wrathofhahn

This offseason has been so boring.

QUOTE (oldsox @ Feb 4, 2018 -> 07:26 AM) Greg has a point. Face it, the majority of the rebuilding efforts have been through trades, not draft picks. The last two Number 1 picks, Burger and Collins, are hardly the cornerstones of the rebuild. If Sox could find a real major league CF, they have what could be a pretty good lineup. I would like to see them go for it, at least until Trading Deadline, and see what happens. What does one have to do with the other? What concerns me about the lack of picks and IFA is that because of that we don't have a second wave. If a couple of our top prospects bust or we need to make a trade down the line we are in trouble. We need to be more active in IFA. We could also use a couple more trades this time targeting HS/IFA guys high upside guys. Dodgers have a ton of them. Our guys at the bottom of the system are old.

I wouldn't be opposed to entering the conversation to get back one of Miamis bad contracts in return for a good prospect. Tazawa. Zeigler. If the Marlins want to save money those are two guys who stunk last year make around 16 million should get you a good player to take on. Also gives our bullpen some meatshields before starting the clock on the guys in the minors.

QUOTE (GreenSox @ Feb 3, 2018 -> 11:04 AM) Josh Reddick was a pretty consistent 2.5-3 WAR player and he signed for 4/$52 last year. Would Boras take that for Hosmer/Moustakas? Hosmer is inconsistent - he'll have a 3-4 WAR year, and then a 0 WAR year. Moustakas is inconsistent too. The tanking teams has something to do with it, but it's also a fact that the market has changed...these 30 year old good/not great players just don't have the value they did. The other problem is the player agents have badly misjudged the market. The longer they wait the more apt teams are to make trades to fill in holes which many have already done.

QUOTE (Dam8610 @ Feb 2, 2018 -> 11:03 PM) It actually is like that. This article is misleading because he is comparing opening day payrolls to today when there are so many FA available. If payroll does decrease it will be negligible. What is more likely is the term for many of these players won't be what their agents are looking for. They'll get their AAV just not the term.

QUOTE (BlackSox13 @ Feb 2, 2018 -> 09:53 PM) https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2018/02/tony...-offseason.html This would appear to be getting worse. I love baseball and I was happy to welcome baseball back in April of 95 after the strike. However, if that s*** were to happen again, f*** the owners and players, I would would wash my hands of the sport for good. Going on strike hurts the fans and fans only. Let's hope the owners and players pull their heads out of their asses. They can moan and groan all they want but GM's are just smarter now. It's not like team payrolls aren't going up they are just being smarter with how they devote their resources.

QUOTE (Sarava @ Feb 2, 2018 -> 01:22 PM) For starters - it looks to me like he has 2 years left on his deal? So we're conceding that they aren't even trying for a free agent in next year's big free agent class? Also, even if it were off the books, the money is still spent. $40 million is still $40 mil. It's going to eventually come out of something. The Sox don't have an infinite amount of money to spend. The Padres are paying 5 million so it's slightly less. I'm with you it doesn't make sense to trade for Kemp unless the Dodgers offer you top prospects or a bunch of quality ones. QUOTE (Sarava @ Feb 2, 2018 -> 01:33 PM) In any event, you aren't going to get a Luis Robert caliber prospect for Kemp's contract. But hey, if you can, then I could accept hurting the chances of signing Machado next year. But it's not happening. The Dodgers are stingy with their prospects. They certainly aren't giving up a haul to remove one contract. I mean I honestly don't care about the Dodgers perspective on things. Noone is knocking down the door for Kemp if they don't offer a good deal he can stay a dodger and ultimately be bought out or be moved next year when a team would need to eat less money. I do think there is a chance a remote one that they want to sign Darvish or some top shelf pitcher and they need to move Kemp deal to facilitate the move to keep them under the repeater tax. In that case maybe from the dodger perspective they wouldn't be looking at it as straight Kemp trade but also as essentially trading for Darvish or Arrietta but yeah it's not our problem. They can hoard their own prospects Ideally it probably would make more sense to invest that 38 million into the farm through IFA and overslot signings then anything the Dodgers would offer but I think Hahn should at least listen.

