In the first two Prospect Weeks at the relaunched Sox Machine, all the posts delving into the various categories of White Sox prospects were all necessary due to the abundance of talent that couldn't be contained in a simple top 10 list.
Thanks to the combination of graduation and attrition, one might only need a list half the size to cover everybody of note in 2020. After the top five or so, chaos ensues.
I'd argue that such an open-ended field makes such exercises more valuable. It's one thing to take 10 good players and arrange them in an order with little variety. Determining which players are most worthy of making the cut when the list tails off halfway through is a true test of one's resources.
Now, when it comes to ranking prospects, I don't yet offer the wealth of in-person looks and network of scouts. As somebody who logs performances in the White Sox farm system just about every day, I feel like my value is sensing which players are getting stuck and which ones have the potential to get unstuck.
Also specific to my weltanschauung, I tend to rate prospects in terms of how much the big-league club is counting on them, or how much it would hurt their long-term outlook in trading them.
Take Steele Walker. He'd have made the cut on this list had he not been dealt for Nomar Mazara, but given how little distinguished him from three other outfielders -- left-handed bat lacking standout power, isn't young for the level and might be stretched in center -- I wouldn't have felt compelled ranking him higher than seventh. Maybe he would've been 10th. He was ahead of the other outfielders in terms of recent performance, but the material he worked with didn't scream "fixture!" It'd hurt more to trade any of the top six names on this list, so it makes certain sense that he wouldn't rank higher than that, right?
So with that in mind, below is a feelings-based approach to ranking prospects exclusive to Sox Machine Patreon supporters like yourself. When the list advances into the territory of players who look like bench players and high-minors depth, that's where my feelings run out.
Actually untouchable
No. 1: Luis Robert
Rick Hahn has said it before, and he said it again during SoxFest:
But obviously that doesn't apply to Robert at this juncture. Not after he signed a contract before his first MLB game that takes care of up to his first eight MLB seasons, and not after seeing his PECOTA projections: .266/.318/.499, 31 2B, 4 3B, 30 HR, 4.0 WARP. That projection is good for the 17th-best position player in baseball.*
If I had to choose projection systems to ride with, I'd guess Robert ends up closer to what ZiPS sees (.265/.309/.455, 21 2B, 7 3B, 20 HR, 2.3 WAR), but either one is terrific for a rookie season with seven more in the chamber.
I'll also take ZiPS' No. 1 comparable player over any of the ones BPro spit out.
Assuming Robert is closer to the last name than the previous 10, he has an easy case for the top spot.
(Yasmani Grandal owns the fourth-best projection at 5.7 WARP, in case the joy over that signing was wearing off.)
Technically touchable, too talented
No. 2: Michael Kopech
With no initial velocity concerns during his rehab appearances in instructional league, Kopech is already ahead of the majority of recent White Sox Tommy John surgery cases.
Assuming he comes back with his old arsenal -- 97 as a default setting, a strong slider and a decent changeup -- the White Sox have a No. 2 starter kit in front of them. Lucas Giolito is the only other pitcher in the White Sox system who can claim that kind of potential, although Dallas Keuchel should give the Sox a No. 2 starter's workload.
It's just all a little speculative since the White Sox have a rocky history with elbow injuries and nobody has seen Kopech's stuff over the course of five innings in a year and a half. With Robert, we've seen him do all sorts of crazy stuff in Charlotte as recently as September. If the White Sox traded Kopech, I'd ask, "For what?" With Robert, my first question would be, "Why?"
No. 3: Andrew Vaughn
If Vaughn is the second coming of Paul Konerko, well, it's theoretically possible to do better than Konerko in terms of value to a team. But if he's a Konerko who looks like he's harder on opposing pitchers than he is on himself, I'd want to see that unfold in a White Sox uniform.
In the eight months of so that Vaughn has been in the White Sox's orbit, every prospect analyst and outlet makes the caveat that they normally wouldn't rank a right-handed first baseman as high as they place Vaughn on top 100 lists, be they pre-draft or 2020 editions.
But they do. I want to see why that is. Vaughn showed flashes of it in his pro debut, but there's gotta be more there.
