Jake

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 31, 2015 -> 12:17 PM) If he could play defense, I'd be more patient with Avi cause I do see potential for offensive upside. I just never see him being a capable defender and thus he'd have to really really hit and the odds of that are pretty minimal. He has the physical tools to be an acceptable outfield defender, so I want to say he can improve. But he really seems to lack the instincts out there and if he's this bad now, I don't know why he didn't get better in his long minor league career spent solely in the outfield. I don't think the odds of him hitting well are minimal, but we might be having a vocabulary difference as to what "really hitting" is. If his defense can't improve, might be reasonable to say that he has the upside of 2.0 WAR player, which is nice to have but obviously not something you'll mortgage the franchise to develop

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 31, 2015 -> 11:58 AM) IF their is truth to this, I just shake my head. Overloaded with what. Garcia sucks and LaRoche has not been productive. What overload are we talking about? An overload of crap? They have to decide how to manage roster moves and playing time. It is not at all straightforward and they are right to be conflicted about it.

I think holding on to Shark is a move in and of itself and probably the only prudent one

QUOTE (shipps @ Jul 31, 2015 -> 11:17 AM) But not every player has the same obvious potential showing speed, power and athletic ability. Plus the way he fought to come back early last year from the inury showed he is truly willing to work at improving and has some guts. I like that. To each is own. What's most frustrating is that he lost last year. Lots of solid to great players come up and have the sort of mild struggles at the plate that he's having and eventually put it all together...but now the Sox want to contend and he's the weakest link. Gets a lot harder to be patient with his development. His poor defense also makes it paramount that his bat reach its potential in order for him to be tolerable on a winning team. I think this is a spot where the Melky deal hurts because you really need Avi in LF where his defense might fit better. Of course, Melky is actually hitting, so that makes one of them.

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Jul 31, 2015 -> 03:03 AM) Today is the 5 year anniversary of the Sox inexplicably throwing in Holmberg on the Hudson-Edwin Jackson deal. I know this because Facebook "reminded" me of how outraged I was over the deal at the time. On the bright side, he's not good. 4.40 ERA/4.75 FIP in AAA this year, 5 K/9 and 3 BB/9.

Probably should have batted righty today.

What a bunch of morons

Saladino has a crazy high ground ball rate. Hope he starts putting a charge into some pitches.

There are two legitimate criticisms you can use to explain why we have a non-elite (but non-horrible) farm system. First is that we have drafted badly, which at least until around the Sale draft is hard to argue with. You can lump in international scouting as well. Wilder looms large even after all this time. Second is not that we have traded out of our farm, but that we haven't done enough trading into it. You could argue that years we have gone for it we should have instead moved our big league assets to reload our minor leagues. Somewhere between those two is the publicized fact that until the draft slot system was in place, Reinsdorf more or less despised the idea of investing money in draft picks. I suspect the Joe Borchard signing had a significant and lasting effect as he thought about the nice big leaguers he could have gotten for that money instead.

Peace out, kid

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ Jul 30, 2015 -> 07:12 PM) Another milestone! (lol) Carlos Sanchez has been worth roughly .8 fWAR over the last 4 weeks and is back up to replacement level on the year! Seriously though, Sanchez and the Melkman have been critical in this run, hopefully they can keep it up as both are assets not just this year but hopefully the next couple. Somebody with the White Sox deserves a lot of credit for sticking with him. He had a long time where he was sub-Phegley level at the plate and they let him work through it. Most teams wouldn't. He doesn't have to stay this hot from here on out, but he does have to keep hitting well to show that we didn't just experience two flukes (one bad, one good)

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ Jul 30, 2015 -> 06:34 PM) The official twitter of the Charlotte Knights just posted that Sellers is headed there. Trade is official. Just some cash I guess. The seems to be a precursor to another move, perhaps an infielder (Micah?) getting shipped off... The same tweet from the Knights says Micah is on the DL

I have basically always avoided catch-alls. In a time like this, you're irrevocably behind if you're gone for a couple of hours. I hate trying to poke around a mass of pages trying to figure out what post everyone is reacting to while also trying to figure out what subject each poster is talking about.

I don't like adding Cespedes compared to Upton because Cespedes outside of this season has been a worse hitter than Upton and I fear for his approach since he walks so little...not sure that I like the "synergy" for the lineup with Cespedes compared to Upton. And if we dream of re-signing the rental player, it just won't happen with Cespedes.