QUOTE (GenericUserName @ Feb 2, 2018 -> 09:28 AM) Alvarez had fallen off the top100 and his stock is pretty down right now. If we target him, you could also probably get another guy from the back of their top 30 pretty easily. He's still a top 100 prospect his stuff is electric but yeah he probably falls a little after last year. A bunch of their guys took steps back but they still have some really young guys who could be part of a 2nd wave (or all flame out entirely). Heredia. Brito. Merinan. What impresses me most isn't who they have at the top but the guys 15-30. Most of our guys are already advanced with very little upside. Their guys could rise to the ranks of the top 100 in a couple of years. I'm also not sure what the market is right now doesn't seem like there are any other teams willing to take on a contract of Kemps size.

QUOTE (soxfan2014 @ Feb 2, 2018 -> 08:09 AM) As someone pointed out, there hasn't really hasn't been too many of these moves where there were big prospects. I think you have to use that Touki Toussaint deal as a guideline. I believe he was trade for only one year of Arroyo and Kemp is making me more annually. So it should definitely be worth more than him unless like you said, we get multiple intriguing guys. Yeah the Liriano deal for me sort of stands out. The Blue Jays got two fringy top 100 guys for eating Liriano deal but Liriano had value and was only making 18 million over 2 versus like I said Kemp being owed 38 million (lower figure then salary bc 5 million paid by padres). I said in my other post at best 5 million and really thats probably pretty optimistic regarding what he could get in FA right now. I have no idea Liriano value (contract wise) at the time of the trade. I do know the Blue Jays were able to move him later and get some interesting guys back as well from Houston without eating any of his contract. That won't happen with Kemp. https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2016/08/blue...co-liriano.html

Just going off the Moss deal as a baseline you'd probably at best be looking at a one year 5 million ish deal for Kemp. He is making 38.5 million over the next two years. Thats 33 million worth of excess cost. If you aren't going to get a good package for taking on the cost of Kemp I'd rather them just focus on other areas bring in someone like Duda on an one year deal and hope he hits for you then move him at the deadline. Bringing it back to Moss that trade that Oakland pulled off for a reliever arm is a smaller deal we could be targeting like we did with Soria. We don't sort of need to take on a commitment like Kemp to get a decent prospect or interesting ML arm back like Front. If it's Kemp we should and would demand more much more.

Seems like it was wrote by a dodgers fan. Front? Really? Try again. Also if you aren't getting back someone in the top 50 plus another intriguing prospect outside the top 100 you better be getting back a bunch of intriguing prospects. For example the guy I'd want in their system would be Alvarez. If not Alvarez it would have to be something like Ruiz, Heredia, Brito and Marinan.

QUOTE (Dam8610 @ Feb 1, 2018 -> 05:01 PM) I think finding out if Sanchez can be a 2-3 WAR player moving forward is more important than creating a spot for Matt Davidson or creating depth on a team that is incredibly unlikely to compete for anything that isn't a top 5 draft pick. That said, bring on Kemp as a DH if he comes with appropriate prospect compensation or something interesting from their ML roster like Joc Pederson. Whether Sanchez or Davidson plays 3B DH is a spot that could be upgraded. Personally, I think with Davidson power he's sort of a guy you work on fixing his approach and hoping he gets onbase enough to get his OPS in the .800 range. Not sure Sanchez will ever be the guy he's a solid 2B but not sure he has 3B power.

QUOTE (ChiliIrishHammock24 @ Feb 1, 2018 -> 04:17 PM) Brewers may be close to making a move. Front Office called for a big meeting this afternoon according to a Brewers insider. Probably inregards to a FA. Darvish maybe?

