Speaker 1: Keith, thanks for joining the Sox Machine podcast again.
Speaker 2: Mid season special edition usually have you on beforehand to
Speaker 2: discuss prospects. But now we have number one overall pick,
Speaker 2: and I'm thinking that so much has changed since the
Speaker 2: White Sox won the draft lottery, mostly for the good.
Speaker 2: I remember seeing you at the winter meetings and thinking like,
Speaker 2: all right, we have something to hang the summer on,
Speaker 2: some summer programming, some excitement. Rock Chulowski looks pretty close
Speaker 2: to a lock for the number one overall pick, or
Speaker 2: at least like a clear favorite.
Speaker 1: The White Sox might.
Speaker 2: Be another ninety loss season, if not one hundred lost season.
Speaker 2: The system needs a sure thing. This is perfect and
Speaker 2: now smash cut to July. The White Sox are in
Speaker 2: first place. They have a lot of infielders now and
Speaker 2: laws is you know, he's still up top. He's on
Speaker 2: top of your list, but there's some murkiness up top
Speaker 2: with directions the White Sox can go.
Speaker 1: But ultimately this is a good thing, right.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think they're in a good position. I just
Speaker 3: published a new ranking day before we're recording this, and
Speaker 3: I still had Schilawski at one. But I went back
Speaker 3: and forth a lot between him and Von Lackey, and
Speaker 3: I may still switch them before the draft. I think
Speaker 3: Chilawski is a little bit more of a sure thing.
Speaker 3: Lackey might actually be the higher upside pick. And what
Speaker 3: I keep hearing is that Chilaski is in their mix,
Speaker 3: but he is not their top choice. It's either Lackey
Speaker 3: or high school shortstop Grady Emerson, and I think some
Speaker 3: of that is just their preferences, them seeing players in
Speaker 3: a different way now than they had previously because of
Speaker 3: the work that Ryan Fuller and Paul Yannish and others
Speaker 3: have done with a lot of their hitters. Right, they
Speaker 3: saved Colson Montgomery and Jacob Gonzalz. I'd say they saved
Speaker 3: both of those careers. Both guys were well on their
Speaker 3: way to being first round busts and have now turned
Speaker 3: into in the case of Montgomery, a big leaguer. There's
Speaker 3: at least going to stick around in some role. And
Speaker 3: I am really optimistic about Gonzales. So I think as
Speaker 3: the White Sox sort of got into it and looked
Speaker 3: at these three hitters in particular, they felt like maybe
Speaker 3: Lackey and or emersoner guys, they are a better equipped
Speaker 3: to help bet or equiped to work with than they
Speaker 3: would be with chilhows Q.
Speaker 2: And how should you think like the success of this
Speaker 2: season changes or should change the calculus up top in
Speaker 2: terms of not needing a sure thing, perhaps being able
Speaker 2: to take a pick with more upside and a pick
Speaker 2: with a longer development track because they do have guys
Speaker 2: who can play shortstop immediately and.
Speaker 3: Just the way it typically works out in the draft,
Speaker 3: if you're picking very high and just sitting aside the pitchers,
Speaker 3: and this year doesn't really have a one to one
Speaker 3: type pitcher anyway, you're going to be mostly looking at shortstops.
Speaker 3: So regardless of whether you have a truly established shortstop.
Speaker 3: You know, I look at Montgomery, what he's at a
Speaker 3: really good year. If you had told me last April
Speaker 3: he was going to turn to this, I would have laughed.
Speaker 3: He striking out almost fifty percent of the time in
Speaker 3: triple A. That said, you can do better. It's entirely possible.
Speaker 3: Like if they take Rock Shaalowski, he ends up a
Speaker 3: better option to churse up and pushes Montgomery to another position.
