Baseball

New World Order: 2020 White Sox Previews – Nick Madrigal

By Adam Hess 1444 0

There is perhaps no more polarizing player amongst White Sox fans than second baseman Nick Madrigal. After a great college career at Oregon State that concluded in a College World Series Championship, the Sox took the diminutive infielder with the fourth overall pick in the 2018 MLB Draft, passing on a number of high upside high schoolers for the high floor but low ceiling 2B who finished his college careers as one of the best contact hitters ever. Heading into 2020, Madrigal figures to be the Sox’ starter at the keystone for most of the year, but may Sox fans are still divided on him. Let’s dig into why:

2019 MiLB Stats

.311/.377/.414, 5 HR, 55 RBI

8.3 BB%, 3.0 K%

.366 wOBA, 117 wRC+ in AAA (29 games)

4 Total Errors across all levels

Last Week on Nitro: Madrigal played across three levels of the minors last year, and he was quite good at each stop. His worst slash line at any level was the one in High-A, which means that he got better as the competition did. The real encouragement came from his performance in AA, where he hit .341/.400/.451 with a .391 wOBA and 150 wRC+ across 42 games in Birmingham, which is notoriously stifling to offense. Along with that, Madrigal improved his walk rate from 2018 from 4.7% to 7.8% in A+, continued that same rate at AA and then jumped to 9.7% at AAA, which was a welcome sight considering his contact heavy profile saw a lot of swinging and not as much patience in his college career and he first few months of his pro career. The real headliner, though, is the strikeout rate, which was so low it has garnered plenty of attention from national outlets. He kept it steady at 2.8% in both Winston-Salem and Birmingham before seeing a minimal bump to 3.7% in AAA. With plenty of strikeout-prone sluggers in the lineup, having a guy like Madrigal who makes consistent contact and damn near never strikes out will be a nice piece to have in the lineup to counteract some of that. That combined with his 65-grade speed and baserunning abilities makes him seem like your prototypical leadoff hitter moving forward, and his glove has drawn plenty of “Future Gold Glover” praise from scouts.

The main area of concern for Madrigal is his power, or more accurately his lack thereof. Madrigal totaled just 36 extra base hits last year, and 27 of those were doubles. He hit just 5 dingers, and even that is a bit misleading as one of them was in fact *not* a dinger because he had one inside-the-parker. To his credit, he had a few wall-scrapers, but that also could point to the problem – he has wall-scraping power at best. Most scouting reports hesitate to even credit him with gap power, while his biggest detractors go as far as to place a 20-grade on his power tool which essentially figures to a zero power rating if you were creating him in MLB The Show. Even the jump to AAA, where they were using the same golf ball imitation that MLB was, saw Madrial’s SLG% drop from .450 in Birmingham to .424 in Charlotte. We will talk more about this below, but this is certainly an area of concern when looking at his MiLB numbers considering that it’s only going to get harder for him to hit the ball with power in the bigs.

TOO SWEET (WHOOP WHOOP): Madrigal seems destined to start the year in AAA, and while normally sending a top prospect who had success at every level of MiLB the year prior to AAA to start the year would scream service time manipulation, I truly don’t believe that is the case here. As just discussed, there is a serious power element missing to his game, and it’s not hard to believe that a bit of time with the tennis ball in Charlotte could help that a bit. The Sox have plenty of power in the lineup, so they don’t need a ton of round trippers from Madrigal, but they’re gonna at least need him to start hitting with doubles power. Of course, the ideal outcome there is that his elite batter’s eye allows him to consistently avoid strikeouts enough to the point that pitchers have to choose to either walk him or throw him a pitch he can really hit a long ways, and he starts elevating the ball more to make use of the relatively batter-friendly Sox Park. I refuse to get ahead of myself here, but I think seeing him post an 8+ walk rate while keeping the K-rate below 10 and hit even just 10 home runs could allow him to be a hugely impactful player right away.

