Kopech has a torn UCL, TJS recommended

[ptatc]

2 minutes ago, Jack Parkman said:

I don't, but for me it raises huge red flags when a position player can't hit .240 over a season in the minors. If he wasn't a first round pick, he'd be a non-prospect. He's a non-prospect. He isn't Courtney Hawkins bad, but he's not that far off. If he was hitting .270 that would be a different story. 

It's the age of advanced stats, even the players dont worry about batting average anymore. It's not a great sign but I wouldn't consider a redflag. He is far from a non-prospects at this point. The average batting average last year was .255.

[reiks12]

Probably the baseball gods letting us know they disapproved of us keeping Eloy down.

[Jack Parkman]

6 minutes ago, ptatc said:

It's the age of advanced stats, even the players dont worry about batting average anymore. It's not a great sign but I wouldn't consider a redflag. He is far from a non-prospects at this point. The average batting average last year was .255.

The point is, the rest of the stats don't matter if hitter can't put bat on ball in the minors. If he's hitting that poorly against pitchers that won't sniff the bigs, what is he going to do against 5 year MLB vets? The tools are there, there are plenty of guys who had loud tools and didn't make the bigs because they didn't make enough contact. It is player specific what I look for. With Moncada and Collins, if they both make contact the rest will take care of itself. For them, BA is the biggest indicator of future success, IMO. For players like that, I put more emphasis on getting hits because the tools are there. 

Edited September 8, 2018 by Jack Parkman

[SoxAce]

I blame James Shields for this.

[tray]

It's really hard watching this game knowing the bad news about Kopech  while Benetti ignores it, talks about a hamburger and engages in trite small talk.

This season is for all practical purposes,  Ovah.

[reiks12]

Just now, tray said:

It's really hard watching this game knowing the bad news about Kopech  while Benetti ignores it, talks about a hamburger and engages in trite small talk.

This season is for all practical purposes,  Ovah.

Yeah, i couldn't even watch 10 seconds worth. Im sure Benetti doesn't want to be there either

[ptatc]

10 minutes ago, Jack Parkman said:

The point is, the rest of the stats don't matter if hitter can't put bat on ball in the minors. If he's hitting that poorly against pitchers that won't sniff the bigs, what is he going to do against 5 year MLB vets? The tools are there, there are plenty of guys who had loud tools and didn't make the bigs because they didn't make enough contact. It is player specific what I look for. With Moncada and Collins, if they both make contact the rest will take care of itself. For them, BA is the biggest indicator of future success, IMO. For players like that, I put more emphasis on getting hits because the tools are there. 

I disagree that the rest of the stats don't matter. He isn't hitting poorly, he just isn't hitting often. A player who can get on base 36% of the time and slugs 400 is useful. Is he a great hitter? No, but not all hitters are going to be great. 

[ptatc]

11 minutes ago, tray said:

It's really hard watching this game knowing the bad news about Kopech  while Benetti ignores it, talks about a hamburger and engages in trite small talk.

This season is for all practical purposes,  Ovah.

I think watching the young bullpen makes it interesting. It looks to be a strength next year.

[ptatc]

19 minutes ago, reiks12 said:

Probably the baseball gods letting us know they disapproved of us keeping Eloy down.

No doubt. 

[ptatc]

1 hour ago, reiks12 said:

Back on Kopech 

Do UCL tears like this gradually happen over a long timeframe or does it happen quickly? In other words, was his UCL messed up in Charlotte as well?

According to the article in the Tribune, he didn't feel much or say anything to the team until Thursday. He though it was something he could pitch through and planned on making his next start, when the team sent him to the doc to be cautious. 

It's entirely possible that due to his strength he didn't feel anything until the tear became so large. Most people feel something significant prior to it becoming "a rather large tear" as Hahn put it.

[Balta1701]

A summary of my anti-rants.

1. This sucks.
2. This really sucks.

3. You're right the timing is awful. It would have been great if this happened 3 weeks ago, by comparison. I can be a little open to the argument that keeping him down would avoid service time loss in the event of injury...but literally no one made that. It was keeping him down for service time when he comes up next year, to extend things in 2025, not to protect against losing service time while rehabbing injuries. Furthermore, this happening early next year could darn well have been worse - it might have saved us service time, but it could have knocked him out for most of 2020, with that happening after we had already spent money on the free agent market with the expectation of being good in 2019 and 2020. Imagine signing Machado, giving him a 3 year opt out, and then this happening in early May of next year.

