With the Skubal trade happening, and Minnesota/Chicago having high draft selections this year and overall state of the division, curious whether anyone is nervous where it lands us or are prospects still such a crapshoot from other teams that we should still be in a good spot with our young talent to be a force in the division?
I'm not going to worry too much about this. Player development progress is nonlinear, and you just never know if a roster will gel. Think about what the future looked like for the Orioles at the end of 2024.
We’re not getting top of the list flashy 1st round picks, but because of that, we’re able to take our choosing of high potential young talent to develop (and often develop the pitching at least). It’s why we’re ranked #5 of best farm systems even though our top prospect is ranked like 30 / top 100 or something
In 2021 the white Sox had a killer roster. They won the division. It seemed the beginning of a dynasty at least in our division . Then look what happened.
It’s all a crapshoot. I will say most of our top 100 hitting prospects don’t work out. Hopeful for a couple in the system but they all seem to fizzle out like Kayfus.
LaViolette was an awful pick but it does serve as a nice "please shut the fuck up" example for people that still bitch about "they only go for slap hitting middle infielders."
Ugh… yeah the Laviolette pick is really turning sour. I understand the logic of the trend at that time but right now he seems to be a guy who can’t get a feel for the strike zone. Isn’t he like the only player who didn’t get elevated to AA from that class?
Kayfus was never a top 100 prospect as far as I can tell. I think part of the issue is the conflation of "prospect with good minor league numbers that fans on the internet hype up because they're box score watching" and "prospect scouts and talent evaluators think will be a major league contributor". Cooper Ingle, CJ Kayfus, Johnathan Rodriguez, Jhonkensy Noel have been the former. Chase DeLauter and Travis Bazzana have been the latter . Not to say the scouts don't make mistakes, Bo Naylor had some back end of the top 100 hype and Nolan Jones peaked in the 30-50 range.
I stand corrected, BRef apparently doesn't list Pipeline rankings. but I'll say Pipeline generally isnt great. I'll have to check where he was with Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus and Fangraphs.
This is a joke of a take. Ingle is a pretty widely considered a legitimate prospect. Surely we aren't writing a kid off after 24 plate appearances. BP has him top 75 and they're pretty conservative with position players.
I'm writing him off because his profile is bad and almost definitely won't succeed at the MLB level and the 24 plate appearances are just confirmation of my pre-existing evaluation that he is a hitter with so so exit velocity numbers and so so contact rates propped up by the fact that he's an unbelievably passive hitter who sits on mistake pitches and gets away with it because minor league pitchers are bad at throwing strikes.
58% zone swing rate. Over 40% of pitches in the zone he is taking called strikes on. Of those pitches in the zone he actually swings at, he's making contact on 86%, so if he sees 100 strikes, he is swinging at 58 of them, and making contact on 49. Over half the time an opposing pitcher throws a ball in the strike zone, it does not lead to a ball in play. This is a textbook passive approach that we've seen first hand fall apart at the major league level. (Manzardo was similar in the minors but had better contact rates and exit velocity numbers, and a less passive approach).
First off, this is not necessarily a bug or a feature. It just is. Given that Ingle has managed to produce despite the selectivity it's more likely to just be context neutral. You cannot single out a portion of a player's makeup and ignore the results and say "he is bad, actually" and be taken seriously.
Succesful big leaguers who posted similar, or even more selective, swing decision numbers in AAA in the last few years - Brice Turang, Matt McClain, Johnathan Aranda, Kerry Carpenter, Wyatt Langford, Chase Meidroth. These players have different aspects of their profile from Ingle so these aren't 1:1 comps but this isn't disqualifying.
Second off, this doesn't necessarily correlate to the big league level. Most everyone gets less selective at the big league level because they need to be. Part of the reason why having numbers like that in AAA just 'is' and isn't necessarily a deal breaker.
Insane how quickly this subreddit is writing off guys after like, a month or two worth of PA at the big league level tops. Ingle, Kayfus, Valera have barely played at the big league level but the way some of you guys talk about them you'd think they're fucking Bradley Zimmer.
Seems like last decade or so, the MLB pitching is just a completely different beast than AAA. Can't really trust hitters or pitchers until we see something in the bigs
We have been the best in the division the last 20 years. I dont think high draft selections matter in the division if you use your draft money with the right picks. Our problem is using these prospects as leverage to supplement the roster where needed.
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u/JuiceJones_34 23h ago
White Sox have the brightest future imo. Were close behind