chitownsportsfan

QUOTE (soxforlife05 @ Sep 28, 2016 -> 09:15 PM) I hope you're not being sarcastic but I can't tell. No reason a team with Sale, Q, and Rodon can't play .500 ball the rest of the season from that point. I honestly forgot the team was once 14 or whatever over .500. Like that memory has not crept into my consciousness for months until I read that post. I'm with you I think with better leadership the Sox would never have cratered like they did. Maybe they wouldn't have won 90 games but they'd have made it closer to a wildcard with a better manager IMO.

QUOTE (Black_Jack29 @ Sep 28, 2016 -> 09:03 PM) I'm not sure that it's an accountability problem. I'd say the problem is Reinsdorf being unwilling to do a rebuild (full or partial) because of his age. Dude wants to win now and can't wait another four or five years to properly construct a winner. Detroit has the same problem with Mike Ilitch. Except the Tigers have consistently made it close. They aren't just sniffing .500 every year they are consistently in the playoffs or in the hunt until the last week of the season. Their superstars are incredibly aged compared to the Sox' as well. It's hard to tell Miguel Cabrera to wait a couple years for a rebuild. Easier sell to twentysomethings like Sale and Q. The Sox have little in common with the Tigers other than division. One is a well run club that puts out a consistently solid, if not elite product. The other, is well, the White Sox.

QUOTE (soxforlife05 @ Sep 28, 2016 -> 08:54 PM) Do you even watch the games? Ventura is easily one of the worst in game managers in the league. And his team choked away a 23-10 start after one bad loss. After a start like that there is no excuse to not be in the wild card hunt until the last day of the season at a minimum. I can honestly say that I forgot all about the hot start. That is how disconnected I am. When I read your post just now I remembered how I felt during that start and how excited I was for the season. SOB.

QUOTE (Thad Bosley @ Sep 28, 2016 -> 07:16 PM) If the White Sox are not blaming Ventura for the past five seasons but rather "roster deficiencies", then I wonder when we can expect heads to roll in the FO? Right, that's what I was digging at above. It's beyond time to make a change, even if it's just for change's sake. The same is true of the FO.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Sep 28, 2016 -> 06:31 PM) It's just sad that Reinsdorf has created an organization with absolutely no accountability. Our team has been a joke Robin's entire tenure. If he's not part of the problem, then the front office most certaintly is. Something has to give at this point, even for a guy as loyal as Reinsdorf. Unfortunately for us, changes may not be made. At this point it's more than just about RV and his ability (or lack of) as a manager: it's a referendum on the entire last decade plus of failure and right now the plan seems to be "more of the same". At a certain point, and IMO the Sox are well past that point, you gain some things by making change simply for change's sake. You signal to your fans that your not happy. You signal that you're willing to take action, even if you're not sure about what course of action to take by not having a "slam dunk" candidate already picked. There's not ever going to be a "perfect" time to fire RV or a "perfect" candidate ready to replace him. Just make a move to make a move! It's well past that point. Signal to us fans that the current direction is the wrong one and you're willing to consider moving in another one.

Score more runs. DGAF if it's via infield hits and stolen bases and bunts. Score. More. Runs. Don't consistently field a bottom 1/3 offense in any metric : RS, OPS, wRC+, OBP, etc. Find. More. Good. Hitters. The HR argument is bulls***. Just get better hitters. How they are good doesn't matter.

keep losing boys.

Yep and I'm with ya here. It's not clear that Cooper is still an asset. The Sox haven't had the depth of pitching they enjoyed through most of his tenure, not even close really, the past two seasons. It used to be that Cooper was on the regular finding guys like Thornton, Santos, etc and turning them into quality assets. Now he's "finding" guys like Latos, Albers, Shields and others and more often than not they are mediocre at best and downright awful other times. I don't think he's a bad coach, but he's not untouchable by any means.

As I said upthread if Jose was doing this in a pennant race we'd be tickled pink. He had a down first 2/3 of the season and yea it didn't help the overall record. If he had contributed more the Sox would have won another 2-3 games but really it doesn't matter as even with a monster season from Jose the team wasn't going to win 86-88 wins for the playoffs. Put more talent around him so if this happens next year the Sox were able to win more earlier and a hot stretch like this in late summer will actually matter in the playoff picture.