Less talented, too unique
No. 4: Nick Madrigal
For just about as long as Madrigal has been in the White Sox organization, I've mentally assigned Placido Polanco as his upper-percentile scenario. As long as you're not a Detroit Tigers fan fixated on his 0-for-17 performance in the 2006 World Series, you'd take that career every time for a player of his stature.
You can upgrade on Polanco, like when the Cardinals traded him to the Phillies in a five-player trade that brought Scott Rolen to St. Louis in 2002.
You can also do worse than Polanco, like when the Phillies dealt him to Detroit for Ugueth Urbina in 2005. Urbina was arrested for attempted murder after the season, and eventually convicted. Polanco, who stayed away from attacking people with a machete and gasoline, ended up helping out the Tigers a ton, 2006 World Series aside.
So I wouldn't take a Polanco-type talent for granted. Especially if he's shorter, preternatural at making contact and maniacal about competing. Remember all the fun people had talking about Willians Astudillo? Imagine what that'll be like for a guy who can also play defense.
Sorely needed pitching depth
No. 5: Jonathan Stiever
Stiever wasn't really on anybody's radar last year, more because there were at least four other right-handed pitching prospects hogging the attention. Well, Dylan Cease graduated, and three others had Tommy John surgery, so Stiever finally took in some of that sweet sunlight and oxygen.
With only one good year under his belt and no exposure to Double-A, he's hasn't yet attained the kind of status that Dane Dunning and even Jimmy Lambert had before things went awry. Alec Hansen also met this description, but Stiever's history of control and athleticism is reassuring when it comes to holding his gains.
No. 6: Dane Dunning
Speaking of Dunning, the same caveats for Kopech apply to Dunning, but perhaps at a higher cost. In Dunning's case, we haven't seen him fully operational in 2½ years, and he needs all the velocity he has to maintain his membership to the Notable Prospect Club.
But often a UCL repair is merely a long interruption, and the hope is that the White Sox make it routine themselves. If so, Dunning was well on his way to conquering Double-A with his old arsenal, and he would've been an ideal seventh starter on Opening Day had he maintained his form and progress all the way through 2018. He can reclaim that ground. He's just 25 now, so he used up his margin for error in terms of age.
Numbness approaches
No. 7: Bryce Bush
Last year I had Bush ranked ninth. He had a rough year. Now he's seventh. This is less a reflection of Bush, and more a reflection of how poorly the field that should've lapped him performed.
As the White Sox prepared to exit the rebuild and push toward contending, I became more used to evaluating rosters in a binary sense, sorting players who help apart from the players who don't. The first time the White Sox rebuilt, it felt like the Sox settled for players who merely didn't suck to address the gap between their stars and scrubs. But then those additions turned into scrubs, and the Sox felt compelled to sell the stars as a result. The gap between not hurting and helping is worth attempting to bridge.
So, back to Bush: He hit .201/.285/.346 across the whole season as a 19-year-old in Kannapolis, which is bad. But as I mentioned in the write-up of the players who are still figuring it all out, he had a couple stretches where he was the best hitter in a Sally League lineup at 19 before two different kinds of (hopefully) non-chronic maladies derailed him. The Sox also seemed to find a position for him, eliminating third base and settling on right field, which is not first base or DH.
He's shown this kind of impact two times in two seasons, which is more than anybody else on this list can say. Somebody like Lenyn Sosa isn't far behind. One came from the draft and the other from the international market, but they've been on a similar timetable. Sosa had a superior year in Kannapolis at the same age, but his was a slow and steady grind, and the leading edge of his game is not as well defined
If the White Sox traded Sosa for what he would get in MLB talent -- think Luis Avilan, or maybe Iván Nova for comparable deals -- I wouldn't like it. If the Sox traded Bush for that deal, I would hate it.
I don't think I would say that about anybody else on this list -- even Walker, because I didn't hate seeing him traded for the Ghost of Nomar Mazara Future -- so his ranking is mostly to denote where feelingsball is out of the equation.
