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Thank you. Hey, everybody, you're listening to the White Sox Talk podcast, brought to you by Winters Community Bank, home of White Sox checking with free ATMs nationwide, including their special White Sox webpage, www.ww.wintrust.com slash socks. Okay, Chuck Garfin here with Vinnie Duber and Scott Merkin of Elmby.com. Scott was stretching when he found out he was coming on the podcast. He wanted to be ready for this. I wanted to do it right. You should have done like a mystery guess. Like the old like, what's my line? Like, will the mystery guest sign in please? And they could have guessed who I was. They probably would have lost interest in just this dialogue right here. We've just lost all of our listeners because of this by Scott Merkin. First off, we're going to hear from Todd Stevenson, a hitting coach. We spoke a while about Yohan Moncotta he's batting eighth

let's get your thoughts first Scott about the decision to move him down and what do

you see going on with Moncada well you know I think as this year goes this is not a

year that was designed for the team to win so it might have been different if

this team was in contention and a guy who you pick is a key player is just not having a very good season. But there have been signs of excellence from him and things seem to turn after he got hurt a little bit. I just think he's learning. It's kind of on the job training. And, you know, I think if you come, if we do the same podcast next year this time, and he's

hitting where his average is and he's got a hundred.

The strikeouts might just be there, but it's the same kind of year. Then you might have a little pause for concern. But, you know, look at a lot of guys who've gone through, you know, Mike Trout had a lot of strikeouts his first year. Chris Bryant had a lot of strikeouts. Now granted, they did a little more production-wise.

But I think right now you can chalk up to a guy who's immensely talented

that's just got to make some adjustments and kind of learn as he's going to... Now, granted, they did a little more production-wise. But I think right now you can chalk up to a guy who's

immensely talented that's just got to make some adjustments and kind of learn as he's going here. I feel like when he's in this slump, when he's in the abyss and we're watching the abyss and in a way living it with him, it seems like, oh, he's going to be in this forever, but it'll just take some time to get out of it. Well, this thing with the whole rebuilding process is that

we're all watching development on a daily basis, stuff that if the team was in a different position might be going on at the minor league level, we're seeing at the major league level and we're seeing it on a daily basis. I think the thing that Rick Hahn has said all along is that these guys aren't all finished products, even the guys who have been here a couple years and who figure to be parts of this thing in the long term, they're not finished products. They're still developing. And, you know, when Aloi Jimenez finally gets here, when Michael Kopeck finally gets here, they're going to have development to still do at the major league level. And we're seeing those growing pains with Moncada right now.

I mean, leading the league in strikeouts on pace to maybe set the single-season strikeout record in baseball,

there's an obvious reason that fans and other people are concerned about that,

but the reason is we're seeing development right before our eyes.

I will say real quickly that he's kept the same demeanor across the board, and that's key. One of the big things that separates kind of also-rans, or maybe medium-level players versus guys who are major contributors, is how they handle failure. Because, you know, I know this line's been used a thousand times, that even the best hitters get hits three out of ten times. So, I mean, one thing you see about Moncada is he knows what's going on.

I talked to him in, I think it was either Tampa or Houston, where we talked about strikeouts, and he said, you know, that's something he's got to tackle next year, but right now he's just trying to improve from game game. What did you think about that, though? Because when he said next year, I'm like, why don't you tackle it this year? Well, I think because I think right now it's kind of past that point.

So he's just trying to learn from day to day.

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