joeynach

My mom raised another interesting theory on Dunn to me. She is a psychiatrist and when i was talking about Dunn and his appendectomy she noted that she has seen patients go into a depression and not being able to function as they had before b/c of the anesthesia. Its rather un-documented, but she said that some ppl just react differently to anesthesia and can take months even years to recover. She said some people brains just dont recover correctly and people can feel the effects for extended periods of time. It would be interesting to see if Dunn's appendectomy, about a 60-90 min surgery, coincides with his massive drop in performance. Just a theory.

QUOTE (VictoryMC98 @ Dec 5, 2011 -> 05:20 PM) rebound from sucking to being avg.. Sure why not. Y Eh sort of, certaintly that league average BA of .270 in 2009, but he psoted a .347 OBP and .460 SLG in 2009, good for .808 OPS. Id def call that above average.

f QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 7, 2011 -> 08:03 AM) And yet your whole rant was based on a single line by Ventura which had in it none of the thigns you spoke to. I would also invite you to speak to something tangible. Was providing defensive WAR metrics and Defensive Runs above replacement numbers not tangible? I provided figures which prove why Ventura's statement was made with either lack or information or ignoring of available information. To which I was was repsonded with "yeah cuz he was DHing not playing the field". Which statement provided tangible assets and which didnt. And I asked him for some measureable information to back up his claim. I know where the information is, but I am not going to do his homework for him. You want to tell me why the reason Dunn was bad is b/c he was a DH then show me, dont tell me. So far this has yet to take place.

QUOTE (Harry Chappas @ Dec 6, 2011 -> 04:01 PM) Because they owe him good money and if his offensive WAR is more productive then his negative defensive WAR because he can not DH, you have to live with it. You are basing that on nothing but heresy and your own opinion. I show up in court with facts and figures and you bring some un-measurable theory about how having to DH made him go from All Star good to epically bad. Grow up, thats the easy way out, do some research. How did Dunn do offensively on days he played the field, or back to back days played in the field. Please dont talk to me about sports radio caller comments like ayyyy its cuz hes a DH now he cant hit anymore. How about something concrete, hes aging, his bat speed decreased, the quality of pitching in the AL is stronger, it was the first time he was looked upon as the key to winning it all, he was unfamiliar with the pitchers, he gained weight.....come with at least something tangible!

Ventura says Dunn will get more playing time in the field (its all over Twitter), including time in the OF. Again, another example of blatant disregard of advanced metrics, something we saw with Ozzie too (remember 75 pitch Peavy). Advanced statistics have a place in this game weather u were brought up with them or not, they are not just for mid twenties baseball bloggers. If you ignore them you will wind up playing a guy whose is -127.3 career defensive WAR player, the same guy who posted a staggering -37.3 def WAR season in 2010 for the Nats. Dude also owns a career -167 defensive runs above replacement figure (according to Baseball Info Solutions). Can some non archaic baseball thinker (of the media) please ask Robin if he is aware of things like this, even cares to look, and why he would play such an established poor defender in the field more. This isnt rocket science.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Dec 4, 2011 -> 11:33 PM) I guess a lot of them were hit right at people, then, cause his BA sucked big dog. I can't knock the guy too much cause his glove was a sight to behold last year. Very good defensive player. Finally some statements with merit. His BABIP did take a hit, .276 last year (about league average), but still down from his .290-.295 BABIP from 09-10. One of the reasons his BA took such a huge dive was b/c his K rate went up. And from my analysis his K rate went up b/c of his poor plate discipline and volunatry expansion of the strike zone. Its all relative man. Though you are right on about his glove, he posted a Fielding War last year of 4.9. Far higher than any of his previous years.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 5, 2011 -> 03:56 PM) Interesting - $12M-$13M per for 3 years. I was saying before all the sweepstakes he'd get less than his last contract, and everyone scoffed. He's not likely to get the 4/$56 kind of deal people are talking about, unless one of those teams goes nuts. At 3/$36-$39, if the Sox can move a few salaries, I'd love to see them do it. And I still stick with my earlier assertion, 60% chance he stays. The Sox are talking about moving what they can and getting prospects and salary relief. If they do trade CQ, Danks, Flloyd, and Thornton as rumored why in Hell would they resign Buehrle for 3 years and 39M. Its one or the other, you keep em all, resign Buehrle and add other pieces, or you sell off reduce payroll and rebuild the farm. One or the other, and from what has been said thus far what on earth makes u think 60% chance sox essentially go All in again and thus retain Buehrle.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Dec 4, 2011 -> 01:09 AM) I'm kind of the same way. I love when he's hitting line drives, but last year was just pathetic except for his glove. His Line Drive rate was actually the highest of his career in 2011, 20.3%. It was like 16.3% during his rookie year in 09.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 3, 2011 -> 07:27 PM) And yet they try to sell themselves as "Hard working", "Grinder rules", etc., on the field. My opinion is actions mean a lot more than words. They (KW) can call themselves whatever they want but its what they do that matters. They went "All in" in 2011, that wouldn't mean anything if they didnt extend payroll to a record level of $127M.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Dec 2, 2011 -> 02:06 PM) The White Sox are one of the most expensive tickets in baseball. I've been to a lot of stadiums and I'm alwasy baffled by how pricey seats at the Cell are. Ive talked to Brooks about this personally, or via email. I did a Sales report in school a couple years ago and was profiling the selling strategy for large and small markets teams, white sox vs pirates. Brooks basically told me that the Sox strategy is to market, promote, and sell a premium experience, and with that premium pricing is certainly a factor. They essentially view their entertainment product as top quality, not just the product on the field but the ammenties of the ballpark and overall experience of going to USCF. So they charge a premium price. He told me that they really dont want just anyone coming to the park, part of building a premium experience is to have people there that value their $45 lower deck seat, or $550 Scout seat. And those people wanted to be surrounded by other people who want to pay that price and experience premium offerings (food, beverages, fan environment). The sox dont want a stadium full of people who paid $18 per ticket, they would rather have a half full stadium of people who paid $45 a ticket. Its how they market and promote, its how they get good corporate advertising dollars, its how they get good deals for Radio and TV, its how they keep prices high for food, drink, parking, etc. The sox dont want to be the pirates, they dont want to appeal top discount ticket buyers, day camps, church groups, teachers, cops, firefighters, etc. They want to viewed as a white collar establishment and want to sell their product to non price sensitive groups. Thats just their strategy, and ticket prices are one component of that.

