We've Entered The Home Stretch Of The Rebuild
Luis Robert fucking smoked two baseballs yesterday for his 26th and 27th dingers of the year.
He’s on pace to be the first play to have a 30/50 season in the minors in 30 years and the first 30/30 player since Joc Pederson in 2014, nbd but kbd:
At this point the Sox are probably past the point of no return with him and he’ll be down until about 4/8 next year. I don’t like it and think they should have called him up prior to the Astros series last week, but at this point it’d be kinda dumb. Hahn is going to have a really tough time rationalizing Robert being held down for 2 weeks to start next April. Everyone on the planet knows what the real reason is, he just can’t say it outlaid and piss off the MLBPA.
Oh, and a former 1st round pick that had a month long cup of coffee in The Show this year is FINALLY dominating. I was ECSTATIC when the Sox took Zack Collins with the 10th overall pick in the 2016 draft out of the U. It was completely against the grain for an organization that took athlete first, baseball player last for a long time. Absurd eye, “the best power bat in the draft” as Nick Hostetler called him and someone who should seemingly sit in the middle of the order for a long time.
Except once drafted he basically forgot how to make contact and turned into a 3 outcome player. Walk, bomb or strike out. It was highly frustrating to watch as a fan, and I’m sure exceedingly more frustrating for those who took him 10th overall and wanted him to fly through the system. His biggest bugaboos were hit hit tool and strike out rates. The power and walk rates were fine, but the Sox didn’t want a poor man’s Adam Dunn in their lineup. Prior to this season, he was walking at about an 18% clip, but was pair that with about a 29% K rate. Good and bad.
I’m not going to act like I know why the called up Collins for a month and gave him hardly any in game action, but I will make conjectures. I’m guessing they sat him down and said something like, “look, you could be way better than you’ve shown thus far. Watch James McCann. He was just an Allstar. Watch how he prepares, takes notes, studies hitters/pitchers and attacks a ballgame. You stink at this and we want you to see that you stink first hand, and when we send you back down we want you to change shit before we call you back up.
Could be wrong, but judging by his pre/during/post call up numbers, I think it’s a mildly safe assumption that it went something like that.
Here are Collins’ numbers this year:
Zack Collins Pre call up:
27% K rate,
Zack Collins during call up:
45% K rate
15.5% K rate.
Not bad. Not bad at all. If (and it’s still a BIG if) Collins can hover around a 22-25% K rate once he settles in as the Sox every day middle of the order bat, he’ll be on base around a .400 clip. That will equate to a ton of scoring opportunities for Moncada, Eloy, Robert and Madrigal should he be at the top of the order.
Now I have zero clue why he’s still in AAA and Castillo hasn’t been DFA’d or flat out released yet, but this is where we’re at.
Moving on…
***WORST PLAYERS OF THE REBUILD***
We are going to talk about this ad nauseam on this week’s Red Line Radio. The worst players of the rebuild. There are a LOT of them but these are the worst ones and for obvious reason:
– Yolmer Sanchez
– Adam Engel
– Avisail Garcia (I know he has been good-ish this year and had an all star year but I still couldn’t stand him)
– Jose Rondon
– Mike Pelfrey
– Dylan Covey
– Nick Delmonico
– Jacob May
– Derek Holland
– Cody Asche
– Trayce Thompson
– Manny Banuelos
We’re going to pour one out to these guys as they will go down in White Sox lore as the placeholders for the players that should theoretically vault them into contention starting in 2020.