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First time poster, long time lurker. Some White Sox fans obsessions with bad baseball players has always baffled me. Comparing Daniel Palka to Joc Pederson is just laughably absurd. Palka is 27 years old and Pederson is 26. Despite Palka posting a +107 wRC last year, he was a .7 WAR player in nearly 500 at bats. He doesn't walk, he strikes out a ton, and he might be the worst defensive player in baseball. He graded out as a -12.1 last year despite playing the easiest position on the baseball diamond and playing a position that is cluttered with horrible fielders. Joc on the other hand, is one year younger and has already accumulated 10.1 fWAR, with two seasons over 3.1 and one at 2.7. He's an above average MLB player. Joc didn't grade out great in the outfield last year, but in his career he's a career average CF'er - which is much harder to be than an average left fielder. ANYONE who thinks Daniel Palka can even sniff Pedersons jock as a defensive player is absolutely kidding themselves. Pederson's wRC+ last year was 126!, and in his one down year he was a league average hitter with an wRC+ of 100. I get it guys, you had fun watching Palka on a very bad baseball team. He supplied you with some moments of joy in a season that had very few, and he seems like a fun good guy... but he SUCKS at baseball. He does not belong on any even mediocre baseball team. Joc, on the other hand, is an impact player on a Good baseball team. Even comparing the two players is absolutely laughable. Daniel Palka does not belong in a MLB uniform. He has some power and can hit the ball really hard, but overall he's a bad baseball player. He can't play the field, he can't throw, he's a poor baserunner and his bat ceiling is a slightly above average hitter? No thanks. Also, as a CF'er for 18 years of my life, people citing sprint speed is absurd. Aaron Rowand wasn't winning any sprint speed contests but he was a hell of an instinctual defender. I'm not comparing Pederson to Roward, but his sprint speed means very little. You're breaking down already unreliable defensive metrics even further - using catch probability on a year to year basis is a horrible way to analyze a player given the micro-nature that is the sample size. Long story short, Daniel Palka is awful at baseball and Joc Pederson is not.

Sox are not talking about acquiring Rich HIll. I think Hill is a great pitcher and fits the team well but he makes $19M and usually misses several starts. JR is going to surprise some people with his spending but acquiring Dick Mountain to pay him $1M a start in a year that's likely a transition year doesn't seem to be the type of a move a shrewd but conservative owner would get behind.

This is no longer a question of if, but of when.

Wow, talk about a crazy overreaction. I read this, yet see this...

Lastly, this should have been a slightly expedited rebuild given that they traded elite MLB talent for MLB nearing prospects. They didnt trade for 19 year old kids - they traded for guys that were very close to Major League ready. If the Sox arent competing until 2021 then this rebuild failed as the key components acquired from our major trades will only have 2 years of controllability left.

At some point, you need to try to win games and improve. Adam Engel doesn't deserve anymore time in a MLB outfield. Playing bad young guys with no future with the team is actually worse than filling the spot with average veterans. At some point, progress needs to be made and steps need to be taken. This needs to be a year of improvement and growth; Engel assists with neither of those things.. Pederson for two years is worth way more to the team than giving Adam Engel 500 more at bats. In this thread, there are people hoping for playing time for Adam Engel and Daniel Palka; they are literally two of the worst players in MLB. Adam Jones and Carlos Gonzalez are also bad baseball players. That would be an old school White Sox path; sign over the hill veterans that were once good, and hope to catch one more good year before their career is officially over. Once again, comparing Jones/Cargo to Pederson doesn't make a lot of sense. Adam Jones had a .5 WAR last year in 600 At Bats. He hasn't surpassed 2 WAR in 3 years. Gonzalez had a "bounce back" year last year with a 1.7 WAR; his bat speed has diminished significantly and he's never hit outside of Coors. He had a negative WAR two years ago. These aren't good adds; they're simply big names from the past that no longer are worth their reputations. The Sox need to bring in young, potentially, long term assets - Pederson may be locked up for two years, but there's no reason to think you couldn't extend him given the current climate of outfielders.

Yeah his wife would fricken LOVE Minneapolis.

No. He bought his followers.

still hasn't touched home plate

So umm, Richard Roeper's tweet about a pretty pretty pretty good Soxfest isn't looking too likely, eh?

Timed race against The Freeze.

Yea.... they act pretty quick. I updated Delmonico's page and within minutes it was removed.

https://www.12up.com/posts/6153378-the-story-behind-rich-hill-s-incredible-players-weekend-nickname-has-been-revealed

Who are you? Why do you post on this site? Is getting a life an option?

He’s right. 2019 isn’t our year... manny or not.

Can. We. Stop. Sharing. Bullshit. Tweets.

I don’t. I’ll ask around tomorrow and see if there’s an answer I can get for you. My guess is I won’t be able to but I’ll ask. I do know logistically on our end things are a little different this year so that could be part of it. But I don’t know.

They aren’t sacrificing defense for the long ball. Not even close. They’re simply replacing a bad player overall with a good player overall. The end result will mean winning more games. Which the Sox are pushing to do right now.

I am beginning to wonder if Manny Machado is a real person.

Let’s not jump the gun here. We still have “Wednesday” to look forward to...

I wouldn’t talk myself into this. For as “bad” as Pederson is defensively (he isn’t), an improved Daniel Palka still doesn’t even belong in the same discussion as Joc defensively.

Here's the thing about defense: the White Sox don't care. They've shown this with their player personnel decisions, with free agent acquisitions, and, well, with how prospects arrive when they first get to Chicago. The White Sox simply do not prioritize defense in their decisions. This is not entirely indefensible (heh) as one of the most valid criticisms, to my mind, of the rise of sabermetrics is an overemphasis on poorly defined and unreliable defensive metrics, but lets not pretend that Pederson's defense is going to stop the Sox from trading for him or from playing him in CF as much as possible.

