Chisoxfn

I'm worried about this weekend's game, Iowa hasn't won at Michigan State in 14 years (dating back to 1995).

Thats awesome. It says something when you hit a bomb off a guy like Stras.

The Sox might have made a call but there is absolutely no way they are about to drop that kind of coin on Chapman. Now if Chapman doesn't ultimately get it, than the Sox might listen but I highly doubt a team like the Red Sox, Cards or Yankees won't get involved (I look at the Angels as a potential sleeper candidate).

QUOTE (son of a rude @ Oct 22, 2009 -> 01:15 PM) My god, you are an arrogant jackass. You picked two examples of where it was inaccurate. Want me to find the many examples of where it is accurate? And is it impossible that he had an off year defensively? Maybe he had a nagging injury he was playing through. Buh...Bye. And don't think it was just you, others were suspended....but you never play nice, never debate, its just attack after attack and that is intolerable and unacceptable.

Ya, I'm gonna be watching.

QUOTE (CanOfCorn @ Oct 22, 2009 -> 12:46 PM) To defend him...it's gonna take a long time to get back to the explosiveness a DT needs when you have a knee injury like that. If by long time, you mean never, you are correct. I'm not saying it is his fault that he's not playing good, he just physically doesn't have the ability to be an upper echelon DT and unfortunately for him we are paying him to be one so when he doesn't perform like one he's gonna get called out. He'll be gone at the end of the year. I used to say Urlacher would be gone too, but given the few draft picks we have, the only way he's gone is if Roach/Williams step-up this year. If they do, Urlacher will be traded (mabye the Bears try to get something for Harris too) and than use there picks to replenish the oline as well as pick up another safety. The dline will be addressed with the Gaines Adams move and the current options for at least one more year. The Bears are also going to have to get creative in there attempt to improve the oline and that creativity might just be shelling out major bucks for a FA.

QUOTE (Thunderbolt @ Oct 22, 2009 -> 12:32 PM) Rob Mackoviak really wasn't that bad. He shouldn't of been playing CF, but he worked his ass of their anyway. I'd say there's little chance of De Aza being better then Rob. That's actually not that bad a thing anyway. Mack was an asset and the Sox just didn't have the personnel to use him properly. Ozzie was forced to play him in CF because he didn't believe in Brian Anderson. I disagreed with the move at the time because I just didn't see Mack being anything other than a horrendous every-day defensive CFer so I questioned what real value we gained by starting him over BA. De Aza could be a great pinch-runner and defensive sub who maybe figures it out and becomes more but in no way are the Sox counting him on being anything other than a bench player and he has the tools to be a pretty valuable one, imo. I would be quite content with our 4th and 5th Of'ers being Kotsay and De Aza. Maybe the Sox go crazy and carry Kotsay, De Aza, and Pods. Either way I don't think Pods or Kotsay should be looked at as anything more than back-ups that should get 300 or so ab's.

QUOTE (scenario @ Oct 22, 2009 -> 11:51 AM) 2009 UZR for MLB 2Bs... Second Base: 1. Dustin Pedroia 10.7 2. Placido Polanco 9.1 3. Chase Utley 8.7 4. Felipe Lopez 5.9 4. Freddy Sanchez 5.9 4. Ian Kinsler 5.9 7. Brandon Phillips 5.1 8. Clint Barmes 4.3 9. Aaron Hill -0.8 10. Jose Lopez -1.5 11. Kaz Matsui -1.8 12. Chris Getz -2.8 13. Orlando Hudson -3.8 14. Brian Roberts -4.1 15. David Eckstein -5.1 The fact that O-Dug and Brian Roberts are that low on the list saws a lot right there. Hell, Aaron Hill is a negative .8. There is nothing on that list that makes me think UZR is at all reliable. In fact, if anything else, it tells me that UZR is a joke.

QUOTE (son of a rude @ Oct 22, 2009 -> 11:45 AM) He has bad range.... He has a UZR of -5.8. I'm sure you don't believe in UZR though. Please explain how Getz is a good defensive player. Let me guess, you use your eyes? I don't believe in UZR being an end all be all. Just look at the funky UZR's of tons of guys that are very good defensive players.

