The list is long and sundry with great things you were told high draft picks were going to do. He’s a productive major-league hitter. A lot of players don’t even get to that point.

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

He's a stop gap type guy. If you have him you should be trying to improve on him.

He's a midget version of Andre Thornton.

_________________
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

Will Vaughn improve? I don't see why he couldn't become a better player. Maybe he's not elite at any point, but I think the problems probably go well beyond him.

Vaughn is not on a list of problems to deal with at the moment. Sure he will never be elite. But he is more than serviceable for them moving forward. You could easily have him at 1B on a playoff team.

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

Vaughn may not be a problem, but I'm not sure he's a solution either. You could easily have him at 1B if you have two or three other guys approaching 30 HRs a year. JOrr is right. Sox should be trying to improve from a guy like Vaughn at 1st. I don't dislike the guy, but you need more power from your first baseman if you are intending to win a title.

Vaughn might be the guy who brings back the most in a trade.

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Your offense/power has to come from somewhere. First base is an obvious place. If you're getting minimal production there, you're gonna need to make it up elsewhere. Maybe they could if Robert and Eloy can stay on the field and Moncada can do anywhere near what he seems capable of. That just hasn't happened though.

_________________
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 you figure 400+ ABs, Vaughn is 18th among 1B in OPS. But if you look at guys that are on original contracts, You got Vlad, Torkelson, and Mountcastle ahead of him(I might have missed some guys, it was a shallow dive on fangraphs).

He's good enough for 5 mil, he's not good enough for 15+ mil.

Vaughn could help round out a good team.

Unless he juices, then he could be McGwire.

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Right. He's not likely to be a centerpiece.

Look at the '05 club. Outside of speed, you had basically zero power/slugging from LF. But your RF hit 30 bombs. Your 1B hit 40. You had 38 homers from the left side of your infield. You got 22 from the catcher. The Sox right now don't have anything close to that. They currently have 155 HRs as a team, but 25 of those were hit by a guy who's playing for the Marlins right now.

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If the guy's average and young, there's hope. It's a toxic environment. It full of management not knowing their ass from a hole in the ground. From top to bottom.

And he’s showed well, all things considered.

Seems like a fine baseball player. I just wish he could’ve been a catcher or 2B. Or again, juice. If he just sacrificed a little bit of integrity/health, he could be something.

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I'd stick him back in Left. THE EASIEST POSITION!!!!!!!!!

This kind of touches on my thoughts on the topic. From a position player standpoint, your key rebuild guys were: Eloy, Robert, Moncada, Madrigal, and Vaughn. For the rebuild to work, you needed at least three of those guys to be better than average. Only one of those guys (Robert) is better than average. Therefore, Vaughn is part of the problem, but he's one of many other parts.

The problem is, you can say that for every single position on the field, outside of CF.

Doesn't help that the 3 young position players that are getting a chance right now aren't doing well (Colas, Lee, Sosa). Small sample size, and hopefully they improve, but would be nice to have someone come up and look decent from the start.

Going full tank, then rebuild with prospects is a very dicey proposition to begin with. Those players have to hit and stay healthy and the odds are astronomically against teams to do that. It’s hard enough to have one prospect be good let alone depending on a half dozen of them to come through your system and be good major leaguers. So much has to go right with very little going wrong . Also why the job Theo did in 16 was great .

_________________
Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

Astros, Rays, and Orioles have been great. I can't really give Theo the same credit. Babe is essentially the only guy who didn't fall on his face, and he was the guy we didn't want to give $10M to.

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

2/3 of the NL tanking and Cleveland booting the ball around in their home park in game 6 is the very essence of so much going right with so little going wrong.

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Enough of them played well enough to win the Series . The rebuild was a success. Looking at the
Sox you see how hard that is to take it all the way.

_________________
Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

don't forget a remarkable string of injuries to each of their opponents

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

Injuries happen to almost everyone, but the 2016 Cubs were healthy overall. Especially their starting pitchers. That too is so much going right with so little going wrong.

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I think you can win with Moncada-Robert-Jimenez as the heart of your order (of course, they have to stay on the field) if you round out the lineup with real ballpalyers. In twenty years no one will mention Dansby Swanson, but he's a fuckin' ballplayer. You need guys like that in the middle of the infield, at catcher, and in the clubhouse. Then you don't ever need to talk about the manager.

_________________
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

Agree. You need winners on the club. Leaders. Swanson is one.

If a guy like Swanson see's you not giving it your all and jogging to first base , he'll kick your ass in the locker room afterwards.

That's the thing. The Sox have anti-Swansons. No gamers. Dumb. Can't play their position or run the bases. They came up with none of this knowledge, and they sure haven't learned any.

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

It's beyond injuries at this point with Moncada and Jimenez. Moncada puts up, at best, average numbers and while Jimenez's numbers are consistently above average, they're not that far above average that they can carry the weight for other players. Also, those numbers come with absolutely no defense.

The two rebuilds that have worked recently (the Astros and the Cubs) have produced at least two guys who were well above average in the years they won. Unless you're going to do the Rays thing where you're always in the midst of a rebuild, you need to identify and develop those well above average players through the rebuild.

The odds aren't astronomical. It's just not guaranteed. Go look at how most of the recent World Series champions were built. The Cubs method and the Sox method were how it was done. You tank. You get a superstar or two because of it. You trade away whatever else you have for some prospects. If it works, you spend some money around the team to fill in the holes. It worked for the Cubs. It failed miserably for the White Sox. The method is sound.

The ironic part is that many people were blaming the White Sox for chasing mediocrity after the 2005-2006 teams were past their championship window. They would laugh at the White Sox making all these free agent moves designed to win now that wouldn't really result in anything but a slightly above average team. You seem to be advocating for that now when I am almost certain you also had issue with how the White Sox tried to win prior to the fire sale that led to this tank job.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Two things the Sox apparently cannot do. Or if the players are well above average, they have glaring weaknesses and can't stay healthy (Jimenez). Robert's the exception.

They can't seem to find any starters. And even if they do find decent ones, they are the type that are kind of done by September.

For relievers, this is the place to go to kill your skills.

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I'll give you Robert and Eloy.

If Moncada is on a Championship team, he's a role player along for the ride. When you consider he was the prize piece of a trade that was received in return for one of the best White Sox pitchers of all time, Moncada is without question one of the biggest busts in Chicago sports history.

Agree with your thoughts on Swanson and players like him.

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Moncada is a more than adequate third baseman. Jimenez is a DH.

_________________
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

JORRs thoughts on Swanson vs. Moncada are good stuff. Moncada is the poster boy for a waste of such talent. Swanson is the poster boy for getting everything you can out of the talent you have. Every team needs a couple Swansons if they are going to be good. It is like Buehrle and Lester. Neither were the most talented pitchers around. But they were bulldogs that you wanted to have the ball. You knew they were going to fight scratch and do whatever was needed to get your team the win. Guys respected them, followed them and were a little afraid of them.

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