nrockway

if Zavala turns out to be a good player, is the Cease trade a 'good' trade? Sure wasn't the package I would've wanted, predicated on a pitcher who throws as slow as I do. I just don't think you can actually 'grade' this deal yet. It strikes me as difficult to judge any baseball trade in the moment unless it is for major league talent. The Dodgers obviously did something smart by acquiring Edman and Kopech even if Vargas turns into something. Was the Fedde deal a good one? I don't think so. Again though, the jury is out, though Vargas is arguably the worst MLB player I've ever watched play on a semi regular basis. But he was acquired for essentially nothing; the Fedde deal was smart, a move that no other team thought to make, I think you have to give Getz credit for that if you're going to critique what he was traded for. Why I actually opened this thread was to congratulate Crochet for winning Comeback Player of the Year! However, he's not really 'coming back' from anything. He's always been good, he's just finally healthy and was given an opportunity to start. He deserves some credit for his excellent season that nobody anticipated. I want to '#throw back thursday' to all those SoxTalk posters and facebook users who thought he sucked and wouldn't be able to start because "well look at the previous innings he pitched". pseudo-statistical 'projection'. it's meaningless. I'm sure MLB teams still 'project' players based on their three previous years' performance. meaningless and unhelpful.

I didn't cite a fuckin thing

You joke, but I'm certain the phpBB crowd is more qualified to run a professional sports team than most front offices.

what do I think they do?

everyone definitely saw that coming, right?

Interesting idea re: collusion. My thinking is that we overexaggerate the importance of "analytics" and it doesn't impact winning as much as we think. I'm pretty sure the main "projection" Fangraphs and ESPN use was developed by some high school students. Why isn't there an army of PhD students and post-docs producing baseball advanced stats for free? My thinking is that there isn't much there. Which is to say, I sort of doubt that if teams hired a team of PhD statisticians, they would be able to develop any useful and novel metrics. I think a team of scouts with GEDs are probably better equipped at the job. There is definitely use in visualizing data for easy digestion by players and staff, ie developing hot/cold zone charts for hitters or showing the trajectory of various pitch types...but that isn't highly-paid work. I don't know what the industry standard is, but I assume it's low. Then again, there is relatively new data to look at...the Statcast cameras...that could probably tell you a lot. That's probably the competitive advantage, making that data into something useful. I assume the product that Statcast sells already does that though. And does it tell you anything that a hitting coach couldn't? What's the salary of the guy who interprets Statcast data? I can't imagine it's super high. I think biomechanics...physics generally... and kinesiology are probably more useful fields to apply to baseball than statistics TBH. I also like the Tom House approach of having an illustrious baseball career then doing a PhD and applying it to coaching. An 'analytics' guy like that probably commands a high salary.

literally the only reason. I'm not sure why it's a better situation. by what metric?

The CTA is night and day since COVID. Ridership has plummeted and the increase in violent crime is statistically significant. There is a well-researched positive correlation between ridership and crime. The system would probably be fine if people decided to ride it again, yet you have to convince people that it's safe and they should ride. A Catch-22 situation. People talk about Chicago today like we should be making a comparison between 2024 and 1990. The city is markedly different now than it was in 2015. I'm the sort of person who traditionally would ride CTA all night, that is no longer the case. I'm taking a cab if I'm out after a certain hour. I frankly won't even stay downtown after a certain hour. By the way, I like the CTA, I applied to be an intern there once upon a time. They are in trouble. They want to be real estate developers now.

Some of the points of comparison feel a bit contrived....also the 2017 Browns exist...but I'm clicking the like button anyway. Also every Oakland team is seemingly comparable to one another. The Raiders are just the A's, right?

He was incredible in DC though, right? Not necessarily a marquee team, despite being the nation's capital. I agree with you, he was a little lackluster in SD. I think his time in San Diego is an aberration. Also quite short. He was also statistically well about average in a Padres jersey....936 plate appearances, .893 OPS. sub.900 seems bad for Soto, right, but a 'down year' is an all-star year for most players. Pretty much my point. We'll see if he can maintain it. I hope so. He's a super fun player to watch. Have you seen a player with a better command of the strike zone? Robbie Grossman? I love the idea of being egotistical about being patient and taking a walk. Yet still hitting for both average and power. His defense is better year by year too. MLB wants to make Judge and Ohtani the stars, and they are, but I imagine Soto is a scarier hitter to face. I think this begs an interesting question: I suspect you follow the Padres with a similar SoCal gusto as I do, likely more so. Preller's teams have consistently underperformed. "On paper", these teams should have been much better. I like the Padres. I generally like the roster decisions Preller makes too. And they remind me of the Sox in this way: the players show up there and underperform and do better elsewhere, despite some different operational decisions ($$$$$). I guess what I'm trying to say is: is it possible that the White Sox make players worse and also the Padres make players worse?

I don't necessarily take pride in it. I didn't play for the team. I enjoyed watching it on television when I was 12-years-old though. The one game I went to that season is a lifelong memory. My contemporary association with the team and a game at the Cell is "fat woman shoots herself and another fan; CPD blames teens". I prefer my childhood conception of the White Sox. I know people around town still talk about it. In fact, it just came up for me in conversation this week amongst a group of young people who are 1) not baseball fans 2) weren't alive when it happened. I guess they have pride in their South Side team. I obviously see your point, we would prefer to watch a good baseball team than a bad one right now. But I will reiterate my point that it's insane for you to think winning the World Series meant nothing. It definitely meant something. Even the Cubs winning meant something for me, and I hate the Cubs.

Soto is easily the best baseball player I've watched since Bonds. Judge? Super overrated.

He’s getting hits off real pitchers too. 2-3 today, rbi double in a 1-0 win. He looked strong to end the season and fall is looking promising!