In fairness to the 14 year old, it is so oddly specific and inconsequential that you have to think he didn't pull it out of thin air.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jul 30, 2015 -> 11:08 AM) But that sort of ignores reality right? They're not going extinct because people are killing them just for s***s and giggles or even for sport. I'm sure for most animals the biggest problem there is habitat loss. But even with regard to human killings, there's a market out there for hides, ivory, skins, etc. We can pretend like that will just magically disappear, but we all know it won't, at least not 100%. Keep working on that angle, obviously, but an additional method to save these animals IS to allow some heavily regulated, for-profit hunting. It has to be done right. There needs to be control. But what they've found is that in some cases, MORE animals get protected and MORE people guard against poaching because they want to appeal to big game hunters (i.e., have animals to shoot, usually old, non-procreating animals). There are a few examples of big game ranges in Texas that are doubling and tripling the number of safari animals because with the price for the few that they allow to be killed, they are able to buy, bring over, save, and then multiply other animals. I think there's an antelope that went extinct in Africa but is thriving in Texas. I was reading on some of this yesterday and a lot of conservation groups and even the US Wildlife service agrees that the big game hunting can and does help conservation efforts. The devils in the details though and how the system is set up and managed. As a principle, while it sucks that a beautiful animal will be killed, if it's saving even more, i'm all for it. I think very similarly with regards to zoos and their breeding programs. Yeah it sucks those animals are stuck in cages and small enclosures, but at least they're still around and even breeding. I think you make good points, but I want to make clear that the premise is that those indirect causes of population loss like habitat loss would arguably also be a result for our low regard for the animals. With that said, I'm not closed off to other solutions that use the same negative impulses (greed) to try to extract some positive (intentional protection of the animals in some way, shape, or form)

QUOTE (Leonard Zelig @ Jul 30, 2015 -> 04:15 PM) Is his name Toby Sellers? No

If true, it's just an org. depth move. No reason to think the guy would be on our 25-man.

Original source on the Sellers deal is a 14 year old self-described reporter who hosts his own website.

If the BoSox really wanted to win, they'd have signed up Delmon Young for the night.

I'd be surprised if we did anything that is likely to mainly improve this year's team at the possible expense of the next 2 or 3 years and I wouldn't support doing so.

QUOTE (reiks12 @ Jul 29, 2015 -> 11:28 PM) Am I the only one who wants the sox to stand pat? I'm happy for them to do that. Even if you had a lot of faith in the team, our record isn't good enough to justify selling out just to win this season. But the team is playing so well and the pitching staff is so great that you can't justify selling off either. Keeping Samardzija is a risk, losing Samardzija is a risk. I think keeping Samardzija is in and of itself a gamble and maybe the only appropriate one for this season.

QUOTE (OmarComing25 @ Jul 29, 2015 -> 11:20 PM) It's based a lot on run differential. So while we're +35 over this winning streak the overall number is still crappy. I wouldn't put too much stock into that number, considering we were putting up that horrible run differential when we couldn't hit s*** and our defense was awful. Both have improved, which the formula doesn't account for. Even when our record was at its absolute worst, pretty much every system there is suggested that our record was better than we deserved. So a run of good play can't erase just how "lucky" we may have been to only have had a sort-of horrible record a few weeks ago

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 29, 2015 -> 07:53 PM) Major android vulnerability http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/google-a...-virus-3621072/ The vulnerability is deep in the OS, the MMS method is only one of several potential attack vectors. It could be executed via browsers as well (other than Firefox, according to the guy who found the hole), it's just that the MMS method is the easiest way to target a particular person.

The best argument I've heard about the whole raising money for conservation by shooting endangered animals business is this: the thing that is threatening these animals is the way that many of us humans regard them. We don't value their lives, well-being, habitat, etc. While we may get some money to throw at the problem by encouraging some legal, controlled hunting, we may in fact be making the actual cause of the problem worse. Hunting them trains us to continue believing that killing them is fine, morally speaking. Nobody wants the animals to be extinct but no one kill makes them extinct. But if every person can kill them for their own selfish reasons and feel no guilt, nobody will feel responsible for the collective well-being of the species. I killed one to put it on my wall sure, but that's just one and I paid a lot of money for it. It's hard to say for sure what the best way to approach it is. People have made similar arguments about global warming/pollution/the environment and I think there is a good counterargument in that case: technological and policy solutions could very realistically be a relatively permanent solution to the human-induced CO2 emissions problem and if we can do that rather than try to change worldwide attitudes, we should go ahead and do it. But when we're talking about preserving a living species, it's an ongoing problem that seems very difficult to fix with some sort of magic bullet solution. If someone could convince me that using the market to save them could work, I'd be open to it even if I would continue to be fairly disgusted by the means (killing innocent animals for no reason beyond self-fulfillment/aggrandizement).