the question that Moncada develops into a defensive stud. I've pretty much given up hope that he'll ever hit .300(I thought that as recently as the ASB, but I've abandoned that thought as evidence mounts to the contrary) in a season, but I'll be happy if he fluctuates between .265-.285. He's just probably not going to be that superstar that everyone thought the Sox were getting. Still a good player, and probably within the top 30% of MLB players. I think that the question now is if Moncada will be a 2.5-4 Win player or a 4.5-6. I think his realistic ceiling has been adjusted from "sky's the limit" to probably in the 5.5-6 win range.

My bar for an MLB player being awful is a lot higher than Adam Engel. Engel belongs nowhere near a major league ballpark.

You are probably right. That is a solid MLB regular but by no means a star or superstar. A lot of people expect stardom at the very least from Moncada. A lot of people are going to be disappointed if that is as good as he ever gets. If you're going to hit .240-260 most of the time you better play some damn good defense as well. If he stays bad defensively and is only a solid MLB regular most will be calling him a bust even then. the #1 prospect in baseball should be a star or superstar. Brace yourselves.

Moncada's entire potential to be a superstar revolves around the development of his hit tool. He oozes a lot of other talent, so it doesn't shock me that even at .230-.250 he has an acceptable OPS. If he can ever make enough contact to get to .280+ he'll be a star. How many hits does Moncada get? This is one case where a traditional stat(batting average) tells a lot of the story. If Moncada makes contact, the rest will take care of itself.

I'm a huge Moncada fan too. I used to think he'd be fine eventually, but going through his splits on fangraphs made me change my mind. I've taken it from "he'll be fine eventually" to "We'll see" This is coming from the guy who said that if he puts it all together he could be a notch below Trout.

I have zero confidence in any sort of scouting they do. Hostetler has been a little better on the Amateur side, but their pro scouting so far(in terms of impact at the MLB level) has been horrendous. Moncada and Giolito look awful, and Lopez looks like a back of the rotation guy. At the current time, I'm concerned they'll be in the same situation in 2021 they were in 2016, without the great contracts to bail them out. A 75-79 win team with a roster of 4 stars and a bunch of crap. I think Madrigal has to be a hell of a hitter(like an Ichiro/Carew/Tony Gwynn Sr. type) or else that pick will look bad. I have this horrible feeling that he's going to end up more like Juan Pierre.

I think the Yankees did in fact do a rebuild. They had a lot of bad contracts and aging stars and built up their farm while waiting for the bad contracts to get off the books. They never added at the deadline, they always sold while doing this. They showed everyone how to rebuild while not completely bottoming out, but then again the International rules were different at that time and they're the Yankees so they can always throw money at stuff like that. And when I was talking about getting JR to open the wallet, I meant more for guys like Moncada and Japanese players, and maybe going into the penalty a couple times when it was an option in the international market. When they could have signed a TON of top international talent every two seasons and there were zero penalties for going over a certain dollar amount, other than not being able to sign guys for over 300k.

I understand that this is somewhat common, but you don't want to waste the entirety of your top prospects pre-arb years on becoming a useful MLB player. It significantly hampers a) the window and b) the team's ability to add if necessary, unless you're the Yankees/Dodgers/Cubs. You want them to figure it out by the end of year 2 of pre-arb.

And the Royals had an incredibly short window because it took Hosmer and Moustakas 3 seasons to figure it out at the MLB level. My point exactly.

Of course. We're not talking about that right now. My point is I'm not sure he should have been afforded the opportunity to go through with this rebuild. Somebody else should have been trading Sale/Q. Not that he got bad deals or anything, but I don't trust the Player Development team they have and I would feel better if they would have hired someone from the Astros to assemble their player development team. Not Chris Getz. Pick a guy from a team that has had loads of success actually cultivating minor league talent. I also don't trust this front office to properly evaluate players. I have a sinking feeling that most of the players acquired via trade or the draft are going to bust. Why do I feel this way? Because I don't believe the FO knows what they're looking at. If they did, they wouldn't have been in the situation they were in from 2014-16.

My point is what good is having great contracts if you can't acquire the supplementary talent to take advantage of them? I completely understand that the Sox were a 70 win team and they didn't have the assets or options on the FA market. What were they supposed to do? The other problem is no team would have paid what Sale/Q were worth with 5 or 6 years on their contract. I get why they did what they did in terms of waiting to trade Sale/Q. I don't get why they wasted what little minor league assets they had on rentals when they weren't going to put them over the top anyway. They should have been spending money on a bunch of fringe FA looking for a bounce back year and flipping the ones that worked to gain some young talent. This process should have started in 2014, such that they *maybe* got enough talent in return to NOT have to trade Sale/Q in 2017.