YOU FUCKED UP! YOU FUCKED UP!: Okay, let’s just rip the bandaid off here – there is a chance Nick Madrigal doesn’t even become a league average player, not just for 2020 but long term. If you want me to just tell you a worst case scenario for 2020, it largely starts with Madrigal getting hurt, because that would indeed be bad, but I think the Sox could survive it because, again, ther is a chance he may not be a league average player, largely because of that power issue. Let me tell you what I mean. Per last week’s Keith Law Podcast, Madrigal averaged just over 84 MPH exit velocity last year, and looking at the statcast leaderboard for exit velo, the player names that are living in that realm are not exactly comforting. Now, the most optimistic of fans will point to the fact that Jose Altuve averaged just 86.1 MPH last year, but I don’t need to explain to you why there is plenty of reason to think that may not have been legitimate. There are a few encouraging names in the 87 MPH range – Paul DeJong, Adam Eaton, Starling Marte, Kris Bryant (please do not fire me, Sam) – but I’m ignoring a LOT of “dear God I don’t want Madrigal to be THAT GUY” contestants to give you these names. Now, Sox Park is hardly a hitter’s nightmare, so he might be able to make due with his current power, but if he ends up being Dee Gordon, Neil Walker, or *gulp* Yolmer Sanchez, all of whom were in the 86 MPH range for average exit velo last year, that is going to be a huge disappointment.

BAH GOD, THAT’S MADRIGAL’S MUSIC: This is a really tough one, because I truly do not know what to expect from Madrigal. If he was playing 20 years ago, he’d be a fucking star from jump street. He’d probably win multiple MVPs. But in today’s game, where strikeouts are not viewed as a huge negative and power is the real premium tool, Madrigal almost seems like a misfit. I don’t want to place everything on Madrigal’s power, because just about every other tool he has is average or plus. He’s one of the best hitters the minors have ever seen from a strikeout and contact profile standpoint, he fields well and runs well. All of those things could enable him to be a good player without hitting for power. But the lack of power could also hold him back from becoming a great player. All of this is more big picture, though. For 2020, I expect Madrigal to be productive at AAA before coming up to become the Sox everyday 2B, and fitting in well right away. I think he will still be hard to strikeout, and draw walks at a decent rate to make him an OBP threat, but overall I think he will finish 2020 with a wRC+ below 100 (meaning he will be a below average hitter). But if he can bring the upside with his glove and the basepaths that he has in the minors, that could still be enough to be a high-level player at the keystone.

Hockey

Game #66 – Ducks vs. Hawks Preview: You Were Only Supposed To Blow The Bloody Doors Off

By Sam Fels 1304 0

vs.

RECORDS: Ducks 26-31-8   Hawks 29-28-8

PUCK DROP: 7:30

TV: NBCSN Chicago

MUSKETEERS? ON GUARD?: Anaheim Calling

Whenever the Hawks were mapping out a road back to the playoffs–be it before the season, or in the depths of the fall, or when they looked barely competent around the new year and trying to place a final charge–they must have looked at March and thought this was where it would happen. Because looking at this month’s slate, even in their current state the Hawks could pile up some points here.

It starts tonight with the Ducks, who blow. The Wings are on Friday, and they blow. The Sharks and Sentators at home next week. They blow chunks, too. Minnesota in a home-and-home and then Buffalo, and both of those teams blow a fair amount as well. The Kings and Canadiens at the end of the month, and yep, there’s some definite blowage there as well. That’s nine games that you’d expect the Hawks to win, no matter their makeup. Which means if  the Hawks were to goof a couple of results out of the Oilers, Blues, Caps, Penguins, or Stars…they could have 86 or 88 points, or even more at denouement of the season.

Except that probably only worsens their draft position. And makes you wonder what if. And that’s if you think the Hawks will take all 18 points from the games they should. Which they won’t. There’ll be no shelter here.

Either way, it kicks off tonight with the visit of the Ducks, who have backed up all season themselves after backing up all last season and have never really recovered since a playoff loss to the Predators in 2017. Boy, that sounds familiar. The Ducks might still be in Step 1 of turning from the Getzlaf-Perry generation to the next that will be led by…well, they don’t really know who yet and that’s the problem.

