chitownsportsfan

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Aug 19, 2015 -> 08:13 PM) They also have the 32nd ranked farm system in major league baseball Someone over at BTF (might have been Walt) did an analysis showing how much the FA market has changed on a cost per WAR basis and on how much WAR is typically available in an offseason compared to say 2002, when teams like the Yankees could easily outbid everyone else and set up a winning team almost solely based on FA (ignore for a second all the home grown talent they had it's just an example). Now, even the rich teams like Boston are founding it nearly impossible to simply buy enough WAR in the offseason to make a good, winning team. The Tigers are absolutely f***ed. Even if the contracts of Miggy, JV, and V-Mart were magically lifted from their shoulders there aren't enough premium FA anymore to sign to replace them. And even if there were, because of the winner's curse, they couldn't afford to sign more than one or two at most. And then they'd still have to get 30 some odd WAR from guys they already have on the team. You can't build a team through FA anymore you have to rely on drafting and scouting and trades. It's a fools errand to even try which is why you see teams like the Astros and Cubs having so much success without big payrolls. You don't need a big payroll to compete anymore and in fact it may often be a detriment as it eats into your money available for scouting, development, intentional FA, etc.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Aug 19, 2015 -> 07:22 PM) Good post. I agree. Duke is just another guy and he's trending downward IMO. He's a waste. Melky isn't totally worthless but he has no power and we need power at that position in the Cell. He's pretty ordinary at best. Robertson is a wasted commodity. He has great stuff but our team isn't a contender and doesn't need him. Sox have a ton of holes to even get to be a .500 team. Duke and Melky are average players. The Sox need more average players and they found two last offseason. I will keep repeating this over and over and over again: the team Hahn inherited from the MLB roster on all the way to Kannapolis WAS ARGUABLY THE WORST IN ALL OF MLB. The team had half a dozen holes on the MLB position player roster, some of them smoking craters. The farm was in shambles, the international efforts were lagging and the overall position of the club was bottom 1/4, at best.

QUOTE (GreenSox @ Aug 19, 2015 -> 07:29 PM) You're right, but you have to trade something to get something. Good teams sell high. If the Sox have a replacement, that's what you do - sell high. Except...you're not selling high. You're selling a guy about to enter his prime according to all the research we have on aging curves. In fact, hitters don't really age anymore Eaton could be entering a 5 year stretch until he's on the wrong side of 30 where he's a consistent 3-5 WAR player. You don't trade that away unless you get bowled over on return. And nobody does that anymore.

QUOTE (fathom @ Aug 19, 2015 -> 06:49 PM) Wow, Flowers catching. I wonder if Soto is dealt the next few days. Free Trayce! He'll never clear waivers.

QUOTE (SouthSideSale @ Aug 19, 2015 -> 05:13 PM) I too disagree with Balta although I understand his point. Semien wasn't going to be anything special, Phegley is a backup catcher. Bassit is solid but wont be anything more than a back end starter. It was worth the shot. You gota take chances and sometimes they work sometimes they do not. I hope they take some more this offseason. This team needs a jolt. I want to see a new coaching staff and add Puig in the offseason. New coaching staff would be great. As often said, if you're not gonna be good, at least be entertaining. New staff will bring the latter, and maybe some more of the former.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Aug 19, 2015 -> 04:32 PM) Yep. Still worth taking the shot, IMO. And you are getting a bit ridiculous trying to prove your point that you despise everyone and everything to do with this organization currently. Yes I diverge with Balta on this point. Were some sacrifices to long term depth made in order to go "all in" this winter? Yes. Where they crippling? Hell no. The Sox weren't wrong, they are close. They were just wrong on internal improvement from Avi, 2B and weren't counting on Ramirez having a -1 WAR season. I don't blame them that much they took a shot and came up short and it's not like they traded Anderson or Rodon to try and do it or added 400 million in payroll like the Red Sox. Hindsight is 20/20.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 19, 2015 -> 04:25 PM) And 4 players, so 6 different players who would otherwise be in our organization. And then people who say that we didn't give up all that much will simultaneously say how we don't have that much depth in our system, or lament that we can't bring positions up to tolerable performance levels. And that's on top of other decisions not made...things like "we didn't trade Alexei last year" when hindsight shows that to be a mistake as well. So even if we didn't get a top of the league return for him, there's 7+ layers we surrendered for the privilege of 2015. And that doesn't even count the opportunity-cost of not giving innings to EJ in the last month when he really should have been up. I'd feel better if you were in charge honestly. I don't always agree but it's clear you have an internally consistent philosophy based on sound principles.

QUOTE (Knackattack @ Aug 19, 2015 -> 04:16 PM) Why would we trade Adam Eaton? He is one of the top 3 bats on the team and an above average offensive CF signed cheap This is like the problem I run into on OOTP -- how do I improve the team without gutting it? I can tell you that when you try and trade the guys that have trade value it usually means you're making the team worse in the short term for no guarantee of long term improvement. Guys like Q and Eaton shouldn't just be thrown out as "trade assets" because hell, those are two of the best players in the team. Without either, they'd really be in trouble and there's no guarantee what they'd get back would amount to anything. Especially given that KW is likely to be the final say.