Some of the reports from our own insiders here about how many of his errors were caused just by a non-MLB quality 1B were correct and he was much closer to MLB ready defensively then the errors predicted. You can't really go from a bad defensive SS to a good one in a few months can you? I think he has been solid since the 1st day he came up. Certainly he has a bit of a wild arm at times but so do most athletic SSs as they are trying to make every play and giving max effort throws more often then someone that can't even get to the ball in the first place.

Eaton is great. Need more like him. Runs his mouth a little bit too much for my liking but s*** put up numbers like this and he can b**** and moan about management, etc all he wants.

QUOTE (balfanman @ Sep 14, 2016 -> 10:22 AM) It seems like through the years I've heard from various sources that defense is not really that big of a deal at first base, yet we always seem to be clamoring for a new first baseman because of defense ( Abreu's glove, Pauli's range, Frank's glove & arm, etc.). Personally, I've always valued a good defensive 1st baseman such as Kieth Hernandez, Mark Grace, etc. Even Konerko's ability to dig balls out of the dirt did wonders for this team ( especially Alexis' error totals ) and saved a lot of runs. I've had enough of this theory that you can stick anyone at 1st base ( and left field too for that matter). I hope we can make Abrue a dh and get an above average 1st baseman in here. I mean you kinda can stick "anyone" at 1B (Dae Ho Lee for example) but it will cost you some outs at some point. It's why Jose plays there himself. The only way it makes sense to move him to DH is if he's body is breaking down and the Sox have someone else on the roster that is better defensively at 1B and can hit enough to make it matter. Right now that guy isn't on the roster and Jose isn't missing enough games where it makes sense to DH him full time. I too get tired of sloppy defending at 1B from Jose but it's far from the most pressing issue this off season. Getting some actual good outfielders and a catcher and a bullpen would be my priorities.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Sep 8, 2016 -> 05:47 PM) He was a 5.5, 3.8 and right now at 2.6. I don't know where you get the 2-3, but I think more likely he is a 3-4 WAR player, maybe a 5 WAR, but seems unlikely he is a 2 WAR player (given even with all his struggles, he'll finish the year somewhere pretty close to 3. He is also on pace for more walks and fewer strikeouts then last year (yes less power as well) but a slightly better average and OBP. We've seen he can still hit for power too. bWAR doesn't hate his defense as much as Fangraphs. by fWAR he's 5.3, 3, 1.4. That thing that's alarming is his wRC+ 161 129 118 and his iso: .264 .212 .185 his power is declining big time. I am still of the opinion that he is older then advertised. He moves and play like a 31-34 year old. Not someone still in his late 20s. Thanks for a reasoned reply tho, those seem rare when talking WAR around here.

It's not Jose's fault that the offense wasn't able to produce more and keep the Sox competitive until he heated up. I mean if this was a pennant race we'd be praising him for turning it up down the stretch. That said, I had hopes he'd be a 5 WAR player consistently and those hopes have pretty much been dashed. Maybe he'll have a monster line next year but his defense and baserunning are about as bad as advertised so he needs to hit like 300/370/580 to put up that 5 WAR. Can he do it again like his rookie year? Hope so but not banking on it. He looks more like a 2-3 WAR player. Good starter, but not a superstar.

QUOTE (Hatchetman @ Sep 1, 2016 -> 06:50 PM) I dunno guys. Nobody complains about the FO more than me, but I've seen much MUCH worse teams on the field than this. This team is actually entertaining sometimes. Well that's the rub. They have some decent, even star players. They also have a lot of really s***ty players. The "stars and scrubs" approach can work but not when your scrubs are quite this bad.

QUOTE (shipps @ Sep 1, 2016 -> 03:04 PM) I have to fight the urge in each new thread to not respond "god this is depressing" in every one. Its just all so disappointing with very minimal positive signs I am....just done. Yea even Tim Anderson in the lineup on a Carlos start doesn't really get me to tune in. Just a boring, bad team yet again. Cancelled my MLB.tv months ago. Renewed it briefly when TA came up then cancelled again. Didn't bother going to a game here in Seattle when they came this year. First time for that. Had been four years in a row since I moved here.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Sep 1, 2016 -> 02:30 PM) Blown saves does not tell you anything about how good or bad a bullpen is. It's a pretty useless stat for evaluation. Blown saves can occur late in games for a variety of reasons, and it treats all the same which makes it really noisy. The bullpen is bad, but the blown saves measure doesn't tell us that. s*** offense = small leads easily blown.

