Moncada

[SCCWS]

2 hours ago, Chicago White Sox said:

I just want to know what the fuck Steverson is doing with this kid.  When Moncada goes bad, he looks completely lost & hopeless.  FFS, no one should strike out looking four times in one game.  Adjustments should be made in terms of approach.  So that means either Steverson isn’t coaching in real time or Moncada isn’t listening.  To me, that’s the most frustrating part.

or something is getting lost in the translation...........................

[footlongcomiskeydog]

2 hours ago, Chicago White Sox said:

I just want to know what the fuck Steverson is doing with this kid.  When Moncada goes bad, he looks completely lost & hopeless.  FFS, no one should strike out looking four times in one game.  Adjustments should be made in terms of approach.  So that means either Steverson isn’t coaching in real time or Moncada isn’t listening.  To me, that’s the most frustrating part.

Have you not been watching this team for the past decade and change? The coaching and development of young players, especially on the position player side, is not something this organization excels at. For better or worse, most of these young guys are on their own when it comes to learning how to play in the big leagues.

[Eminor3rd]

6 hours ago, Two-Gun Pete said:

We all see the "loud tools," & we all look hopefully toward Moncada becoming what his tools say he should be.

OTOH, I keep going back to wondering exactly why he "had to" be called up last July. Last year, we all had to read how "Moncada has nothing left to learn in AAA."

This year, we have to wonder if he can hit RH, if he'll ever get his K rate down, if he'll ever take a more aggressive approach early in counts, if he'll ever learn to protect in 2-strike counts, if he'll ever learn consistency in his approach to fielding, among other issues.

I said then, & I still say now that Moncada had a lot more than "nothing left to learn." Him failing to become an absolute STUD would hurt this rebuild significantly.

If what he's doing now -- 93 wRC+, which is maybe a standard deviation below  a league average MLB batting line -- is "failure," then I would say it's pretty clear that he should be learning at the MLB level. 

The power is there, the speed is there, and the defense is passable and improving. The only thing between him and stardom is pitch selection. He needs to be working on recognizing Major League-quality pitches.

Edited August 7, 2018 by Eminor3rd

[caulfield12]

Byron Buxton, 1046 career at-bats, 4.6 fWAR

Yoan Moncada, 712 career at-bats, 2.2 fWAR

[GGajewski18]

16 minutes ago, caulfield12 said:

Byron Buxton, 1046 career at-bats, 4.6 fWAR

Yoan Moncada, 712 career at-bats, 2.2 fWAR

I'd be willing to bet that at least 3.5 of that WAR is defensively.  Buxton hasn't done anything offensively.

[footlongcomiskeydog]

4 hours ago, Eminor3rd said:

If what he's doing now -- 93 wRC+, which is maybe a standard deviation below  a league average MLB batting line -- is "failure," then I would say it's pretty clear that he should be learning at the MLB level. 

The power is there, the speed is there, and the defense is passable and improving. The only thing between him and stardom is pitch selection. He needs to be working on recognizing Major League-quality pitches.

Don't you think he needs to become a league average second baseman before we start declaring him a star? 

Also, the bolded is a lot easier said than done. Many a baseball career has been derailed by an inability to ever full recogonize and adjust to major league pitching. 

 

[SCCWS]

At this stage I am amazed he is still leading off.  I know he is dropped down when a lefty is pitching, but maybe the kid needs to bat lower in the order just to see if it helps.  Even move him to 2nd where he had the most success last year.  

[ChiSox59]

50 minutes ago, caulfield12 said:

Byron Buxton, 1046 career at-bats, 4.6 fWAR

Yoan Moncada, 712 career at-bats, 2.2 fWAR

Mentioned this here before...but I live in Minneapolis, and obviously my buddies are Twins fans.  I had the under on a bet with a bud on Buxton's fWAR at 3.5.  It ended at 3.5.  I ended up looking up the calculations and doing the math...it came out to like 3.4975.  I had Eno Saris confirm my math via twitter DM, which he amazingly did.  

It was an incredible line we set.  Was offered the same bet this year, which I declined, because I took an amazing amount of shit from my buddies the last several weeks of last season as Buxton's fWAR rose and rose and rose.  Wasn't worth it...but man I wish I did this year.  But instead I did Twins under 85 wins, so not all is bad.  They've been awfully quiet....

[Eminor3rd]

26 minutes ago, footlongcomiskeydog said:

Don't you think he needs to become a league average second baseman before we start declaring him a star? 

Also, the bolded is a lot easier said than done. Many a baseball career has been derailed by an inability to ever full recogonize and adjust to major league pitching. 

 

He IS a league average second baseman, he just doesn't have a league average batting line, which is propped up by first baseman and corner outfielders. MLB league average 2B is 94 wRC+ this year. Moncada is 93.