Prep arms
No. 8(t): Matthew Thompson
No. 8(t): Andrew Dalquist
We don't know what the White Sox do with high school pitchers. We know what the White Sox have done with high school pitchers. In the past, they've drafted a Tyler Danish here and a Spencer Adams there with a fair amount of intrigue or acclaim, only to fall well short of projected velocity gains and settle for a life on the margins. (Poor Danish might've been the single biggest victim of Triple-A's adoption of the major league baseball last year.)
The White Sox are already on a different track here because they've drafted two of them, and they have slightly different profiles. They're both righties, but Thompson fell out of the first round due to inconsistent showing his senior year, while Dalquist moved into the third round due to advances in his performance. Thompson's stuff peaks higher, Dalquist's secondary stuff is more advanced.
They've only pitched five innings combined, so if the White Sox traded either one today, the chances of them regretting it are slim, just because of the amount of ground and grind the Thompson and Dalquist have in front of them. I'm inclined to regard the two of them as one prospect entity for the time being, because together they represent the Sox's newfound willingness to try developing a different kind of talent, and having two of them mitigates the risk. It might be like buying two raffle tickets instead of one, but the odds improve regardless.
Future Cuban
No. 10: TBD
While everybody's waiting for the Mookie Betts trade to become official, involve new teams or just fall apart, Jeff Passan broke a different kind of news by reporting that 22-year-old Cuban outfield Pedro Leon would be signing with the Houston Astros when the new international period signing opens on July 2.
Kiley McDaniel, his new colleague occupying the ESPN+ position vacated when Keith Law went to The Athletic, followed up by saying there are more such signings on the way:
We previously discussed Oscar Luis Colás, who I would assume is one of the players McDaniel is alluding to, but this seems like it plays directly into the White Sox's strengths, especially since they usually have less money committed to prospects from the open and established Caribbean markets. Here's me penciling one in to avoid putting a number on anybody else here.
Honorable mentions
Let's clump 'em up because I lack the feelings to separate them with any meaningful degree of conviction.
Lenyn Sosa
Yolbert Sanchez
Right now, both appear to be good-glove shortstops who need to do enough at the plate to complement defense that won't win Gold Gloves. Sanchez hasn't made his stateside debut, and Sosa is new/young enough to where such forecasts still have considerable elasticity.
Luis Basabe
Luis Gonzalez
Micker Adolfo
Blake Rutherford
Two of these players were covered in the roundup of injured prospects, the other two were featured in players with big obstacles remaining, but health is the biggest obstacle of all when you think about it. The order of the players reflects my order of faith in their abilities to rise to the challenge. Basabe would've stood apart had this been his first run-in with the injured list, but he's had two bad health years out of three with the White Sox.
Zack Collins
Gavin Sheets
If you could put Sheets' hit tool on the rest of Collins' profile, you'd feel OK about resigning that player to a first base/DH profile if necessary. As it stands, Collins still needs to catch in order to stand out as more than a platoon bat, and Sheets needs to carry an above-average batting average in order to offset his lack of dynamic power. They both showed progress last year, but are they more than Quadruple-A talents?
Danny Mendick
A player in Mendick's position almost seems like the control for this area of a prospect list. Sure, he's 26 and profiles as a utility infielder ... but he's also realized that role, even if it's only a September call-up to date, and he's got a little bit of potential left unexplored. He's not anybody's idea of a top prospect, yet his situation would be a victory for half of that outfield cluster above. Age sometimes only goes so far.
Jimmy Lambert
He's like Stiever in terms of a shorter track record the White Sox unlocked from a second-day performance, but he's closer to Dunning in terms of what he achieved at Double-A before injury set in. He's also coming back from Tommy John surgery, but it might take him the whole season to do so due to timing, so he's on the outside looking in.
Benyamin Bailey
The White Sox aren't such an international powerhouse to the point that you can take a .324/.477/.454 performance from a 17-year-old outfielder for granted, even if it's coming in the Dominican Summer League. It's a cut above previous pleasant surprises like Jose Rodriguez, who also merits consideration.
Elijah Tatis
Rick Hahn already said he's not trading another Tatis, so he makes the cut by default.
