Kopech has a torn UCL, TJS recommended

[Dominikk85]

I could see several things happening next year.

Losing kopech hurts and probably costs them like 3 wins but if moncada peogresses, the young starters keep progressing and eloy has a huge rookie year like acuna plus the pen holds up they could win mid 80s.

But of course the opposite could happen too,  anderson, davidson and rondon regress, abreu declines, moncada doesn't get better and eloy is solid but not great and they lose 90 games again.

Imo winning 80 next year and having the young guys progress would be a big success.

[SCCWS]

On 9/7/2018 at 6:11 PM, Dick Allen said:

I think this probably started before he came up. I would bet he had some sort of tear every pitch he threw in the major leagues. His first star, he was throwing 95-96. As amped as he was, I would have figured several 100s in there. 

Another possibility was the start against Boston. Obviously he was geared up for that start due to the trade and actually hit Betts to start the game. I remember Steve Lyons doing the color say he was overthrowing in that first inning.  In hindsight, maybe that game w the lousy weather had sometning to do with it. 

[harkness99]

Well... yikes...

However

1. I was very concerned when he was throwing 93-94... now there is a reason why - so that's actually a relief (and not his actual velo)

2.  We ain't even trying to win until at least 2020... so he can still be a part of the mix then.

[Dominikk85]

Btw do you think his reduced velo in his mlb starts already were caused by the injury? 

 

The media narrative was he intentionally took something off and preferred strikes at 95-96 over a wild 100+ and the results were solid (except for his last start) despite lower than normal k rates for him because he didn't walk many guys but maybe this already was a sign of his injury.

[caulfield12]

On 9/9/2018 at 2:21 AM, Balta1701 said:

I would have hated re-upping Shields 2 days ago, because I would have liked to see them go for someone stronger to fill the back of that rotation and I thought that could be a legit strength. Our offense and defense wouldn't have measured up to the big boys even with Eloy and Machado, just go compare the guys we have to Cleveland, Boston, Houston, or New York, but a rotation of Kopech, Rodon Lopez, Giolito, and a legit 5th guy could have been as good as any of them. That could have been the thing our organization was strong in, strong enough to push .500. Drop out the top name on that rotation list and the back side is now a gaping hole. Now, adding in Shields and another arm are necessary just to fill innings, and it's basically impossible for the rotation to be a strength without blowing a huge amount of money.

A couple days ago I thought that right now, the White Sox were a 90 loss team, and I thought that over the offseason, improvement in guys would probably bring them up to an 85 loss team level. They were a 100+ loss team at the start of the year, improvement during the year probably has made them a 93-95-ish loss team, adding in Kopech would have made this a ~90 loss team. Now, improvement over the offseason just makes up for losing Kopech and they're still a 90-ish loss team. Adding in 10 wins on the free agent market isn't cheap. That's a $100 million payroll boost just to get to .500.

The Indians are losing Allen, Brantley, Miller and Kipnis...Encarnacion will be in the last year of his deal, as well.

They have enough starting pitching to win 88-90 games, but that assumes full health and progressions from some of their younger guys like Bieber.

It’s hard to imagine the White Sox being worse at any position next year...where would it be, other than catcher?   Some combination of Davidson/Palka/Delmonico at DH will be fine.  Moncada, CF, Abreu and Jimenez should put up much bigger numbers.  Anderson, about the same, probably better than worse, especially from a defensive standpoint?   Donaldson or Moustakas make sense depending on price.  You can pretty much say for sure that Yolmer and Avi aren’t in the long-term plans at this point, same with Leury Garcia (too many nagging injuries.)

Even without Kopech, difficult to imagine being worse.  Hamilton might surprise as closer right off the bat, although I’m not sure they’re ready to anoint him until he has at least a half season under his belt.

 

 

[bmags]

On 9/8/2018 at 12:29 PM, Balta1701 said:

This team still doesn't have a ton of positional talent on it, Eloy will make a difference but as a rookie he might still have a slump or two in him. 3b is being covered by a utility guy, our catcher was suspended for steroids, our middle infield is young and struggled a ton, CF is a black hole, we might have a decent DH, but our RF who was an all star last year was bad enough he could be nontendered this year, and our 1b has had the worst season of his career at age 31. Some of that might improve next year just by luck, but if we were thinking of getting to mid-80s wins next year, we'd get there because the strength on the organization would be a rough rotation led by Kopech and Rodon, with better depth at 3 and 4 than we have had in a decade. If that rotation stepped forwards then we could have surprised next year, but we just lost the key piece. .500 next year was already an "everything is going right" kinda setup, and this destroys that concept. Now just for 2019 we have 2 rotation slots to fill in addition to a bullpen that is at best inexperienced and a young lineup with a lot of holes. 

Kopech isn't going to come out and throw 200 innings in 2020 and he might not even be very effective, it takes a while to rebuild strength from this surgery. Madrigal in 2020 is a huge rush. Hopefully by then we're seeing serious progress from Moncada, we'll have some guys like Collins up, but the Winston-Salem team that is so talent loaded won't be ready to take over the OF and other spots until 2021. 

Yeah this all seems reasonable to me, and that scares me.

I'm a bit shook right now. We made it through the first year of rebuild with no prospect taking significant step back through either injury or play. Well, regression hit hard this year.

[NWINFan]

The Kopech situation is a huge setback, but now it's time to see how this organization responds to it. 

[turnin' two]

In some ways, this isn't such a terrible thing.  What I mean is, that it is best that this happened now rather than later.  There is no bigger red flag for TJ than high velocity.  Kopech has always had that risk.  It is best that this happens now rather than this time next year or something.  There should be a pretty good chance he comes back as about the same pitcher.  

The flip of this for me is that I hope the Sox focus a little more on pitching in next year's draft.  The have basically neglected SPs high in the draft the last 2 years. And while they have a lot of high end talent on the mound, this is a stark reminder that you can never have enough.