QUOTE (son of a rude @ Oct 22, 2009 -> 11:30 AM) 2009 ALDS: 6 runs in 3 games 2006 ALDS: 7 runs in 3 games 2003 ALDS: 6 runs in 4 games Yep, it's the pitching. 2009 they were missing a key cog of there offense, Justin Morneau and went up against one of the best pitchers in baseball CC, and a pretty good pitcher Burnett. They also gave up 15 runs in 3 games. 2006: Barry Zito (the pre-Giants version, ie, the Cy Young version) and Dan Haren were tough. The twins also stranded an absolute ton of guys in the series sans the Zito start. So they hit just fine. Also, they gave up 16 runs in 2006 in just 3 games. 2003: They went up against the younger, excellent Andy Pettite a dominant Roger Clemens and a pretty good David Wells. They also gave up 15 runs in the 3 losses and won the only game where they had solid pitching (1 run performance which they won 3-1).

Very interesting. Hopefully this works out an they generate a lot more revenue. The one thing I wonder is what is the impact if you invest a lot of money and the company bellies up. Do we see franchise revenues take a hit? Either way sounds pretty cool and promising, but I was just curious about the other side.

QUOTE (son of a rude @ Oct 22, 2009 -> 10:55 AM) Ugh, why would you want players like that? Nick Punto! Oh yeah! There's a reason the twins never make it past first round... Ya, they don't have the quality pitching to make it farther.

So if Derrick Rose misses substantial time, are there any top picks we can hope fall our way?

The Phils should hope the Angels at least make it interesting, if not win. Basically put, if I'm the Phils and I'm going to have a shot, I need the Yanks to go 7 games which would mean you only see CC twice and it wouldn't be until Game 3 or so.

I worked with my current fiance. For every bit of bad that can come out of it, there is also plenty of good that can come from work-place incidents. I also know a few other people who are married to people they met at work. Of course I never worked with this person, but regardless my company had zero policies against this sort of behavior. The only rule was that anyone who was seeing someone couldn't work on the same consulting team as there significant other.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 21, 2009 -> 02:21 PM) I'd rather look a little more in-depth in to his numbers because career numbers can be skewed by 100 ab's at too low of a level. When he's played a good chunk of a season, he's done so in: 2005, 2006, and 2009. In 2007 he was up in teh bigs for 1/2 a season at age 23 and hit .229. 2005, 21 year old in high-A, .370 OBP, .286 batting. 2006, 22 year old in AA, .346 OBP, .278 batting. 2009, 25 year old in AAA, .370 OBP, .300 batting. He started off being kinda young at every level, got an early callup but didn't do all that much, and spent 2008 hurt. A big issue appears to be strikeouts (sounds familiar). He appears to average right around 1 walk/10 PA's, which is pretty good, but he strikes out 2 times every 10 PA's or so. Full season his numbers would average 100-120 K's if they held steady from the minors to the bigs. Pods k'd 74 times last year in 537 AB's, in the weak PCL De Aza K'd 53 times in 267 AB's. He puts the ball in play a little more and he could be a solid player. Those K's will kill his OBP in the bigs though if he can't do that. He could be our Dwayne Wise replacement and that is fine with me. I agree he needs to shorten his swing and improve his contact rate.

