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He's keeping a strong backside on the offspeed stuff. Sliders that he would roll over last year he's hitting where they're pitched this year. I hope it's more than just a streak and he's made some meaningful improvements because god damn is he gifted as an athlete. Clearly has put on strength this year. We are seeing him develop physically at the least. Long term, he is probably a #6-#9 hitter on a playoff team but with this roster, he should be at the top of the order getting as many looks as possible. OBP be damned.

This has to be language related. TA was rightfully livid when he was ejected and was yelling at the umps as he was walked off the field. As per Joe West - Here's an umpire in the American League that knows nothing about the game of baseball!

Yes and as you pointed out, all thoughts about Robert's future both short term and long term need to have mention of the significant caveat that is his health.

^^ Yup what he said. Top draft picks and top international amateurs (especially position players) have less to gain from extensions and more risk from signing an extension. At the end of the day, there are more factors at play than just the players financial standings at the time where an extension would make sense, but that's kind of the broad way of looking at things. I do think the players representation (particularly if they're with a lesser-known agent) is very important consideration as well.

Someone else said it and I totally agree - it's very possible Sox are very conservative with Robert to avoid any service time attention next April. If the Sox pull up Robert to Bham in May, and he continues to dominating, people will expect him AAA by the end of the year. Then when he puts on a show in ST next year the Sox will be the evil team holding him back like with Eloy. Robert seems unlikely to do one of these extensions everyone else is doing because he got his signing bonus when he came stateside so Sox would want to hold him back for the 7th year of control. I think Sox would like to have Robert split time between A+/AA but we'll see how long they can keep him in W-S if he keeps this up.

Lost in the shuffle of all this is the absolute bomb Timmy hit. He's made some adjustments at the plate and is staying in there much better against breaking balls but his body is really developing. He is getting stronger and more powerful every year. He's got some BABIP regression coming but he's made some improvements too. Very exciting.

My guy. Hope all is well up there. At least some of us should be privy to good baseball.

Nice post CWS. They have so many decent or strong performing college draftee arms in A/A+. 1&2) I think Walker to W-S, Robert to BHAM and Booker to Charlotte should happen by the end of the month or whenever Basabe returns. Pretty much explains itself given the prospects and performances of those mentioned and others. 3) Varnell is kind of interesting given how bad his college #s were and he only got 5k in signed as a senior. I'll write off his success in the AZL as a 23-year-old but 22/2 K/BB in 17 innings is incredible even if SSS. Sox said he was going to be a reliever at draft time but he's started every appearance in the org. I think he could get overlooked ultimately but there is a lot of trash on the W-S staff. 4) I think McClure is an example of making players "earn" their promotions. That's kind of a newer trend since Getz joined the org but he should be in W-S soon given that roto is a bunch of non-factors. 5) Sousa could be behind Perez in the promotion line with them both being lefty relievers with success against younger competition. I think Sox like Perez more. 6) The Sox are moving Moncada prematurely to 3B for this guy so I'd imagine Madrigal is the one prospect the Sox really push forward compared to the rest. Sox 40 man decisions these next few offseasons will be difficult so Sox may be hesitant to push guys up through the system but Madrgial would be the one exception IMO. 7) Pilkington has good numbers but I've seen some bad scouting reports on his stuff. I would say with a 3rd rounder who was a Friday night starter at a big program that we should push him up quick but he's surprisingly young. He wouldve been one of the youngest people in his high school class if my math is right. ? Hansen - who knows 10) Flores was great in AA last year and is picking up where he left off. I feel that the HR-unfriendly Regions Fields is kind to a guy who gets by on pitch-ability and Sox might prefer him to stay in Bham to work. He's definitely earned consideration though.

I don't think this will happen for the following reasons. 1) Sox have had catchers that are terrible working with pitchers since Flowers left. Given the Sox willingness to dump Narvaez so quickly (given his career progression) and the Sox opting to sign McCann early in the offseason with better options available (implies he was a "target"), it seems game managing is a priority for the Sox. Swihart's reputation is that pitchers don't like throwing to him. 2) McCann is the catcher for Rodon/Giolito. I don't think the Sox want to deviate from that path for an incremental upgrade. 3) Collins has a role on the 2019 lineup. I don't see how he and Swihart coexist on the roster. 4) If Swihart is not the best catcher/game caller, the assumption is you're acquiring him for his bat. His performance is shockingly bad. I know the BoSox have jerked him around and perhaps mismanaged his career but there is no track record to speak of here.

You may have an argument but it's not happening. If everyone takes a look at the split of McCann and Castillo starting behind the plate you'll notice that McCann always catches Rodon and Giolito. That's by design and not going to change. Rodon's "camp" - we'll say - has been very vocal in the past about the lack of quality catching on the MLB roster.

This is a bit disingenuous. I don't think you're wrong either as there are certainly fans who don't like Madrigal because he has no power or he's short or he's not ceiling, etc. etc. I said the Sox would take him and wanted the Sox to do so. Madrigal's swing does not look like it did when he ascended to top 5 draft pick status. You can have an appreciation for the player and his game while also fairly pointing out less positive developments.

I understand that. That doesn't mean the Sox don't care about the development of the others just because Robert is the priority.

Rutherford has had a string of 35 bad PA's. Not going to dump on him yet. The interesting issue is that with Adolfo/Rutherford/Gonzalez all struggling and Basabe soon returning from injury, the Sox don't really have a spot for Robert at BHam and that's completely disregarding Booker who I am sure the Sox would like to play. If I am the Sox I probably pull up Booker to AAA now as he's 25. From there, you either have to hope Basabe hits the ground running and you can promote him right away or Luis Gonzalez has the maturity to handle basically skipping AA.

