Jake

Phegley had a 34 wRC+ last year. 34!! His "good" month, July, was 59. Then 28. Then 17. He had the worst wRC+ of any MLB player that had as many at-bats as he did. Among the big sluggers who hit better are Jeff Francouer, Jamey Carroll, Brendan Ryan, Pete Kozma, Chris Getz, B.J. "worst season ever" Upton, Tyler Flowers, Jeff Keppinger. This is a rate stat, meaning those players didn't have an advantage by having more plate appearances. He was just literally the worst batter in all of baseball. This wasn't a deal where he started looking better as time went on, either. It was pretty much unfathomable awfulness after the first 5 games or so. He got progressively worse. That doesn't mean he sucks or should be released, but it makes little sense at this point to argue that he should do well in the MLB. He has been pushed aggressively throughout his career and he needs more fine tuning. Being in MLB made him worse. He needs to go hit in AAA again - it was the first time his wRC+ ever rated him as above his league's average, short of two

Chances are Sanchez gets MLB reps next year with an injury or movement. That means somebody very well may be willing to use him as a utility man as well, since we would do that under certain circumstances.

Alright Rick, do your thing

Does the presence of an obvious interceptor between ball and receiver make the pass uncatchable? I might be able to fathom that the ball gets near enough to Gronk if the ball is unimpeded. On the other hand, even an unimpeded Gronk has no chance of stopping that interception.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Nov 19, 2013 -> 12:34 PM) year by year I swear I lose more and more respect for the Sox fanbase. I think they're coming around to getting rid of PK. My articles on Yahoo attract the absolute lowest of the low when it comes to commenters, oftentimes citing the departure of Mark Buehrle as evidence of what's wrong with the franchise. I wrote an article about our need to let go of PK and there was a great deal of agreement among the comments, especially compared to what I expected. On the other hand, one of the top voted comments is someone saying that this is all Jeff Samardzija's fault...so who knows

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Nov 19, 2013 -> 12:18 PM) On point number 1, you are likely going to have to pick up $10 million and take nothing in return. If you wait until July 31st to do that (or August 30th, neither matters), you are doing essentially the same thing but at least maintain the possibility that you can trade him and pick up a young, talented piece. You aren't trading Konerko. On number 2, Konerko is still a more talented player than Dunn. Yes, he's probably going to be a poor player, but I think the odds of Konerko putting up an .825 OPS far outweigh the odds that Dunn will do so. Konerko is not a more talented player than Dunn, not anymore. The only baseball activity that he can fathomably do better is hit left-handed pitchers. By the time Konerko would take the field again, it will have been just under two years since he has posted an .825 OPS over just a single month. He will be 38 years old. I don't know why any person would have confidence that he could do that. Dunn is no cinch either since he is prone to alternate between .900+ and I like these graphs: http://www.fangraphs.com/comparison.aspx?p...amp;players=319 By age and by recent history, Dunn seems like the better bet. Pair that with the fact that our middle of the order has Abreu (RHH), Avisail (RHH), and Viciedo (RHH) and Dunn will undeniably make us better. That doesn't mean the "take Konerko for better draft pick" argument makes sense. That's stupid. If you want to do badly to get a draft pick, you don't do it with a 38-year-old with little chance to do well and no desire to play anywhere else. You pick your random young guy and stick him there (which could be anyone, since it is DH - it would make more sense to give Jordan Danks at-bats via that opening in the lineup than it would Konerko).

If I'm choosing between no prison time and 20 years for a serial rapist, I'm going with 20 years. This is no accident, no misunderstanding, it is among the worst crimes fathomable and clearly so.

While I have not been convinced at all that Trayvon was a bad kid, was definitively winning this fistfight, or was the aggressor -- the disturbing thing is how we as a society are largely okay with the thought of these kinds of encounters being fatal, so long as the victim was a bad person or started the fight.

If the Yanks sign Brendan Ryan and Stephen Drew with Jeter on the roster, why even sign Cano?

