Jake

Lopez looks great.

QUOTE (fathom @ Mar 31, 2018 -> 08:26 PM) Gavin way better hook, Giolito better change so far Yeah that's been a more recent development for Giolito. Gavin's change had some moments but he didn't trust it.

Giolito continues to remind a lot of Gavin Floyd. Similar talent, consistency issues, struggles pitching out of the stretch.

Giolito threw zero fastballs below 90mph per Statcast

The WGN strike zone graphic is ludicrously wrong.

The problem is Steve Stone. The broadcast will get really good when Stone moves on.

QUOTE (SouthSideSale @ Mar 29, 2018 -> 06:40 PM) Dang. Moncada gave that one a ride 105mph, 80% hit probability per Statcast

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ Mar 29, 2018 -> 04:42 PM) A negative WAR season and Davidson has "solidified" his position in the clubhouse. I'm already tired of Jason. It's just a statement of fact. If you don't like his solid position in the clubhouse, take it up with Hahn.

I was super impressed with how poised and polished he looked against MLB talent in the spring training. You don't see that often with a guy with so little experience against top talent look that good.

Yeah I also found it very curious that we sent him to A-ball. Would make more sense if he hadn't been in camp for a while and this was going to basically be his "rehab" stint.

I've always had a fear that at some point things would change with our browsers, the web, the underlying software, etc. and it would lead ST to not really work...and perhaps it would be too hard by then to upgrade. Glad to see we're going to be brought up to date.

If it were me, I'd definitely keep Narvaez. Thanks to the poster who mentioned they have options, for some reason I was thinking they didn't. I wouldn't put a ton of money on Narvaez being better than Kevan Smith in the long term, but if I have to pick one I'm picking Narvaez. The way I see it, Narvaez has pretty limited upside in that I don't see any potential for even below average power. But his downside is limited, too. I have to think there are 20-25 MLB teams that will always have a place for a guy like him. Smith has to tap into his power or else his other warts will be too much of a problem long term...and at this point he's 29 and hardly younger than the veteran we just signed. Just watching last season, though, the playing time he got made me think the Sox might have preferred him to Narvaez.

I've been puzzled about the Wellington Castillo signing from the start. It's not that there's anything wrong with him, but given how young of a team we have and how relatively strong the catcher position was last year, I didn't really get it. But that's not what this is about. Who is our backup catcher? Narvaez was a better hitter last year and seems to be a clearly better defender. Smith seems to have more upside but is older and has more downside, as evidenced by his being a worse player last season. But I get the feeling that the Sox aren't high on Narvaez. He does have the lefty matchup advantage. I don't think either player stands to benefit from more time AAA nor could you justify carrying any of them as a DH/1B/anything like that. So...who will it be? What happens to the loser?

Sounds like Tommy John surgery is likely, but if it doesn't look terrible on the MRI they might try to rehab it before putting him on the operating table.

Yikes, 55 games on WGN will screw a lot of downstate folks. Were there that many last year?

I suspect this may be the amount of distance before the pitch begins to drop, relative to the hypothetical non-spinning ball used for other PitchFX metrics. If I'm right, then 10 inches of carry would mean it doesn't begin it's gravity-induced drop until about 10 inches later than a non-spinning ball thrown in a vacuum would. It may also mean simply that it would literally travel 10 inches further (if not caught by the catcher first) than that hypothetical non-spinning ball. In that case you'd interpret carry the same way you would when you talk about an outfielder whose throws carry.

Note that nobody has confirmed the amount of drugs or even which substance yet. The charge means *at least* 20 kilos, but it could plausibly be much more. We also don't know what substance is per the reports as the concern about Fentanyl exposure led cops to not test it themselves but instead wait on a lab. His (ex-)wife's death is interesting in that the exact cause of the plane crash was never determined because the plane crashed at such a high speed there was basically no physical evidence. The plane was thought to be in tough shape, though, and the pilot was 78 years old. On the other hand, the company that owned the plane (and was the manager of the now-deceased wife) had multiple planes seized by the DEA for unspecified reasons around that same time.

The problem with the FA market, besides the end of the steroid era, is that a third of the league has no interest in adding good veterans long term and more teams than that aren't seriously trying to improve their teams for next year. A player has to be very lucky to have multiple teams really competing for them.

NBA has to get more aggressive in reducing the incentives for losing, in particular reducing the incentive to be the worst or bottom 3. Not good for the league to punish a team like the Bulls to finish the year with a .400 W-L just because they didn't intentionally avoid having any talent. And of course anyone who likes to watch games hates that so many teams aren't even trying.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 17, 2018 -> 06:18 PM) I kinda feel like we're having this exact same discussion about Leury and I feel like he added some muscle and slowed down a bit. This happened to Yolmer and he was already not that fast to begin with.

I don't think Engel should make the team out of spring training unless the team's talent evaluators know that his bat has improved greatly in the offseason. His ability to catch the ball, per the best metrics we have available, suggest he is at Buxton's level. The eye test will tell you that too. But his bat is so bad and so very far from being good enough that you need him to hit the ball consistently for a while before you have him play in the majors again. Leury is not the defender, but is very fast — his very small sample of Statcast data on speed does not contradict what has long been reported by scouts about his speed — and showed last year that he can actually hit and defend well enough in CF. It's Leury's spot to lose in my opinion, but for some reason it seems to me that the Sox are not as high on him for some reason.

If I were trying to start a Cubs network, my first goal would be to get as much *exclusive* Bears content as possible. Sign a deal with the Bears that forces CSN/NBCSN to do that embarrassing stuff where they can't show any video of the games, only photos. Don't have Bears staff and representatives come on NBCSN shows. Then you'd have to go to the Cubs channel to get the good Bears content, where they'll have surely poached the best Bears people from Comcast due to the cancellation of some of the Bears programming.

As far as slick-fielding SS, we also acquired Yeyson Yrizarri.

I'm not too worked up about this, the reason you wouldn't include the end of the Sox's drought is that our fans didn't make up a supernatural explanation for our lack of WS wins and never embraced the "lovable losers" BS....so most people wouldn't have realized how long our drought was.

Pitching is really bad, though it got a little bit better with today's trade. But we still got a lot out of Quintana, Kahnle, Robertson, Swarzak, and Frazier before they were traded so I wouldn't want to bet on a better record this year.