Getzlaf is still here of course, but his can’t-be-bothered, I’ll-float-out-here style has now aged into a I-can’t-get-there-if-I-wanted-to-but-still-don’t morass. Getz is headed for his lowest point-total since 2012 or worse, and he’s still the #1 center around these parts. What kids he’s turning the torch over to, I can’t tell you. The Ducks seemed to have missed a generation, just like the Hawks have. Rickard Rakell is 27 soon. Jakob Silfverberg is 29. Adam Henrique is 30. Cam Fowler is 28. Josh Manson too. That’s not really anyone in their prime or approaching it who’s ready to be the centerpiece of this team. When your important players are either over 30 or under 24, you get this.

The younger ducklings (so clever) like Sam Steel or Max Jones or Max Comtois (Larry Horse say Ducks too Max-y) or Jacob Larsson haven’t seized the greater opportunities. There’s still time of course, but Ducks observers would probably like to see a little more flash and less talk. The Ducks have taken on a couple projects in the hopes of finding plutonium by accident like Danton Heinen or Sonny Milano or Christian Djoos. Something’s got to work soon, right?

There’s still a few kids who haven’t even gotten a full go yet, and that’s where the hope lies. But this being a Bob Murray team, they’re going to struggle to find room for them thanks to contracts like Ryan Kesler’s if he doesn’t want to retire, or Erik Gudbranson’s, or David Backes’s for one more year. It’s a project in Anaheim, that’s for sure. The hockey team matches the area around it. There’s a lot of trash just lying around with nothing to stand out from the background.

To the Hawks, it’s basically the same again as it was in Florida. Corey Crawford will start, and the rest of the lineup will remain the same. And really, why would you change anything at this point? How would you? It kind of picks itself.

Toews, Keith, Kane, and Crow have been sounding the bell about making a serious run this month, and they’ll probably be doing the same in the room. They have to. Players want to win, and there are wins here to be had. And hey, maybe it’ll be fun. Who knows what it would tell the front office though. Look, we’ve got to come up with some reason to electively watch the Hawks play teams like this, right?

Hockey

Game #66 – Ducks vs. Hawks Spotlight: Dallas Eakins And The Curse Of The Marlies

By Sam Fels 1239 0

You won’t believe this, but everything being overblown and exaggerated just because it takes place in Toronto spreads beyond its NHL team. You probably knew that, because no Leafs fan every shuts the fuck up about what’s going on with the AHL’s Marlies. Remember when Mark Arcobello was all that was needed to get the Leafs from merely playoff attendant to Cup winner? The Rays don’t talk about their AAA team an eighth as much and that actually produces shit for the big club!

It’s like that every goddamn year with them, because everyone in T.O is under the delusion that everyone else cares about their entire system. He’s in Germany now, by the way. It was the same with Josh Leivo or T.J. Brennan or Carter Ashton or a host of others Leafs fans were convinced were NHL-worthy simply because they were in the Toronto system/area code who turned out to be tomato cans.

It’s apparently the same with with coaches. Except the Leafs have somehow exported that blurred vision of the world elsewhere.

Dallas Eakins is on his second job, and it’s hard to get a good read on what he is. The Ducks roster he has here is shit, John Gibson hasn’t played well, but it’s not like this team is overachieving or anything. Metrically, they’re about the same as the Hawks, and we know what a problem that is. But unlike the Hawks, there really isn’t a star on the roster besides Gibson, at least one that can stay healthy. Getzlaf is past it, Lindholm is just under that border, and the rest have flattered to deceive or are mere seat-fillers to plus seat-fillers.

But it wasn’t so long ago that you simply had to have Eakins as coach. He was the hot name because…he took the Marlies to the Calder Cup Final once? So it seems. Every second intermission on Hockey Night in Canada had some hockey wag breathlessly reporting that one of a dozen teams was all over Eakin’s ass. Most of the current crop of players that make the Leafs what they are now came after him, and/or skipped the Marlies altogether. Still, that was in the bloodstream, and the Oilers axed Ralph Kreuger to get Eakins even though the former had a surprising season with the dish-water talent that usually exists in EdMo. Well, Eakins won 36 of his 113 games in charge up there and was out on his ass in 18 months.