Trayce has also been great on the bases according to Fangraphs. This kid needs to play. He could be one of those guys whose athletic skills just translate better in MLB for whatever reason. The parks are bigger, the balls are hit harder and a gifted natural athlete like Trayce might be able to make it work. It doesn't hurt anyone to play garcia at DH the rest of the way and let Trayce see 150 PA before the season is over.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 19, 2015 -> 04:07 PM) I don't think it was a "fluke", I think Kenny remains a solid judge of baseball talent (see Jose Abreu) and that was a key part of him being able to build the team in the 2005 year. I think that Kenny moved from that technique - building a ballclub through shrewd acquisition and development of undervalued talent - to a strategy that is going in the wrong direction, as more resources became available to him. He went from signing an undervalued Japanese 2b and a RF coming off injury and a catcher no one wanted to paying big time prices for guys in trades and on the FA market, a strategy that minimized his own skills. He was able to do that because more resources became available (money) after the WS win and because he continued trying to "win now" at all costs. He no longer could take time to develop a pitcher like Jon Garland, who had 3 mediocre full seasons following 2 mediocre part seasons before he snapped off his solid 2005, because he couldn't spend 3 years turning a guy into a useful piece. good post I think he also started to believe he was some once in a lifetime talent evaluater. As I say often, he was probably fooled by randomness like Garland developing, Tad coming through, etc. When the random luck changed he doubled down on bringing in boom or bust guys thinking they'd mostly boom like before because of something the Sox were doing. TUrns out it wasn't anything but luck really.

QUOTE (OmarComing25 @ Aug 19, 2015 -> 01:53 PM) 2014 Alexei was rated 11th out of 22 qualified shortstops defensively by Fangraphs, and with a .713 OPS and roughly average baserunning he was worth 3.1 WAR. Castro was 13th defensively (though a pretty decent gap from Alexei) and had a .777 OPS and 2.8 WAR, but he was terrible on the basepaths. Using this as a rough baseline the theoretical season above should definitely be above 3 WAR. Thanks for running the numbers. I think we'll all be thrilled if Anderson comes close to his ceiling. Guys like him don't come along too often.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 19, 2015 -> 02:47 PM) A .750 OPS, neutral defense, and strongly positive on the basepaths? That sounds like >3 to me right there. , well that would be good too. Hard to tell with the positional adjustments. IIRC I just saw something on how the positional adjustments for '16 might credit ss and catcher and cf less and 1B and DH more based on recent trends at the positions. You'd think it would be easy to find a DH that can OPS 800, but apparently it's pretty hard these days. Any Sox fan can f***ing tell ya that I guess.

One nice thing is that if Tim Anderson can play run neutral defense and slash 290/320/430 with 25/30 SB he's gonna be a 3 WAR SS. The position is that weak right now.

QUOTE (lasttriptotulsa @ Aug 19, 2015 -> 11:08 AM) Considering that neither one plays another position, there is absolutely nothing wrong with combining their stats to assess your catching situation. Our catchers are pretty much middle of the pack across all of MLB. fWAR - 1.4 (16th) wRC+ - 88 (13th) AVG - .228 (18th) OBP - .291 (20th) SLG - .390 (15th) HR - 16 (12th) RBI - 49 (17th) Hawk's absolutely right when he says our catchers aren't the problem. There is really a lack of quality catchers in baseball and the days of catchers being big time offensive contributors are over. The catchers aren't the problem, but does anyone think Tyler Flowers is the solution? Even if you believe the pitch framing numbers as both predictive and accurate you can AT BEST make an argument that Tyler Flowers is an average starting catcher. That is absolute at best. Middle case he's bottom 1/3 starter and that's where I'd put him. I do agree with Hawk and your post however -- catcher isn't the team's biggest problem. That would be 3B, RF and SS. Ramirez has been f***ing awful it's time to cut bait on him.

Mediocre outing at best. Angels don't exactly have a good offense at the moment and those were some meatballs early.

I'm sick of seeing Jose getting a steady diet of inside s***. That's what having no protection does. Nobody is afraid of putting him on for Melky and Avi.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Aug 18, 2015 -> 11:04 PM) That was a filthy play regardless to save extra bases. The brooks Robinson comment is so out of context. It's just laughable at this point all around.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Aug 18, 2015 -> 11:02 PM) ...that...that was bad I thought so too then I realized he was at least a foot off the bag it wouldn't have mattered anyways. Throw was almost 5 feet wide or so on replay.

instant karma for hawk and his brooks robinson bs. Kids good but let's be real

ugly swings out there so far

QUOTE (harkness @ Aug 18, 2015 -> 10:36 AM) Hard to make any real conclusions from those stats... Looks like an exercise in randomness. Yes, and people are being fooled by randomness. We want to assign narratives to everything. CERA is useless it has zero predictive value.

http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2009/6/19...yone-stop-using

I seriously can't believe this CERA thing has actually become A THING. FFS, you'd think Tyler f***ing Flowers was Johnny Bench. It's a small sample size fluke. Shark throwing meatball after meatball that doesn't even reach the catcher's glove has zero to do with who is catching him. The White Sox' insane love for Flowers has permeated some the brains on this forum with its insidious insanity.

great start from Rodon.

now he f***ing PHs? GMAFB