QUOTE (Ozzie Ball @ Oct 21, 2009 -> 01:25 PM) Derek Jeter AVG vs. BABIP 1995: AVG- .250 BABIP- .324 1996: AVG- .314 (+.064 from previous year) BABIP- .368 (+.044 from previous year) 1997: AVG- .291 (-.023) BABIP- .347 (-.021) 1998: AVG- .324 (+.033) BABIP- .377 (+.030) 1999: AVG- .349 (+.025) BABIP- .400 (+.023) 2000: AVG- .339 (-.010) BABIP- .388 (-.012) 2001: AVG- .311 (-.028) BABIP- .344 (-.044) 2002: AVG- .297 (-.014) BABIP- .338 (-.006) 2003: AVG- .324 (+.027) BABIP- .380 (+.042) 2004: AVG- .292 (-.032) BABIP- .317 (-.063) 2005: AVG- .309 (+.017) BABIP- .353 (+0.036) 2006: AVG- .343 (+.034) BABIP- .394 (+.041) 2007: AVG- .322 (-.021) BABIP- .368 (-.026) 2008: AVG- .300 (-.022) BABIP- .336 (-.032) 2009: AVG- .334 (+.034) BABIP- .369 (+.033) Average changes: AVG- .0274 BABIP- .0324 Difference- .005 I picked Jeter at random due to him having a long career and therefore a lot of data points, he wasn't a predetermined pick that I knew this worked for. So as you can see Jeter's change in batting average is heavily linked to his change in BABIP (and therefore his change in luck) and this is the case more often than not with any player you look at. So now back to Nix, his BABIP was .251, his average .224, his expected BABIP (which is calculated from factors such as Park factors, player speed/power and batted ball rates) was .289. Given what we've seen with Jeter I think it is reasonable to expect Nix to hit between .245-.275 (the lower end of the scale playing everyday due to ability vs. RHP and the high end of the scale if a platoon player) for as long as he can maintain this years speed/power and batted ball rates. Defense: I'm going by the most accurate readily available defensive metric, UZR. Getz this year: -5.8 UZR (or 5.8 runs worse than an average defensive 2B) -5.4 UZR per 150 games -5.3 RngR (range runs) -5.0 UZR per 150 games for his career Nix this year (at 2B): +4.5 UZR (4.5 runs better than an average defensive 2B) +11.3 UZR per 150 games +4.3 RngR +14.3 UZR per 150 games for his career It's overwhelmingly in Nix' favour, he would have been worth 16.7 runs more than Getz this year on defense if left to play every day. Getz' offense was worth 7.3 park adjusted runs less than an average offensive 2B this year in 102 games, which over 150 games comes to 10.74 runs below average. Now just for proving my points sake, lets say Nix is twice as bad offensively as Getz (which is not even close to being correct as they were almost identical offensively this year), so if Nix' offense is worth 10.74 runs less than Getz' over a full year he's still worth about 6 runs more than Getz due to his vastly superior defensive ability, and therefore, hence point number 4. Your whole argument for Getz being better than Nix is based solely on batting average, and as we've seen, batting average is heavily influenced by luck. If Nix gets a shot next year, his luck levels out and his BABIP sits near his xBABIP of .289 (probability, research, history tells us this is likely to happen) then I don't see any reason why Nix can't post a slash line in the region of .250/.350/.450 with outstanding defense, and you can be sure, that is better than anything Getz will ever be able to do. I'm not going to get too much into it, but I think the luck invovled in BAPIP is an overplayed angle. If a guy makes contact, but not strong contact often, you'd see a low BAPIP and people call him unlucky. Yet some other batter might make a lot of contact and hit the ball hard most of the time because he has a good approach and doesn't jam himself often, goes the opposite way, etc. BAPIP isn't all luck. Sure a small portion could be related to luck but there is a reason why certain batters have higher career BAPIP's than other batters. I'd rather correlate it by line-drive rates, etc. Oh and the fact that Getz makes contact a whole lot more often than Nix also should help him have a higher average. I just find it very laughable that what you are projecting based upon Nix BAPIP is an average that is pretty much as good, if not better in some ranges than his career .261 average (which is driven up based upon the numbers he put up in his 2nd and 3rd season at AAA and those were numbers inflated from playing in Colorado Springs none-the-less). Basically put, nothing about Nix history projects him to be a guy that will hit .275. Now could he make adjustments, absolutely, but you are using statistics as your basis and I flat out see nothing in the statistics to show this guy ever being a .275 hitter. Getz on the other hand hit over .300 (well, I'm cheating and counting his .299 in his 2nd year at AA) at every level in the minors with exception to his first stop in AA. So he has tons of evidence of him hitting near .300 (assuming his approach works at the major league level and after his initial start, Getz put up a month or two span where he was hitting right around .300). Injuries would be the big concern with Chris Getz. Getz also showed that his walk rate and strikeout rates remained relatively consistent between the minors and majors which again tells me he's got a good shot at duplicating his minor league numbers, which were quite superior to that of Jayson Nix.

Sounds like a good move with zero risk and some upside. I like it.

QUOTE (Kenny Hates Prospects @ Oct 21, 2009 -> 11:33 AM) Damn, don't be so hard on yourself man. Cassel is so far down on the list of guys to watch that it doesn't really matter IMO. Haha, I'm gonna blame it on getting engaged...my useless sports info takes a backseat, haha.

QUOTE (Kenny Hates Prospects @ Oct 21, 2009 -> 10:22 AM) Were you thinking of Justin Edwards maybe? Same first name, both have underwhelming stuff, taken same year in the draft, both had minor league success, etc. Edwards is the lefty. I think I assumed from his draft day scouting report that he was a lefty and went with it. And your probably right. Probably one of the biggest gaffes I've ever had. Feel like a boob for being wrong for like 4 years on something that basic, haha.