I actually don't think Kuechly did much to move Gronk, who definitely didn't have a chance to adjust. His hand placement is pretty incriminating, though. I do think that this "controversy" is at least 50% "it's the Patriots!" related

I still remember Tony Pena Jr. pitching in garbage time for the Royals and more than one commentator saying that his fastball was so good he might be better served to pitch

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Nov 19, 2013 -> 09:00 AM) Who has ever said this? He's overstating things a bit but it is worth noting that when there are two crazy assholes and one of them has a gun, it is pretty easy to predict what will happen. If neither do, you're probably just looking at two crazy assholes who got into a fist fight. And that's assuming that Trayvon was such a person -- we don't know that

We'll never know exactly what happened that night, but Zimmerman is sure making it clear that he is the type of guy that would escalate a situation for no particular reason, especially if he was empowered by having a gun around

I still think LeBron would fail the mental test of getting f***ed up every other time he goes to the rack

If you put Peyton on the Bears and McCown/Cutler on the Broncos, which team is better?

Welp, I won by .4 points to retain my first place spot in my better league

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 18, 2013 -> 04:36 PM) Yup, the percentage might be 13% when they're at their own 16 to start the drive, but that probability will change with each and every play. He knew that. He's basically just explaining what his beginning state of mind was, which is that there was no expectation of them scoring a TD. By the time that seemed to be a possibility to him, he explained the other things that affected his decisionmaking.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Nov 18, 2013 -> 09:58 AM) I was all aboard the Josh McCown train until my buddy pointed out that he is 34 already. I was shocked. I am hesitant to give Cutler a long-term deal, but it would take big, big balls to let him go after what we've gone through on the qb front over the past 3 decades. Well, you wouldn't retain McCown and dump Cutler unless you had a rookie/other young QB in the fold who you hoped to pass things off to after one or two seasons.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Nov 18, 2013 -> 10:07 AM) It is worth mentioning that Dunn was still far, far more productive when he was actually on the field compared to DHing. At this point, it's pretty impossible to ignore. Indeed. Kind of hard to speculate on whether that will continue. I still regard the sample size as a bit too small for certainty, but the difference is nonetheless worth attention

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Nov 18, 2013 -> 10:07 AM) It is worth mentioning that Dunn was still far, far more productive when he was actually on the field compared to DHing. At this point, it's pretty impossible to ignore. Indeed. Kind of hard to speculate on whether that will continue. I still regard the sample size as a bit too small for certainty, but the difference is nonetheless worth attention