Of course, he’s not alone. Paul Maurice was able to parlay one season behind the Toronto bench to a job with the big club, which went exactly nowhere. He’s still getting work despite clearly demonstrating his head is filled with barf. Sheldon Keefe followed that same path as Maurice, just 15 years later or so, and he’s currently struggling to make the the playoffs with one of the more gifted sets of forwards in the league. Good stuff there. Clearly the Marlies are the start of a golden road. Or shower.

Eakins recovered to take a job with the Ducks’ AHL affiliate in San Diego, where he worked with some of the kids they hope will turn this ugly-ass ship around sometime soon. The Ducks and their fans have been bleating about Sam Steel and Max Jones and Max Comtois for a while now, without actual tangible results at the top level. Trevor Zegras was picked last draft and Isac Lundestrom came up for air briefly this season. Maybe they’ll be the ones who the Ducks got right.

Still, this is where Eakins is now, watching this dreck every night. Eakins did all right work with the Gulls for a couple seasons, taking them to the conference final last year with Steel, Jones, and others. But he never proved to be the genius that Toronto fans told everyone he was. Which is how things work around there all the time.

Hockey

Game #66 – Ducks vs. Hawks: Hedley Lamarr’s Mugs, Pugs, And Thugs

By Sam Fels 1086 0

Ryan Getzlaf – He’s the only shit-eater left now that Corey Perry and slinked off to Dallas to do pretty much nothing except elbow anyone who fell asleep for seven seconds to not see him coming. Getzlaf’s skills seems to have matched his attitude now, as he hasn’t given a shit in years and now he can’t just use his hands to get out of it. He’ll be 35 next season and in the last year of his contract, so this could be one of his last visits to the United Center. Which is fine, the fumigation costs after he leaves are absurd.

Erik Gudbranson – He’s hurt and won’t play tonight, but someone always seems to sign or trade for this cinderblock and he hasn’t been able to do anything since he came into the league. But if you’re big and hairy the NHL will always find a place for you for some reason.

Michael Del Zotto – There’s no coming back from publicly blowing it with a porn star, dude.

Hockey

Game #66 – Ducks vs. Hawks: Lineups & How They Were Built

By Sam Fels 1015 0

Ducks

Notes: Here is a mash unit of sorts. If Hampus! Hampus! plays it’s kind of different animal, but it’s not expected…Henrique has nine points in his last eight games…Gibson has had a rough season, but was good against the Devils last out. He has to start as Miller is still just out of an illness, though the Hawks might see Anthony Stolarz tonight with the Ducks playing the Avs tomorrow…

Hawks

Baseball

Yes Movement – 2020 Chicago Cubs Player Previews: Javy Danger

By Sam Fels 993 0

For a team that seems to want to destroy itself for reasons it or no one else can really understand, there sure are a lot of certainties. You know what you’ll get from Bryant and Rizzo. You’ll know what you get from Hendricks. Contreras is a pretty safe bet. Seems like Schwarber will be, too. Darvish a little less so but still good. Most would throw Javy Baez on that list. And I would 99% of the time. The thing with Javy is that so much of his game seems impossible that it’s hard to convince yourself fully that it can be repeated year after year. The whole thing is on a wire. Except that Javy is a Wallenda, so that’s ok. You and I aren’t Wallendas. Most major leaguers aren’t. But he is. More of the same this time around?