I use the ignore feature but you can't ignore admin or mod posts. That should be changed imo. I try and avoid getting into it with ss2k but I can't put him on ignore like I did with DA.

Carlos is one of the few reasons to be excited right now. He's building a pretty good 2nd half.

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ Aug 27, 2016 -> 09:27 PM) Thank you Eminor for your contributions . It is greatly appreciated. As you said a lot about WAR is misunderstood and misused and that's what so confusing about it. It just takes too much effort to get a real grasp on what it all means especially when the people qwho talk about are constantly making mistakes. It appears I will remain a dinosaur stuck in the tar pit struggling but ultimately losing the battle. just remember that WAR is two things 1) it's an attempt to measure TRUE VALUE, and 2) IT'S NOT A PROJECTION. WAR saying that Alex Avila (sporting a pretty hot .360 OBP as a Catcher) has been more valuable this season really is making no claim at all about how is better not only right now (like this moment) but also forever in the future. Don't think you can't grasp it that's just silly. Only so many things can happen on a baseball diamond that's the beauty of it. Smart people have assigned all those thing values. WAR is a summation of those values.

it would nice if one of the years jose decides to start raking in late august/september that the other guys would carry them enough in the prior months to make it meaningful.

Jesus what a thread. It would be nice to win and be relevant just to avoid threads like this. But yea margulas is basically ss2k15 born 15 years later imo. He can critique but mostly it's just pro org bulletin points and the comments section, led by pnoles, is mostly an echo chamber. At least here there is less groupthink.

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ Aug 26, 2016 -> 11:58 PM) Yea I was sort of driving at that but I guess I am not supposed to compare a 1st baseman to a catcher or OF or IF just to other 1st basemen. The problem is it does nothing to show a players value to his team . Maybe I am just the dummy who looks at it and says how can anyone say Avila is better than Abreu or more valuable of a player. Abreu means 10X what Avila does for the Sox . If you say 1 WAR is worth $7/8 million than isn't Avila worth more than Abreu here ? WAR is just a counting stat. It's not at all saying that Jose Abreu is a worse player than Alex Avila just that all other things being equal for this year that in abstract you'd take a solid defense Alex Avila at catcher with a s***ty OPS than an awful at defense 1B with a mediocre OPS. If Jose could catch and put up and 780 OPS he'd be at 5-7 WAR. But he can't, in fact he's basically a DH. So he needs to smack the ball moreso than just slightly above average to matter. I find it hard to believe anyone could watch the Sox this year and then look at these numbers and think WAR isn't fairly accurate. Does anything not believe Navarro and Avi are some of the least valuable players in baseball? That Eaton, especially given his amazing defense, hasn't been the Sox' best position player...and TA the 2nd best in his limited time? The team hasn't gotten much from Lawrie, Frazier, Jackson etc that shows in watching and in WAR. Yea Todd has hit some HR but his overall slash line is brutal and his defense has fallen off to average as he's aged.

It's really hard to find guys that can hit a lick that can play 2B/SS/3B, let alone at an above MLB average level and Tyler can do that. It's pretty easy to find guys (relatively) that can hit for a 780 OPS and play awful defense at 1B and run the bases like a slug. That's basically Jose this year. When Jose had an OPS of 900 he was right there at 4-5WAR. What WAR does a good job of measuring is positional scarcity and Jose, as a poor defensive 1B, is basically a glorified DH. WAR knows a s*** player when it sees it -- look at Avi. Eaton, as a guy that can hit some, field a lot and run some contributes in all 3 areas. Same with TA for the most part (although fangraphs doesn't like his base running too much). Jose needs to hit to have value and this season, with the average MLB hitter doing more and Jose less, his relative value has gone way down.

And one Timmah. Good on Eaton but boy oh boy what a bunch of slop behind him. Once again the Sox would have been better simply keeping their younger options like Thompson (and Sally as full timer at 2B/SS) than bringing in guys like Jackson, Frazier and Lawrie. (obviously it's more complicated then that but the MLB scouting of this franchise is brutal, especially in assessing other teams' talent relative to their own.) Eaton: 4.7 Anderson: 1.4 Frazier: .9 Lawrie: .9 Melky: .9 Avila: .7 Sally: .7 Abreu (ugh): .4 Coats: .2 Narvaez: .1 everybody else is negative or at zero. Same story new year: pitching is good enough to make the playoffs, even with a s***ty pen and bad back of the rotation but the position player contributions are not even close to up to par.