On the contrary, Courtney Hawkins.

You're not wrong. There's not walking, then there is posting a .298 OBP with a .290 average over nearly 300 PAs. That's actually impressively bad plate discipline. That said, Perez has 6 BB's in 23 AB's (including his 2 PAs tonight) in W-S this year. Last year had 4 BBs in 276 ABs at Kanny.

Sox got some good arms from the left side in the bullpen picture but Medeiros should be working out of the pen sooner than later. It's actually impressive how good Madrigal's stats look against how he's actually looked. He hasn't even gotten hot this year despite how his slash will look after today. SSS I know. I did not like what I saw from his hack this weekend.

He would provide as much value to the future at 2B as Yolmer.

Sox are historically not concerned with Super 2. Cease's debut depends on three things: 1) His performance 2) The MLB roto's performance 3) The Sox capping his innings. He probably has some number in the range of 150-170 innings. Since we aren't competing it might be less important as they can shut him down whenever they want. If he dominates his next few starts and Santana is getting shelled get him up here. Sox will have so many inexperienced guys next year with Kopech and Dunning returning, Collins and some chunk of the OF prospects. I want Cease learning up here soon.

1) Yeah, you can reread the exchange and see who took it personal. 2) I don't want to call you wrong, you just happened to be wrong. You speak about everything matter-of-factly whether you have any substance behind your take or not. Also, I pointed out you were wrong so people don't think your inaccurate info is real. Your response to me doing that is moving goal posts and making it personal because at the end of the day you can't back up bullshit with facts so changing the subject was your only course. I have asked for the rules before. They don't exist. I also PM'ed you asking what the broken rules were. You didn't respond. I guess you're more concerned with the public shaming attempt here than you are in clarity towards the rules. 3) I don't even know what you're talking about. You need this to be personal and you're taking it that way because you can't debate your points on merit because they are factually inaccurate. The hypocrisy is actually impressive. Instead of admitting you were wrong in the first place, you have absolutely derailed the thread to change the subject from you being wrong to me eating cake and likening me to a fallen company you don't understand. That's great leadership. You need to get off your pedastool. For those who don't know, the owner of the site has a young family and a demanding career and as a result, can't manage the site as much as may he have in the past. That's a great thing and has happened to a lot of people that used to be frequent users/mods/admins. I post way less than what I did when I was in. In any case, there are a bunch of mundane, boring tasks that need to be completed like accepting new members, monitoring for spam accounts, changing users names, etc. Since 2k5 is online here all the time, he does most of this stuff. So the site's back-end functioning is a lot of stuff s2k5 does. As such, he's valuable to keeping the site running and reprimanding him or calling him on his shit isn't something people are willing to do. And no one would want him to leave the site because those tedious tasks would have to be picked up by someone else. So the externality created is s2k5 thinks he's better than everyone else, can condescend/attack people without reprimand and can use his power against those he disagrees with (regardless of "rules" and norms around here). And while the forum's reaction isn't infallible, look at how objective people responded to this personal shit storm you created. I might flip it the other way by addressing it but there's not a lot of support for your posts in this. People seem to be responding positively to what I had to you. And I am not the most popular poster by any stretch, but I think it speaks to the fact that most people prefer factually-based reasoning as opposed to the personal digs and idioms you put out.

And unfortunately it's the playing environment. Most teams have some type of stadium deal.

Woof. You must think that's quite the zinger given your repeated use of it. I guess when you can't speak on the topic at hand you gotta keep it personal. Stay classy s2k5.

Re: the financials: It's far more complicated than you're presenting and I get that as you may not have the understanding necessary. Knowing how much ISFA paid for the Sox deal is only one piece of the puzzle. In order to answer Fan O'Faust's question, you would need much more detail. As his question was about the White Sox operating results (not the ISFA financials that you're clinging to in hopes of salvaging your initial inaccurate comment), that additional detail needed would have to come from the Sox. Further than that, assessing what the Sox would be paying in a market scenario would be a daunting task in itself. His question is only answered if the cost of the alternative is understood. Butt since you're going to get personal I'll bow out since we both know how you play with the rules. I am not sure of the relevance here. Enron was a fraud based upon bogus special purposes entities, recognizing profits before they'd been realized and conflict of interest creating Independence issues between the executive team and the public accounting firm. The White Sox took advantage of corrupt political environment. Also, Enron was a public entity so their financials and operating results are readily accessible to anyone whereas the White Sox are a private institution. Furthermore, Enron's execs were creating dubious financials to pump the publicly traded stock. Publicly traded stocks created hundreds of thousands of shareholders that the executives screwed over. Where the Sox are only beholden to only their private group of ownership and their creditor(s) (if any). Sometimes it's a lot easier to just admit you're wrong on the first point you made rather than moving goal posts to open up another can of worms that you can't intelligibly speak to. I should say though, congrats on your recent SoxTalk anniversary. 16 whole years of making 26 posts a day. That's quite an accomplishment.

I am not surprised. Most professional sports teams in America (that aren't ponzi-scheme MLS) have been incredibly profitable since the 80's in terms of operating results and in return on equity.

He made his own point and he was pretty clear to that end. He wanted to know how much of the Sox profit is related to the kush deal they have. That would require valuations services on what their stadium would cost in a free market scenario. That would require understanding the financials of the White Sox. None of that is available via FOIA That's great except they are not the Sox. You should put in a FOIA with them to see how much of the Sox profits come from their deal and report back.

The poster wasn't asking about ISTA's profits.