Dominikk85

Yeah I agree. Having a good catcher is a plus but since a catcher usually can only catch for like 450 PAs his offensive impact is a bit limited and thus teams often just except bad catcher hitting, get some guys with good gloves and get offense elsewhere. Sure if you get a guy like Grandal or realmuto that is good but otherwise a good fielder with a 90 wrc+ is fine too.

I'm relatively sure the sox will pick another college player unless one of the top 1-2 falls because the strength of this draft is clearly college players and a college player also fits the timeline of the sox window better. So either a college pitcher or hitter.

The sox System after the top 5 is also quite thin and the difference between 6 and 20 is not all that large as they have a decent depth of 40s but not much in the 45-50 range behind the big 4.

That could work but lower level pitching prospects are not yielding great returns, especially if they are not raking (causing the sox willing to trade him) because of the theo Epstein mantra of developing hitting and buying pitching, I.e teams prefer trading for close to mlb ready pitchers as they have less bust risk. If he is showing signs of not being good and still in high A ball his trade value won't be high. If you plan to trade a guy better get a HS hitter as good HS hitters already have good trade value in the low minors if they perform some.

Sure they can be wrong and 15% is not nothing but not sure it is good to hope for the outlier. At 11 you need some risk if you want upside, that is not like a top5 pick but I'd want At least like a 50% chance to start. Sure he could be sale but more likely he is fulmer or if it is not quite as bad a good reliever. Now if he becomes a top5 closer that is a good result for a 11th pick but it could also be worse so I would prefer a safer starter floor.

Here is the article https://blogs.fangraphs.com/top-38-prospects-chicago-white-sox/ 1. Robert 2. Kopech 3. Vaughn 4. Madrigal Robert and kopech get 60s, vaughn and madrigal 55s, no other 50+ prospects. Depth has suffered from graduations and injuries/underperformance but the top4 are as good as any other system still.

So anyone gets pushed back a year?

I have seen some hints there will be no milb season but a mlb season. How would that affect prospects ETA? Younger prospects will of course be delayed but will near ready guys like Vaughn be promoted earlier so that don't lose a year of development? I could see the sox bringing up Vaughn earlier and madrigal definitely should be up if there is no season. Any other prospects who would not have made opening day who could be brought up due to this situation to not lose too much development time?

Also even if the contraction makes the talent pipeline worse it doesn't really matter as all teams are doing it so there is no disadvantage. I think for quality of talent it won't make a difference either way. Most good or even average mlb players are from the first 10-15 rounds and contracting the minors and draft won't change that. Sure there is the occasional good 30th rounder (piazza) but those are exceptions. Regarding focusing of resources I don't think that is a big effect either as teams are already focusing resources on the real talents and the fillers aren't getting much attention anyway. In the end it is mostly saving costs without really any big disadvantage. Sure an occasional diamond in the rough will be missed but that applies to all teams so nothing is really lost for the individual teams.

I think revenue will be lower to zero in 2020 but in 2021 revenue will be almost normal again and then teams will need cheap talent. Sure teams will lose money in 2020 but the draft really isn't a lot of money plus 2020 they will only have to pay up to 100k anyway.

That would be extremely stupid long term because prospects are worth 4-5 times the amount of their bonus cost. Moncada got 40m while rutschman got like 9m, this should tell you how much a top prospect is really worth. Saving 5m in the draft means losing like 20-25m in surplus value that you have to buy on the open market then.

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.