The 101 is here! As a White Sox fan, for many years the 101 was like being the sad little Dickensian child on Christmas morning, nose pressed against the window of a happy family, watching other, happier children open their presents. “Maybe Addison Reed squeaked into the back of the list!” I’d say, shivering in my rags, before being escorted off the premises while Rays fans reenacted My Super Sweet Sixteen but with Matt Moore or whatever.
But no longer. Despite graduating three players off the Midseason Top 50, the White Sox still lead all teams with eight players on the list. Although the sequence of names was not a surprise, given that we’ve had the White Sox Top 10 list for weeks now, it was far from obvious as to how many on the back half of the org ranking would make it onto the global one. Jake Burger, Dane Dunning, and Blake Rutherford all appear between 80-90, as Burger survived our prospect team’s (justified) skepticism of likely R/R 1B prospects and Rutherford’s underlying skills and draft pedigree overcame his poor results in 2017.
Jeff Paternostro will be doing a chat to answer any 101 questions you might have (or you can read the transcript there once it is over).
Still, I take the opportunity to remind you that, as fun as it is to see “White Sox” next to as many names as possible in the 101, the further down the list you go, the gaps between prospects shrink. The prospect team likely has a list of anywhere from 20-50 more names you could try to argue on to the 101, and the gap between, say, 50 and 75, or 75 and 90 could very well be within the error bars.
Given the bust rate on prospects overall, even the very highly regarded ones, volume is the exciting thing here. Dylan Cease on his own is a risky proposition. Alec Hansen on his own is a risky proposition. Michael Kopech might not work. Dane Dunning might not work. Then again, all four of them could wind up being major league contributors, and a few of them could be of the impact variety.
It is a different world for White Sox fans than even a few years ago, but now the game becomes watching and waiting, seeing what becomes of this collection of talent. And the season is rapidly approaching.
Photo credit Matt Marton