Look at Ray Ray Run

The White Sox currently own ZERO automobiles that work. They have 30 of them in the shop, being worked on to hopefully win a race, but none of them have ever won a race before - most of them have never even participated. Joc has won races and participated and adding him to the shop adds one guaranteed asset to a group of none. The number one thing so many people are struggling to grasp is that prospects are volatile. If the plan is to wait for all your prospects to contend, and to add one good MLB player (Machado) then you're setting yourself up for failure. You need to compliment the young talent with proven, quality, veterans. Joc is exactly that.

Yes, but the 2020 WAR for Pederson is more valuable than any FV WAR expected from Rutherford in 2022. By that time, you've cycled through more prospects and Rutherfords impact becomes even less valuable. FV is all about organizational cycles with trades - Rutherford is far from the majors, and has a log jam of superior (currently) talent in front of him. You have to account for the difference between Rutherford and the organizations next options, which one could easily argue are greater than Rutherford but that same argument can not be made for Pederson. The odds of the prospects outperforming Pederson is significantly less than it is that they outperform Rutherford. I also couldn't disagree with you more on 2019 WAR being worthless; that's pure nonsense. As I have stated, this year needs to trend upward; this team needs to take significant steps forward. Now is the time to do so. There's value to Pederson because he's a good MLB player and this team needs to add a few of those because last year they had zero players as good as Joc Pederson. That's a problem. You can't expect your prospects to fill out every hole in the organization. That's a pipe dream that is very unlikely to come to fruition.

This is a fair point, but one could easily argue that the White Sox win the deal by enough that it's logical for both sides. True FV of of Pederson over the next two years is probably close to $50 million. Rutherford and Flores have less than a 35% chance (based on their FV likely outputs) of being worth 50 million over the duration of their years of control. The future value of Rutherford matters - I wouldn't argue otherwise - but it means less to this organization than you'd think. Rutherford is the 3rd rated CF'er in HIS own organization. He has to leap frog Gonzalez, Basebe and Robert at his position alone. Pair that with the fact that Pederson is young, and has power that plays in the corners better than Rutherford, and you could easily argue that the Sox would come out ahead in sheer value which is frankly all that matters when making a deal like this.

I'm not sure why - we are overvaluing middling prospects at this point. ] The value of Rutherford if he's a 50FV prospect is roughly $17 million - you could argue that Rutherford is a 45FV which would bring him all the way down to about 8 million in value. Let's say, for the sake of this, that Rutherford is trending upwards though and is worth about $17 million. Flores isn't worth much - maybe $3 millionish. So let's say our total value moved is about 20 million. Obviously, future value is worth more to this team than present, but it's not by as much as you'd think given that the White Sox want to expedite the window and have this year be a year of potential surprise with next year being a year of definite contention (in their eyes), but lets say for the sake that Rutherford's future value increases the value of a win by $3 million per - he's worth roughly 2 wins now (assuming 10 million = 1 WAR but as we know, WAR values aren't exact) so we get Rutherford and Flores up to being worth $26 million. Pederson would need to accumulate 2.6 WAR in 2 years to equal the net value of our offer. Now volatility of a guy like Rutherford changes things a bit, but at most, it's safe to say that if Pederson is a 2 WAR+ player each of the next two years, that his present day value surpasses any Future Value for Rutherford. I know people don't want to give up any prospects - the infatuation with all of them is very real - but from a sheer value standpoint that would be a fine swap for the White Sox. Not one I think they're interested in - as I think they'd rather move relievers and more wild card position players than a top 100 prospect, but it certainly would be a defendable trade for the White Sox.

He's a competitor. He should want to keep his job because he's really good at it. He's earned it. He's better than Manny there so he belongs there. I have no issues with that.

A rebuild in which you traded mlb stars for MLB ready prospect would be a complete failure if it takes 5 years to even be competitive. Arguing otherwise completely ignores the assets that were moved and acquired to kick off the rebuild.

