Dominikk85

I'm not against a college hitter but only if one of the top4 falls. Imo there is quite a drop of in talent of college hitters after that. 2012 college hitters 1. Mike Zunino 2. David Dahl 3.tyler naquin 4. Devan marrero Other notables - 2013: 1. Bryant 2. Hunter Dozier 3.dj Peterson 4. Hunter renfroe Notables: Tim anderson 2014: 1. Schwarber 2. Conforto 3. Pentecost 4.trea Turner Notables:Bradley Zimmer 2015: 1. Swanson 2. Bergman 3. Benintendi 4. Happ Notables: Kevin Newman, DJ Stewart Generally the top 3 tend to be good to very good with some exceptions but then there usually is a big drop if in the first round and the rounds after that get really bad. 2015 was a bit of an exception as it was very deep on college guys but generally I would want one of the top4 or a prep guy. College pitcher I also would want one of the top 3-4.

Definitely, some spin axis adjustment/pitch design could improve him a lot, you just have to trust the Sox pitching dev to do that. Generally at 11 you have to concede something, this is not a top5 pick and you either have to give up ceiling if you want a really sound, polished player or floor and accept some flaws that need to be worked out if you want high ceiling. The super safe but high upside guys will be long gone at 11 and you will have to give something.

I would take franco because his k to bb ratio makes him less risky plus he is a shortstop. Robert with his k to bb is more risky albeit acuna and tatis also had bad k to bb in the minors and raked (by slightly improving k to bb and tons of power and speed). Also talents like franco with great tools, advanced hit and great plate discipline often take very little time in the upper minors (like soto) so franco could be ready some time in late 2020 too albeit the Rays are not a team bringing up prospects early.

I would be a bit worried about that. His FB does look straight and in the video the hitter was fouling off a ton of fastballs. If he loses 2 or 3 mph on his Fb it could be very bad. You can be good with a bad fastball (kluber) but then you have to have at least one plus plus offspeed pitch.

Video at mlbtr speculating shortened season could help sox. 1. More time for kopech and rodon to come back from injury 2.young guys could come up and perform right away with less time for the league to find holes in their swing 3. The old players will wear down less as the Sox have very young and some 34+ yo players but not many of the 27-31 year olds who tend to be good and very durable 4. Possibly innings limit for young pitchers could be less of an issue https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2020/04/how-the-white-sox-could-benefit-from-a-shortened-season.html

I see nothing wrong with giving reed a chance. After all he was a top prospect. It didn't work but those reclamation projects are exactly what you need to try, sometimes a change of scenery does motivate a player who got stuck in his old org. Now motivation isn't everything and really most of the time it doesn't work but if they only saw a 30% chance it could have worked it would have been worth the gamble. Yermin is a cool story and he earned a chance with his perfomance but he is not the kind of prospect you create an opportunity for. The one it really sucked for was Collins, he should have given more playing time. I also wonder why Collins didn't catch more, it would have hurt the pitchers but who cares last year when the team was going nowhere anyway

The first round HS talents (i.e toolsy players with advanced playability and mechanics) will sign anyway, especially since there is speculation of the next draft being shorter too and colleges will have a crunch too with extra eligibility. The guys who will not sign is the high upside more raw/flawed guys who would have been taken like 50-100th overall in the draft.

Buehrle was so good at the small stuff. His career k-bb% was just 8% and his FIP 4.1 but he gained 0.3 era points by being good at all of the small stuff (running game, pitcher defense, avoiding wild pitches). Each of those things is not very important but if you are great at all of them it adds up. Basically he was the anti Nolan Ryan who was terrible at all of those small things and thus underperformed his FIP. Still run of course was a better pitcher because he was better at the "core business" of a pitcher but still interesting to compare those extremes. buehrle isn't quite a hall of famer but 52 fWAR and 60 fWAR (which is probably more accurate since his FIP suppressing skill seems pretty real) is pretty impressive given his modest stuff. If one of the young sox pitchers can have a career like him that would be great.

A lot will depend on the next two weeks. If social distancing works I could see games without fans starting in late may. But if the situation in major cities like new York tilts and hospitals are so full that people die on the streets like in parts of italy and Spain there would be a good chance there is no pro sports in 2020. I mean if NYC health care collapses I don't see games happen but if the increase levels off it could happen. It possible they will definitely go for empty stadiums over no games because that would cost lots of money but most important is TV money. The only way fanless games are not considered is when mlb believes they can start full stadium games before early may so they can do close to a full season. But since that is highly unlikely those empty seats games won't really cost mlb money because the limit is time and not games played so those lost live gates early in the season could never be caught up later in the season anyway.