Duda on a one year wouldn't be so bad. Of course for the right prospects Kemp works as well. I was actually just about to post this (my own thoughts not heyman) but didn't know where to post speculation. Davidson has more value at 3B. DH will hit better then Sanchez seems like an easy way to upgrade the offense and create some depth with Sanchez coming off the bench

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 1, 2018 -> 11:37 AM) I know there are a ton of moving parts out there, but I would love to see the Cubs gets screwed by waiting so late into this off season to do something about their starters. Hard to see that happening. Heck the only guy we signed we probably overpaid by quite a bit signing him early. Take at the Avila signing what did he get? 8 milllion over 2. What did we pay Castillo 15.5 million over 2?

QUOTE (Dam8610 @ Jan 31, 2018 -> 01:47 PM) What I think your post shows is that the swing data is more useful to measure his performance against his past performance than it is to measure him against the average player in terms of finding reasons for his success in 2017 and indicators that said success may or may not repeat, and that small changes in things like swing data, contact profile, etc. can lead to larger changes in things like OPS. Something has to explain his success for the full 2017 season, and it isn't just BABIP, because that went down by 50 points over the course of the season while he ended up maintaining a .330 average for the whole season. So if it isn't those numbers, what is it? We need to stop pretending that these things don't happen they do. It's uncommon but it happens. I named five players in my other post who had magical Avi like seasons. Then completely fell off a cliff. Thats not to say I don't think it has to happen in Avi case because the talent is there but he can't build off last season. He needs to work getting under the ball and driving it. He needs to be more selective at the plate. If he wants to have a really good season again. If he wants to hit with a .750 ish OPS he can do what he's already doing and if a couple things go right instead of everything like last year he can have an ok year. Prior to last year he had an BABIP of somewhere around .320. To give you some perspective of the difference BABIP makes had his BABIP been his normal averages after crunching the numbers he'd be batting .253 last season which would have dropped his OPS 77 points.

QUOTE (Dam8610 @ Jan 31, 2018 -> 09:44 AM) His BB% increased and K% declined throughout the year, his BB% last year was below his career average, O-swing% was below career average, Z-swing% was well above career average, Z-contact% was well above career average, contact% was the highest it's been since his partial seasons, swstr% was career low. All of those things point to improved plate discipline or the potential for it. His pull rate was well above career average, hard contact rate was well above career average, soft contact rate was well below career average, FB% above career average, IFFB% below career average, he had one of the highest average exit velocities in MLB, and he had some sort of arm injury in July, after which he didn't hit a HR for a month and a half. All of those things point to improved power numbers or the potential for it. I don't understand the argument. Prior to last year he was a .695 hitter and the numbers you mention are negligible improvements. For example his OSWING improved by 2 percent. His zone contact improved by 2 percent. While his OPS last year was 127% more then his previous career numbers. I'd also point out those OSWING numbers aren't good. So when you improve from not good to still not good you are still well not good. 39.8% OSWING is not a good number. 84.3% Zone contact is below average. Stat Average O-Swing 30% Z-Swing 65% Swing 46% O-Contact 66% Z-Contact 87% Contact 80% Zone 45% F-Strike 59% SwStr 9.5% With that being said not all players are equal. For example the contact rate and plate discipline of Abreu is less important then Garcia because he has a career ISO of .224. He can afford to have a career OBP of .360 because he slugs .524.

