CaliSoxFanViaSWside

Still no idea why this was ever in Soxtalk. Was it supposed to be at GRF ? Chance the Rapper ties ? Still oddly out of place.

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Sep 6, 2017 -> 08:34 AM) This is the biggest contradiction ever. Saladino, Sanchez, and Alvarez have never hit more than 9 home runs in a season, yet they apparently have the potential to hit 25. Engel has never hit more than 7 home runs in a season, yet he's the one out of the four that's apparently not going to figure it out and become a sudden home run hitter, despite being the youngest. This was either a remarkably poorly informed post or a troll attempt. Sometimes I am truly astounded with peoples inability to detect sarcasm. All he was doing was pointing out that we wish and pray and hope for guys who in his opinion don't deserve it which is Saladino, Sanchez along with Engel. Edit: Realize this was answered and is no knock on you Jose . Sarcasm is one of those things that is harder to pick up in writing I guess because you can't hear tone of voice. I just see it a lot here .

QUOTE (OmarComing25 @ Sep 5, 2017 -> 03:14 PM) FWIW I checked out Avi's xStats and they were better than I thought they were going to be. He's shown some real positive change compared to last year. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14rW...K-cXP4cs8qc97I/ His xOBA is .349, and while it's quite a bit lower than his current .366 wOBA it's still well above average. His "expected" batting line based on exit velocity and launch angle came out to .291/.342/.478, which would be a wRC+ of about 118 or so, which is still top 10 for all RF on the year. Unsurprisingly his xBABIP is quite a bit lower at .336, but that is partially offset because xStats believes he's been unlucky on his power this season, seeing as how his SLG barely drops at all despite the decent sized drop in AVG/OBP. His xOBA in 2016 was .321 which was quite a bit higher than his actual 2016 wOBA of .302 so you could say xStats saw some considerable improvement coming this season anyway. Also, xStats tends to slightly underrate guys who get a lot of infield hits and Avi's infield hit% this year (12.2%) is double the league average rate, and for his career he's solidly above league average (~9%), so you could even argue that his expected batting line should be higher. I have been saying Avi's had a ton of infield hits and had to be among the leaders. Does xStats have a top 10 in infield hits and if so where is Avi on it ?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 5, 2017 -> 05:02 AM) It is also worth pointing out that his worst stretch also overlapped his injury before he went on the DL. Exactly and I think it bothered him for a long time even most of August since he wasn't really hitting for power l I haven't looked up the injury date(s) and cannot remember what caused it. A HBP followed by a few more HBP ? All around the hand /wrist area ? I know while watching the August games if he got jammed quite a few times I saw him shaking his hand either in the a batters box or after running down to first base. Only with his recent triple and HR did I start to think ,hmmm maybe his hand is feeling better now. I know it's hard to imagine someone with a hand/wrist hurting hitting .423 for the month but a loss of power is often associated with those kind of injuries. Kind of scary to think he might have learned to be an even better hitter because of the injuries. He may have just been relying on what he knows he has always done best and that's hit up the middle and to the right side . His triple was off the right field wall and HR also to RF.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 4, 2017 -> 08:30 AM) I will say this much. I don't think most of baseball has bought in to Avi Garcia yet, or someone would have offered enough to pry him away from the Sox during the firesale. I am not quite sure if he is a victim of the lack of value in offensive only players that happened this year, or if it is more of just no believing in him as of yet. It will be interesting to see what his value is during the winter. He started the season very hot but every month his BA declined so right before the trade deadline is when he bottomed out. Everyone around here was saying there's the regression we have been predicting. Then August came and he hits .423 for the month. His slugging wasn't as high as April but the OBP was higher so OPS ended up close to the same for both months. Over 1.000 .

QUOTE (SoxPride18 @ Sep 4, 2017 -> 05:33 AM) Jace Fry is getting called up today per his agency Interesting choice. The lefty reliever showed improvement in AA although he walked a few too many. Most likely will be used as a situational lefty.

QUOTE (BlackSox13 @ Sep 3, 2017 -> 09:00 AM) Avi doesn't have the trade value yet. If the idea is to trade Avi then give him all of the 2018 season to boost his stock and then dangle him on the trade market over the 2018/19 winter as a much cheaper alternative to signing Harper. If the idea is to keep Avi long term, let's see how he performs next year and go from there. Great thing about Avi is that there's no pressure to trade or extend him. Just wait and see.. Couldn't have said it better. Even being Avi's biggest supporter it would be wrong to extend him based on one good year . They jumped the gun on Anderson and it still may work out but still need a larger body of good performance to extend him.