What? Bad at proving what? I broke down the math for you to show you how absurd it is to say those 4 teams had less than a 10% chance of winning the world series combined. Its simply inaccurate. The market will tell you that with the prices set. 40% of participants did not have a 10% chance of winning. Even if you thought they were much worse than the remaining 60%, their odds would still come in at about 25% if their price was +300 in every series. Given that the A's were about -110 in their first series, that already negates the +300 requirement.

Well your fictitious percentage is exactly that. Those four teams made up 40% of the playoff participants. For them to have less than a 10% chance, combined, to win (when they weren't facing each other too), would mean they all had less than a 8% chance of winning their one series vs other "super teams" which is simply wrong. I'll tell you what. This year you give me the four teams that have zero chance of winning, and give me 10-1 on all of those teams, and I'll take it for any amount.

None of this is relevant. You said they had zero chance and that's statistically false. You said they would compete for a division but not the World Series. That makes zero sense and is simply wrong. If you're competing for your division then you're a contender to win it all. If the A's were 100-1, I'd have been all in on the A's. You are saying they could be 100000-1 and it wouldnt matter because they have zero chance of winning which is simply wrong.

No they arent. As I said, wins have been inflated by the bottom of the league. The A's won 97 games. The difference between 97 wins and 100 wins is equal to about 5 plays in a season. Were the A's a super team or is the fictitious 100 win mark the barometer you go by?

Come on... how are the Cubs a Superteam? The Dodgers too? What? They havent won anything. The Red Sox were a Super Team too? I think you're getting a bit carried away with the term. The reason there were more 95+ win teams is because the bottom of the league has been so bad due to the rebuild trend. The Red Sox would barely have been favored vs a team in their own division. They would have been even vs the Astros. There's nothing super about the teams, they're just good baseball teams. The speaking in absolutes around here for a baseball playoff series is horribly misguided. As I noted above, at most you're about 3-1 to win the series; that's hardly a zero chance outcome. Nothing has changed in the past 3 or 4 years. It's still the same game that a 100 loss team could win a 7 game series vs a 100 win team because baseball is a funny game with small margins for error that gives anyone a chance in a small sample setting.

What? The A's won 97 games. Not only that but every single team that makes the playoffs has a decent g shot of winning. Its absurd to say you can contend for a division for years but not the World Series. The favorite wins in baseball less than pretty much every other sport (Hockey is similar). If the Sox are competing for the division then they're competing for a title. It's that simple. At most you're a +250ish underdog for a series - which equates to about a 28% of winning the series. That's far from a zero chance possibility. It's easy to say the A's had zero chance now that it's over, but if you really thought that you should have taking out a loan against your net worth and bet it all on the field vs the A's.

Real quick, the Cubs nor the Astros were bad for 5 years due to a rebuild. They were bad prior to their rebuild commitment and then year 4 of the rebuild was moving year - a year of progress. The Sox have been bad for a decade but I'm only counting the three years in which we began the rebuild.

I'm going to bookmark this post so I can get back to this when I get time - I apologize, it's been fun tonight but I sadly am trying to get some work done before a long next couple days. I will do my best to respond with the changes made to catch probability, and the deficiencies I see with the metric before this thread wraps up. The great thing about this forum is we are all on the same fan page.

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.

Because Pederson is still on the upside of his aging curve - although he's nearing a regression point defensively as defense ages quicker than offense in MLB. Pederson still has prime years left in him, and taking the sum of his outcomes is a smarter move than taking a noisy "regression" at 26 years old which doesn't match with standard aging and regression curves for MLB players. Jones and Gonzalez are on the wrong side of 30 (33 and 34), and if you look at their career progression, it is quite obvious they are following the standard aging curve that existed prior to steroids in baseball - and has apparently returned with the reduction of use in PED's. They simply aren't the same thing. Yes, getting better and improving is important in 2019. Prospect growth and progress IS NOT linear. There's nothing that says such and such will get this much better with this many AB's. For all you know, Anderson and Moncada could have huge breakout years or they could stay the same. You need to be prepared for growth, and not react to it though; reacting to unexpected prospect progression leads to you hampering their further growth because you didn't surround them with quality MLB talent. You can't continue to trot out complete and utter garbage. Sorry, but that's not a rebuild; at some point, your window for growth needs to kick into gear, and after 3 absolutely abysmal seasons for the White Sox, the time is now for them to begin an upward trajectory otherwise you set yourself back another year despite guys like Anderson, Moncada and now Eloy being one year closer to their free agency. Maximizing windows isn't about drafting high every year, it's about year to year growth and changing the organizational culture.