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ Jan 31, 2018 -> 02:55 AM) Personally while I believe in advanced stats to a degree there is an over reliance on them.Baseball Common Sense 101 tells me when you hit .330 you did a lot right and just didn't get lucky. While I will have to agree that his batting average is likely to regress because of a large number of infield hits it wasn't just luck . I think we forget baseball takes a large amount of skill to get hits and all this talk about his numbers declining to pre 2017 is just people hedging their bets playing the odds that previous bad seasons still outweigh the 1 good one. Why can't the Sox have a player who breaks out in a big way ? Happens all the time. The only way to get a feel for a player is to watch a lot of games. I don't mean 1/2 the games I mean at least 75% and watch what the player is doing up there in the batters box. There's a lot to be said for actually watching/studying baseball. Sigh baseball is littered with BABIP one year wonders. Remember the era of Pat Listach? Me neither. Jose Iglesias. Mike Aviles. The era of Danny Santana? The thing about Garcia is he has talent but he needed to make changes prior to last season and instead found success. So what are the chances he makes the necessary changes of him being more patient at the plate and trying to get more loft on his swing with the success he had last year? I mean we'll see but one of the sort of curses of the BABIP monster is you see many promising young players never sort of recover they are trying to recapture the magic of their rookie year instead of writing it off as the fluke it was and making the necessary changes for longterm sustainable success.

QUOTE (Dam8610 @ Jan 30, 2018 -> 10:55 PM) Explain how the advanced stats scream regression without using the acronym "BABIP". That's the only one that is strongly favoring negative regression, and other advanced metrics point to the possibility of positive regression in both power and plate discipline. If he puts up a .290/.360/.540 line, is he any less valuable? Because I could see that based on his 2017 numbers factoring negative BABIP regression with positive regression in the power and plate discipline categories. Um okay he doesn't walk. If you look at the batted ball data you will see he really wasn't doing anything all that differently. He wasn't hitting lasers all over the field. His LD% was actually lower then the year before and his career numbers. He's not a contact hitter either the percentage of pitches outside the strike zone he swung at was basically unchanged from the year before. His zone contact percentage was negligibly better then last year. He mainly just got lucky. You want to see how hard to do what Garcia is attempting to do take a look at Melky someone who plays no defense and puts up .130 to .140 ISO power. Then take a look at the batted ball data and contact rates.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jan 30, 2018 -> 08:00 PM) Let's face it, there are people on this board (I'd say 40 percent of the peeps, maybe a bit more) who will never "believe" in Avi. His age and his production scream "excitement" and "potential" but Sox fans just can't unequivocally support the guy. That's fine. He's got to prove it again. I'd say if he has the same year this year as last there still will be severe detractors. I guess they will want at least 15 more homers from Avi, a ton more RBIs. The funny thing is that the advanced stats all love Avi and still the advanced statniks here can't buy that Avi is a star. Again, that's fine. We Avi lovers can't win; and Avi can't win. If he sucks in April and May ... wow the naysayers will want to run him out of town. If he excels? Big deal. It's not sustainable. Tough tough crowd and it makes no sense cause of Avi's age and his WAR. p.s. Would the nontender crowd like for Hahn to just dump him for scraps ASAP? Dat's a good question. p.s.s. The Royals getting rid of Moss?? Now that makes sense in all aspects. Avi being dumped? Makes no sense. BELIEVE.IN.AVI. He will deliver, folks. It isn't about belief it's about facts his BABIP was far and away the best in the league. If he makes some further improvements in his plate discipline and knocks a couple extra of HR's he can help stave of the regression but his BABIP will force his BA regress the only question is how much. But in order for that to happen he's going to have to get more loft on the ball. Only 27% of his balls put in play last year were flyballs. He hits around 26 for his career. His HR/FB is actually a pretty respectable 16.1. I have no idea what league average was last year due to the balls being juiced but it's usually around 10 percent. So basically what he did worked last year but unless he wants to max out at a .760 ish OPS he's going to have to adjust his approach. Steamer by the way projects him to have a .333 BABIP which is till too high.

