Kalapse

$4.5M? Try $10.5M. And no, no they will not. Santos is the only young arm who's out of options and there is 1 spot left in the pen (since a 2nd lefty is a lock for the other spot) so that's not an issue. This is why they signed Putz, he takes over the 8th inning righty role with Pena behind him and Linebrink working low leverage innings until he proves he has his s*** together. With Thornton, Putz and Pena in the fold and an open roster spot for your 1 promising young arm who's out of options there's no reason to panic and cut Linebrink, assuming he's not injured he should be able to give you a decent month or 2 in the first half and there's always the chance he has a flookish successful season given his talent and past production. But no, you don't eat $10.5M for no good reason.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Mar 11, 2010 -> 07:23 PM) Trey Griffey is a couple of years younger than Frank's son but he doesn't seem to be interested in baseball. That'd be awesome if he played but that's also a s***-ton of pressure, I mean, your dad and granddad are both HOFs? Ken Griffey was a good player and all but he was no where near hall of fame caliber.

QUOTE (Kalapse @ Mar 9, 2010 -> 11:44 PM) I'll come up with something more comprehensive tomorrow but for now I throw out 2 things one of which could be considered breaking the ever so important sample size rule: Multi-inning saves since 2004: Nathan: 11 Rivera: 45 Nathan has struggled mightily in the playoffs as a closer to the tune of a 4.70 ERA, 1.83 WHIP and .830 OPS against in 7.2 IP. I know, s*** sample size but the fact remains. Meanwhile Rivera has put up a 0.70 ERA, 0.84 WHIP and .432 OPS against in the playoffs since '04. I have another: 6 of Rivera's 18 blown saves since 2004 (yeah, that's all) were multi-inning save opportunities. Only 12 times since 2004 has Mariano Rivera blown a save that started in the 9th inning. That's 2 f***ing blown saves a year. Craziness. As for Nathan: only 2 of his 25 blown saves were multi-inning affairs. So that's 23 9th inning saves blown. So Rivera has attempted 51 multi-inning saves since 2004 and successfully closed out 88% of them. Nathan has attempted only 13 multi-inning saves since 2004 and successfully closed out 85% of them. Personally, I think this puts an end to the debate. (not that anyone is still cares)

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Mar 11, 2010 -> 02:02 PM) Seeing that the 2003 year was one where we were quite close to winning the division, who knows what might have happened had we not made that trade. Many people think that the 2003 team was arguably the best we've had in over a decade. We wound up 4 back for the division and who knows if we kept those 3 nobodys if maybe one of them had a flash in the pan year that could have gotten us over the top...ala Cotts in 2005. Or maybe we could have used them as trade pieces for something more effective for 2003 instead of a complete waste in Ritchie. You can say that about any failed trade, especially the Swisher deal. We could have gotten quite a haul for De Los Santos, Sweeney and Gio but instead we got 1 bad year from an expensive player. I'm not going to consider a trade especially bad because we may have caught lightning in a bottle from the bad players we lost in the deal especially when the team in question's best starting pitcher was, himself, an incredible flash in the pan.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Mar 11, 2010 -> 01:34 PM) Ah I get it now. As long as you're not considered a contender for a WS for that particular season then it doesn't matter if you make terrible trades that can impact subsequent seasons. What profound effect did it have on subsequent seasons? The cheap players they gave up were bad and the $3.5M terrible pitcher they acquired was only on a 1 year deal.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Mar 11, 2010 -> 01:19 PM) fixed Because that '02 team was $3.5M away from a title?

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Mar 11, 2010 -> 01:21 PM) The Koch deal has to be right up there. Koch gave us nothing while Keith Foulke dominated in 2003 and was nasty during Boston's title run in 2004. Of course, we did get a fluke year from Neal Cotts in 2005. There's the key. At least we got 1 good piece out of that trade and he played a crucial role on the Wold Series winning club.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Mar 11, 2010 -> 12:49 PM) Worse than the Todd Ritchie deal? I'm not lamenting the loss of Josh Fogg, Kip Wells and Sean Lowe (Wells had 2 good years with the Piarates but that's about it for the 3 of them). I'd love to have Ryan Sweeney right about now.