My background is in finance; statistics, and modeling, is more of a hobby I had as a kid than a career for me. There are probably A LOT of people much smarter than me in statistical analysis. I just happen to love baseball - and basketball - when it comes to statistical models and forecasting. It's fun to build them, and analyze others data, but it's also very humbling given how horribly wrong I have been before. Volatility in sports is a lot of fun!

I don't like catch probability for a few reasons; one, it's an infant statistic that has already had two significant adjustments in it's calculation and catch difficulty qualifications made to it in the past three years. Two, the sample for each catch group is not large enough - on an individual season basis - to weed all the noise. There is far too much volatility year to year for the statistic to warrant merit when evaluating a players yearly successes. The statistic is OK when you grow the sample large enough, but by the time it becomes more reliable it no longer has predictive qualities because the data used to generate the outputs are dated. It's a good tool to evaluate a career, but a bad tool to evaluate a year in my opinion.

What? You seem really caught up on my Rowand comment. I'm not sure why... Usually when explaining something - ala sprint speed being overrated as a defender - you want to use an example that your audience would be familiar with. I didn't use Rowand because of Hawk Harrelson or any nonsense; I used Rowand because he's a terrific example for why speed, or lack their of, does not make or break a center fielders defensive prowess. He's not universally adored by advanced metrics crowd? The two publications that were highest on Madrigal were fangraphs and BP.

Once again, there is so much volatility with defensive metrics that using individual season outputs to determine the talent level of a fielder is a not good statistical analysis. Pederson isn't old, and there's no reason for a significant drop in his fielding prowess. Taking a 4 year sample is a much better predictor for future outcomes than taking last years minute data outputs.

They're prospects; outside of Eloy, if any of the other outfield prospects accumulate 10.1 fWAR in 4 seasons I would be ecstatic. You'd rather have a depth problem by bringing in Joc, than a lack of success problem by surpassing on above average MLB players to save a spot for Blake Rutherford who you hope figures it out. If it turns out that you get a log jam of talent - a good problem to have - you then have an avenue of strength and depth you can trade from to improve the parts of your team that didn't work out as well. There's a reason you never EVER draft for positional need in MLB, and that's because prospects aren't guaranteed, and depth is really really important; and organizational depth is what separates the great organizations from the one year and no year wonders.

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.

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.

We've all had our not normal obsessions with bad baseball players. I used to love Willie Harris. Willie accumulated 3.6 fWAR over the course of 1000+ games. That's terrible. Willie was fun, and seemed like a great guy; scoring the run in the World Series helped too, but I loved Willie before that. I was a kid who loved to watch him run and play defense, but Willie was bad. I understand how fans become infatuated with a guys personality or his vibe - it makes sense! Pablo Ozuna was another guy I loved. I have to be the only guy alive with a Pablo jersey. But when talking about adding a real above average MLB player, it's just plan silly to even bring up the concept of blocking a bum like Palka. It's not as if Palka is some young, break out, prospect who found something. He's not Josh Donaldson or JD Martinez making dramatic swing changes. He's still the same guy he was in the minors; bad strike zone command, big swing, tons of power, and a really poor hit tool. Nothing changed. There's no reason to be excited for Daniel Palka; if anything, for me, Palka reminds me of an era of White Sox baseball I'd sooner like to forget.