Don't like the draft changes but which manfred rules are bad? Instant replay? Catcher collisions banned? DP Brake up slide banned? Second wildcard? No pitch IBB? 3 batter minimum? 26th roster spot? Pitch clock? I like most of those rules. Manfred is a puppet of the owners and I'm not a big fan but I don't hate most of the actual rule changes of his era so far. Jury is still out on the changes he likely will be like international draft or robot ump but I don't think those will be bad either.

I think path to the majors matters more for college prospects. HS prospects often take 4-5 years and you can hardly plan that far ahead but for advanced college guys who might take 2-3 years it could play a bigger role.

The biggest fear I have is that those changes will stick. Mlb owners wanted to "streamline " player dev anyway and contract the minors so maybe they use this draft to start this and always make only like a 15-20 round draft instead of 40. After a 10 round draft there will be less resistance against a 20 round draft then after a 40 round draft.

I agree, definitely good to invest a lot now even if it means lots of new debt. Need to keep the economy running. What is bad is that goverment in the US hasn't saved money or slightly raised interests (not much, just a tiny bit) during good economy. Yeah that would have slowed growth a bit but it is actually good to slow the growth a bit during boom so you can invest when there is recession. Problem is people got greedy and never stopped lighting the fire during boom and now you don't have many reserves to put into. Still they absolutely need to invest now at all costs but hopefully they learn from this next time and stop big spending during the next good phase.

Yeah I'm leaning left but I have nothing against sane, moderate conservatives plus there are crazy leftists too. Definitely pretty crazy atmosphere in us politics right now.

Good discussion here. It seems white sox fans tend to be more reasonable, when I read political discussions in cubs forums it always seemed to be at least 40% crazy right wing guys.

Probably will still miss time even if whole season is cancelled, some come back after 12 months but average is like 15-18 months, sometimes even more. More likely timeline for him is like after all star break 2021.

It would suck for every team to lose a year of their window but teams at the start of their window still are in a better situation. Sucks way more when it happens towards the end of your window, sometimes this is your only shot (like the royals when they won their WS and shortly after the team fell apart). If you lose that year (nats maybe too last year who also were more towards the end of a 5-6 year window, albeit they were already supposed to be after the window after harper left). At least the sox will have 4-5 more chances after 2020 if 2020 doesn't happen.

Trump just switches what he says every day, can't give too much on his words.

This crisis is probably the biggest crisis of the western world since the end of the cold war, the finance crisis and Islamic terrorism is nothing against that. In the end it will cause hundreds of thousands of deaths and a worldwide recession that is worse than any recession in the last 50 years. Unfortunately people realized it too late, just two weeks ago people still were partying and not taking it seriously and now it has hit them hard. Some have suggested to continue work and just let the old people die to prevent the recession but this is not doable even if you accept the deaths because there are not enough ICU beds in hospitals to treat all the people and if you don't shut down there us no space to treat other patients either and health care would collapse. Thus unfortunately there is no alternative to lockdown which will cause a recession of course.

If the season would be cancelled the Dodgers would be a big loser as they made that big trade for that one betts season. Would suck for them giving up that much and not get a game from betts.

They could still start an 81 game season around late june so until then they don't need to cancel. So if they could start a shortened spring training june first and then regular season june 24th or so they could play 81 games and a normal post season. If they can't start anything (not even spring training) by mid July there might not be a season. I believe there will be a season albeit a truncated one.

I think this mostly means draft rankings are mostly set now by preseason rankings and a little bit by the small sample this year. The stats from this season mean very little but some information like health and velo gains or losses or power gains by hitters (trackman) are still out there. Teams can't really use era or ops data from this year but things like velo and max EV are telling even in a small sample.

Regarding nick Gonzalez he has performed extremely well but longenhagen said he played in a very weak conference and did look not so good against some of the better pitchers looking overwhelmed by high 80s fastballs. Wonder if that could mean he could fall. He definitely has the tools but maybe the hit tool isn't that advanced.

Probably reconsidered corona jokes after the gobert disaster:)

Considering the number of graduations the system is still decent. The only bad thing is that a lot of depth has evaporated due to prospects failing to develope or getting injured. In the last 2-3 years a ton of guys who were ranked close to top100 busted or regressed. Sox player dev and medical staff can be blamed for that. Fortunately they seem to be investing more in player dev and sabermetrics now but it is a little late now because there isn't as much high upside talent left to develope. They really would have needed that player dev a year or two ago, maybe then the system now would be deeper.