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My favorite season is the offseason.  Things slow down from real-time to turn-based.  All of baseball fandom might have to live off a single trade for weeks.  The Foster Griffin signing might be the most important news of the day.

Now that the season is going, I really only know which of my players are injured.  Mick Abel, I’m looking at you.  But the speed of information goes into overdrive.  Every player at every level sees 9,253 pitches a day, each with a velocity, spin rate, and inverted seam-shifted pronated shape stuff.

And then crazy things happen like Ildemaro Vargas monstar’d Geraldo Perdomo.  And Ronny Cruz is more valuable than Dylan Crews.  And Luis Lara is hitting for power.

So I’ll admit that I felt like I didn’t have the information to weigh in on the top 10 lists we’re making.  In a very limited sense, I was right.  Between when the was made and when I started drafting this article, our # 7 (and I would have ranked him higher) Tanner MacDougal has sacrificed his arm at the altar of Big Velo.

But I do have a White Sox prospecting story to tell that may be of some value.  I am in Chris’s School of Hard Knocks league.  To oversimplify, we all roster ~40 prospects and six of them have to be from your “home team.”  The home teams were assigned randomly, and I received the White Sox.  At the time, it was hard to imagine a worse draw.  The White Sox weren’t just bad, they were also boring.  They were heading into a historically terrible season.  And things were so bad that a reliever who couldn’t stay healthy was named as their opening day starter.  And that vibe spread to their prospects.  I knew I wouldn’t want to spend big capital on Noah Schultz because I wanted to focus on guys closer to the bigs.  Beyond that, look at that list. It’s brutal.  The only other “name” at the time was Colson Montgomery but I’d seen him play poorly in one game and did not believe he had the talent.

In hindsight, I think the question is whether I let my view of Chicago’s inability to assemble big-league talent affect my view of the potential of their prospects.  And then I wonder how much of that is true more universally.  I am convinced that people began to really believe that Pittsburgh is a pitching factory  because of Paul Skenes, an arm that universally seen as the best in the draft class and that Pittsburgh did not have spent much time developing.  When you think of Bubba Chandler, do you think of Paul Skenes?  Or do you think of a chain that runs from Nick Kingham to Hunter Barco?

It’s possible you could think about Tyler Glasnow or Gerrit Cole or Quinn Priester.  But I bet it’s Skenes.

Until Nolan McLean burst into bloom, I found I could no longer take a Mets pitching prospect seriously.  I had been burned by Christian Scott and Blade Tidwell and Brandon Sproat and Matt Allan.  The Mets’ failure to develop a big league pitcher made doubt each of their pitching prospects, just like the abundant success of Bryan Woo makes me believe in Ryan Sloan and Kade Anderson.

On the other hand, trying to monitor freely available White Sox talent has been of some interest.  I managed to hit on some surprise wins like Caleb Bonemer, Grant Taylor, and double former Sox Yhoiker Fajardo.  I also have grabbed a lot of busts: I currently roster Nick Nastrini and Brooks Baldwin.  I keep waiting for someone to tell me if Jurdrick Profar is related to Jurickson Profar.

And then finally, I have managed to be slow to grab White Sox names.  I didn’t get MacDougal.  I thought I dropped Jaden Fauske, but I was actually thinking about Casey Saucke.  I heard about Austin Shenton after the list came out.

I think what I have learned most of all is that some teams may develop better than others but, below the surface, everyone has a grab bag.  The goal is to play in a deep enough league to make it fun to fish for those party favors.