QUOTE (JorgeFabregas @ Mar 11, 2010 -> 12:41 PM) Gio is still an interesting 'spect. He's young and he's been able to carry his high K rate into the majors. He just hasn't been able to get his walks down. Yeah, it's hard to write a 24 year old lefty off after only ~130 ML IP espcially when he's sporting a 9+ K/9. Unless I'm missing a real obvious one that Swisher trade is probably the worst of KW's career.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 11, 2010 -> 12:38 PM) How did the Gio trades work again? Well, you clearly lose since you provided the least information.

QUOTE (since56 @ Mar 11, 2010 -> 12:09 PM) Nice read by Sox organization on Gio Gonzales. I remember him being touted as a phenom. A wrecked Freddy and him for Gavin. Not bad. Same with Mc carthy. He certainly contributed in'05 but Cooper or some one decided he wasn't all that and they got Danks for him. Nice going White Sox! Gio was traded with Rowand for Thome then re-acquired with Gavin for Freddy then dealt to the A's as part of a package for Swisher.

QUOTE (Knackattack @ Mar 10, 2010 -> 06:06 PM) Salty is already 25 and hasn't done much at all yet, not to mention that he is injured, and Teagarden has still got a year or two before he is ML ready. So they should start looking for another catcher because Saltalamacchia is already 25 and "injured" and Teagarden isn't ML ready despite the fact that he's 26 and split catching duties with Salty throughout last season? Salty is coming off surgery to his right shoulder but he's not currently "injured". Their catchers would be Salty against righties (hoping he can hit them as well as he did in '08) and Teagarden against lefties (hoping he can hit them as well as he did in '09 only with a much larger sample size and his minor league splits would suggest he should be able to do so). That's basically good enough or at least not bad enough to warrant giving up talented young major league ready players for a stop gap. They're not going to trade young talent for yet another young catching prospect when they already have 2 at the major league level. You wanna trade Beckham for Lyle Overbay? Because that's what you're asking of the Rangers when you request Justin f***ing smoke for AJ Pierzynski.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Mar 9, 2010 -> 11:38 PM) Just go look at their leverages when they enter games. Nathan: 1.64 Rivera: 1.72 All from last season. Rivera has had a higher leverage in his career by about .3. Rivera's gmLI from last season was actually 1.84 compared to Nathan's 1.64.

QUOTE (Princess Dye @ Mar 9, 2010 -> 10:08 PM) I mean, obviously DH/1B is the hardest to make a splash with. Just funny how now we need a lefthanded one, and yet they dont seem to be around. I'd be a little more OK with our current situation if we had a few minor league options from the LH side that would have more promise than Jason Botts. Bryan Myrow is 33 years old and has a career AAA line of .313/.423/.528/.951 Jason Botts is 29 years old and has a career AAA line of .299/.398/.540/.938

I'll come up with something more comprehensive tomorrow but for now I throw out 2 things one of which could be considered breaking the ever so important sample size rule: Multi-inning saves since 2004: Nathan: 11 Rivera: 45 Nathan has struggled mightily in the playoffs as a closer to the tune of a 4.70 ERA, 1.83 WHIP and .830 OPS against in 7.2 IP. I know, s*** sample size but the fact remains. Meanwhile Rivera has put up a 0.70 ERA, 0.84 WHIP and .432 OPS against in the playoffs since '04.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Mar 9, 2010 -> 09:29 PM) I agree that he and Rivera are at the very top, but to say Rivera is simply still the best is arguable. I'd love to hear an argument for anyone other than Rivera. His closest competition is Joe Nathan and he trumps him in all the important closer-related stats doesn't matter if it's a 1, 2 or 3 year scale. I mean just as basic as you can get; Rivera's WHIP over the past 2 seasons is 0.78 and he's blown a total of 7 saves over the past 3 years. That's crazy. Over the past 3 seasons his K/BB is nearly 2.5 points higher than his closest competitor. You say Nathan's been the best closer in baseball for a while but even as I try now I can not build a case for that theory.