QUOTE (Thunderbolt @ Oct 21, 2009 -> 09:40 AM) There’s something about that tone I find a bit patronizing. I recognize that Getz is the starter; it doesn’t mean I have to agree with it. Just like I recognize that you don’t think of much of Nix as a player, doesn’t mean I have to agree with that either. I am patronitzing it because Nix isn't an MLB starter. No one who hits like he did should even be considered for an everyday job. If he had upside and ever showed the ability to actually be a hitter that would be one thing, but all he's shown is that he's a very one-dimensional offensive player. Luckily those that understand how the game of baseball is actually played (its not on a calculator by the way), realize this and know that there is so much more than spitting out OPS or calling guys averages "empty". Getz is so much more of a ball-player than Nix and brings so many other things to the table. Does that mean Getz is an all star 2B, absolutely not. But I think he brings a ton to the table. Especially when you look at the Sox and realize some of there biggest problems have been due to the fact that they have guys that can't hit for high averages or get on base at a high clip. I think Getz upside as an average to a slightly above average defensive 2nd baseman who has a shot at being a near .300 hitter with very good speed. To me that upside is far greater than a 2B who hits .220 with 20HR's and 170 or so strikeouts. Not to mention over a full-season I fully believe we'd see Nix major swing-flaws (he's got a very long swing) get taken advantage of by advanced scouting and solid to good major league pitching. Nix has the ability to be a good utility player in the sense that he can provide power off the bench and a solid eye, but the key to him will be to shorten his swing and improve his defense at SS and 3B because back-ups that can only play 2B above average and don't hit a lot aren't going to have an extensive major league career.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 21, 2009 -> 09:21 AM) Cassel is right-handed, unless he switched arms during the season (maybe that explains his walk rate). There are essentially NO lefty relievers in the top two tiers of the Sox' minor league system right now. Williams appears to be the only option in-house for a 2nd lefty to Thornton. Wow, I've thought for like 4 years that he was a lefty. I'm a dumbass. I swear when he was drafted they announced him as a lefty and I never look at stuff like that once I get something in my head. My bad.

QUOTE (Thunderbolt @ Oct 21, 2009 -> 06:02 AM) Nix has a lot of work cut out for him. He needs to cut down on his k's and maintain a batting average of around .250 to be worth a shot. Until then, Getz who walks more, and is a tad faster is the clear favorite. Lets make one thing clear. Getz is the starter. Ozzie and the Sox don't like Nix as a potential starter. They've made this very evident and I'm very thankful for that cause I completely agree with Getz starting.

QUOTE (balfanman @ Oct 21, 2009 -> 05:43 AM) http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/chi-2...0,4568224.story It also looks like the Sox are trying to fit Cassel into the long relief role next season. They may see Carrasco moving to the 7th inning role. The byword for Cassel, who split 2009 between Double A and Triple A, is "consistency. With the style of pitcher I am and where I am in the organization, I see myself as a spot starter or a long-relief, multiple-innings guy. I'm happy they made a move with me last summer to see how I did out of the bullpen." By the way, I just want to say, you need to post more. You are an excellent poster. I'd be curious to see how the Sox plan on using Cassel in the long-relief role because I question whether he has the command of his "so-so" stuff to succeed at the major league level. What he does against some of the elite prospects in the game in the AFL should be a good indicator for Kenny as to where you can project a guy like Cassel. I'd personally rather see a guy like Torres, but the Sox love carrying two lefties and Cassel's pretty muc our only other option because I highly doubt Randy Williams will be back on the 25 man roster (at least I hope not).

QUOTE (Kenny Hates Prospects @ Oct 20, 2009 -> 01:49 PM) Probably not becaus he's not one of the players we're forced to add. When he gets added it'll probably be because he made the team. All I know is that, if he's still here come Spring Training, Jayson Nix has a hell of a battle ahead of him if he wants to keep his job. I could care less of Nix is gone. He's a decent back-up but he does a lot of things wrong offensively and his big defensive value is at 2B (since he was a horrendous SS). Basically put, I don't want anyone to confuse this guy for a starter. He's a worse offensive version of Nick Swisher.