QUOTE (bucket-of-suck @ Dec 3, 2011 -> 02:23 PM) Until Beckham can make the necessary adjustments to counter the league's adjustment to him he's gonna struggle. It's that simple. That's what separates production from persistent failure. I have heard this explanation for Beckham's struggle but after my analysis I found this statement to be false. My interpretation is that Beckham's approach at the plate has become worse and worse since his solid 09. Numbers show the league has not pitched him differently, he still sees the same FB% (60%), SL% (17%), and CH% (8%) now (2011) as he did in 09 and 10. I have looked over his metrics on fangraphs time and time again and the numbers tell the story. Its his plate disciple and selection of pitches is what has hurt is offensive ability. All the other peripherals remain constant, his LD%, BABIP, GB/FB ratio, etc. The problem is his lack of patience and his poor plate disciple, he has seriously expanded his strike zone. Look at his O Swing %, The percentage of pitches a batter swings at outside the strike zone. In 2009 it was 24.7%, by 2011 this was up to 37%. His raw swing % has also increased ( a sign of poor discipline), from 47% in 2009 to 51% in 2011. To make things worse his contact rate on pitches outside of the zone, known as O Contact %, has actually increased, from 59% in 2009 to 69% in 2011. This is bad b/c it reinforces a bad habit, making more contact on bad pitches out of zone is not a good thing, hes not Vlad Guerrero. Now add the other negative results of poor plate discipline into the equation. A decreased in walk rate, from 9.5% his rookie year to 6.2% in 2011. Same thing for K rate, as a result of his poor plate disciple he is striking out more too, from 15% in 2009 to just under 20% in 2011. Anyone who watched him this past year probably saw him swinging at a lot of poor pitches early in the count and constantly being in 0-1, 0-2, 1-2 counts, which usually ended in a K. Beckham's problem is not talent, its not even mechanical, its mental. Its about his approach, its about self-recognition, coaching, and practice. If those who believe Greg Walker didnt help Beckham than they have have been right. Someone, the hitting coach probably, should have worked extra hard with him to be much much more patient and drill selective aggression into him as the approach he should take. Someone should have (and needs to) tell him that for his purposes they would rather see him take a few more pitches than usual, with the hopes of getting into more hitters counts, even if it leads to more K looking, then swing at the first three pitches (outside of the zone) and strikeout. Beckham is still a young hitter and need to be coached up a bit, I cant say for sure what if anything Walker did for him, but its rather obvious to me after looking at fangraphs for 5 min what Beckhams problem is then it should be cake walk for a hitting coach. Right? This is one thing that really worried me with what I am calling our new assclown of a hitting coach. What worries me is that Jeff Manto doesnt seem to value plate discipline and OBP, at least not from the comments hes made thus far. He doesnt seem to care for metrics and numbers, even basic numbers like O Swing %. If thats the case it would a fair assumption to make that he HAS NOT and WILL NOT recognize this repeated trend in Beckham's approach at the plate. The problem is fairly simple to fix and requires just a bit of statistical analysis, some recognition, and some practice. I firmly believe that if no one, coach or beckham himself, recognizes plate discipline as the main culprit and works to curb the issue, then I am afraid he will continue to decline into a Khalil Greene type player, all glove no bat, perfect for the Padres, bad for an AL club and just not that valuable.

