White Sox Prospect Hugging is OUTTA CONTROL!!!

Frents, I don’t often come to this blog tryna tell people how to live their fandom lives. It’s not really my place, the gatekeeping and all. But as I age, I feel it necessary for Unc Beef to set you straight on a thing or tree. For those not annoyed enough by this team to still read these pages, hopefully it comes in handy. Today’s Message….

White Sox Prospect Hugging is OUTTA CONTROL

Look, prospect hawks, especially at the team level are always overzealous maniacs. I personally like many of these people, including Ian Eskridge, James Fox, Sleepy Harold and on and on. But there’s just something about the personality that it takes to do what they do that causes an eternally glass half full approach that things can sometimes get WAY THE FUCK OUTTA HAND. Today’s subject is Brooks Baldwin.

He’s a 23 year old shortstop in AA having a really good, BABIP fueled campaign on the newly minted, playoff bound Birmingham Barons. The 12th round pick’s stock has risen enough that curious White Sox fans have been asking around about his prospects enough to warrant a little twitter buzz on the lad.

Look at this FUCKING TWEET!

But alas, all good buzz must be overblown by a prospect hugger…..below is exhibit A.

I still say Brooks Baldwin. He’s Leury Garcia if Leury Garcia could hit like Luis Arraez. It’s ridiculous barrel control, and a true Swiss Army knife in the field. Can play anywhere on the dirt, and both corner outfield spots. https://t.co/LAjVsBBmVE

— Dylan (@NotCease) June 24, 2024

Oof…. @NotCease has a growing twitter following and is a pretty decent follow most of the time (we’re mutuals). But this is crazy pants, bananaland time. Let’s break this down very quickly. The second sentence is two very wild points in one. First if Leury Garcia hit like fucking Luis Arraez, well, he’d be better than Luis Arraez, just on the strength of the fact that he was a much better base runner than Arraez (getting picked off 3rd base not withstanding) and his position utility. Arraez was a decent defender at second earlier in his career, but has morphed into a rough defender basically everywhere.

Next up, Baldwin is not really anything like Arraez. Arraez has a roughly 5.5% K-Rate in the majors across the last two season, which is absolutely 80 grade hit tool. This is in an environment in which league average is roughly 22% K-Rate. Baldwin (at AA mind you) has a totally decent and respectable 14.7% K-Rate. According to Steamer translation for this year it would be around 21%, or basically league average in MLB. Not Arraez like at all.

Lastly, the back handed Leury Garcia comment. Leury Garcia very much sucked his final season in the majors, but he did hang around long enough as a utility player to accumulate 4.0 bWAR.

Leury’s bWAR is actually more (so far) than another very much hyped middle infielder for the White Sox with a much larger prospect pedigree than ole Brooks Baldwin.

Yea. Yea. A better comp might have been, Brooks Baldwin might be able to show up and give you prime Leury Garcia levels of dependability at the utility spot. That sounds realistic, touches on a player that had some moments…oh did he have some moments. And brings a modicum hope.

Let’s cut the bullshit with these weirdo comps and try to bring it in so us, the less informed, can learn something from the comp other than that you are off your fucking rocker. Okay? Please. k Thanks.

Btw, if that comp was some big joke that I totally missed, just forget this blog, I was joking too, it was very funny.

-BeefLoaf