Speaker 3: So I also don't think one. I just think you
Speaker 3: take the best player, period, regardless of what else you have,
Speaker 3: but also close to Montgomery is not no Bobby Wit
Speaker 3: Junior where you're saying, oh, we're not going to get
Speaker 3: any better than this, Yeah you might. Actually Montgomery is
Speaker 3: still punching out at a pretty high rate, you know,
Speaker 3: And this is still only about a year of the
Speaker 3: sort of new version of Montgomery with your pros and cons. Again,
Speaker 3: he is going to stick around as a big leaguer,
Speaker 3: but he's not a superstar. And you pick first, you
Speaker 3: want to try to get a superstar. And I don't
Speaker 3: think this year's strong start to the season should really
Speaker 3: change their philosophy. When you pick first, you got to
Speaker 3: get the best guy. I think when teams try to
Speaker 3: get too cute and try to play the money, try
Speaker 3: to move things around. You can do that even starting
Speaker 3: a pick too, but at pick one, I think you
Speaker 3: got to go nail it. And you can just see
Speaker 3: even just in the last couple of drafts, examples of
Speaker 3: teams trying to get creative at one Pittsburgh with Henry Davis,
Speaker 3: Cleveland with Travis Bizana and not getting the best player
Speaker 3: in the draft when you had them all, they were
Speaker 3: all right there in front of you, and he ended
Speaker 3: up with the wrong guy.
Speaker 2: The discussion around Schlawski and just having kind of a
Speaker 2: an okay season by his standards and not making the
Speaker 2: leap that maybe he was supposed to have his junior
Speaker 2: year reminds me a little bit in terms of like
Speaker 2: tenor based on White Sox experience of Carlos Redon in
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen and how he didn't quite make the most
Speaker 2: of his junior year and it allowed the Astros went
Speaker 2: Brady aikin number one high school pitcher, Marlin's won a high.
Speaker 1: School pitcher with Tyler Kollak.
Speaker 2: Obviously, the Astro situation worked out because they didn't sign
Speaker 2: Ach and they got Alex Bregman the following year with
Speaker 2: that pick, so they were able to back.
Speaker 1: Out of it.
Speaker 2: But when it comes to prospect fatigue and maybe just
Speaker 2: over analyzing somebody too much because they were on this
Speaker 2: platform of being the expected number one pick before the season,
Speaker 2: how much are the White Sox or White Sox people
Speaker 2: watching the White Sox at risk of doing that to themselves.
Speaker 3: That maybe happening with Julowski. I do think, Look, he
Speaker 3: plays in the Big ten. It's not the SEC, it's
Speaker 3: not the ACC, it's not even the Big twelve. This
Speaker 3: is not a premium conference. He's not facing premium competition,
Speaker 3: and so you can still be the best player in
Speaker 3: the draft facing less than top tier competition, but you
Speaker 3: got to destroy it. You got to absolutely destroy and
Speaker 3: he didn't. He didn't. He had a very good year.
Speaker 3: But if he is the hitter that he's supposed to be,
Speaker 3: then yeah, he would have. He would have had a
Speaker 3: better season, he would have produced better, and the underlying
Speaker 3: data would have been better also, Right, it's not just
Speaker 3: performance this kid. This has come up a couple of
Speaker 3: times recently, people asking me about certain players who performed
Speaker 3: really well or maybe didn't perform that well this year year.
Speaker 3: But remember, teams are they're looking at performance, but they're
Speaker 3: also looking under the hood for a hitter. They're looking
Speaker 3: at things like the range of eximplocities, the launch angles,
Speaker 3: the hard hit rates, the barrel rates, and so on
Speaker 3: to give them confidence that that player will be able
Speaker 3: to perform, whether it's improving or sustaining when they once
Speaker 3: switched to wood bats. Still the hardest thing of all
Speaker 3: of this, evaluating hitters. But then also by the time
Speaker 3: you get to at least to double a you're facing
Speaker 3: better pitching. If you go from the SEC to High A,
Speaker 3: you ought to rake. It's not that much better. The
Speaker 3: big difference between SEC and hias are playing six times
Speaker 3: a week instead of three or four. But by the
Speaker 3: time you get to double A, you are most nights
Speaker 3: facing better pitching than what you were going to see
Speaker 3: on the in the typical SEC game. And so to
Speaker 3: me get just to take this back to Chilawski, though,
Speaker 3: I think his issue is that everything just stayed steady
Speaker 3: and that could have been good enough. But Von Lackey
Speaker 3: had a real breakout season. And Emerson is a different
Speaker 3: story because we don't have a ton of data and
Speaker 3: he went to play for a tiny religious school. He
Speaker 3: wanted to play for Rusty Greer as his head coach,
Speaker 3: so the competition he faced the spring was just kind
Speaker 3: of lousy. So I think a lot of this was
Speaker 3: just after last summer. It's like, that is the best
Speaker 3: high school hitter in the draft, great swing, hit well
Speaker 3: against the best quality pitching. He was the guy when
Speaker 3: no one else could hit. He was the guy who's
Speaker 3: still hitting. He just sort of gets elevated to the top.