QUOTE (2nd_city_saint787 @ Nov 19, 2011 -> 02:04 AM) thats because the first 14 include AJ and Flowers both starting at catcher and basically 5 OFer starting, adding the first 14 wouldnt be the way to do it...im to tired to calculate it now but youd have to basically knock out either Qs or tanks number, lastings numbers, castros, most of flowers, then like split half of rios or de azas...lillibridge is the utility IF in this situation Well its a new day, do it.

QUOTE (Greg Hibbard @ Nov 18, 2011 -> 08:56 AM) Lower single game prices, please. Tiered pricing is ridic. $77 a pop for general lower deck to see Boston is a travesty in this economy, especially when you're no longer offering I have always agreed with this, why is any UD seat on a weekday every not discounted to get butts in the seats. Tue home game vs KC, OAK, CLE, even DET or TEX....sell 2 for 1 Upper Deck or half price or something. Last year when the team fell off or wasn't in it, just discount outfield seats or 2 for 1 them, get the seats filled. Its a fixed cost structure gets those butts in the seats damn it.

When season price tickets drop, payroll always drops as well. I remember last year when the sox signed Dunn, my buddy who is a Sox account executive told me all season ticket prices when up by $4 a game. Now that season ticket prices drop I expect payroll to drop as well. It will be interested to see how much prices drop compared to how much payroll drops. I would consider the price correlation to be similar to gasoline, fast to go up, slow to come down. My guess, payroll decreased by 25%, ticket prices decreased 15%.

Wait a second this cant be right. Am the only one that realizes what they are projecting here. For hitters, the first 14 from Konerko to Lillibridge if you add up their RBI, you get 803 Runs Scored. For pitchers, if you add up the the ER of the 7 starters and 7 top relievers (including Kinney, but not Pena cuz he was released) you get 692. WHAT. That kind of run scored vs runs allowed figure is going to yield, according to Pythagorean win formula, like 94-95 wins. Even if you adjust each number by a 50 runs in the worse direction you get 750 runs scored and 750 runs allowed. So in being pessimistic according to their numbers, the sox are still an 81 win team. And if things go right they are a 94 win team. YEAH RIGHT. I really really think they need to realize the difference between what they are saying about the sox, "What the team can't do is take a middle ground - even in a weaker division, the franchise doesn't have enough to simply tread water and hope for the best" (which I agree with) and what their numbers show (which I disagree with).

Interesting rumor, I do believe KW would love to move Thornton. If the rumor is valid it has a big meaning, the sox and KW will actually try and have a rebuild year and if u are trading Thornton you are probably trading CQ, Danks, and Flloyd too. Which personally I am totally fine with. That being said Im checking with my MLBTraderumors.com guy to see if he can help validate.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 4, 2011 -> 01:03 PM) Ergo...the Sox don't strike out much...but they don't put the ball in play strongly. Almost as if they're being too aggressive on pitches out of the zone. I know for a fact Gordon Beckham is and thats been part of his demise since the 09 season. If you look at Fangraphs for Beckham and look at this plate discipline category you can see evidence of this White Sox (or Beckham's) hitting philosophy. Beckham had an O-swing % of 24.7 in 2009, that stat measures the percentage at which he swings at a pitch outside of the strike zone. That number climbed to 32.1% in 2010, and an awful 36.9% in 2011. This can also be seen just watching him play as most of us have seen him swing at pitches outside of the zone a lot more frequent, and his BA and BABIP has suffered b/c of this. Our hitting coach needs to approach Beckham with selective aggression and plate discipline, not be ready to hit in all situations philosophy, that will just re-enforce bad habits. If Manto cant use simple stats such as O-swing to help Beckham make an adjustment then hes garbage and I stand by the title of the thread I started.

Jeff Manto was on 670 The Score this morning. I didnt hear the interview, I am hoping they will replay it later, but I heard that one reason he doesnt like walks and OBP is becuase he fears it leads to or sets up the Double play. SERIOUSLY!! If true that is the morst assinine thing I have ever heard and he is an automatic BOOB! Lets see, stressing walks, seeing pitches, and high OBP has the documented effects of more opportunities for the pitcher to make a mistake, throw a wild pitch, tired himself out with high pitch count/extended ABs, more opportunity for the catcher to make an error (past ball), you get more opportunities to see what the pitcher's got, what pitch types, what he is or is not comfortable throwing (benefit for all hitters in lineup), and most importantly you get the opportunity to put yourself in a more desirable pitch count where you may get a better pitch to hit, or be more attune to the type of pitch coming in that pitch count. But nevermind all that, a walk COULD lead to a double play, an event that occurs on average about once a game, or about 10-15 times over a players season AB's. Dude wants to ignore walks/OBP and positive effect from those in an effort to combat a low statistical outcome event. Awful!