Javier Baez 2019

138 games, 561 PA

.281/.316/.531

.347 wOBA  114 wRC+

5.0 BB%  27.8 K%

15.7 Defensive Runs

4.4 fWAR

Some of Javy’s numbers are colored by the fact that he was a puddle come the middle of August, and then was hurt throughout all of September. The Cubs didn’t really have a backup shorstop on the roster, and Addison Russell’s strange attempts to play baseball, or something resembling it, didn’t really qualify. Javy was crackers during the season’s first two months, had some fiendish BABIP treachery in June, and then July and August were merely average as the amount of games started to pile up. July and especially August had some pretty worrying contact-type numbers, which we can only hope can be attributed to a slower bat due to fatigue. Otherwise…

YES! YES! YES!: Some combination of Hoerner and Bote gives Baez just enough days off to keep him fresh throughout the season, and maybe the Cubs medical staff will take less than a week and a half to diagnose anything that might be wrong this time around. Baez can get back to his 2018 offensive numbers, which means just a touch more pop (he needs to slug over .520 to be really effective thanks to his low OBP style) and less grounders (50% last year). Baez had one of the highest average exit velocities on the team last year (91.6 MPH) but saw his angle drop nearly a third from the previous season. The difference seemed to be pitchers getting more grounders from getting in on his hands last year, and again, some of that can be bat-speed from tiredness. Javy doesn’t need to raise his power much to be back to premier player status, but he does need to get the ball in the air more this season. Which shouldn’t be too much of an ask. And hey, there’s always a chance his approach improves. I mean, nothing is impossible, right?

YOU’RE A B+ PLAYER: Pitchers went to busting Javy inside last year with fastballs more often, and Javy gave them a greater margin for error as you can see here:

The fear is that will be a permanent solution, and even at 27 one could wonder if Javy can keep what is a ridiculous level of bat-speed going. One need look no further than Bryce Harper for a player that depended on other worldly bat-speed and suddenly at just 27 you could go up and in on him if you wanted. There are just some skills, as unique as they may be, that can only be maintained at mutant-level for so long. Unlike Baez though, Bryce still has a pretty solid approach to make up for it.

If that ends up being the case and Javy has to cheat, even the slightest bit, on heaters inside and high, then he becomes even more vulnerable to breaking balls away than he already is. And we know that he already is highly so. Which means that K% could start creeping up to 30%, as it slanted that way last year.

And if Hoerner doesn’t make it up for a while, and Bote looks like Duck Amuck at short in spot starts, Javy might have to carry to big of an innings-load there again, leaving him a doormat come the season’s final throes. And this Cubs team is likely to need to play well in the season’s final month to do anything of note. It’s likely not to run away from anyone. Baez looks slotted as the #3 hitter behind Rizzo, which should mean a ton of RBI opportunities. But if he slides back, and those have to go to Schwarber or Contreras, hitters who have struggled in that spot in the past, then the offense might not be the given we think it is right now.

Dragon Or Fickle?: I’m not going to be the asshole to forecast doom for Javy Baez. At worst, he’s still a defensive wizard who will provide a ton of value that way. But I have to admit at a slight worry, a slight tickle, about an offensive game that was based on stellar skill and not really any kind of solid approach. Baez’s approach has improved as his career has gone along, but you still wouldn’t call it good. And it’s not going to be. Javy has the extraordinary gifts, reflexes, skill, whatever you want to call it to overcome that and do more with a bad approach than anyone else could. But how long is that going to last? The margins of error are so thin, and it’s dazzling he’s been on the right side of it for three or four seasons now.

I think last season is probably more the norm for him than his near MVP-run of 2018. That’s hardly a bad player. Combined with his defense it’s a really good one. And there’s probably an offensive spike season still in his future with some bounces that makes him dominant for that campaign. But it’s the spike, not the baseline. At least until there’s some change in approach.

But you can do a fuckton worse than having a 4-5 WAR player at short who might end up your third-best player, maybe even fourth of Contreras goes a touch nutty.

Baseball

Yes Movement – 2020 Chicago Cubs Player Previews: Descalso & Kipnis, Two Corpses

By Sam Fels 1126 0

It is likely that the Cubs may trot out a three-headed monster at second, either until Nico Hoerner is ready or all year if he isn’t. As neither Daniel Descalso nor Jason Kipnis deserve their own entries, given the struggle to maintain oxygen intake both of them have, we’ll smash them together.

