Chicago White Sox

Come on Zack...do some damage here!

Against LHP I agree...don’t think we have any better options against RHP though.

I know it’s early, but we’re going to need another versatile bench piece. Leury is obviously better than what he’s showed so far, but his bat doesn’t fit well on this roster.

Ducksnort!

Leury is so bad right now

I missed the first batter, but liked I what I saw afterwards. Now let’s get some fucking runs for him and let him pitch with a lead!

Jerksticks’ post wasn’t exclusive to the catcher position. But let’s say it was, it’s not like Collins is Cease’s personal catcher. What are the other considerations here?

Very few guys on our roster have faced Minor somehow and he’s limited them to a .408 OPS. Abreu & Moncada are both 0-4 while Leury is 2/3 with a BB. While those samples are ridiculously small, I have feeling that career OPS against us is going to rise quite a bit after today.

Then please rationalize these against-the-platoon decisions

Cease taking steps forward and optimizing the lineup aren’t mutually exclusive. Seasons can come down to a single game and every decision matters. I agree in many ways that Cease is the fulcrum to the season, but I’d also like to see La Russa show more as our manager.

He’s already caught Giolito & Lynn and now will be adding Cease. Keuchel has always been a Grandal fan, but right now it doesn’t appear any of them outside of maybe Dallas will only work with one guy. I still think you should avoid using personal catchers and go with the best offensive matchup each day, within reason obviously.

And apparently the batteries are setup days in advance with no flexibility:

The two most egregious decisions are starting Collins over Grandal against a lefty despite two straight days off and facing a righty tomorrow and then leading off Leury over several better options.

Theoretically yes, but you may have just angered the baseball gods by being this confident ?

I think it’s a bigger indictment of La Russa’s old school tendencies to put a fast guy first. At least Leury is decent against LHP, but still would bat him lower in the lineup.

I would have gone with the following against the lefty: Madrigal, 2B Robert, CF Abreu, 1B Mercedes, DH Grandal, C# Vaughn, LF Moncada, 3B# Garcia, RF# Mendick, SS

Lineup posted: Garcia, RF# Robert, CF Abreu, 1B Moncada, 3B# Mercedes, DH Vaughn, LF Collins, C* Madrigal, 2B Mendick, SS

Being bold <> making baseball claims. There is zero reason think this will be a top five farm system after Vaughn, Kopech, Crochet, & Madrigal graduate...none whatsoever

They can do it at any time. The only difference now is they’ll have to make up for any time accrued so far this year. So if before he needed to be down 2.5 weeks now it’s closer to 4 and rising every game.

Madrigal is a nutshell so far this season: Elite contact ability (100th percentile) Improving walk rate (10.3% vs 3.7% LY) Poor quality of contact (.230 xwOBACON) Good not great speed (~70th percentile) Shitty defensive play (4th percentile in OAA) So far lacking a supposed high baseball IQ Personally, after doing this exercise I’m actually a bit more optimistic. His one elite tool (contact ability) he’s delivering on while his quality said of contact is way down from last year, which will almost certainly improve in a bigger sample. Nick will never be a power hitter given his approach and frame, so getting on base at a high clip is what will make or break him as an above league average hitter. The good news there is his walk rate is way up and that corresponds with an 11 point drop in his O-swing %. None of this is overly sexy or makes up for passing on potential high impact talents like Jarred Kelenic in the 2018 draft, but offensively there is a package here that can result in an incredibly effective #9 hitter / second leadoff hitter. Speed wise it’s very clear he wasn’t the plus plus runner some scouts pegged him as at Oregon St and that’s evident from just watching him. That being said, talk of him being slow is completely fabricated. He looks like he’ll be someone who will end up around the 75th percentile for sprint speed which is plenty fast but not necessarily game changing. I don’t envision him ever being a huge SB threat, probably plateauing in the 10 to 20 range. His speed should allow him provide positive value just running the bases as long as he can keep the gaffes to a minimum. And that feeds directly into his defense. What the hell is going on with this kid and why is he making so many mistakes and dumb decisions? He definitely made some ugly mistakes last year, but ultimately Statcast had his defense in the 85th percentile for OAA. This year he’s sitting in the 4th percentile and has actually looked like a liability out there. What he is in the field will ultimately decide whether he can be an above average 2B or not. IMO, I think he’s playing a bit scared out there and is in how own head right now. Some people here tend to forgot these are human beings and not robots and guys like Nick haven’t dealt with a lot of failure in their pro careers. You see it all the time with young guys being poor defenders when they first get called up with Moncada being a prime example of that at 2B. I do think his defense was probably a bit overstated, but I still expect Nick to be above average defensively in the end when he finally develops a bit more confidence in himself. If so, he can still be a very valuable player on a legit championship contending team.

The Sox are going to have to make a decision at some point about what to do with Vaughn. If they’re willing to commit to him in LF, then start doing so now and play him everyday. If not, send him down to AAA once Engel is back. Using him in a quasi platoon role isn’t going to help that much with his development and we’re burning a year of service time while doing so.

Correct - see “HoT fIrE” as an example

Yermin’s xBA per Statcast is .401 ?

How about 2/$40M?

God I love Lance Lynn...still wish they’d extent him