Regarding the second line: I never said it wasn't. The conversation I was having was about whether or not Moncada needed more time in AAA. Moncada has disappointed everyone by not being a star this year, but he has NOT been overmatched.

He's 23. He's working out his struggles in the Majors, where most 23 year olds are working out their struggles in AA/AAA. This is good. He's on a good track.

Edited August 7, 2018 by Eminor3rd

[caulfield12]

9 minutes ago, Eminor3rd said:

He IS a league average second baseman, he just doesn't have a league average batting line, which is propped up by first baseman and corner outfielders. MLB league average 2B is 94 wRC+ this year. Moncada is 93.

Regarding the second line: I never said it wasn't. The conversation I was having was about whether or not Moncada needed more time in AAA. Moncada has disappointed everyone by not being a star this year, but he has NOT been overmatched.

He's 23. He's working out his struggles in the Majors, where most 23 year olds are working out their struggles in AA/AAA. This is good. He's on a good track.

How many strikeouts would he have to accumulate to qualify as overmatched?

Yeah, I know part of it's umpires, called 3rd strikes (even letting the umpire get in that position to make a decision, as Madrigal points out in his interviews)...not being aggressive early, guessing wrong on pitches, being in-between, etc.  It feels like he has gotten behind in the count almost every at-bat since the beginning of May (coming off DL), with a few rather memorable exceptions where he's done damage early in the count.

But when is the last time he absolutely clobbered an upper 90's fastball?   Giles last year?  It seems like most of his homers have come again fastballs in the 91-93 mph range.  Others who follow gamethreads would probably have the answer.

[Bob Sacamano]

Maybe he should switch to a lighter bat again. Or start loading up sooner.

[southsider2k5]

42 minutes ago, footlongcomiskeydog said:

Don't you think he needs to become a league average second baseman before we start declaring him a star? 

Also, the bolded is a lot easier said than done. Many a baseball career has been derailed by an inability to ever full recogonize and adjust to major league pitching. 

 

If you are using the standard that 2.0 WAR is league average for a positional starter, he is almost exactly the definition of league average right now as we speak.

[caulfield12]

13 minutes ago, southsider2k5 said:

If you are using the standard that 2.0 WAR is league average for a positional starter, he is almost exactly the definition of league average right now as we speak.

And yet if you started out with this "spin" the day of the Sale trade...that he would be fighting just to be average, well...that wouldn't have been considered a win.  But at least we have Kopech and Basabe, right?

Or we can go with Javier Baez's 4.9 cumulative fWAR from 2014-2017, yes?  That's even worse than Moncada (pace-wise) today...Baez debuted at 22, right around the same time as Moncada.

Of course, there's no comparison in terms of the core of Cubs' players around Baez.  Rizzo, Bryant, Contreras and the rest of their young position players picked up the slack and allowed Baez "not to have to be THE man" until he finally broke through this season.   Right now, Moncada only has Jimenez to pick up the slack and take off the yoke of expectations and most of the spotlight away from him.  And maybe Abreu/Avi, but who is writing their name/s in pen onto the 2020 roster?

Now I'm a bit concerned Hahn will pull the trigger on moving up Jimenez and Kopech...to have the season with Moncada tailspinning below a .200 batting average over these last two months would be a PR disaster for the White Sox to deal with all offseason. Hahn will spend most of it defending himself and the rebuild, and promoting those two and Cease whenever he could go on the attack.   At this point, it's highly unlikely he would choose to send Moncada down, for the same reason that Giolito has been up all season long.

[caulfield12]

52 minutes ago, ChiSox59 said:

Mentioned this here before...but I live in Minneapolis, and obviously my buddies are Twins fans.  I had the under on a bet with a bud on Buxton's fWAR at 3.5.  It ended at 3.5.  I ended up looking up the calculations and doing the math...it came out to like 3.4975.  I had Eno Saris confirm my math via twitter DM, which he amazingly did.  

It was an incredible line we set.  Was offered the same bet this year, which I declined, because I took an amazing amount of shit from my buddies the last several weeks of last season as Buxton's fWAR rose and rose and rose.  Wasn't worth it...but man I wish I did this year.  But instead I did Twins under 85 wins, so not all is bad.  They've been awfully quiet....

Are they more upset about Sano or Buxton?

What do they do next...rebuild AGAIN?  They're in a terrible position right now.  Not worse than the Royals and Tigers, maybe, but not much better off.  Rosario's had a really strong (break-through) year, but can he repeat it?  Berrios has been pretty good, but NOT an ace, either.

Edited August 7, 2018 by caulfield12

[footlongcomiskeydog]

36 minutes ago, Eminor3rd said:

He IS a league average second baseman, he just doesn't have a league average batting line, which is propped up by first baseman and corner outfielders. MLB league average 2B is 94 wRC+ this year. Moncada is 93.