Daniel Descalso 2019

82 games, 194 PA

.173/.271/.250 

.238 wOBA, 42 wRC+

11.9 BB%  29.4 K%

0.9 Defensive Runs

-0.8 fWAR

(If you’re a woman and read that you’ll now never be able to become pregnant. If you’re a man…you might be able to become pregnant)

Jason Kipnis 2019

121 games, 511 PA

.245/.304/.410

.301 wOBA, 82 wRC+

7.8 BB%  17.2 K%

4.8 Defensive Runs

1.1 fWAR

What I’m supposed to say is that Descalso’s 2019 was ruined by an ankle injury he tried to play through–a continuing theme for the ’19 Cubs–and made everything worse. Which I guess works if you consider the 101 wRC+, meaning exactly average, Descalso put up in the season’s first month as something worth celebrating. He was woeful throughout the rest of the season when he could even take the field, which wasn’t all that much. Seeing as how Descalso has only had one plus-season offensively, he’s probably closer to this disaster overall than he is a promising bench bat.

Unlike Descalso, there was a time when Kipnis was really good. He has three 4.0+ WAR seasons to his name. They’re just not recently. His offense fell off a cliff three seasons ago when he only played 90 games, and he’s never regained any power since. But he can still play the field well and he makes contact, and the Cubs are seemingly enamored with anyone who can do that at the moment if only to get people to shut up about how they don’t have anyone who makes consistent contact. Maybe the Cubs saw something in his last August when he slugged .525, though he appears to sold out his approach to do that as his walks dipped and his Ks spiked to 22%. On that pace, he’ll fit right in.

YES! YES! YES!: Probably the best case scenario is that neither of them play much. As far as bench players, Descalso is more accustomed to that role, and performed admirably in Arizona as something of a bench player. Kipnis must know that his regular starting days are over, and he does provide the far superior glove to either Descalso or Bote. But it’s hard to imagine, especially when Hoerner is around, that you’d keep a guy around just for his glove and only at second. Descalso can at least claim to be able to stand at first or third, whereas Kipnis has never played anywhere else except for a brief stint in the outfield in Cleveland that they don’t let you talk about within 50 miles of Jacobs Field.

They’re also in the strange position of both hitting left-handed, but a platoon with David Bote is a strange proposition at the moment as it was left-handers that Bote couldn’t hit last year. Maybe that’s a one year blip, but still throws a wrench into any plans.

YOU’RE A B+ PLAYER: Basically if either of them have to play regularly. And that could happen with an injury to any outfielder, forcing Bryant out there more often and Bote to third and these two into the lineup before Hoerner’s time. Or Hoerner falls on his face that already kind of looks like he fell on it. At 33, it’s unlikely Kipnis is going to learn a new trick with is bat slowing down, and basically has to rely on taking a lot of walks to be effective. Descalso is forced into a more regular role than spot-hitter and his high-strikeout ways only add to a lineup that has too many of those anyway. Basically, the Cubs can’t have anyone get hurt at all.

Dragon Or Fickle?: I would imagine it’s neither. Hoerner doesn’t feel or sound like he’ll be in Iowa that long, and unless he starts ingesting whatever Carl Edwards Jr. did he’ll be back quickly. Which means that the Cubs are only trying to get through a month or six weeks without him, which is probably gobbled up mostly by Bote. It’s hard to see where both of these guys are on the team, but at least Descalso has seen success as a pinch-hitter. Kipnis might take to it given the right spots, but you’d lose any value he has by not playing him in the field. Again, if the rest of the lineup clicks you can carry a glove-only guy for a while, but that might end up being what Hoerner is.

The less you see them, it’s the former. The more, the latter.

 

Baseball

New World Order: 2020 White Sox Previews: Leury Garcia

By Adam Hess 1534 0

There was a long and painful discussion about whether or not we would do a write up for Leury Legend in this preview series – mostly because the painful part was trying to figure out who would have to subject themselves to spending time writing specifically about freakin’ Leury Garcia. But, considering he was the starting CF last year and figures to be Nick Madrigal‘s caddy the starting 2B until Nick Madrigal is deemed ready for the bigs, it felt right to give the Legend his own post. So let’s do it.

