lostfan

Kimbrel gets the "Win" for today, I hate that stat

Excellent.

It was annoying earlier in the season to see him playing every game, and for a while it was like he was up *every time* the Sox had RISP in a high-leverage situation, but that wasn't really his fault. He's a utility guy, in that role, he's great

I don't really know where Gavin Sheets fits in with this team long term, but that's a problem for another day. For now he's really nice to have here

Well within his range, he just added a little drama to it

70% of the earth is covered by water. The rest is covered by Luis Robert.

The 400M women's hurdles were pretty spectacular this year too

I'm an Eloy fan and I think he's gonna be the best pure hitter this franchise has had since Frank but he's nowhere near as toolsy as Robert. All Robert's tools grade out at 70 or 80 (whether they all develop all the way into long-term MLB success is a whole other story)

We seamlessly went from Frank Thomas, to Paul Konerko, to Jose Abreu, and then after that maybe to Vaughn?

I think about this a lot. We've got so many metrics now to measure things we didn't really know how to quantify when I was a kid and I would've been so into that in the 90s. Stuff like spin rates on pitches, launch angles, exit velocity, WAR (especially dWAR), UZR, all those things.

I asked a version of this question on Facebook and a guy said Richie Allen, I was like bro I'm 39 not 69 ?

I, too, possess this special negative power but it only seems to work on the Bears but I'll give it a try Luis Robert is a bust. Another embarrassing failure by our scouting department.

I had plans to go to Vegas to see the Bears w/my friend but she wanted to pivot towards the White Sox playoffs (and I agreed). As of right now it looks like they'd be playing Houston - we're both from Chicago obviously and she lives in Houston, so that'd work, but damn, the Astros beat us like we stole something this year

I definitely understand what you're saying but this wasn't really what I was asking, I tried to be careful with how I worded it because it's still entirely possible he flames out, plus he hasn't actually *done* that much yet, having only played 97 MLB games so far. "Potential" is really hard to project in the majors but I cannot remember a time when a guy in the White Sox system has this many tools, graded this highly, checking as many boxes at each level of development as he has.

I used to think it was so bizarre that Frank looked like he could bench press the entire gym but I'm legitimately wondering if I could throw harder than him.

Earlier this week I was thinking about the Olympics and how Jamaican track and field fans love Allyson Felix and respect her as a legend even though she doesn't compete for them - she shows them love so they love her back. It's kind of the same thing with Abreu. I watch the way opponents interact with him between plays. They're always friendly and cordial, chatting him and such, pitchers hit him and immediately apologize.

That one looked like he could have taken a swing with just his left hand and still put it over the fence. Wasn't even much of a swing.

I always feel like I gotta hedge myself when I talk about him and use "could be" or "potentially" so I am not putting him on the level of Mike Trout - can't really say that until he's actually done it - but the tools are there, if this guy does 150-155 games in a season he is a 8+ WAR type of player. There is always the worrying about how he's gonna respond when pitchers start exploiting his weaknesses but he's already had a couple of rounds of that. The sliders just off the plate were killing him but he's seeing those a lot better. And this is just the beta version of him, he keeps getting better. I'm wondering when he is gonna plateau and it hasn't happened.

Not just the tools themselves, but seeing those tools actually develop in the majors. I try to avoid making my mind to go places like this but with Robert I just can't avoid it. He came to us with so much hype, and at every level of his development he's exceeded or outright destroyed the expectations like it was a joke to him. My first thought is of course Frank Thomas, easily the greatest hitter we've ever had, but he wasn't a Gold Glove infielder and he didn't run like Luis.

It's hard for him to resist that because he's been able to hit it at lower levels and MLB pitchers are too good, they started taking advantage of him and he was having some tough ABs for a while, but he figured it out. Still strikes out on it (like every MLB player does) but nowhere near as often.

At every point in Luis Robert's development there's a period where he briefly struggles and then gets locked in and starts destroying that level's pitching. Seems like he's there with MLB now but there is no higher level for him to get promoted to now.

Right before he got hurt he had just gone through a rough patch trying to figure out his approach, and he seemed like he'd just gotten it - here he is picking it right up where he left off

Luis Robert is on his way to being a top 5 player in baseball

Moncada is close to that which is why I think people get over-the-top when they talk about how "bad" he is. He is a guy who can potentially play at a MVP level but what they see is just "pretty good"

Luis Robert is really fucking good. And this is just the beta version of him.