Speaker 3: And if you believe he's got that sort of Kevin
Speaker 3: McGonagall hit tool around him, then yeah, he should be
Speaker 3: in consideration at one.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was curious about Emerson just thinking about the last
Speaker 2: time there was a preseason number one who kind of
Speaker 2: went wired a wire with Atlie Rutchman.
Speaker 3: Elie Rutchman.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and then Bobby Wood Junior went number two.
Speaker 2: And obviously what we know now about Bobby Wood Junior,
Speaker 2: it's maybe.
Speaker 1: Hard to unwind that and think back to his.
Speaker 2: Pure prospect state of where he was. But in terms
Speaker 2: of the gap from going from say, like you know,
Speaker 2: obviously if the Orioles took wits number one and let
Speaker 2: Rutchman go, there might have been some consternation at the time,
Speaker 2: but probably would have proved them correct and.
Speaker 1: They're fine either way. But in terms of like the
Speaker 1: gap between.
Speaker 2: Chilawski and Emerson and such like, where is Emerson based
Speaker 2: on what you can tell against competition he's faced against Chilawski,
Speaker 2: against Lackey in that conversation, given just the the less information.
Speaker 3: I have him below those guys I actually have below
Speaker 3: Tyler Bell too from Kentucky where I'm the high guy.
Speaker 3: But I look at Bell and I mean that guy
Speaker 3: played the whole year with one shoulder and still in
Speaker 3: an unbelievable season. He did do it in the SEC
Speaker 3: facing the best competition. He's not in consideration at once.
Speaker 3: It's not worth spending much time talking about him. But
Speaker 3: to me, the difference is I don't have the degree
Speaker 3: of confidence that Emerson is the next Kevin McGonagall. And
Speaker 3: by the way, I saw Kevin McGonagall in high school,
Speaker 3: he played about forty minutes for me. They actually came down.
Speaker 3: He played about ten minutes for me, and I thought
Speaker 3: he's a good player. He's definitely a first rounder. And
Speaker 3: I think I had him like twenty to twenty five
Speaker 3: on my board, So I didn't know at the time
Speaker 3: he was this good. And I saw Emerson in the
Speaker 3: spring and I thought maybe. I guess it's really hard
Speaker 3: to tell what the level of competition he was facing.
Speaker 3: He wasn't quite as successful on the showcases as McGonagall.
Speaker 3: Was not so much a criticism of Emerson as it
Speaker 3: is just McGonagle that good at the time. But then
Speaker 3: I also look, you know, if everything goes well for
Speaker 3: Emerson three years from now, is he rock Shallowski? Is
Speaker 3: he better than Rock Shallowski? It's possible, but I would
Speaker 3: not bet a substantial amount of money on it, say
Speaker 3: the eleven million dollars of the first pick, right, could
Speaker 3: I do? I think Emerson ends up three years from
Speaker 3: now better than Chelawski or Lackey. I feel a lot
Speaker 3: more confident knowing what those college players are. This is
Speaker 3: one of those situations where going to the college route
Speaker 3: means certainty probability. I understand college guys fail, but we
Speaker 3: know a lot more about them, and we're not waiting
Speaker 3: so much on physical or emotional development that I've ever heard,
Speaker 3: never heard a bad word about Emerson's character, making more
Speaker 3: of a broad statement a twenty one year old versus
Speaker 3: an eighteen year old.
Speaker 2: It's funny though, with the White Sox, just how much
Speaker 2: has changed. And that's we're talking about the White Sox
Speaker 2: maybe drafting a position player and you're saying, yeah, do
Speaker 2: it just because Colson Montgomery, because of Caleb Bonnomer making
Speaker 2: huge rides. And every time Bonnomer has like a cold week,
Speaker 2: he realized, well, he is twenty, he's in double.