QUOTE (ron883 @ Sep 3, 2017 -> 06:33 PM) Really want to respond to this post on there. That thread conveniently stopped on 8/31. When you include the last start with Dunning throwing a 7 inning 1 hitter ,Gio and Lopez last starts that board should be eating a lot of crow and humble pie for breakfast. Could even throw in Gio's whole body of work actually. Send them this https://www.mlb.com/gameday/rays-vs-white-s...rap,game=492145 But I don't want to be that dick.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Sep 2, 2017 -> 11:54 AM) Unless he signs for penalty-box money, the Sox literally can't get him because they blew past the cap with Robert. I don't think he'll sign anywhere that he can't hit, and I don't think it's likely that a team will let him play in the field. IMO, the early frontrunners have to be Texas and NYY. But who knows -- anything can happen. Literally can't get him ? He can still sign for 300K can't he ? I know it sounds ridiculous but in the context of the highest amount he can be offered it's not a big difference. If he becomes a major leaguer right away wouldn't his minimal salary be added to the bonus pool money and he would be under control for the normal amount of time? A promise to let him attempt to be an everyday player and starting pitcher seems like something that other teams wouldn't promise. Also do we think part of the offers to him will promise to extend or renegotiate his contract or is that not kosher ?

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Sep 3, 2017 -> 04:56 PM) So what part of his approach do you like? He swings at terrible pitches and maintains a groundball swing path after five full seasons. Help me out here on that "maintains a groundball swing path" thingy. On baseball ref under Ratio batting I found GO/AO which is ground outs to air outs. I noticed it was 1.38 which was a lot different than last years 1.90 and the lowest (or is it highest )of his career. Want to explain that to me ? I know so little about these things.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Sep 3, 2017 -> 04:06 PM) He's barreling up balls all over the place. I know Eminor isn't high on his plate discipline, but his approach is just fine. His problem is the launch angle really results in a lot of singles, which limits his value as a corner outfielder. The problem with saying his O swing % or whatever its called sucks (40%) because it is the same as always and equating it to approach is just gross abuse of stats. So his 40% swing rate on balls outside the zone is bad. So what does this tell us and, more importantly, what doesn't it tell us? I think like all single stats what is doesn't tell us is significantly higher. Stats are all over the internet and hard to track down maybe fangraphs has them all . I do not know. Just a quick look on baseball ref . I ask myself ok his swing rate at balls outside the zone is bad so maybe his K rate should be the same ? Not so, it's at the lowest of his career. Ok maybe he hits a lot of popups on those swings. . His fly balls on the infield rate which includes line drives also a career low significantly so at 6% So that 40% terrible swing rate should result in a lot of poor contact so lemme check some XBH stats . Hmm XBH % at a career high 8.9% . Maybe we can agree XBH's don't usually fall into the lucky category since they are usually hit hard down the lines , into the gaps and over the fence. So if we all look hard enough we can see plenty of areas of improvement .

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Sep 3, 2017 -> 02:39 PM) I'm sure he's hitting the ball harder, and that's good. But his approach hasn't changed much at all -- he's still swinging at more than 40% of the non-strikes he sees, where league average has dipped below 30%. His BABIP is .395 and literally leads the entire MLB. The last time someone ended a season with a BABIP in the .390 range was... Chris Johnson in 2013. No one (in the modern era at least) has ever repeated something like that. Avi has maxed out the level of productivity he can achieve while maintaining his terrible approach to hitting -- and the result is a ~3.0 WAR player. I'll admit that I didn't think he had this in him, and I suppose it's possible for him to repeat against the odds, but it would make him the first person ever to do it. Add the fact that his service time is running out, and the correct move is absolutely to try to sell high. The chance that it turns out burning us is non-zero, but it's extremely small. Maybe we have different definitions of approach. Maybe I should 've called it concentration level or hitting smarts combined with a looser/quicker swing from weight loss .You just cant pick out sabre stats and say his approach is the same because so much goes into it when there is a drastic change in results not just luck . Haven't defenses in MLB evolved to eliminate luck as much as possible ? We might be able to say it will be a career high in BABIP but he's hitting the ball all over the field so defenses have trouble with him. His improved speed has led to quite a few infield hits. I am at a disadvantage because I don't analyze the things you do. I only know what I observe and my understanding of the game. And right now Avi has made the necessary changes in many areas to improve his overall game. That cannot be denied and I hope that evolution continues even if an unusually high BABIP does not. I just hate the term luck when anyone talks about BABIP because it belittles the players very hard work to improve.

