Jake

QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 31, 2015 -> 09:10 PM) Spent a fortune this offseason and is very likely going to have another .500 team with a mediocre farm system. Hahn talks a great game, but he has not done a very good job so far. I think there has been some changing of the guard in the KW to Hahn change but we have done nothing like hiring a new GM (and I'm actually more or less okay with that). With that said, I think people really need to get it out of their minds that there is some meaningful line of demarcation between the KW tenure and the Hahn tenure. And if there is, are we sure we wouldn't want KW back?

QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 31, 2015 -> 09:03 PM) Maybe the most disappointing thing of the last 6 weeks or so was Hahn seemingly not trying to unload LaRoche on the Cards or Pirates. It's pretty obvious LaRoche is a terrible fit here. In what bizarro world could we have managed a deal of LaRoche and gotten anything of value? He went from modestly underperforming to free-falling after signing a market value deal. I don't know why anyone would have wanted to trade for him. If what someone said in another thread is true, seems like he needs to spend a little time on the DL

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ Jul 31, 2015 -> 09:06 PM) Hahn's resume looks mediocre? He's taken an awful team and made them mediocre in 2 years. That's harder than it looks when the main farm additions are Carlos Sanchez and Carlos Rodon. You know who's resume looks awful... the guy... that would be KW. Carlos Sanchez is a KW signing

QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 31, 2015 -> 08:56 PM) Rodon needs the experience at this level. I like to think back on John Danks' first season in the big leagues. It was a real struggle and got worse as the season wore on. I was thinking he needed a complete rebuild of his mechanics because his command was just crap. The next year he came out and really kicked some ass.

Expected throes of despair, saw them, leaving

Recall that Scott Kazmir, who one would assume has a similar value to Samardzija, garnered the A's ... not a single top 200 prospect.

QUOTE (RaySox @ Jul 31, 2015 -> 04:23 PM) I'm sure he'll take us to the promise land next year. No other moves needed. The poster said we had no top 100 position player who could contribute next year, but we clearly have one who can.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jul 31, 2015 -> 04:21 PM) We have no top 100 position player prospect ready to go for 2016. If they want to improve that team then, they'll do what they did last year. Micah Johnson?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 31, 2015 -> 04:18 PM) of course we're not obligated to...we could instead go into next year with a similar roster to the one we currently have, except probably without Samardzija and with a rookie in his place in the rotation. You can also make trades, have young players emerge and improve, sign good players who don't cost >$100M and a draft pick, etc.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jul 31, 2015 -> 04:15 PM) Exactly. We will both not be top 10 protected, and almost assuredly have to sign a big ticket FA. We are in no way obligated to sign a big ticket FA. There won't be many anyway, especially if you don't plan on looking at starting pitchers. Heyward will cost a pick, Upton apparently will, and Cespedes won't. There aren't as far as I know any major players slated to be available at non-OF positions

I like it. You can't give up on the team by trading Samardzija, but you can't trust this team so much that you'll pay big for a rental. The problem with going for a bigger deal is that it's not 100% clear where are needs are beyond "maybe everywhere." You can benefit from the information you get over the next two months about which players are going to flourish and which are going to need replaced in the offseason.

So what the f*** are the Padres doing?

Yeah I mean that could be true but we hear this s*** all the time

https://twitter.com/BNightengale/status/627199373252792320 Bob Nightengale ‏@BNightengale 56s57 seconds ago The #Tigers real close to moving Cespedes. The #whitesox involved but not the favorite

If you were an opposing GM, would you rather call KW or Hahn to get a deal done?

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Jul 31, 2015 -> 03:26 PM) One thing is for sure, between choosing whether to take advantage of the market and sell or to take advantage of your big holes and buy, doing neither is absolutely the wrong choice. I'm still in the doing nothing camp, though I can't object to a hypothetical "we get a great player without giving up anyone I care about" deal.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 31, 2015 -> 03:21 PM) Pay him to play meaningless games. That's a pretty expensive draft pick to hang on to. OTOH, considering this GM is pretty new, it would show others he won't cave at the end. I think this is important. If you never stick to what you say, everyone will be able to call your bluff.

QUOTE (woods of ypres @ Jul 31, 2015 -> 03:07 PM) I still believe they'll regret not moving Shark. Well I feel quite certain that Sox fans for years will bemoan the fact we didn't get the ultra-massive, franchise-changing prospect packages that we surely passed up on

I'm guessing Nightengale is getting pestered by White Sox fans and decided to just throw out a hollow update

BA rated Eaton's arm as the strongest in the Arizona system before he lost prospect status. He did miss much of 2013 with an elbow problem, though. I think he appears to have a really strong arm but is not very accurate.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 31, 2015 -> 02:50 PM) By the sabs, he was nothing but an awful player. Juan Pierre had 4.2 and 4.0 WAR in 2003 and 2004 with 110 wRC+ and 100 wRC+. Those peak two years of Pierre were great and I'd be very surprised if Ben Revere manages to post those sorts of numbers. Pierre's defense graded out as solid to great for the first ~7 years of his career before there was a quick dropoff to well below average.

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Jul 31, 2015 -> 01:25 PM) If we're trying to contend, how does trading Samardzija and acquiring Cespedes make any sense? If we're gonna buy, then let's buy. It's a lower risk type of buy, which makes sense given our position in the standings

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 31, 2015 -> 12:55 PM) Not when I don't see any long-term value in Avi. I don't think Avi is a good baseball player. If you look at my history of posts, I am typically very patient with prospects, etc. What I have seen from Avi, given his defensive struggles, gives me very little faith in him ever reaching anything close to his perceived "upside". I think if this team intends to compete, it needs to add a very good outfielder. I am okay with then using Avi and LaRoche in a DH roll, with Avi giving our outfielders occasional breaks. But this is the exact type of thing they're trying to decide. Do they do that or send him to Charlotte? How do they split the ABs considering that a straight platoon would mean the younger (and player hitting better this season) player spends a ton of time on the bench?

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 31, 2015 -> 12:08 PM) How to manage roster moves of guys with negative WAR's? I really don't understand what their is to be conflicted about. AVI & LaRoche's combined WAR is -.3 (-.2 and -.1), respectively. I realize WAR isn't the end all be all stat, but it does magnify just how bad both players have been this season. There's more to it than what a guy's WAR is this season. Avi is a young player who you are trying to develop and LaRoche is a veteran with a track record and a big contract that you want to get value out of. It's not a deal where they necessarily think these players are better than rest-of-season Upton or whomever, but you have to figure out how to handle these guys in the ways that benefit the team most now and in the future

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 31, 2015 -> 12:30 PM) If his defense can't improve, he'd have to be a hell of a hitter to be a 2.0 WAR player. His defense is that bad and I don't really see him improving. He gets horrible reads and is just a lousy fielder. And it is magnified more when you have a team built around pitching. Just for a statistical comparison since I can't calculate hypothetical WAR values in my head, Brandon Moss of last year had a net defensive rating of -11.1 runs below average from his time in the OF, DH, and 1B, which is similar to where Avi projects to be (and he'd have a better defensive rating if he moved to LF in all likelihood). Moss had a 121 wRC+, which I don't think is out of reach for a version of Avisail that is panning out--though he would get to a 121 wRC+ in a different way than Moss, who always carries a low average and high walk rate. Moss had a 2.1 WAR and that's with positional adjustments for 1B and DH included. I don't think it's out of reach, especially when we're talking about a player's upside.