Speaker 3: As, he's really young and from Michigan. Right, this guy
Speaker 3: didn't come from Alabama or Florida, or Georgia or California,
Speaker 3: where he was facing much better competition on a regular basis.
Speaker 3: It was Michigan where I don't know if he was
Speaker 3: in one of those leagues. There's leagues in Michigan where
Speaker 3: they play three balls and two strikes, so it is
Speaker 3: not the same thing. Howard, my husband fell at a
Speaker 3: construction site. I knew it wasn't safe.
Speaker 1: It ain't in law.
Speaker 3: We're one of the largest filers of workers' compensation claims
Speaker 3: in the state.
Speaker 1: If you've been hurt on the job.
Speaker 3: In a car accident or suffered a medical mistake, call
Speaker 3: three one, two six million.
Speaker 1: Interesting. Yeah, I don't think he played.
Speaker 2: At least he did enough showcase the whey that didn't
Speaker 2: come up as a criticism like, oh, we don't know
Speaker 2: how he works counts he has ever to them. And
Speaker 2: when it comes to like the you know, beyond the
Speaker 2: first pick, you mentioned that, you know, there's no points
Speaker 2: in getting cute with the money and trying to save
Speaker 2: money or disperse it for picks down the line. But
Speaker 2: in terms of like going from second round on, where
Speaker 2: is the depth, where do you think the White Sox
Speaker 2: can maybe go especially early on since they do have
Speaker 2: the first pick of every round after that.
Speaker 3: So the depth of this draft is actually in high
Speaker 3: school pitching, which of course my least favorite category, but
Speaker 3: I will say so the White Sox second pick is
Speaker 3: forty one. At that point take the high school picture
Speaker 3: where not the risk at that point has been mitigated.
Speaker 3: The point of not taking high school pictures high is
Speaker 3: don't take them in the top twenty five thirty because
Speaker 3: in almost every draft there will be better options on
Speaker 3: the board once you consider the higher risk involved in
Speaker 3: taking the best high school pictures. Because the best high
Speaker 3: school pictures often the guys who throw super hard, they
Speaker 3: don't work out as often as the other categories, either
Speaker 3: because they simply don't progress or because they get hurt
Speaker 3: by the time you get to forty one. If you
Speaker 3: think the best guy's high school pitcher, absolutely take him.
Speaker 3: That may very well be the route that they go,
Speaker 3: particularly given their history. They've tended to like taking project pitchers,
Speaker 3: particularly if there's a lefty out there with a low slot,
Speaker 3: and I feel like a lot of guys are going
Speaker 3: to that low slot, low release height, get a high
Speaker 3: vert on your fastball. That's kind of on trend right now.
Speaker 3: They could also go to the high school position player route.
Speaker 3: They've been tied a bunch to landin Toomai for obvious reasons,
Speaker 3: not the least which is a local kid, and they
Speaker 3: took Janfowski off the same high school team last year.
Speaker 3: I actually don't know if Tommy gets to forty one,
Speaker 3: but if he were still on the board at that point,
Speaker 3: wouldn't surprise me at all and it would be a
Speaker 3: valid selection. This would not be a NEPO pick. Yeah, yeah, No,
Speaker 3: I think he actually does deserve to go there, And
Speaker 3: by all accounts, he made a lot of strides in
Speaker 3: the last twelve months, worked a lot, he got stronger,
Speaker 3: he's driving the ball better. He just looks a lot different.
Speaker 3: Year ago, he looked like he'll be a good college player.
Speaker 3: He's nowhere near as physically developed as he is now
Speaker 3: where you feel like you could send him out to
Speaker 3: pro ball and he'll be able to handle that.
Speaker 2: Then, when it comes to the top pick, in the
Speaker 2: discussion around it is you're talking to the White Sox
Speaker 2: as you're talking to other teams, trying to figure out
Speaker 2: the White Sox are going to do, how or what
Speaker 2: is the level of certainty or uncertainty like compared to
Speaker 2: other years. Is it a normal level of chatter and
Speaker 2: possibilities or is it teams really concerned about like needing
Speaker 2: all routes available.
Speaker 3: So I feel like last year the Nats were at
Speaker 3: least in rumors, still looking at more guys. Now, of course,
Speaker 3: the Nats had just fired their GM slash president a
Speaker 3: week earlier, so that complicated thing.