Got to get this years quick before they remove it

QUOTE (Tony @ Jan 28, 2018 -> 10:50 AM) Rick Hahn is the voice for the entire organization. Ownership doesn’t give many interviews, so it’s the job of Hahn to speak for the franchise. Because of that, he has to hedge in interviews a bit. He can’t come out and say “Listen, 2018 and 2019 are going to be a mess from a W-L perspective. If you want to see wins, go someplace else.” It’s a marketing disaster. On top of that, why can’t the plan change? What if the team as currently constructed goes out and wins 82 games with huge seasons from Moncada, Anderson, Giolitio, ect. 2019 is just supposed to be a lost year because it was never part of the plan? Things can change. It isn't so much the fact that plans can change of course they can but my question in this case would be why? That quote was from September of last year. You mentioned ownership and that is sort of where I was trying to go with things. I hope he is given the time to do a proper rebuild. In any case I don't want to be alarmist like you said it maybe nothing but he's been making conflicting statements. QUOTE (BlackSox13 @ Jan 28, 2018 -> 02:27 PM) Funny thing is, is that if the rumors were flipped and it was reported the Sox had no interest in Machado or Yelich this winter, these same people would be complaining about it. Whiners are gonna whine. One thing ignored is that Hahn has said repeatedly they would continue to seek players that can be apart of the next contender and come with long term control. Yelich fits that and until Machado made clear that he would not sign an extension, so did he. I see no inconsistencies whatsoever coming from Hahn. The problem with Yelich is the same problem we had with Q. He has control but on a rebuilding club that control doesn't mean as much because a good portion of his control won't be part of the Sox window. And more to the point the Marlins are doing a trade now because they are willing to sacrifice the shortterm for the longterm they were never going to walk away with a package that at first appearance made them worse in the shortterm AND the longterm. For example in 2020 unless the prospects bust the package the Marlins got back will probably be worth much more then three years of cost controlled Yelich. In any case I don't really want to belabor this any further. I just don't see why it made sense to make some of the trades last year if the plan was to just trade many of the same prospects back and get someone with 1 or 2 years worth of extra control. This whole offseason has been very confusing it went from moving Abreu and Garcia to instead possibly acquiring Machado and/or Yelich.

QUOTE (Jerksticks @ Jan 27, 2018 -> 05:07 PM) When does a rebuild complete exactly? I feel like the goal is always to have awesome players at every position. Some of those are going to come through free agency and trades. The whole point of having a farm system is to supplement the major league roster. I'm not really forecasting I've just been hearing some conflicting statements. At the end of last year he was talking about 2020 being the earliest where we could realistically be competitive. Now he's talking about trying to make trades for ML players like Machado and Yelich suggesting the window changed. I guess the question what caused him to change his thinking? “Both Avi and Abreu are under control for the next two years, through 2019. I think even under the most optimistic projections of our ability to contend, certainly ’18 and ’19 don’t include the bulk of the time when we anticipate having a window open to us,” Hahn said. “So obviously with any player who isn’t controllable through the bulk of that window, we have to make an assessment." I think for me if the plan is 2020 which makes perfect sense lets make the 2020 team as good as possible with as many controllable assets as possible. It also gives us ammunition to make a deals if we need to as well.

QUOTE (Dam8610 @ Jan 27, 2018 -> 04:11 PM) Great, hopefully he can develop into a 2+ WAR CF so that that's the White Sox worst case scenario when it's time to compete, with an upside of a 5+ WAR Robert. I think we are sort of fine at CF we have three guys who can play the position in Garcia, Tilson and Cordell all are intriguing. I think L Garcia has some power if he can figure out to be a little more selective thats sort of the difference between him being a .700 hitter and a .800 hitter. Tilson is a guy everyone was high on. Cordell has raked in the minors. It's why I never really wanted to trade for a CF like Yelich. We don't know what we have not even with robert but the wave of guys ahead of him. We need to let the young guys play and then figure out from there where we need to fill holes. It's hard to sort of know at this point.

I want more certainty from Hahn. He talks about Yelich and Machado but the problem with that is the rebuild hasn't been completed. I want his assurance he will follow the season ender PC where he talked about 2020 being the target date. Last thing we need is to be back where started in no mans land because Hahn or more likely Kenny didn't have the stomach for a proper 2-3 year rebuild.