QUOTE (Lillian @ Sep 3, 2017 -> 01:51 PM) Ok, however you don't see him beating out a lot of weak infield hits, or hitting Texas Leaguers. Actually you do. He has a lot of infield hits this year. I would guess he is among the league leaders for that if I knew how to find it to check.

QUOTE (soxforlife05 @ Sep 3, 2017 -> 01:17 PM) Crazy thing is looks like we might not have room for Dunning in the rotation with Kopech ready and Hansen following close behind Long way to go for that to come to fruition. More crazy to think Kopech Hansen and Dunning will all be quality major leaguers in a short period ( 2-3 years) of time .

QUOTE (Kalapse @ Sep 3, 2017 -> 12:59 PM) Probably because they weren't particularly interesting in the first place. If I hear something a billion times even if uninteresting I'd probably have it memorized Ok hey I'm not a fuzzy viewer the main thing is I'm watching the Sox . Do I like Hawk more? Yes . Do I dislike Benetti ? No no. I was just observing how different the approaches to the game are. I like sitcoms as much as the next guy.

Pretty impressive 7th inning . K'ed the side and some good hitters too.

QUOTE (Quin @ Sep 3, 2017 -> 12:49 PM) Well, I'm enjoying it more than listening to stories about Yaz and Catfish Hunter for the billionth time. Can you retell me the stories since you heard them so many times? If not maybe you just weren't open to those stories in the first place.

LG gets out of crucial situation getting LOMO to GO weakly with 2 on.

QUOTE (elrockinMT @ Sep 3, 2017 -> 12:38 PM) This is funny. My wife gets a kick out of Benetti and Stone and their banter back and forth If you treat a Sox game like watching a sitcom where witty banter is the norm then Sox games can be entertaining. If you like actual baseball talk then perhaps your viewing experience is not as enjoyable. Things like Sox math , and Sticks and Stone and now the Kamka thing is a lot of silly filler but ,hey, that's entertainment !?!

Throwing a change up to Engel has to be one of the worst pitch calls in the history of baseball. Adam swings and misses like a pitcher on FB's and hard breaking pitches.

QUOTE (Two-Gun Pete @ Sep 3, 2017 -> 10:54 AM) Here's a true story for both of you: Once upon a time, an MLB GM actually traded Fernando Tatis Jr for the desiccated remains of James Shields. James Shields went on to be among the worst SPs in the game, while Fernando Tatis Jr looks like he might be one of the best prospects in the game. The moral of the story? All it takes is one imbecile to buy in. And, there's a sucker born every minute. Not a great example since Tatis Jr. has done nothing at the MLB level yet.Feel free to use that priceless little story in 5-10 years though once Tatis has an All Star game or 2 in him.

QUOTE (Quin @ Sep 3, 2017 -> 11:55 AM) Which do you take if it reaches its max potential Rodon's slider Kopech's fastball Giolito's curve Can I take Kopech FB potential and add it to Gio curve potential so we get Nolan Ryan ?

Hanson double, Anderson single, Abreu HR Duda HR 3-1 Sox

QUOTE (Reddy @ Aug 31, 2017 -> 07:49 AM) I've always said there's some sort of genetic connection between attractiveness and being exceptionally good at physical feats. Obviously there are exceptions, but superstars in sports also just tend to be good looking people. Same in the performing arts. It's prettttttty interesting. Basically what I'm saying is ron is 100% right, and we're likely to be a good team in a couple years because our players are pretty. Fact. There have been actual studies on what you are talking about. Good looking people in general tend to be more successful in many high paying jobs and are more apt to be hired over the less attractive.

QUOTE (Two-Gun Pete @ Sep 2, 2017 -> 10:08 PM) You're exactly right. His BABIP strongly suggests that these numbers are purely artificial and/or unsustainable. Meanwhile, he is getting closer to the end of his controllable years for this club, meaning he'd have to be extended at some point in the near future to stay here. Therefore, Hahn should sell high on Avi this offseason, even if you believe in these numbers. (I don't.) Don't really agree with the strictly artificial. If it was so easy a lot more guys would be hitting .320 but hardly any do among the so many talented ball players in MLB. Is Avi the only one being so lucky or is it a product of hard work and making adjustments to his approach .