Regarding the second line: I never said it wasn't. The conversation I was having was about whether or not Moncada needed more time in AAA. Moncada has disappointed everyone by not being a star this year, but he has NOT been overmatched.

He's 23. He's working out his struggles in the Majors, where most 23 year olds are working out their struggles in AA/AAA. This is good. He's on a good track.

Moncada has a wRC+ of 91 according to fangraphs. That is below average no matter how you slice it and dice it. 

Also, a 34% strikeout percentage with a sub 700 OPS looks pretty overmatched to my eyes. 

[southsider2k5]

3 minutes ago, caulfield12 said:

And yet if you started out with this "spin" the day of the Sale trade...that he would be fighting just to be average, well...that wouldn't have been considered a win.  But at least we have Kopech and Basabe, right?

Or we can go with Javier Baez's 4.9 cumulative fWAR from 2014-2017, yes?  That's even worse than Moncada (pace-wise) today...Baez debuted at 22, right around the same time as Moncada.

Of course, there's no comparison in terms of the core of Cubs' players around Baez.  Rizzo, Bryant, Contreras and the rest of their young position players picked up the slack and allowed Baez "not to have to be THE man" until he finally broke through this season.   Right now, Moncada only has Jimenez to pick up the slack and take off the yoke of expectations and most of the spotlight away from him.  And maybe Abreu/Avi, but who is writing their name/s in pen onto the 2020 roster?

Now I'm a bit concerned Hahn will pull the trigger on moving up Jimenez and Kopech...to have the season with Moncada tailspinning below a .200 batting average over these last two months would be a PR disaster for the White Sox to deal with all offseason. Hahn will spend most of it defending himself and the rebuild, and promoting those two and Cease whenever he could go on the attack.   At this point, it's highly unlikely he would choose to send Moncada down, for the same reason that Giolito has been up all season long.

I guess I didn't watch the same Yoan Moncada everyone else did because he was extremely raw when he got here, and I even said that it shouldn't shock anyone if he took the Avi Garcia route versus the Kris Bryant route.

And just for clarities sake, if anyone in our system is going to go the Bryant route, it will be Eloy.  I firmly believe his adjustment period will be the smallest of all.  It wouldn't shock me if he landed on the ground hitting, and never stopped.

Also for the record, I believe Kopech will have a difficult adjustment, which is why I would like to see him up here working through it ASAP.  He is done with AAA, at least for now.  His work needs to be against major league hitters.

I will ignore the rest of the listed names here as irrelevant.

[footlongcomiskeydog]

25 minutes ago, caulfield12 said:

And yet if you started out with this "spin" the day of the Sale trade...that he would be fighting just to be average, well...that wouldn't have been considered a win.  But at least we have Kopech and Basabe, right?

Or we can go with Javier Baez's 4.9 cumulative fWAR from 2014-2017, yes?  That's even worse than Moncada (pace-wise) today...Baez debuted at 22, right around the same time as Moncada.

Of course, there's no comparison in terms of the core of Cubs' players around Baez.  Rizzo, Bryant, Contreras and the rest of their young position players picked up the slack and allowed Baez "not to have to be THE man" until he finally broke through this season.   Right now, Moncada only has Jimenez to pick up the slack and take off the yoke of expectations and most of the spotlight away from him.  And maybe Abreu/Avi, but who is writing their name/s in pen onto the 2020 roster?

Now I'm a bit concerned Hahn will pull the trigger on moving up Jimenez and Kopech...to have the season with Moncada tailspinning below a .200 batting average over these last two months would be a PR disaster for the White Sox to deal with all offseason. Hahn will spend most of it defending himself and the rebuild, and promoting those two and Cease whenever he could go on the attack.   At this point, it's highly unlikely he would choose to send Moncada down, for the same reason that Giolito has been up all season long.

Last year Moncada's future was being compared to Robinson Cano. Currently, his future is being compared to Javier Baez. At this time next year, will we be comping him to Starlin Castro? 

[ChiSox59]

18 minutes ago, caulfield12 said:

Are they more upset about Sano or Buxton?

What do they do next...rebuild AGAIN?  They're in a terrible position right now.  Not worse than the Royals and Tigers, maybe, but not much better off.  Rosario's had a really strong (break-through) year, but can he repeat it?  Berrios has been pretty good, but NOT an ace, either.

Depends on who you ask.  The diehards are still believers.  The serious but a little more casual fan are pretty frustrated.  Very casual fans are fed up.  Buxton is in trouble, he has some serious hamate issues, and as we all saw with Beckham, that can really fuc* up your swing.  But when his rehab stint ended in early July, they actually optioned Buxton, so they now control him through 2022 as opposed 2021 (which is when Sano and Rosario are FA).  He's likely done for this season and needs to spend 2 more weeks on the 25 man this year for Twins to lose control in 2022.  My buddies all think Sano is a POS, but the talent is obviously there.  He did have a rod inserted into his leg about a year ago, so I think they give him a little slack.

