Dominikk85

Depends a lot on starter health. Offense and pen should be very good and if anyone is healthy they could even win 100 games. But there isn't a lot of starter depth and an injury to a key guy could be tough to compensate. However that really applies to most teams in baseball.

Not sure why they are doing that, the investment is low of course but using a roster spot for a pinch runner doesn't make much sense in these days. Sure it makes sense to take out Eloy late as he is very bad Defensively but are you using a roster spot for that? The issue with Hamilton really is that his issues are not fixable. He has decent plate discipline (28% career chase rate which is better than league average) but he has barely average contact rate (20.7% career K rate is ever so slightly above average but obviously not for a zero power guy) and of course By far the lowest exit velo in mlb. This means there is really no upside. If he was a no power, good contact guy like dee Gordon or madrigal he could at least hit for average but his K rate is not low enough for this. And obviously he also isn't a guy which can compensate for his low OBP with power. If the Sox want to have a low OBP speedster at least take a guy with power upside, the minors are full of really fast outfielders with power who can't hit. Or if you want hit tool get a no power good contact guy, but BH can do neither above average contact rate nor any kind of power.

I wrote it already in the other thread, I'm a big Vaughn fan but collins has been out hitting him this spring, so give collins the DH job, lucroy to back up and Vaughn to the minors and when Vaughn comes up in a month or so you figure out what to do with collins. Collins has earned his shot and Vaughn is not on the 40 man plus you get the extra year. Unless there is an extension that is an easy decision for me.

Gore really is all over the place, no command today.

Having two utility infielders is really not needed. Mendick and leury are kinda redundant, you only need one and then call up the other one when there is an injury.

With the crunch I would just keep Vaughn down a couple weeks and collect the extra service time year. Collins actually has a higher OPS than Vaughn (1063 vs 905) this spring so just give him the DH job, let lucroy back up and use those two or 3 weeks to decide whom to keep and then you bring up Vaughn in late April and get rid of one of lucroy or Collins. And if Collins and lucroy both really suck you bring up Vaughn a little earlier and if they both really do well you wait for super two. Collins raking is the perfect excuse to service time Vaughn and just going by roster crunch and 40 man status this might be the best decision anyway.

Honestly if they don't give Collins the backup job after the spring he is having why keep him at all? I mean he is 26 now, staching him in the minors really has no value. So either give him the backup job or trade him, maybe his hot spring training is a good point to sell high on him.

They are compared as the top 1b prospects. I wonder if Vaughn should be seen as the top 1b prospect about torkelson at that point.

Torkelson finally got his first hit but he is 1 for 17 with 10 Ks and 3 walks. I wouldn't be worried about 1 for 17 if I was a tigers fan but 10 Ks in 20 PAs clearly shows that he is not ready at all and probably won't be ready until mid 2022.Vaughn on the other hand looks pretty good, hitting 300 with good plate discipline and decent strikeout numbers (16% so far this spring, if he can keep that under 20 this season it would be great).

It is interesting how bad the draft is for college hitting after 18 and 19 were so good on college hitting and 20 was slightly down from that turning towards pitching but still decent. But this draft seems to be all pitching on the college side, I'm Sure guys will pop up but there aren't really guys like Vaughn, madrigal, rutschman, torkelson or martin who had been talked about as top 3 picks already in their soph year. But that makes me optimistic the sox are not getting another athletically challenged college high performer:)

He still looks stiff behind the plate but it is good to see that he is trying the modern framing stuff with going on a knee and catching the ball low to high. Not sure how good he executes it and he probably will remain a bad blocker but at least he tries the new stuff.

Does anyone else think Collins swing got better? Imo his load looks a bit more quiet and he also so far has only one K in 19 PAs. It is spring and a small sample but if he can lower his K percentage to let's say under 25% he could be a really good hitter with his walks (maybe even a Carlos Santana type of hitter).

Engel or any other current mlb bench player would probably extremely dominate if time machined to 1910 simply because pitchers threw like 83 instead of 95, it is like facing division 3 college pitching (and most pro players would probably hit 400 at the d3 level). However of course he also wouldn't be as good if he grew up with 1910 training methods and nutrition and if he had to work full time in the off season like many players at the time did.