4. Everyone who's struggling to find something the White Sox did wrong...if avoiding these things were easy then someone would have figured it out. The Red Sox got lucky with David Price, congratulations. Why did Jay Groome, their top prospect, not get the same arm saving treatment from their excellent medical staff? The answer is...these things happen with pitchers. Look earlier in this thread, almost every top pitching prospect has now had one this year. You do the best you can to put them on a throwing regimen, to keep their mechanics right, and if you think their mechanics are a risk maybe you trade them. Even if you do all that, you still lose some. You can't detect these things early, even sending guys for MRI scans weekly isn't going to do that. The White Sox have been as good as anyone at avoiding this particular surgery for the last 15 years...that could be luck, but you certainly can't tell me that they're putting these guys at undue risk. Hanging this on the coaching staff or the training staff and wishing we had some other team's trainers is silly.

5. Blaming this on Rick Hahn and the front office, for now at least, is still inappropriate. Literally no one on this site dislikes Rick Hahn more than me, I believe the shame of his performance should taint his children's children's children. This is a major setback and it makes it darn near impossible to compete in 2020. However, The overall situation is still the same, we have a load arriving in 2021 or so, and now we have to plan for that as that should also be the year for full strength Kopech. We may well have dramatically mis-scouted guys. The strategy of acquiring so many pitchers could darn well be fundamentally flawed, and in 2 years we may have said that trading our last assets for young pitching was the final mistake in the career of the worst GM in baseball history. Until then, we've still got to let this play out. Holding onto Chris Sale and letting him walk after 2019, having not been over .500 since 2012, would be just about as rotten as where we are right now.

6. I do think this dramatically changes what we have to do this offseason. A 3 year signing is now a stopgap, not a move to compete. We can't give out 3-year opt outs if we sign anyone big, because the first 2 seasons are now undermanned. We now have, honestly, more motivation to move Rodon. I don't think we'll get the right kind of offers for him until next year's trade deadline personally, but if the right kind of offer comes in, the White Sox now simply won't have the firepower in 2019 or 2020 to make use of Rodon, in 2020 they will be rehabbing Kopech and working Cease into the rotation hopefully and that's just not the strong rotation we will need to make a legit run when so much of our high level talent was wrapped up in starting pitching. Holding Rodon until the right offer comes in makes sense, but if such an offer appears it's time to make the move. Now we have to play for 2021 as a piece that could have been a 2020 all star will now probably pitch 100 big league innings that year if we're lucky. We should consider that when signing contracts and when making moves on other guys, we're underpowered in 2020.

7. This sucks. 

[ptatc]

2 minutes ago, Balta1701 said:

A summary of my anti-rants.

1. This sucks.
2. This really sucks.

3. You're right the timing is awful. It would have been great if this happened 3 weeks ago, by comparison. I can be a little open to the argument that keeping him down would avoid service time loss in the event of injury...but literally no one made that. It was keeping him down for service time when he comes up next year, to extend things in 2025, not to protect against losing service time while rehabbing injuries. Furthermore, this happening early next year could darn well have been worse - it might have saved us service time, but it could have knocked him out for most of 2020, with that happening after we had already spent money on the free agent market with the expectation of being good in 2019 and 2020. Imagine signing Machado, giving him a 3 year opt out, and then this happening in early May of next year.

4. Everyone who's struggling to find something the White Sox did wrong...if avoiding these things were easy then someone would have figured it out. The Red Sox got lucky with David Price, congratulations. Why did Jay Groome, their top prospect, not get the same arm saving treatment from their excellent medical staff? The answer is...these things happen with pitchers. Look earlier in this thread, almost every top pitching prospect has now had one this year. You do the best you can to put them on a throwing regimen, to keep their mechanics right, and if you think their mechanics are a risk maybe you trade them. Even if you do all that, you still lose some. You can't detect these things early, even sending guys for MRI scans weekly isn't going to do that. The White Sox have been as good as anyone at avoiding this particular surgery for the last 15 years...that could be luck, but you certainly can't tell me that they're putting these guys at undue risk. Hanging this on the coaching staff or the training staff and wishing we had some other team's trainers is silly.