This is from southsidesox feature. For s tarter s , Manto i s no fan of on-ba s e percentage, partly becau s e he believe s it s empha s i s on wal k s doe s not ta k e into account that a ba s e-on-ball s i s not alway s a de s ired or productive re s ult. While di s mi s s ing run s created, Manto offered hi s own s tati s tical category: "run s produced" -- mea s ured by adding run s and RBI, s ubtracting home run s from that total and dividing that number by game s played. "Do we want Ja s on Bay wal k ing if a pitch i s an inch out s ide and there' s a man on third? I'm not s o s ure. There' s a time to wal k and a time to under s tand what' s going on." - Feb. 16, 2006 Seriously this is what he just promoted to hitting coach. Someone who after all the Moneyball, Saber, Theo, stuff he hired this dude who subscribes to 1960 baseball strategy. Doesnt believe in OBP and walks, are u kidding me. Get ready for the Corey Patterson approach to hitting on the southside friends, stay in attack made, always be ready to swing, make a lot of outs, and for god's sake dont walk (get on base). What a clown.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 25, 2011 -> 09:15 AM) I can't imagine the Sox keepign Frasor. The only free agent that has a chance at being back is Mark. I don't think I would protect Danks. Crazy? There is no reason to resign Buehrle at all if the sox are just going to remain rather status quo for 2012, reduce their payroll, and wait for some more money to come off the books for 2013 (like Peavy). What is the purpose of Mark Buerhle on a 2 year deal for a team that is built to win 80 games.

No, the only way CQ is on this team opening day is if his value on the trade market diminished so much KW couldnt get any value for him.

JUST NO LA RUSSA. NO GIVING AWAY OUTS, NO SAC BUNTS, ETC ETC

I want a manger that embraces sabermetrics and advanced statistics in his managing style and decision making. If thats Francona fine, if not, next please.

Next year is a weird year, you have two option, go all in again with a $125M+ payroll and fill all holes with your arbitration eligible’s or free agents, or make 2012 a transition year where you can get payroll down to around $100M or so and let some youth fill in around the vets under contract, aiming for probably a .500 year. You have $88M committed before arbitration salaries to Danks, CQ, and Pena, that’s probably another $20M. Then you have a hole in the rotation from Buehrle and in LF from Pierre. If you replace both of those with major league talent you could be looking at another $15M+ in salary. So to build a projected 90+win team on paper for 2012 you need to be ready to spend about the same as this year, $125M. In my opinion the all in redux move would be a mistake, I don’t like a lot of the moving parts, I don’t like the age of a lot of even the consistent vets, I don’t like having to count on poor mechanics in Rios and Beckham to somehow turnaround, I don’t like the reliance upon Dunn somehow magically being not as bad, and I don’t like relying upon Buehrle and Peavy as my go to vets in the rotation. I like the idea of reducing payroll, to around $100M, letting Buehrle and Pierre go, trading CQ, trading Danks if a long term deal cannot be reached, and filling all those spots with our youth. Its an obvious transition year, its an obvious .500 team on paper, but I believe its necessary. If you can buy some time in 2012 you have a big window to develop some players, really see what you have in guys like Vicideo, De Aza, Morel, Sale (as a starter), Humber (can he be consistent), Stewart (as a starter). Then in 2013 your window opens up quite a bit because you only have $51M committed as of right now, and Peavy is finally gone. With this situation your still pretty deep with vets and still going to end up with a $100M payroll, I do not believe some sort of sell everything and go young scheme is possible or realistic within this organization. But I do think another “Kenny rebuild on the fly” year is in the works. I think you could still extend Danks, essentially giving him some of the $$ saved from moving CQ, letting Buehrle go, and Peavy’s deal expiring after 2012. You get to see Viciedo everyday and possibly De Aza too. Flowers gets some more time to be the everyday catcher is Dunn struggles because AJ becomes your DH. If you do or do not extend danks you can still get your 3 youngsters (Sale, Stewart, Humber) a valuable year in the rotation either as a 5 man without Danks, or 6 man with Danks (helps keep Peavy fresh). You probably win around 80 something games and look like Cleveland does this year, up and down, up and down, and in the end 82-80. Entering 2013 you now build around your young core, knowing exactly who should stay and who should go. You have probably $50M to play with and a large amount of leverage with a group of MLB seasoned youngsters. You look for 2013 to be like the Reds of 2010, the Dbacks of 2011, etc.

QUOTE (knightni @ Aug 10, 2011 -> 05:24 PM) I'm trying get one together this week. My computer died late last month and I haven't had photoshop. Whack!!