Jake

Profar has the same amount of team control as Sale and less than Quintana. Would have to be a secondary piece.

Thought that factoid that Griffey is the first #1 draft pick to go to the HoF was fascinating. Seems to undermine the idea that there are really big payoffs for a full-on tanking approach. Note that I am not saying the draft is a 100% crap shoot and that higher picks aren't better. But one must admit it makes far more sense to undertake such a strategy in the NBA, where 19 number 1s will be Hall of Famers starting in 1958 (Elgin Baylor) through 2003 (LeBron James, making an assumption here). After Griffey, the only surefire HoF caliber player is Alex Rodriguez who clearly won't get in and then you have the fringey Chipper Jones who may make it in. No obvious HoFers after that, though Bryce Harper is on a promising path and David Price is haivng a great career.

Putting aside all else with Trump's speech tonight, it is bothersome that it was based on several false premises: 1. The country is suffering from greater rates of crime (false in all but the most absurd readings of crime statistics). 2. We're dealing with an influx of illegal immigrants, mostly from Mexico (net migration from Mexico to the US is negative, more people are going from US to Mexico than vice versa). 3. Immigrants are dangerous (less likely to commit crime than citizens). 4. Illegal immigrants are primarily coming to us across an unsecured border (most overstay legal visas). I do wonder, for all that rank and file Republicans may agree about with Trump, are they nearly as interested in these immigration and crime issues that this speech focused on so much? Sure, they may generally favor the idea of the need to crack down on crime and on immigration, but I've never had the sense that these are the top issues for average conservatives. And, if I'm right about that, it's because the world most of us live in is not characterized by unprecedented crime and immigration. My read is that conservatives are generally either concerned with big changes to our social world—like gay marriage—or the way our economy is run, the role the government should serve in reducing poverty, etc. because those are more clearly problems and ones that affect people's day to day lives. I just wonder whether conservatives in general are in agreement on what the major issues are and, after that, whether Republicans and Democrats are at all close in diagnosing the problems that they should be seeking to fix (with the assumption that the proposed solutions will generally be different).

To be completely honest, if we traded Sale and Quintana, there's almost no return that wouldn't still have me much less interested in following the team for the foreseeable future. It would absolutely be a punt to a few years from now hoping that we at least walk away with a couple of guys as good as the ones we lost.

People are so fearful of losing favor with their party's leader and potential POTUS that nobody in the party really wants to oppose him at this point. It's really a structural problem that would happen to the Dems too if they had a candidate they hated. Your political career rests too much on the ensuring the party leadership likes you...unless you want to just become rich and famous and jump in later in life ala Trump. But then you become the kingmaker, the problem continues.

QUOTE (JUSTgottaBELIEVE @ Jul 21, 2016 -> 07:18 PM) Govenor Rauner continues to bury himself a deeper grave. Looks like he will be a single term governor at this rate. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/p...0721-story.html QUOTE (bmags @ Jul 21, 2016 -> 07:33 PM) That is awful, but I will say at the very least this is an actual apology: ""Significant change can be frustratingly slow; this is especially true in public education. Many of us, at one time or another, have sent hastily crafted emails containing inaccurate or intemperate statements," Trover's statement said in part. "This particular email was sent out of frustration at the pace of change in our public school system. The governor regrets writing it and apologizes to CPS educators for making an unfair, untrue comment."" To me, this doesn't qualify as a particularly interesting controversy. For one, as bmags said his people have apologized and disavowed the comment. It's also a bit old. And perhaps most importantly, the people that like Rauner would agree with his statement.

Spencer Adams strikeouts by month: April – 8.0/9IP May – 6.5/9IP June – 4.9/9IP July – 4.5/9IP That is an odd trend to reward with a promotion

You know, there's a good argument for moving Sale over Quintana. My main thought is you can keep Quintana longer at less per year and he is only barely worse than Sale as a player. But I think other teams would be willing to trade MUCH more for Sale due to his name recognition.

Worth noting that Jose Quintana has more years of team control than Jurickson Profar.