Juan Pierre uses Beyonce/Jay-Z "Deja Vu" AJ uses The Killers "Somebody Told"

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Mar 9, 2010 -> 06:48 PM) I don't even see this as a competition. Unless another GM offers KW something of value for Nix, which is extremely unlikely, he will be the extra infielder on the opening day roster. Nix has no options left, so you might as well start the season with him and see what you have. That way if someone gets hurt early on, you at least have Lillibridge in AAA to take on Nix's role. As horrible as that sounds, he at least has some value as a late innning defensive replacement and pinch runner. Who is Brent Lillibridge going to replace for defensive purposes late in a ballgame?

QUOTE (chw42 @ Mar 9, 2010 -> 04:58 PM) The average closer should be about a ~1.3 WAR reliever according to last year's stats. I don't really know how you can define league average though. Broxton was the highest at 2.9. Surprisingly, Jenks and K-Rod tied for the lowest at 0.3. That's because Bobby allowed 9 HR last season. When your HR/9 is 1.52 your FIP is gonna suck and it did (4.47) and when your FIP is garbage and you're only giving your team 53 IP because you're a closer and miss 20+ games due to injury your WAR is gonna blow. As for K-Rod: a 5.03 BB/09 will not make for a healthy FIP.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Mar 9, 2010 -> 02:37 PM) I just looked some numbers up. From a Sabermetric point of view, optimistically, this could cost the Twins 2 WAR and that's being pretty conservative about the loss. I'm certainly somewhat biased, but I think this his loss could result in 4 less wins for the team this year, if not more. Except WAR doesn't take into account leverage. Last season Joe Nathan came in at a 1.9 WAR and DJ Carrasco was a 1.3 this is because WAR uses FIP and IP when determining value so Nathan had a decent advantage in FIP (like .60 points) but Carrasco closed the gap a bit with ~20 more IP. So even though Nathan was in the top ten in pLI and Carrasco was in the bottom ten it doesn't affect their WAR because leverage never comes into play. Something tells me Carrasco wasn't worth a mere 3/5 of a win less than Nathan last year. Nathan had to have been worth more than 2 wins to the Twins last year.

QUOTE (RyanPaleAndHosed @ Mar 9, 2010 -> 02:29 PM) I don't know about that. Blalock hasn't played more than 124 games in 3 years. He's not even come close to matching the all-star numbers that he put up in '03 and '04 since his shoulder injury. Sure, the HR total was there last year, but that's about it. I think it's basically a wash if you were to ask me if I'd rather have Hank Blalock or a rotating platoon of DH's (Konerko, Kotsay, Jones). You'll get solid L vs R match-ups when Kotsay is in there. Then again, I thought for sure they were going to go after Jack Cust who's basically a Hank Blalock clone with more SO's, so who knows. Not to mention Cust's #1 quality: drawing walks at an absurd rate. (#1 BB% in baseball over the past 3 seasons)

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Mar 9, 2010 -> 12:58 PM) That's because you're a baseball fan first, Sox fan second. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I'm pretty much the same way. And if anything this gives annoying ass Twins fans (save Benchwarmin) a legitimate excuse from the get-go if we or the Tigers win the division. I think you're 100% right. It's situations such as these that I realize my baseball entertainment and happiness is not solely predicated on the White Sox winning, I just enjoy the hell out of watching the best players in the game regardless of what team they play for and when we lose one of the best it's gonna bother me even if it does benefit my favorite team. I felt the same way last year when Mauer went down.

This will likely end up benefiting the Sox but for some crazy reason I'm not getting any pleasure out of a possible career ending injury to one of the best closers in the game.

Speaking of Beckham; he's doing an interview on the Score right now.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 9, 2010 -> 12:17 PM) That was a rhetorical question. Eh, it needed to be said somewhere in this thread.