Let's think about some good case scenarios. We'll just say Alexei duplicates his past season: 3.1 WAR on the strength of great baserunning and defense and an 86 wRC+, the average figure for a SS We'll tweak De Aza a little bit. Instead of the 97 wRC+ last year, we'll say his good case scenario involves him posting a 106 wRC+ as he did in 2012. Likewise, he'll play replacement-level defense like he did in 2012 as opposed to about 1/3 win below replacement level. Bear in mind this guy was worth almost an entire win on the strength of his CF defense in his rookie year. Anyway: 3.0 WAR (2.2 last year) Gordon doesn't break out, but does his usual mixture of hot and cold, ending with the same 88 wRC+ he had last year. This time, he plays over 150 games though. No change to defense: 1.5 WAR (1.0 last year in 100 games) Gillaspie will appear to have a much better season, but play significantly fewer games as he more or less platoons with Keppinger. Much like he did last year, Gillaspie posts a league-average 100 wRC+ overall. This assumes he bats almost exclusively against RHP and makes a very marginal gain against both LHP and RHP: I'll go with the steamer projection of 1.3 WAR (0.7 last year) Keppinger will obviously step up quite a bit in a good case scenario and there's no reason to think he will duplicate his worst career season. To avoid going overboard, we'll say he comes far short of his better seasons with the bat. 128 wRC+ and 60 wRC+ in 2012/2013. I'll just refer to his career averages and predict a 105 wRC+ on the strength of him duplicating his career average 121 wRC+ against LHP. To protect him from RHP and protect us from his sub-standard D, his games played goes down: 1.5 WAR (-1.5 last year) Garcia will obviously play well in this scenario. He posted a 109 wRC+ with the White Sox last season and we'll say he sticks with that. His defense in a very small sample has never rated well, but for now we'll say he plays RF at replacement level; not sure if that is an optimistic projection or not. 2.5 WAR (compare to 2.0 WAR for Rios in 100 games for us last season) Dayan will hit well, too. His good runs will finally start to definitively outweigh his bad. After posting 98 and 96 wRC+ in his two seasons, he'll step that up. He had a monster 178 wRC+ vs LHP in 2012 vs. a perplexing 89 in 2013. We'll expect him to mash LHP in 2014, but maybe not on the all-world level of the past. In the spirit of optimism, we will say that he does replicate his 98 wRC+ vs RHP (was 72 in 2012), with the help of strategic days off. Steamer thinks he'll post a 108 overall wRC+ with a 1.6 WAR. I'm going to say he goes 115 wRC+ and 2.5 WAR, with just the slightest improvements on D. He's been more or less exactly at replacement level previously. Flowers. I'm going to say he wins the job as he outplayed Phegley by a great deal last season, though we actually expect a new player to brought in to presumably get the lion's share of the starts. I'll predict that a. he goes back to playing solid D and b. he hits better, but not good. His 59 wRC+ does not go back to the 91 and 94 in previous season, but rather 79. He will post 1.0 WAR, something he's done before in a part time role, rather than the break even replacement level he did last year. I'd argue that his value is actually unchanged by him playing a backup role BTW. Dunn! I won't go overboard even in this good case scenario. He posted 115 and 105 wRC+ in 2012 and 2013. I'm just going to say his season is more like 2012 than 2013 and that he plays little to no defense. 2.0 WAR, roughly average for DH. His LH bat proves valuable breaking up our righties, howver. Abreu. This is, of course, the hardest. For the purposes of this argument, let's say his absolute ceiling is an MVP - 150 wRC+ type 1Bman. His absolute floor, we'll say is 90 wRC+ - this is like saying the worst he can do is a little worse than Dayan has done, which I think is fair as a floor. He's going to have a great year in my good case scenario, but nowhere near his ceiling. As our best hitter, he puts up a 130 wRC+ and plays league average defense. Compare that offensive production to Paulie's 2012 (Paulie's 2012, of course, was more like 2 months of 200 wRC+ and 3 months of 80 wRC+). He will be worth about 4.0 WAR. Pitching stays the same. Bench players are neither good nor bad. That's a playoff team. Those are all intentionally optimistic projections, but not best case scenarios. Several players hardly change and only young players produce at a level they have never done previously (Viciedo, Abreu, Garcia). In real life, you'd have some of these guys going below these expecations and others going above even in the good case scenario - but this is just a way of looking at it.

QUOTE (GoSox05 @ Nov 18, 2013 -> 09:11 AM) Really only one of those INT was really bad, the first one. The second one JPP just made a crazy play on it and the last INT didn't really matter cause the game was about over. What I like about him is he isn't afraid to throw down field. Most back ups come in and just throw check down after check down. Tolzien yesterday was for 4 for 4 on passes throw over 20 yards and 6 for 6 over 15 yards. He should be have a edge on the back up spot next year.

Yeah, I'm hesitant to speculate how the defense would be if "the Loveman" were here but I tend to think it would be better if it was different at all

As frustrated as I was with Mel Tucker early in the season with a largely healthy defense, I've become impressed with how we are playing with a completely decimated defense. The D isn't playing good, but we are actually staying in games now. I hope we can keep it up and continue to get some production from rookies and other relative unknowns. Other side note: how completely f***ing s***ty must Cornelius Washington be to not get a single snap on defense throughout all this bulls***? People thought he might go as high as the second round but he's been beaten out for playing time by guys like David Bass (who admittedly has done okay)

FWIW, the franchise tag for QBs this season was 15 million bucks, which would be a substantial yearly raise for Cutler