This is an insane thing to write and post

so Tim Hill is a better pitcher than Clase, right? imagine signing a relief pitcher to a multiyear contract.

Lucky for you, my own opinion isn’t rooted in the opinions of the players. I don’t talk to them. I don’t know what they think. Of course, the actual crux of the post is that, unfortunately, millionaire athletes need to be compelled to do their job to the best of their ability. This strikes me as the only reason to have a manager. In real jobs too, management is worthless except they can fire you if you don’t do your job effectively. That’s motivation!

I think Grady provides what we want out of a manager at this particular moment. Who knows about his X's and O's, his bullpen management, his lineups....but who cares. It seems like the players actually want to impress him by playing hard. Grady Sizemore is a respectable name, I imagine a lot of these players can recall watching him play. I suspect with an appropriate supporting staff, he could be a really good manager for this team. Showalter is just another TLR-esque hire. I'm not sure why everyone is impressed by Schumacher except that he likes to be called "Skip" which is a pretty cool name for a manager to have.

Pardon me, Anthony Banda has the same nerd glasses. 🤓

Did eye just spy Joe Kelly running out of the bullpen? GG dodgers. They are garbage at finding/training pitchers.

They should do a collaboration with a company that repairs train tracks.

I sort of like the Grimace bit, I'm less keen on McDonald's defacing MTA property. That decal is at least a $75 fine, Ronald. He also appears to be standing in middle of the doorway, preventing the doors from closing, so now he's just made everyone late for work. That'll be another $100. Furthermore, I've heard of guys getting fined $100 for "showtime" and this seems like "showtime". Arguably public intoxication. But seriously I hope McDonald's pays something to advertise on public property. You can charter an entire CTA train for under $4,000. if I'm the MTA's business development dick, I'm not letting Grimace on my train for under $10,000. I'd probably feel less strongly about all this if the McDonald's near my house still did that 'buy 1 get 1 free' deal on the quarter pounder. Totally absurd. I also just learned that it's possible to charter CTA trains and that it's reasonably affordable. I'm not sure what to do with this information, but I'm keeping it in mind.

Any of those guys that talked s%*# after being shitcanned was, in my mind, a pretty obvious "cancer" and likely a major source of the dysfunction. I wrote in a post last year (when this was a timely discussion. IDK how Olney and friends got away with publishing this a year after the fact), but there was a stark difference in Giolito's and Lynn's reaction after leaving the 2023 White Sox. Giolito was thoughtful and professional, took personal accountability, Lynn blamed everybody else. It's like, you're 40-years-old, you're clearly dying your beard, it's time to grow up. Something tells me that was part of the reason Giolito signed a $40mil contract and Lynn signed a $10mil one.

Brandon Belt couldn't get a contract after a .860 OPS season. Now imagine paying Andrew Vaughn $6 million dollars. I'd pay him because, why not, there still might be something 'there', compared to Nicky at $5m who is an obvious non-tender. 1b OPS was weird this season. Only 4 (qualified) players players hit above .800. Most are low to mid .700s. Vaughn is obviously at the bottom. Seems to me that the best 'hitters' are also the best athletes, and can play defense reasonably well. Look at Judge and Witt, not superstar defenders by any means, but able to play the premium positions. What's Vaughn's excuse? More generally, what's the point of the position?

I don't think this actually happened. I don't think anyone (at any scale where it would be noticed on the field) was actively rooting for the team to lose. I think the media made this up in an attempt to paint every Sox fan as a drunk, unhappy and belligerent. Personally I take offense.

That's so cool. You love to see it. He got a MAJOR standing ovation today. As he should, he's been a workhorse this year. I appreciate what he's done throughout a horrific season, and it was cool to see him go 6.1 scoreless. I was hoping to see Crochet for the last home game, but Flexen was actually nasty. Made a couple guys look foolish. I want to look at the replay though because I feel like the umpire was calling everything inside to RHB a strike, everything outside to a LHB a strike. I thought it might've been my vantage point, but then I started to see batters get disgusted by that specific call. Great way to end it for him. I was surprised they brought him out for the 7th, despite a strong performance. so it's neat to see this post and get a better understanding of why they might've done it. I think it's a cool thing to do, it ain't my money, but he also looked good enough to go out there for the 7th. more than anything, I was surprised when they pulled him after kind of a flub hit, but I was also pretty focused on the fight going on in my section. More on that in a moment. I went to this game expecting it to be a madhouse of bitter, unemployed people, but the atmosphere was genuinely the nicest Sox game I've been to in years. Everyone was in a good mood. I think beer was cheaper than normal, yet the drunks were limited (besides me, but I just talk to myself). I sat behind the third base dugout for ten bucks. Some kid and his mom kept trying to get the wave going the entire game. It picked up some steam toward the end, but I don't think you could call it a legitimate wave. It spanned one, maybe one and a half sections. Naturally, it's not a Sox game if someone isn't getting into a fight or getting shot (my past four ballgame experiences). Today, Bridgeport Bob got into it with Beverly Billy. Which was amusing. "You can't say that about my brother!!!" or something. They looked exactly the same. Well, everyone involved on all sides looked the same. The entire crew of guys getting into it looked like they could be related or even clones. All ginger beards. All fat. All wearing St Paddys Day Sox jerseys. Unique looking dudes. Actually, one of the opposing belligerent's beards was turning grey. Maybe he was their uncle. What was particularly amusing to me was that fans were cheering for them being kicked out during the Flexen 7th inning mound visit, then it turned into an ovation for Flexen after being pulled. Fun day to play hooky and I'm glad I went to at least one Sox game this year. I actually haven't seen them win in person since, truly, I think 2005.