2019 Stats

.279/.310/.378, 8 HR, 40 RBI

1.3 fWAR, 1.6 bWAR, 0.3 WARP

3.4 BB%, 22.5 K%

.294 wOBA, 83 wRC+ .688 OPS

-5 DRS, 1 Out Above Average

Last Week On Nitro: Leury’s 2019 season wasn’t a stat filler or game changer, but in this humble writer’s opinion, it was a bit more valuable than the stats designed to measure value make it out to be – not from a production standpoint, but because he provided a steady-enough presence as the everyday centerfielder and leadoff hitter for a team whose aspirations were not high anyway. Obviously a player with an 83 wRC+ is not the ideal everyday type, but to his credit Leury was asked to do more than he may be realistically capable of. The fact that he served as an above average CF (1 OAA is good enough for 62nd percentile in the stat, because there are far more bad fielders than good ones) despite being a natural SS shows just how versatile he is and how much he excelled in a less than ideal situation.

On top of that, while his 2019 OBP left something to be desired and I am certainly not one to espouse the virtues of batting average, a team designed to not be good could do a LOT worse for a leadoff hitter than a guy who hit .279 and got on base at a .310 clip. The production obviously was not there overall, as Leury will never threaten to be a power hitter, but that’s also not what was asked of him. I don’t want to be too bullish on what was truly an unimpressive season, but I do think it’d be hard to ask him for much more than what he gave.

TOO SWEET (WHOOP WHOOP): With Leury set to move from everyday CF to temporary 2B and then Swiss Army Knife bench piece in 2020, I think we’re already looking at the best case scenario for how he should be used. He can realistically play every position but catcher (and maybe 1B, as he’s tiny) for you in a pinch, and is likely to do a decent amount of spelling Eloy Jimenez and Nomar Mazara in the OF when they need off days, and might even fill in for Tim Anderson at short occasionally. Overall, the best case scenario for the Sox is that they don’t need Leury’s services in more than 60-70 games, and even that would be an inflated number from spending most of the first month or two waiting for Madrigal to come to take his job. I wouldn’t expect him to hit leadoff anymore, and actually think he will be inversed in the lineup card and hit 9th – that allows the Sox to limit his ABs but still use him as a decent table setter for the big bats when the lineup turns over. From a numbers standpoint, just give a similar enough copy of 2019 and I will be fine.

YOU FUCKED UP! YOU FUCKED UP!: Again, keeping the expectations low here, there really isn’t a worst possible outcome for Leury that comes from an utter lack of production or total falling off at the plate. He’s already unimpressive there, although I suppose if he has a Yolmer Sanchez 2019-esque season that could get bad quickly. Overall, though, you already don’t expect him to be an above average hitter, so even if he’s a bit closer to 70 wRC+ as a bench piece, it’s whatever.

What would represent the worst possible scenario for the Sox is if Leury is called into more than just a bench piece role due to injury at any position other than 2B. The reason I say other than 2B is that, as you may see tomorrow, I don’t have the hugest expectations of Nick Madrigal’s bat, and second is such a weak position all across baseball that Leury playing there frequently because Madrigal is hurt or needs more time in AAA wouldn’t hurt you all that much. But if Leury becomes an frequent flier in the outfield or at short because any of those players are hurt, the Sox are in for a bad ride, though it won’t exactly be Leury’s fault.

BAH GOD THAT’S GARCIA’S MUSIC: I may have done a bit too much of this in the TOO SWEET section, just because it’s hard to dream on a player like this. He’s 29 and has been in the bigs a few years already, so you know what you’re getting from him. In a starting CF role, that didn’t go far enough, but it was for a bad team so it was fine. As a starting 2B it will leave something to be desired but certainly not enough to cripple the Sox, and he will only be there until June at the absolute latest unless something goes wrong for Madrigal. And as a utility player on the bench and an occasional pinch runner, Leury’s skillset could arguably be a coveted one around baseball. Again, plus-defenders and plus-baserunners are rare on their own, and even rarer in one package.

Basically, if you feel strongly about Leury’s 2019 or 2020 presence in either direction, you may care too much about it. He’s just a guy, but that’s all the Sox need him to be.