Kawasaki is an extremely hilarious dude Watch some snippets here Imatitating Bautista homerun celebration On mastering English language https://youtu.be/Jm9bEizIGBE

And why wouldn't they after all those years? The white Sox don't owe him anything as they paid him well and the game has passed by him but of course a guy who dedicated his life to baseball will feel bad if he loses his job and doesn't get a new one with another team. Baseball was his whole life and getting told he can't do that anymore is hard. I'm sure he understands that this can happen quickly but it sucks nontheless. I think he is a great pitching coach who knows a ton about pitching but in the last 5-6 years that field just evolved so fast that he just lost touch with it and the Sox needed to adjust to that.

Yermin and Vaughn have looked quite good so far in spring but are you concerned about the spring showing of some of the invited non mlb ready prospects? Burger, sheets, Adolfo, Gonzalez and Rutherford have not done very well so far. Granted those are not super important prospects for the Sox as the core is pretty much set and the future probably hinges more on the new Cuban hitters and the young pitchers than on those older second tier hitters but nonetheless it would be nice if one or two of them could step up. Obviously it is also only about 10 PAs or so for each so stats don't really Say much at that point. As I have not seen much spring training does anyone of them look better than their stats and has maybe taken a step forward?

There definitely is a link but not a strong one. The chance for a kid or brother of an MLB player to make MLB is a lot higher than for the general population but it is still not very high. The performance "window" is just super small so that just very few players have the genetic ability. But yes if you compare the athletic talent of The sons of an MLB player and let's say a random math teacher than most likely the son of the MLB player is more gifted. But pro players are so good that even a quad A player is like 99.9th percentile of athletic ability. In short: another brother of Tatis is much more likely to become a pro player than your or my kid but you can't predict whether he becomes Fernando Tatis or Gordon Beckham. Also apart from the genetic component a son of an MLB player like Tatis of course is more likely to learn baseball early and gets good instruction which helps their chance too. Still most sons of MLB players don't make MLB but obviously sons of random people make MLB even more rarely.

Mauer was an excellent defender before he got those concussion issues that ruined his career. Don't think that can be compared to Collins.

I think rodon will get the first 2 or 3 starts but if he sucks or gets hurt there will be a pretty quick hook and Lopez takes over.

I think this team has to be a chance to be the best team since at least the late 1910s. The 2005 team was good but this team has a much better offense (only plus hitters 05 where konerko and dye if you don't count the 37 games of Thomas) and while the pitching 05 was really good I think they got very lucky as those pitchers weren't truly at that level. But they got it done so until the Sox win again they have that.

I think he probably can play third in a way young miggy Cabrera did, I. E you can put him there occasionally and he fields balls directly at him and throw them to first. I don't think he is a capable full time third baseman by any stretch, that probably is more of an experiment

He will probably catch like 30 games, la Russa played molina 130+ games at catcher and will do so with grandal

I think la Russa will play grandal a ton. Molina also caught a lot of games every year with la Russa (often around 130+). This could mean lucroy gets a shot because for 30 games catcher offense doesn't really matter. If he played a more even split (say 110/50 or even 100/60) then offense of the backup catcher would matter a lot more because you don't want an offensive black hole in one third of your games. So it all depends on how much he wants to use grandal. I'm sure he wants to use him a lot but maybe the FO tells him to give grandal a few more days at DH to rest his legs and then offense of the backup catcher could matter a little more.

Doesn't mean much but spencer torkelson so far is hitless in 11 PAs with 3 walks and 5 Ks. Not quite comparable to Vaughn who is a year older and least had a season in A ball and a full alternate site season but so far Vaughn looks better than torkelson. Tork still has more raw power potential but Vaughn could have a better hit tool, he struck out less in college too (75k, 123 bb vs 104 Ks and 110 bb in about 100 less PAs for Tork).

There are also scouts who don't love Leiters big drop slow curve. That works in amateur ball but scouts think that pro hitters will see that loop out of the hand and would prefer a straighter power curve. Giolito had a similar issue, had that big curve which was great in amateur ball but pro hitters would pick it up which is why in pro ball he leaned more on the slider and now works on a less bendy curve that is straighter out of the hand.