Wrangling 2020 White Sox Prospects: Too early to tell

Atrium Health Ballpark in Kannapolis (KannapolisNC.gov).

The next installment of Prospect Week covers the players who were usurped as the new kids on the block by last year’s draft and signing classes, but they’re still young enough and/or obscure enough to remain men of mystery.

If you missed the previous installments:

Below are seven more prospects whose presents are nearly as difficult to define as their futures.

Lenyn Sosa: One of two 19-year-olds given an ambitious full-season assignment in Kannapolis, Sosa’s aggregate line might suggest he wasn’t ready. He hit .251/.292/.371 over 122 games, drawing 27 walks to 102 strikeouts and stealing just six bases in 12 attempts. The shortstop play was encouraging based on errors — and errors can tell you a lot in the low minors — but there isn’t much to write home about on the surface.

Sosa might’ve only had a .663 OPS, but he got to a .663 OPS the way you want to see a 19-year-old do it: by hitting .310/.348/.460 over his last 30 games. He got off to a ghastly start, but he started doing more withis contact in May, and he got a handle on his strikeout-to-walk ratio starting in June. If you want to expand his sample size to his last three months (71 games), it plays for a guy at his age (.270/.320/.386).

The question is how much growth he has remaining, as he’s not an obvious projection candidate. Speed isn’t his thing, so ideally one would like to see more power. It’s hard to complain too much when a $325,000 signing is ahead of schedule.

Bryce Bush: The other 19-year-old pushed at Kannapolis, Bush’s numbers look even worse (.201/.285/.346, 92 strikeouts to 27 walks over 67 games). Unlike Sosa, he didn’t have health on his side. He kept fouling balls off the same spot on his foot, and by the time he recovered from that, he developed a case of bronchitis that basically wrecked him for the rest of the year.

In order for me to sell you on him, I have to craft more of a narrative. It looks something like…

  • While in over his head at third base: .096/.158/.115 over 13 games.
  • After getting moved to right field: .305/.396/.549 over 23 games.
  • First two weeks after the injury: .122/.204/.306 over 13 games.
  • The following two weeks: .268/.344/.393 over 14 games.

Then he went 0-for-21 over his last seven games, the last four of which came in Arizona as they tried to salvage the season during his bronchitis bout.

As somebody who likes the talent, I see a guy who was Kannapolis’ best hitter at 19 when feeling right defensively and physically, and so I’m still on the bandwagon. But as we’ve seen with Micker Adolfo and Corey Zangari and others, it’s harder to stay attached to the talent when it can’t stay on the field. This year should be big when it comes to establishing durability.

Jose Rodriguez: If Rodriguez starts the 2020 season in Kannapolis, it’d be an aggressive-but-reasonable assignment along the lines of Sosa and Bush in 2019. I’m not sure if it’s the best idea for his future, but I’d like to see it in order to learn a little more about the player. He’s hit his way onto the radar, first as a 17-year-old in the Dominican Summer League (.291/.318/.401), and then with a strong season at age 18 in the AZL.

Down in the desert, Rodriguez hit .293/.328/.505, leading the team in most power categories (homers, triples, extra-base hits, slugging percentage). He also stole seven bases in eight attempts while playing shortstop more often than not. He struck out five times for every walk, but we’ve seen worse (22.5% to 4.5%).

Despite the profile, we don’t know a whole lot about the player. He didn’t sign for a large-enough amount to show up on Ben Badler’s reviews, so we can only go off the video and input Sean Williams provided from Glendale.

There’s room for Rodriguez in Kannapolis even if Sosa returns to low-A at the start of the season because he apparently looks better at second base. I’m all for it, especially if Kannapolis’ new stadium means MiLB.tv feeds.

A brief aside: Speaking of the stadium, it now has a name.

Lency Delgado: When the Sox selected Delgado in the fourth round of the 2018 draft out of the Florida prep ranks, he was billed as having the mold of a power-hitting third baseman. Two short seasons into his career, he hasn’t yet forced a move off shortstop, which is good since the strength of contact is lagging.

The White Sox bumped up Delgado from the AZL to the Pioneer League, and it was a mixed bag. He hit .274/.325/.377, but a strong BABIP saved his production:

  • 2018: 6.0% BB, 26.7% K, .323 BABIP
  • 2019: 6.0% BB, 37.5% K, .452 BABIP

The ISO did improve year-over-year with more doubles, so the progress, while incremental, is detectable. But since he was on the older side for a prep pick, it’s about time he starts holding his own, especially since his forebear Luis Curbelo slid off the radar.

Cabera Weaver: He doesn’t share similarities with Delgado as a player — Weaver is a willowy center fielder and six months younger — but their seasons followed the same course. Weaver went from the AZL in 2018 to Great Falls in 2019 somewhat on faith, and while he held his own (.254/.317/.377), the underlying numbers will need to turn around:

  • 2018: 10.0% BB, 28.9% K, .375 BABIP
  • 2019: 6.9% BB, 32.6% K, .387 BABIP

Weaver was seen as more of a project as a hitter when he was taken in the seventh round, so combine his speed with an ISO that’s now three digits and the progress is more palpable.

Josue Guerrero: Toward the end of his third professional season — second stateside — Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s cousin finally found something resembling traction. Another disappointing start put him on the verge of write-off territory, as his average lagged below the Mendoza Line through the first 21 games of his 43-game sample.

