Chisoxfn

Will, that was a fantastic piece. One of the most informative reads I've seen. Very candid info from Bautista. Some definite great stuff in their regarding Spencer and Almonte and their development and just a good healthy dose of reality.

I've seen enough of this stuff. If you are dealing with the Jays, then the conversation starts @ Hoffman and Pent. And I don't budge off of my demands for Hoffman and to be frank, given that it is July 7th, I'm probably not budging off my demands for both of them. Play the leverage game for the time being. And Shark, do your thing and pitch some awesome baseball until you are traded (hopefully you keep pitching good after too!!!) And yes, I doubt the Jays make the trade I am proposing but with the leverage in place, they absolutely should be able to get at least 1 of those guys plus another good prospect.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 6, 2015 -> 09:24 AM) So here's one that drives me nuts yesterday. When commenting on the defense, people will note that the White Sox simply don't have good defenders and nothing the manager or coaching staff can do will change that. Here's an example of where this hits the coaching staff and organization. First inning yesterday, ground ball to the left side, Gillaspie has to move a good distance to get to the ball and he misses it. It wasn't an impossible play, it wasn't an easy play, but he was given an error on it. He's not a great defender so he might make that play some fraction of the time and miss that play some fraction of the time, maybe 50/50, 75/25, who knows. Even if he practiced it every single day there's so many little differences in every hop that he's still going to miss that one sometimes. Fine. He's not a great defender and that's not on the coaching staff. Gillaspie then becomes an idiot. After missing the ball, he picks it up and rifles it as fast and as hard as he can in the direction of 1b without setting. Even if he made a perfect throw he wasn't going to get the runner. This was a completely stupid throw. There were probably 5 year olds in the stadium who have seen enough baseball to know that ball was ticketed for the dugout, and of course, the runner goes to 2nd on the play. Gillaspie gets the 2nd error on the play, runner scores a few batters later. The first one? Fine, Gillaspie just physically could not make that play every time and the coaching staff can't change that. The 2nd part? How on Earth can a player not know to stick that ball in their pocket and take the error rather than making things worse? That's what I mean when I say there's a difference between being weak defensively and what we see with this team: sloppy, stupid, poorly coached, and poorly prepared. We could be weak defensively, have weak defenders, guys who don't have good range, but we could at least be smart about it. Instead we have the guy who decides that he needs to be the hero and make an inhuman play and it ends up giving up a free run. I think the 2nd part is also to an extent ingrained from years of playing baseball but I also think the culture of an organization and lockeroom (led in part by the mgr) can impact and reduce these occurrences and I agree with you the way the Sox have consistently made dumb baseball plays is why I fully support making changes and would fully support going to Gardy (but with that, the whole org would need to be on board with Gardy's methodologies carrying to the minor league levels, etc).

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 6, 2015 -> 10:01 AM) First point - he was in Torotno last year, so "league adjustment period" is hard to understand. Secondly, I did the exercise last week. I don't have the software to do a full statistical case, but his hits this year are generally falling shorter in the OF than his hits last year. There are definitely a couple clouds of hits in front of each OF that he produced last year which are simply missing this year and his OF hit clouds have moved more shallow. It's generally consistent with him no longer being able to drive the ball over the head of the OF and as a consequence the OFs gradually playing him more shallow, thus taking away hits. This was a major part of the criticism of his game when he was non-tendered by the Braves after washing out in New York, that he never developed a power stroke (not even HR power, extra-base power) and as a consequence the OFs didn't have to respect the ball over their heads, only the balls in the gap. My bad on league adjusted, was typing fast and was thinking back to his Giant season (forgot it was Toronto he was with last year). Either way, the data wasn't their to be indicative of any sort of career setting trend. I have no idea if the last 30 days are more reminiscent of the guy but I'd bet on it being in between the past 30 days and how he started the season, which would be relatively consistent with his career (and then factor in slight regression for the final year of his contract due to age, etc).