If Robertson does in the next two years of his deal what he has done in the past two, he's pretty much lived up exactly to the market value of his contract. The thing with closers isn't that $11M is too much for one; a good one will definitely be worth that much. The problem is that relievers are so inconsistent year to year that the guys you can entrust a long term deal to are few and far between. There are very few guys out there like Robertson that have a pretty long track record of excellent pitching late in games and that's part of the reason he was able to get a long, lucrative deal. Many other closers come into the role and exit it before they are ever able to hit the free agent market.

The defense for this Bulls team will be something to behold

QUOTE (raBBit @ Jul 19, 2016 -> 02:38 PM) Do you see a trend here? The White Sox are always stupid as long as the results aren't good!

Navarro has been worst or near-worst in the league in pitch framing for almost every season he's been in the league. There is little doubt that he cost Robertson big time in that inning. Robertson's command was still bad and that's why he ultimately got burned, but an average job of framing very probably could have gotten Robertson out of that inning. The reason to be frustrated is that Avila is hurt—he's not good when it comes to framing, but he's considerably better than Navarro on a year in, year out basis—and that Navarro hasn't hit as well as hoped.

We were stupid for getting him work in a blowout game a couple weeks ago, now we're stupid for not getting him work in blowout games

I thought Sale did not look sharp in the 8th

BTW, somebody needs to get drilled for Lind shooting his helmet like a basketball on his way to home plate

QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 19, 2016 -> 12:34 AM) And having a mediocre fastball He's never thrown hard, but his fastball is generally quite good because of the cut action. Looked very straight tonight though, probably due to the layoff. The poor command has been consistent throughout the year though

Walks finally catch up to Robertson, though some better pitch framing wouldn't have hurt

Nice to see a complete meltdown going on in the game thread

Main thing to take away from Morneau's stint is that he hasn't struck out much at all. That means he's not getting blown away by live competition.

Ranaudo makes much more sense than Turner and IMO more sense than Fulmer

Another way to compare the heights of our draftees to some kind of known standard would be to look at the average heights of the rest of the draft.

In Greg's defense, the Shark trade had loss all over it from the start

Big difference from last year's team: at the break last year, the Sox position players had a cumulative -3.1 WAR, by far the worst in the league. We also had a team 76 wRC+, worst in the league and by far worst in the AL. This year we're 26th in position player WAR, so it isn't as if we're setting the world on fire, but the bats are not so far from league average and the kind of leap necessary to push us into the playoffs isn't nearly as far-fetched. If Morneau is a 110 wRC+ bat at DH and Abreu returns to 2015 form (not an amazing year by any stretch) while everything else more or less holds steady, you're not far off right there. Have a couple things break our way and we're not unworthy.

Of note, regarding Anderson's defense: Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) gives him a +3 thus far, on the strength of Runs on Plays Made (rPM) with 0s for Runs on Good Fielding Plays (rGFP) and Runs on Double Plays (rGDP). That's a good pace and matches my eye test that he's making most of the plays he should, doesn't look the best on double plays, and hasn't completed any real eye-popping plays. Revised Zone Rating which is computed a bit more transparently also likes him. It's simply a percentage of the time he makes the play on balls hit into the zones that a shortstop fields at least 50% of the time. He's .830 on this metric, which is 6th best among SS with at least 100 innings. UZR gives him an overall 0.6, which computes out to 3.7 over 150 games. Not "oh my god" good, but good. This is another stat that is relative to the average SS, so being above is a good sign. All of his value in UZR comes from not making errors, while he is slightly negative (-0.3) in both range and double plays. This is in basic agreement with DRS, though it's a hair more conservative. I think most of us like him from the eye test as well, it's definitely a far cry from the player that just a year ago many still wondered whether he would be good enough to spend any MLB time at the position. You can see some of the roughness around the edges, especially with footwork on double plays, but he exudes baseball talent on defense IMO. He's been surprisingly sure-handed on routine balls and you can see flashes of that big range and playmaking ability. I'm not sure whether he's truly an above average SS or is benefiting from the kinds of opportunities so far, but he looks like a real MLB SS and perhaps a good one in the long run.