But you are generally talking about guys taken at or near the very top of the draft, correct?

_________________

Trade me right fucking now!

_________________
Good people drink good beer - Hunter S. Thompson

<º)))><

Waiting for the time when I can finally say
That this has all been wonderful, but now I'm on my way

Not necessarily. Mike Trout was the 22nd pick. Adam Jones was the 37th pick. Giancarlo Stanton and Brandon Phillips were both 2nd round picks. Matt Kemp was a 6th rounder. I could go on and on but you get my point.

You can teach an athlete to be a ballplayer but you can't teach a ballplayer to be an athlete.

Then the Sox better be finding new people to teach these athletes to be ballplayers.

_________________
"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

Lets see that list. While there are definitely some athletes that have developed into ballplayers there is no way they are the majority. There are great athletes that happen to be great ballplayers at the same time but that is not what you said and that is not what KW likes to draft. He wants to mold the athletes into ballplayers which is a huge gamble and it fails quite often. You end up with a guy who can hit moon shots in A ball but can't scratch .200 in AA.

I don't care what team does it. I think its a bad philosophy. Hendry took Taiwan Easterling the wr from FSU high and he fucking blows. I remember when Kelly Washington was on the Cougars and could hit the ball further than anyone.....provided it was a fastball and that he could make contact with it. Decent little NFL career though. The Cubs have Shark but he was a dominant college pitcher so its not really the same comparison. They have Szczur too but he is more of just a speed and defense guy....not a power guy. You can have a few of those low risk low reward speed and defense guys around as long as they can get on base.

That is not what KW does though. He wants the whole package. He is envisioning Bo Jackson.

_________________
That's my purse! I don't know you!

UMN and RFDC raise good points above.

We should take a look at the top 5-10 prospects each year for the past decade or so.

I'd be interested to see if the Sox have failed in their drafting philosophy and talent selection (with a possible causal connection between the two) or just their talent selection.

_________________

Reins dorm refuses to negotiate with agents of non unionized employees. Anyone with skins on the wall has an agent so you get nothing but inexperienced management that you are hoping are on the front end of a great career. He does this for both the sox and the bulls

_________________
O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Way too early to say they've failed.

I agree. Kenny Williams tried to draft himself over and over again as if he were a success rather than a complete bust. And even if some of those guys turned out to be Bo Jackson, it's not really that great. Bo was a freakish oddity, kind of like a Nolan Ryan of a position player, fascinating to watch, amazing in many ways, but really, not close to a top player.

It really comes down to hitting. Can a guy hit the baseball? If he can't, running the bases in 14 seconds doesn't mean shit.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

This is so obvious yet baseball execs ignore it! Either you can hit or you can't. You can't "learn" how to hit.

_________________
Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

I imagine every player drafted can hit the shit out of the ball, hitting major league pitching is. Quite different, n you wont know that until its too late.


I agree with those which said Bo Jackson is over rated.

_________________

How was Bo Jackson overrated?

_________________
"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

Do you absolutely dominate your competion and have a well above average ability to make contact and have strike zone judgement?

Go through the past 30 years of White Sox 1st rounders and the answer to that question is usually no, with the exception of Thomas and Ventura.

_________________
Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

Finding a true #1 starter is about as difficult as finding a 30 HR hitter (these days-not in the steroid era). To give up one of the top 5 starters in the A.L. is something I would not do. Do I think he might experience a serious injury before his current contract is over....without a doubt. I think it was foolish for the Sox to give him the contract he received for just that reason. But he has exceptional talent. If he is able to pitch for 80% of the time that is left on that contract, the deal is a good one. The odds of making a deal and getting a guy that develops into a top 5 starter in return are remote. The odds of getting 2 players that become All-Star level players is poor as well. Hoping for a couple solid but unspectacular players in exchange for a top 5 starter is stupid. Sale should be kept.

_________________
Go Cubs!!!!

Well, I don't know if he was "overrated". Maybe he could have been a great player if he had just concentrated on baseball and he hadn't gotten injured. That's a lot of "ifs". As it was, you saw his ability to do amazing things on the athletic field, but was he really a better ballplayer than someone like, Nick Swisher, for example? I'd have to say no.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

_________________

Swisher is a good ballplayer. I'm sorry your view of him is solely informed by his single season on the South side.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Why do you continue to make up quotes an attribute them to me? I never said Swisher wasn't good or hasn't had a good career.

_________________

Don't play games, Frank. What the fuck does your stupid ass GIF mean?

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

If the Sox aren't offered fair return for Sale, they shouldn't trade him. But the idea that he should be considered "untouchable"--as some apparently do--is just plain dumb.

_________________

No one is untouchable. If St Louis offers a deal that starts with Oscar Tavares and Michael Wacha or Boston offers a deal that starts with Xander Bogaerts and Matt Barnes of course they listen but those deals are highly unlikely so all this talk of trading Sale is just a bunch of talk.

So now you need everything explained? Just a couple days ago you were accusing me of being obtuse in the Chris Sale debate. Now you're doing the same thing I see.

My gif means that Swish was not a better ballplayer than Bo Jackson. Swish has had a pretty solid career, but Jackson was able to do things on the field that few have ever been able to duplicate.

_________________

And yet, they don't translate into the stats you love so much since Swisher gets on base at about a 50% higher clip than Bo and they slug right around the same. Sadly, the numbers don't bear your thoughts out. If you want to simply say that Bo was more exciting to watch, we can agree.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Isn't that kind of what we do here, Keyser?

_________________

I bet pitchers shit their pants facing Bo. Any chance he wasn't on steroids?

_________________
Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

Yes but I was referring to the so called baseball experts out there who are saying the Sox should trade Sale.

Sit down CARGO

_________________
1926-1931-1934-1942-1944-1946-1964-1967-1982-2006-2011

Swisher's had 3 seasons with better WARs than Bo's best and one tie.

Swisher is better than Bo, n I hate swisher. Bo was a juiced up one trick pony..swing for the fences or wiff.

_________________