I tend to agree that the Twins are in a pretty bad spot.  But Mauer is off the books after this season, and they have minimal future commitments.  They have a top 5-6 farm, and still do have some good young talent on the major league roster in Berrios, Rosario, Kepler, Polonco, Buxton and Sano.  Beyond Berrios, they have a pretty good set of SP prospects in Fernando Romero and Stephen Gonsalves who are both MLB-ready and Brusdar Graterol who is bit further away. They have an elite middle infield prospect in Royce Lewis and an OF prospect in Kirilloff that is blowing up.  But besides Gonsalves and Romero, their better psopects aren't that close to the bigs.

Not all things are terrible....but this is supposed to be the meat of their contention window, and instead is looking like a team that is going to struggle mightily to contend before their core of Sano, Rosario and Buxton (now delayed another year) hit FA after 2021 unless they go big in free agency, which is something they haven't done much at all, and their FA signings have all been pretty bad in recent history.  That being said, this isn't the old Terry Ryan-led twins.  Lavine and Falvey know what they're doing.  

[Eminor3rd]

49 minutes ago, footlongcomiskeydog said:

Moncada has a wRC+ of 91 according to fangraphs. That is below average no matter how you slice it and dice it. 

Also, a 34% strikeout percentage with a sub 700 OPS looks pretty overmatched to my eyes. 

Ok, I must have seen 93 before it was updated from last night. Regardless, 94 is the average second baseman. He's roughly average for a second baseman. I don't know if that's "slicing and dicing," but it's pretty clear.

Choosing two random stats out of context (K Rate + OPS) is exactly why we have stats like wRC+ in the first place -- so we DON'T have to use "your eyes." We can actually add everything up and see how much all of those stats matter, relative to each other. 

Also, what are we arguing? You responded to a post about him learning in AAA or the MLB. Are you saying he should be in AAA?

[Panerista]

31 minutes ago, footlongcomiskeydog said:

Last year Moncada's future was being compared to Robinson Cano. Currently, his future is being compared to Javier Baez. At this time next year, will we be comping him to Starlin Castro? 

You're severely underestimating how good of a player Javier Baez is.  

And if you were stupid enough to think "comparing tools" was the same thing as "This is the next Robinson Cano", you probably should go back to the Chuck'E'Cheese table.

[Eminor3rd]

1 hour ago, caulfield12 said:

How many strikeouts would he have to accumulate to qualify as overmatched?

Yeah, I know part of it's umpires, called 3rd strikes (even letting the umpire get in that position to make a decision, as Madrigal points out in his interviews)...not being aggressive early, guessing wrong on pitches, being in-between, etc.  It feels like he has gotten behind in the count almost every at-bat since the beginning of May (coming off DL), with a few rather memorable exceptions where he's done damage early in the count.

But when is the last time he absolutely clobbered an upper 90's fastball?   Giles last year?  It seems like most of his homers have come again fastballs in the 91-93 mph range.  Others who follow gamethreads would probably have the answer.

Enough strikeouts so that his batting line became really bad.

[Kyyle23]

8 minutes ago, AustinIllini said:

You're severely underestimating how good of a player Javier Baez is.  

And if you were stupid enough to think "comparing tools" was the same thing as "This is the next Robinson Cano", you probably should go back to the Chuck'E'Cheese table.

Thats enough of your couched insults bullshit

[Panerista]

Just now, Kyyle23 said:

Thats enough of your couched insults bullshit

What?  If anything, Javy Baez is a better player than Robinson Cano now.

 

All I'm saying is, if people are going to bellyache about the rebuild, they might want to, you know, do any sort of research into the players we're disucssing.

[Jack Parkman]

2 hours ago, SCCWS said:

At this stage I am amazed he is still leading off.  I know he is dropped down when a lefty is pitching, but maybe the kid needs to bat lower in the order just to see if it helps.  Even move him to 2nd where he had the most success last year.    

He's leading off because the leadoff guy gets the most PA in a season. 2018 doesn't matter, so why not lead off Moncada and get him the most PA of anyone on the team? 

[Eminor3rd]

1 minute ago, Jack Parkman said:

He's leading off because the leadoff guy gets the most PA in a season. 2018 doesn't matter, so why not lead off Moncada and get him the most PA of anyone on the team? 

Right -- a lot of people here still don't seem to understand what this team is trying to do.

Yoan Moncada is a 23-year old prospect that the White Sox hope turns into a star. He is hitting at the MLB level right now because that's the hurdle that the front office believes he needs to overcome, not because the front office is trying to win a championship this year. 

I know it's different, guys, but take a step back and look at the big picture here.