Speaker 1: Chris Gott seems safe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think he's okay. Yeah, I think he's okay.
Speaker 3: I think he's more than okay. So last year there
Speaker 3: was definitely more uncertainty, and I knew all along will
Speaker 3: It's was a possibility, but I didn't know he was
Speaker 3: going to be the pick until really when it was made.
Speaker 3: The year earlier was Cleveland was first, and it was
Speaker 3: four names and Bisign it seemed likely but again not
Speaker 3: a lock. And I feel like that's kind of where
Speaker 3: we are now. It's I think it's three names. I
Speaker 3: don't think there's another name in there. I think it's
Speaker 3: Emerson Lackey Chilawski. It's not Jackson Flora the picture at
Speaker 3: Santa Barbara. It's not Jacob Lombard, which was a rumor
Speaker 3: at one point, and I think they toyed around with
Speaker 3: the idea he is way too raw as a hitter,
Speaker 3: you just you can't take that risk at the first
Speaker 3: overall pick. There's a spot for that, it's just not first.
Speaker 3: So for us to be nine days out and they've
Speaker 3: got three names, and I feel some degree of confidence
Speaker 3: that I think, I actually think Chilawski is thirtieth of
Speaker 3: three on that list. But that's probably a little more
Speaker 3: info than I would typically have on the first pick
Speaker 3: at this juncture, just based on the last couple of
Speaker 3: years where it often wasn't clear at all until draft
Speaker 3: day or even until the pick was me.
Speaker 2: So to wrap this up, the question that's on everybody's
Speaker 2: mind given that how often it could change the snapshot
Speaker 2: this window. We're talking right now now, who do you
Speaker 2: have number one? And what's the level of certainty you
Speaker 2: place in terms of percentage on that pick.
Speaker 3: If I were producing a mock right now, and I'll
Speaker 3: do another one on Monday, but I haven't started it yet,
Speaker 3: so this is just as talking for now, I would
Speaker 3: go Emerson forty five percent, trying to make sure of
Speaker 3: my math works out on this, Lackey thirty five percent,
Speaker 3: Rock twenty percent. I believe that gets me to one hundred. Yes,
Speaker 3: I don't think it's anybody else. And I don't think
Speaker 3: any of those guys is a giant discount either. So
Speaker 3: if White Sox fans are worried, oh, they're going to
Speaker 3: go cheap, I don't think that would be a realistic
Speaker 3: thing anyway, that the White Sex have done that in
Speaker 3: the past. But I think these are all going to
Speaker 3: be guys who'll signed for slightly underslot at one, which
Speaker 3: seems to be the norm and gives them a little
Speaker 3: room to play around at subsequent picks. But they are not.
Speaker 3: This isn't going about going for a discount. I very
Speaker 3: much believe they are trying to decide who they think
Speaker 3: is actually the best player. You can make a good
Speaker 3: argument for all three of those guys.
Speaker 2: And the fun thing is you're given your reputation for
Speaker 2: hating every single team with the White Sox picking number one.
Speaker 2: It's really hard to say between those three guys that
Speaker 2: Keith Law hates any of them, because you said they're
Speaker 2: all valid, and they're all there, like when you're on
Speaker 2: record saying that they could go in any direction and
Speaker 2: it would be fine.
Speaker 3: So I tried, I tried to hate it. I just can't.
Speaker 3: I can't get there, man, yeah.
Speaker 2: Bring yourself to do it. And like you've turned around
Speaker 2: on Jacob Gonzalez.
Speaker 1: And then as soon as you.
Speaker 2: Wrote that article on Jacob Gonzalez, he goes over twenty
Speaker 2: eight right. I thought like this is uh, you know,
Speaker 2: Keithlaw hates the White Sox. Now the White Sox hate
Speaker 2: Keith Laws.
Speaker 1: Full circle.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, it was so nice to talk to. Now
Speaker 3: I'm like, God, they put the whammy on him.
Speaker 1: I think he puts the whammy on himself.
Speaker 3: That's might be true.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, I always appreciate your time and look
Speaker 2: forward to, uh seeing how it unfolds my pleasure