5. Blaming this on Rick Hahn and the front office, for now at least, is still inappropriate. Literally no one on this site dislikes Rick Hahn more than me, I believe the shame of his performance should taint his children's children's children. This is a major setback and it makes it darn near impossible to compete in 2020. However, The overall situation is still the same, we have a load arriving in 2021 or so, and now we have to plan for that as that should also be the year for full strength Kopech. We may well have dramatically mis-scouted guys. The strategy of acquiring so many pitchers could darn well be fundamentally flawed, and in 2 years we may have said that trading our last assets for young pitching was the final mistake in the career of the worst GM in baseball history. Until then, we've still got to let this play out. Holding onto Chris Sale and letting him walk after 2019, having not been over .500 since 2012, would be just about as rotten as where we are right now.

6. I do think this dramatically changes what we have to do this offseason. A 3 year signing is now a stopgap, not a move to compete. We can't give out 3-year opt outs if we sign anyone big, because the first 2 seasons are now undermanned. We now have, honestly, more motivation to move Rodon. I don't think we'll get the right kind of offers for him until next year's trade deadline personally, but if the right kind of offer comes in, the White Sox now simply won't have the firepower in 2019 or 2020 to make use of Rodon, in 2020 they will be rehabbing Kopech and working Cease into the rotation hopefully and that's just not the strong rotation we will need to make a legit run when so much of our high level talent was wrapped up in starting pitching. Holding Rodon until the right offer comes in makes sense, but if such an offer appears it's time to make the move. Now we have to play for 2021 as a piece that could have been a 2020 all star will now probably pitch 100 big league innings that year if we're lucky. We should consider that when signing contracts and when making moves on other guys, we're underpowered in 2020.

7. This sucks. 

Or the fact that they acquired so many could be what makes it. They may lose some but some will make it through. If they only traded for a few, they would have lost more and couldn't afford to but them like the Cubs needed to.

[oldsox]

Remember maybe 6 months ago someone posted an article and video of Kopech taking a running start and throwing into a screen as hard as he could and getting it up to 110 mph?  As soon as I saw that, I thought accident waiting to happen.

[Jack Parkman]

8 minutes ago, Balta1701 said:

A summary of my anti-rants.

1. This sucks.
2. This really sucks.

3. You're right the timing is awful. It would have been great if this happened 3 weeks ago, by comparison. I can be a little open to the argument that keeping him down would avoid service time loss in the event of injury...but literally no one made that. It was keeping him down for service time when he comes up next year, to extend things in 2025, not to protect against losing service time while rehabbing injuries. Furthermore, this happening early next year could darn well have been worse - it might have saved us service time, but it could have knocked him out for most of 2020, with that happening after we had already spent money on the free agent market with the expectation of being good in 2019 and 2020. Imagine signing Machado, giving him a 3 year opt out, and then this happening in early May of next year.

4. Everyone who's struggling to find something the White Sox did wrong...if avoiding these things were easy then someone would have figured it out. The Red Sox got lucky with David Price, congratulations. Why did Jay Groome, their top prospect, not get the same arm saving treatment from their excellent medical staff? The answer is...these things happen with pitchers. Look earlier in this thread, almost every top pitching prospect has now had one this year. You do the best you can to put them on a throwing regimen, to keep their mechanics right, and if you think their mechanics are a risk maybe you trade them. Even if you do all that, you still lose some. You can't detect these things early, even sending guys for MRI scans weekly isn't going to do that. The White Sox have been as good as anyone at avoiding this particular surgery for the last 15 years...that could be luck, but you certainly can't tell me that they're putting these guys at undue risk. Hanging this on the coaching staff or the training staff and wishing we had some other team's trainers is silly.

5. Blaming this on Rick Hahn and the front office, for now at least, is still inappropriate. Literally no one on this site dislikes Rick Hahn more than me, I believe the shame of his performance should taint his children's children's children. This is a major setback and it makes it darn near impossible to compete in 2020. However, The overall situation is still the same, we have a load arriving in 2021 or so, and now we have to plan for that as that should also be the year for full strength Kopech. We may well have dramatically mis-scouted guys. The strategy of acquiring so many pitchers could darn well be fundamentally flawed, and in 2 years we may have said that trading our last assets for young pitching was the final mistake in the career of the worst GM in baseball history. Until then, we've still got to let this play out. Holding onto Chris Sale and letting him walk after 2019, having not been over .500 since 2012, would be just about as rotten as where we are right now.