The following game against the Cubs was the fulcrum of his year, literally and figuratively. He blasted his first two homers of the season, setting the course of a .289/.345/.526 run over his final 22 games. He belted five homers, and while he strikeout rate still cleared 30 percent, that still marked a major improvement, especially since the three-strikeout games disappeared.

Guerrero earned a $1.1 million signing bonus as the headliner in an outfield-heavy July 2 class in 2017, and neither he nor Luis Mieses nor Anderson Comas nor Anthony Coronado have distinguished themselves in rookie ball. They’ve had hot streaks here and there, but the first one to string together two encouraging samples wins.

Yoelvin Silven: When it comes to international pitchers who sign for unremarkable amounts of money, one is left to scout the most significant numbers — innings, walks and strikeouts — and see if the White Sox had a similar response.

Silven’s followed that path. After striking out 71 batters against 16 walks over 64 innings in the DSL in 2018, he came to the states and experienced even more success in the AZL. He kept the strikeouts (51 over 44 innings), but he shaved down the walks to a miniscule five, and that earned him a season-ending promotion to Great Falls for the final three games.

Like Rodriguez, a season-starting assignment in Kannapolis feels a little aggressive, but I wouldn’t mind seeing what he throws.

Later today: The big questions.

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billyok

So, off-topic but putting this on the SoxMachine/#108ing cross-synergy radar: YouTube Philadelphia Eagles fan/absolute lunatic EDP445 (he of nearly 1 million subscribers) has decided to adopt a baseball team, and he’s adopted this team. This could be interesting. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSeuhNge8O4

MarketMaker

That was a 10 minute video, but it felt like hours.

Anohito

If I recall correctly, he became ultra famous because he was straight up insane going on long angry tirades about how bad the eagles were. And as we all begrudgingly know, the eagles have now recently won a superbowl so I don’t what he even does anymore. Feels weird of him to be a Sox fan now all of a sudden but we’ll see if it actually means something in the “socialsphere”.

Eagle Bones

So this was probably posted and I missed it, but it just made it’s way in front of my face because Jeff Zimmerman’s “Mining the News” post the other day. Merkin was asked in his mailbag last week who he thought will be the leadoff hitter on OD and his answer was disturbing (moreso if it’s something the Sox are actually considering:

I’d go with García as the leadoff man at the start of the season, although Grandal would be a good choice as well. Luis Robert eventually moves into that role, but White Sox manager Rick Renteria has talked about easing him into the lineup at the outset and hitting him lower.

He thinks the guy who will be the worst hitter in the lineup by a fairly wide margin to lead off. Wow. Really hope this idea is nowhere on Ricky’s radar.

https://www.mlb.com/whitesox/news/white-sox-inbox-michael-kopech-a-bullpen-option

https://fantasy.fangraphs.com/mining-the-news-2-5-20/

roke1960

That is really stupid. I would hope Ricky has more sense than that. Garcia should not even start at 2nd if Madrigal is still in Charlotte. He is supposed to be our super-sub. Let Mendick or a late signing start at 2nd, though I still think it should be Madrigal.

To start the season, I would go:
Timmy
Yoan
Jose
Eloy
Grandal
Encarnacion
Robert
Mazara
2nd baseman

I think Timmy has earned the right to bat leadoff with his batting title. If regression sets in as it likely will, and Robert gets off to a good start, then I could see flip-flopping them. Grandal in the leadoff spot is an interesting concept, though putting our two switch-hitters back-to-back is not a good idea.

Eagle Bones

Yeah there are many variations of lineups one could put on paper that would be defensible. One where the 2B is not batting 9th isn’t really that (though I guess if facing a lefty I could see them moving up to 8th behind whoever is in RF).

evenyoudorn

Tangentially related – I guess I’ve thought of the new LOOGY rule as something that makes line-up construction easier by taking away the “OO” component of the strategy. But I guess you could almost say it just shifts the analysis towards scouting/stats or that it favors analytical coaches/FOs (from the hitting perspective) that much more.

Like, to the extent there’s an optimal line-up “but for” handedness, who the other team has in the bullpen and on what rest might tell you, “Screw it – put those three lefties in a row… that guy sucks (or) went seven batters yesterday.” Maybe because your stats guys tell you that’s a great sequence of hitters (but for), or as a way to kind of play chess and dare the other coach to run out their Caleb Frare.

I just mean, as opposed to the default of alternating or spreading out switch dudes. Actually who knows what I mean.

35Shields

Reading the PECOTA primer. Where do I go to complain about this

We will use the “final” 2019 preseason projections for Steamer and ZiPS, which were downloaded from publicly-available sources, and although the current version of PECOTA was developed only recently, we had PECOTA use only pre-2019 data to project 2019 results in retrospect.

Stop fucking validating on your training set! It doesn’t matter if PECOTA used 2019 data to project 2019 results – the 2019 results are already baked in to the model because that’s what you trained it on!

Patrick Nolan

Right here!

I think that’s a valid concern, and the degree to which it’s valid depends on how many past years of data they were able to bake into this. Some of the inputs that they use haven’t been made available until more recently, which raises questions here.

Honestly sometimes I think they sell out to spit out the best R^2, RMSE results, etc, without commenting on the bias/variance tradeoff (overfitting concerns), which is directly related to the issue you mention. I’m not saying they aren’t doing it in the best way, but absent further explanation, the statistics on the page are not sufficient to convince me otherwise. Had they trained the model using only pre-2019 data, those results would be more convincing.