Still in Camp F Bonds. See also Clemens.

Max sprint speed on statcast does not equal play speed. Anyone that’s played the OF will tell you quickness and first step is far more important than straight line speed on most plays. Avi has extreme sprint speed for his size. Does he play a good RF? Absolutely not. Jay and Joc have both ranged from above average to at worst slightly below in defensive fWAR. After what we’ve trotted out there I straight up don’t get what the issue is.

Your battery life is giving me anxiety.

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Actually, I think I've found my solution. The Sox should add Danny Valencia to play vs lefties. He's also another of Machado's friends.

Or Moncada or Yolmer

Pederson is a fine centerfielder. There is a lot more that goes into being an outfielder than foot speed especially given the wonky ways it's recorded. Coredll has no place on the roster. Leury has no part of any platoon especially in RF.

Holy fuck, Dick Mountain 😂

Wiki says 1/25 signing....so this is some back to the future stuff. Also...I laughed hard...then cried because he is playing 3rd...

IIRC it wasn't so much that the Sox tinkered as it was he didn't have a repeatable motion and the Sox tried to give him one. He could get away with losing the strike zone in college because the opposing hitters aren't nearly as good as minor and major league hitters

January 22nd.. The free agent all star team could win a division at this point

Your assumption is based on the belief that all buyers are equal. We are not a destination players want to go play at. We lost 100 games last year and are irrelevant in our own city. If the money is close, we will lose regardless of whether we have his brother-in-law. We have to outbid by a lot to win. It's not letting the market dictate. And if we don't have an open checkbook, why is our payroll at like $18 million next year.

It's a bad thing. If nobody is showing strong interest but for the Sox, now is the time to pounce. They need to up the ante and get Manny while there is no competition. The fact that he remains unsigned simply tells me the Sox haven't made a lucrative enough offer to get him. The longer this drags on, the more likely it is a mystery team jumps in or he takes a shorter deal to play with the Yankees or some other better team. The Sox do not have room to "stand tough" in negotiations to try and get him on a bargain simply because no other team is interested. From Manny's eyes, the Sox are a terrible 100 loss team that is basically irrelevant in their own City. There's no rush to take a mediocre offer -- even if it's the best offer out there. If it turns out the Sox were only offering $200 million, the FO is a complete joke. That was never going to be enough for him -- just enough to say we were in contention. And we will have blown a major opportunity. All this other garbage about signing his friends will have been a bigger joke too.

All the more reason why they need to overpay to make sure they get him

I'm tempted to bring back negative reactions just for this.

It's gotta be ND. Cubs fans and ND fans are synonymous with each other. It is a match made in annoying heaven.

I have a feeling that nothing will happen soon.

For every bad apple, there's posters like @Look at Ray Ray Run who give me hope about the noob contribution to this site.

I'm not here to win the internet; I'm here to present my opinion. I'm not here to rally troops; I used Rowand as an example because he had two of the best defensive CF seasons in the modern metric era, and he wasn't a speed demon and the fans of this board are familiar with him. I could use Jim Edmonds as well, if that would make you feel better. He - although overrated IMO defensively - is still one of the best defensive CF'ers in the modern era, and no one would classify Edmonds as fast. Anyone who watched both of them understood that. Sure, speed helps - in a lot of cases, it helps cover up for other deficiencies and gives you more margin for error; similarly to throwing harder than not.... but to use Sprint Speed on the bases as a determining factor into a guys defensive prowess is just misguided and far too simplistic.

Sure, in his career in CF his total zone rating is -3 and his zone rating per 1200 innnings in the field is -1. He's a league average center fielder by zone rating in his career (which is a much better sample for fielding metrics than any individual season) His UZR rating for his career is -2.1 (so similar) which makes him league average in center again. Over 5 years his DRS is -13 which - once agian - is league average. Every single thing about Pederson says he's a league average center fielder when you look at his entire career. As for your final point; the "best shape of his life" nonsense is exactly that - complete nonsense. This is the time of year where all these guys show up in the best shape of their lives (there will be 20+ articles written about random players stating such) this spring training and those guys will be the same baseball players they were prior to their weight loss... Why? Because Palka isn't a bad defender because he's fat, he's bad because he has a noodle arm, and gets horrendous reads and jumps on baseballs. His path to the ball always looks so unnatural too him; he never looks comfortable. He looks like Hanley Ramirez every time a ball was hit off the monster. As for what is the point of 2 years of Pederson? Because winning baseball games eventually matters and putting out a MLB product to assist/compliment the youthful core is really important. Because people do pay to watch the product, and putting out the absolute worst of the worst for 5 years is simply unacceptable.

Edgar Martinez won a Silver Slugger at age 40 in one of dirtiest clubhouses known in the Steroid Era, yet many voters claim that "roiders" should not make the HOF. LOL

I would imagine your #2 bullet point is a main reason why it's likely not permissible by the C.B.A. The last thing the players union wants is a player's salary being depressed by the withholding of another's player's contract. But the CBA is very long so I can't try to find it right now.

Yeah but Miller is a Milwaukee business, so it makes sense. And is a cool name, like Coors Field and Busch Stadium.

to be fair, it is just a name change from one corporate sponsorship to another corporate sponsorship. It's not like it's Soldier Field having a name change.

Sinclair deal falls thru. Cubs on espn 8 {the ocho} next season.

If they just listened to Costanza, they could have had Bonds and Griffey in the same outfield....and they didn’t really have to give up that much!

Shameless grandstanding ! HAHA you will get nothing from me. I like the originality though and shall think of you in some way when it is repeated by others.