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 6, 2015 -> 10:03 AM) Oh Gage, of all people, you should know better then equity=cash. Never said it did, but equity has to be considered and this team is sitting on massive amounts of book equity and reserves (again, not saying JR doesn't want to leverage it but over his run as the chairman this team, from both operating earnings and historically equity, has made massive amounts of money for ownership). I'm just saying the Sox could fully support a larger payroll then they have today. They are not "all-in" or leveraged in the current situation and they aren't in a significant mess at all. They have a flawed roster but it can be fixed and they can contend next year with the right moves. I think a lot of us said that this year was probably a year premature but as long as they didn't mortgage the next few years trying to push the starting point forward, their wasn't a lot to risk. And I think that comment still holds completely true. Note: The equity sitting in the actual books from carry over income differs from all the unrealized equity that doesn't make the books given current valuation of franchise. As DA pointed out in his last post, just from historical reserves, Sox would have massive amounts of equity (which is actually as good as cash cause in this case, it should be sitting in "cash") as book equity is just assets in excess of liabilities which would really just be driven by income not spent and socked away for future periods. If you did an actual valuation and sold, they'd also record massive gains as FV is well in excess of current equity.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jul 6, 2015 -> 09:55 AM) I'm not sure we can. Lakers are looking to dump salary, we have no space and no non-guaranteed contracts they can dump. Its more likely we get JLin in a sign and trade.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 6, 2015 -> 09:51 AM) Am I allowed to note again the large, important exception to the entire "historical trend" or can I just call it implied and be done? You could have 2 years ago but then he followed up a down year with a very good year and you could point to potential evidence (none of us know for sure) of an injury which significantly impacted his play in that down year. Nelson Cruz was busted too...doens't mean he isn't still a good offensive player to this day. Heck, he's been better since he was busted. Clearly the roids were always a risk but Melky also had good line drive rates / contact rates as well, which were further indications of his early season struggles being more to do with bad luck or even potentially a league adjustment period. Did he have his struggles that went with the bad luck (absolutely cause at the end of the day I'm sure mentally he was fatigued when he looked at the numbers he was producing and probably was pressing). Now Alexei on the other hand, his secondary stats and eye test are causes where I wouldn't blame someone to say he's done. I'd also say Sox best chance of getting anything is to hope he has some form of a hot streak between here and the deadline. I also don't have an appreciation for any "off" the field issues that might be impacting Ramirez (which has happened in the past).

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 6, 2015 -> 09:49 AM) I still think that by far the most important number in that list is the $32 million. Their operating income last year based on the Forbes estimates was about $30 million, and then suddenly we saw a payroll increase of just about that amount. We've played this game for years and it actually works out quite well, the Forbes numbers generally do track the White Sox payroll. Depends on how Sox treated Abreu's cost but the revenues are a great basis to go on and much more verifiable then the forbes number. I could also look at Forbes valuations and say that when teams have been sold they have been horribly inaccurate. I suppose someone could go back and look at Forbes numbers from a few years ago vs. some of those franchises who had financials leaked and see how close they were. Also, operating revenue could be misleading as it depends on what they include / exclude. Should be simple but again, could be more complicated.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 6, 2015 -> 09:13 AM) Every other time this season someone has been proud of a player turning it around (Beckham, the whole bullpen, Danks) a few weeks later we were back to noting how terrible they had been. Beckham is a bad starter and a solid bench player. We know that. Any talk otherwise was nonsense. Danks is mediocre to bad and has proved that as well in his post-injury career. Melky has a historical trend of being an above average hitter so conclusions reached over a short term period were as dumb as people jumping to alternative conclusions based upon 1 Danks start or 5 Gordon Beckham games (they were completely against good, large sample sizes). And this bullpen is what it is, we have a very good closer, some solid pieces and a lot of unreliable guys. But that said, bullpens in general are statistically sporadic so to expect otherwise when most of our relievers are not what i'd call "high" profile relievers, would again be misleading. We bought high on Duke who probably isn't as bad as he has been but clearly had a fluky year last year (in his favor and Sox bought on arm release / other things negating longer term history of suckitude).