6. I do think this dramatically changes what we have to do this offseason. A 3 year signing is now a stopgap, not a move to compete. We can't give out 3-year opt outs if we sign anyone big, because the first 2 seasons are now undermanned. We now have, honestly, more motivation to move Rodon. I don't think we'll get the right kind of offers for him until next year's trade deadline personally, but if the right kind of offer comes in, the White Sox now simply won't have the firepower in 2019 or 2020 to make use of Rodon, in 2020 they will be rehabbing Kopech and working Cease into the rotation hopefully and that's just not the strong rotation we will need to make a legit run when so much of our high level talent was wrapped up in starting pitching. Holding Rodon until the right offer comes in makes sense, but if such an offer appears it's time to make the move. Now we have to play for 2021 as a piece that could have been a 2020 all star will now probably pitch 100 big league innings that year if we're lucky. We should consider that when signing contracts and when making moves on other guys, we're underpowered in 2020.

7. This sucks. 

Well done Balta. I too, complained that they didn't get a good enough mix of pitching and hitting. If they turn Cease and Dunning into Nick Senzel I won't complain, because one top hitter is probably worth two top pitchers. 

Edited September 8, 2018 by Jack Parkman

[Dick Allen]

On the bright side, he was consistently 93/94 with it torn. 

[Real]

How long until we see guys like Dunning. Hansen, and Cease?  been really impressed with them

[ptatc]

1 minute ago, Jack Parkman said:

Well done Balta. I too, complained that they didn't get a good enough mix of pitching and hitting. 

In the three big trades they got 1. Sale: 2 pitchers, 2 hitters, 2. Eaton 3 pitchers, 3. Quintana: 1 pitcher 3 hitters

Total: 6 pitchers, 5 hitters. That's the definition of a good mix.

[Jack Parkman]

Just now, Real said:

How long until we see guys like Dunning. Hansen, and Cease?  been really impressed with them

Hansen has been god awful this season. Dunning has his own elbow issues he's dealing with, and Cease probably isn't coming up until 2020. 

[ptatc]

Just now, Jack Parkman said:

Hansen has been god awful this season. Dunning has his own elbow issues he's dealing with, and Cease probably isn't coming up until 2020. 

I think cease will be up at the end of next season. Similar to the Kopech path.

[Jack Parkman]

Just now, ptatc said:

In the three big trades they got 1. Sale: 2 pitchers, 2 hitters, 2. Eaton 3 pitchers, 3. Quintana: 1 pitcher 3 hitters

Total: 6 pitchers, 5 hitters. That's the definition of a good mix.

I don't count it that way: 

Sale: 2 hitters, 1 pitcher Eaton: 3 pitchers Quintana: 1 pitcher, 1 hitter

Count: 3 hitters, 5 pitchers. I'd have preferred that it was switched. If you're talking about really high end players, they only got 2 hitters, and 4 pitchers. 

[Jack Parkman]

1 minute ago, ptatc said:

I think cease will be up at the end of next season. Similar to the Kopech path.

I don't think they're going to do this again, Cease won't be up until tax day 2020. 

[ptatc]

1 minute ago, Jack Parkman said:

I don't count it that way: 

Sale: 2 hitters, 1 pitcher Eaton: 3 pitchers Quintana: 1 pitcher, 1 hitter

Count: 3 hitters, 5 pitchers. I'd have preferred that it was switched. If you're talking about really high end players, they only got 2 hitters, and 4 pitchers. 

Well I guess if you want to just count the players you want to count and ignore all of the players they actually acquired, you can use any number you care to. 

[SoxAce]

8 minutes ago, Dick Allen said:

On the bright side, he was consistently 93/94 with it torn. 

Similar to Burdi who hit 95 on his last pitch before he exited and had TJS. 

[ptatc]

1 minute ago, Jack Parkman said:

I don't think they're going to do this again, Cease won't be up until tax day 2020. 

They will do it again because it's the path that makes the most sense. You build upon the number of innings the pitcher pitched the previous year.

[Jack Parkman]

Just now, ptatc said:

Well I guess if you want to just count the players you want to count and ignore all of the players they actually acquired, you can use any number you care to. 

I only counted the players who were actual prospects. The other players were minor league filler. Kind of a big difference there.