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 6, 2015 -> 09:12 AM) To remind again...they also significantly slashed ticket prices during that time span. The gate is minor to all the revenues coming from tv deals. Beginning in 2014, each team got an extra $25M per year alone from national tv deal(Roughly $52M per year). And according to fangraphs, the Sox get $450K for every game broadcast on their network (plus they have an equity ownership). While not all games are on comcast, I'm going to just be lazy and assume they did (and any difference for the other games would probably be a rounding figure of +/- $5M) but that would equate to $72.9M on TV revenue for local deal (I will say this seems high but nothing compared to deals like the Angels signed (thought relatively relevant example given 2nd largest team in a major market, albeit they have better draw, etc). That means with just tv deal you are talking $125M / yr. According to a link from statistica (no idea how valid), Sox took in $43M in gate revenue last year (by far the lowest in a long time) and that gives you revenues of $168M (excluding radio rights, which I presume are small and random advertising + merchandising). The Sox also, according to forbes, had operating income of ~32M (I say this with a grain of salt cause they are totally guessing here) but bottom line, you take out your G&A expenses (which probably get largely off-set from the merchandise / advertising / etc) and you could easily justify a net even profit base with a $150M payroll (I'm leaving in $18M for minor league and international + buffer for G&A not covered by those smaller costs). Oh and lets not forget the valuation of the club continues to go up. Sox can do what they want, but even with horrifically low gate sales, they can support a payroll much larger then today's (based upon my very rough math and by now means do I say this is exact).

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 6, 2015 -> 08:19 AM) We are seeing some signs of life recently. Before it seemed like no one could hit. Now we are to a stage where we are getting hits, but aren't getting BIG hits. It is getting there. Eaton has made similar strides. Problem is, the defense is a longer term trend that has to be fixed, but it can be fixed. We do have major holes in the infield (and as I point out consistently, also defensive holes in the outfield). I wouldn't even be surprised if we dangled Avi in a trade package (never know, a team might look at a bat and think he is a fit). problem is with the team not contending this year, unless you get something with promise, you are probably better served seeing if the switch flips and Garcia just starts crushing it (tools are their to be a very good offensive player...just don't know that it will happen, but I don't have any problem being patient with the rest of this season.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 6, 2015 -> 08:12 AM) 3 year window with these players. Melky, LaRoche, Alexei, even before the season started, you had to figure in 3 years, all these guys would be ex-White Sox. The 3 year probably only included Micah and Rodon as contributing prospects. Maybe Sanchez. They know they have to start producing their own talent. I think the 3 year window was a term to buy them time to do just that. We will see, but it is apparent they aren't blowing the entire thing up. They need to make improvements and focus on defense and getting some exciting young positional players, but we also can't ignore what has the makings for a very strong, borderline elite (albeit this is all based upon projections and rankings vs. actual productivity from some of the young guys), cost-controlled rotation. Melky, who some excluded was done (and to which I have said consistently, it is was and is way too early to make those sort of conclusions), is also posting a .907 OPS over the past 23 games.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 6, 2015 -> 08:06 AM) I think you are taking the term 3 year plan way too literally. 3 year plan doesn't mean they are only making plans for the next three years. Otherwise they wouldn't have spent a dime in Latin America. They think they can win something with the core group they have now, but they aren't going to completely scorch the earth to try to compete either. I also this is more an initial 3 year plan to contend with the current group. Doesn't mean their aren't longer term plans. Often times companies have 1 year, 3 year, and 5 year plans and in this case I think the Sox and most sports franchises use a plan that is more "shorter" term, especially given the turnover, etc that can exist. I think their is a larger plan (but it is really hard to project out 5 years in baseball...given crapshoot of prospects, etc).

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Jul 6, 2015 -> 07:24 AM) This is consistent with what I've been saying all along. We need to realize that the league is changing -- the polarity of competing vs. rebuilding is becoming a thing of the past. Yes, the White Sox were trying to put a winner on the field this year, but it was NOT an all-in, do or die plan. I know, Balta, you are concerned about the financials, and I think what you bring up makes sense if we assume a static payroll and a new big ticket pitcher -- but it IS possible for the payroll to increase, and if the FO is stating that they are on pace for a three year plan, it's safe to assume that they have the resources they need. Agree completely with your post, As I pointed out about a week ago, adjusted for standard MLB inflation, Sox relative payroll from 5 years ago would be pushing $150M in today's dollars. New tv deals, etc. yes, gate attendance is down and the Sox TV deal isn't near as sweet as anyone who has recently renegotiated, but they have room in the coffers and have some cost controlled "elite" talent.

Fantastic. Look forward to 16 years from now when my daughter is on the field for her first world cup!!!

Pumped up for Sunday. Hopefully US can get past Japan this time and win this thing!!!

QUOTE (woods of ypres @ Jul 2, 2015 -> 02:05 PM) Anychance we can give Jerry Dipoto a job in our FO? Not in a million years would I want him around.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Jul 2, 2015 -> 12:54 PM) There's a TON of misuse of sabermetric stats in this article. Really sad for a pretty highly-reputed blog. The whole article is freaking delusional. The point that Martinez is worth 3/4th of sale told me the guy was literally insane in the first place. Let alone the wild ass projections of guys with minimal big league experience or just the logic behind the well this guy pitched x innings and you should be impressed by he's thrown a bit more then Martinez (and that number being just over 5 innings a start...which is nothing to brag about). Whole thing was pathetic. Literally one of the worst pieces of trash I've read in a while.

California passed a new law which will require all to be vaccinated to attend schools (unless you have a medical exemption). Personal and religious exemptions will no longer be granted.

Trump is an idiot and a brings a bad name to republicans everywhere.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jul 2, 2015 -> 11:24 AM) I would really like Beverley or Lin as the backup PG. Both have a lot of suitors though and the Bulls can only pay the taxpayer's MLE. No chance Beverely isn't retained by Houston. Lin is a very realistic option. I prefer Stuckey but could live with Lin.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 2, 2015 -> 11:10 AM) At worst, he can always shoot. With guys like Jimmy and Derrick on the floor, all Mike has to do is set up his screens and get to his spots. If Niko continues his growth that takes even more pressure off of Mcd. The key is Niko / Doug / Dunleavy / Snell all have the ability to be good long-range shooters. We will need that as it should really help with the spacing on offense.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jul 2, 2015 -> 08:15 AM) Aaron Portzline ‏@Aportzline 46m46 minutes ago Told #Blackhawks were at least $1M apart on AAV w Brandon Saad, likely $5M and $6M. I'd peg #CBJ deal - when done - at $5.5M or 5.75M per 1 year apart isn't that far a part (in the grand scheme of things). And it looks like Saad split the difference. Seems like someone screwed the pooch up in terms of communication based upon some of Saad's late comments. That said, maybe it was all of a moot point once the offer came through, Stan might have decided that the prospects were worth more to him then Saad at even 5M.

QUOTE (Brian @ Jul 2, 2015 -> 10:48 AM) Read Monrow shunned the Knicks for Milwaukee. Never thought I'd see that happen back in the day. If he wants to win, the Bucks are a much better team to be on. They have a lot of quality young talent, a bright coach, and a returning top pick (to go with the young talent that helped get them to the playoffs). I don't think they are a title contending team but with the defense they are capable of playing they could easily be a top 3-4 team in the East and are not going to be a team people like playing.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 2, 2015 -> 10:44 AM) Looking around at the contracts that have been signed, Dunleavy's deal is a f***ing steal. I feel that way too. He could fall apart pretty quickly, I don't know, but he's the type of guy title teams have on their bench. The key being "bench". We need to get better development out of Snell / Dougie / Niko to ensure that Dunleavy can play less minutes and ideally be as effective as possible during those minutes. He's also just a very good guy to have in the lockeroom. The spacing he brings is also key and thankfully shooting and smart passing are a couple skills that take a longer time to deteriorate.