chitownsportsfan

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 17, 2014 -> 01:58 PM) It's worth noting that in the fan graphs world, we're only a couple fWAR ahead of the pace we set for all last season (with 2 weeks still to play), so the biggest difference this year has been underperforming less than last year. I agree there are paths that can get you there...but just look at your list. You're assuming everything goes right just to get close to 30 without a big FA spending spree. That alone is disconcerting and worrisome. Maybe it can happen, but then you have to seriously look at every single guy and ask what the downside risk is as well. Noesi struggles more, Abreu's foot acts up, Rodon doesn't come up until June after a slow start, Sale spends a month on the DL, and Ramirez and Flowers step back a bit, and suddenly we've spent $35 million a year and wound up with a team in the low 70s in wins again. I here ya, even my best OOTP teams that are predicted to win 95 games occasionally struggle to 80. In the real world a team that is projected to win 88 can easily slide down to 77 because of regression and injuries. But, it's now or never for the Sox to "go all in" with this current core. That doesn't mean they need to go trade Tim Anderson and Micah for a 2 WAR LF -- but it does mean it's time to approach the bullpen and the crater positions -- DH, 2B, LF -- as a team that plans on contending.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 17, 2014 -> 01:45 PM) Let's try it this way. The White Sox are currently close to 20 fWAR. This year, every single team over .500 with a shot at the playoffs has >30 fWAR. Therefore, for the White Sox to even have a shot at being competitive next year, they have to come up with 10+ fWAR next year and then have things go right. For the White Sox to nearly guarantee themselves a playoff spot, they need to be figuring out a way to come up with 20 fWAR beyond what they've produced this year. If they just tried to fill these needs paying fair market value for free agents, with nothing else happening, then we're talking about spending well over $50 million next year beyond what we currently have on payroll to make up that difference, and even then we're counting on the team to over perform rather than underperform. If you go into the numbers maybe there's a few guys who can get better. who knows what Abreu can do if he's in his 2nd year and his manager doesn't try to kill him. Getting rid of Konerko helps some. Maybe Semien and Sanchez have really good years. Garcia is back. Noesi in his 2nd season with Coop as a starter the whole time maybe can add 1-2. But then again, Alexei, Flowers, and Gillaspie might not repeat their seasons. If all we think about is adding a starter like James Shields and a couple bullpen pieces, the only way that pushes us into the playoffs is if other guys step up a whole lot to cover the rest of that gap and we actually get lucky with health/outperform a bit. I'm not using it as predictive, I'm trying to instead figure out what guys might do next year and see where that puts us relative to what we need to reach to even plausibly compete for a playoff spot, and that is a really, really big gap to fill. They are gonna have to get more than ~1.5 WAR from DH, LF and RF combined next year to make the playoffs. I think Rodon is probably a 2 WAR starter right there. Add in Noesi for a full season you get another 1 WAR. Improve the bullpen by throwing say 15 million at it. Ok you just got 1 more WAR. So we're left with about 6 WAR (assuming no regression from Jose, Eaton and Ramirez, which is probably unwise) from those 3 positions (at least). Looking at it that way it's not as tall an order. If you think Hahn added about 10 WAR last offseason without spending much hopefully he can repeat that this offseason (with a lot more dough to spend) and you can see the outline of a team that can reasonably expect to win around 84-90 games. The Sox are well positioned IMO but the next step -- from mediocre to good -- is the hardest. Luckily they have a lot of youth (probably a 5 year window with Jose and Sale and Q and Eeaton and Avi all at peaks) and quite a bit of spare payroll to help them get there.

Trading Chris Sale would be dumb because there is no way you're going to get fair value. You'd need a youngish, cheapish, proven MLB regular to start at a position of need (say someone like Wieters or Kyle Seager) and then you'd need at least two top 50 MLB prospects that are ready for promotion sometime in '15. The teams that are in a position to make that trade? Probably just a handful -- Cubs maybe, Padres, Red Sox as well. Maybe Astros. And in reality you'd want two surefire starters and prospects, even top ones in the high minors, don't hit much more than 60-70% percent -- so maybe you ask for 4 top 100 guys instead -- don't know if any team is in a position to offer that -- because you'd probalby just rather keep those guys if that's the cost. You rarely see superstar trades in baseball for a reason and it's just due to the nature of prospects and how value is assigned. One in the hand in MLB is often worth 4-5 "in the bush". And the teams with prospects "in the bush" are usually risk averse because they (probably rightly) feel that their prospects that they know are a surer bet to help them more long term than the one superstar. In the NBA a superstar can tilt the scales way more than simply summing up a few draft picks or young talents. Not so much in MLB.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Sep 16, 2014 -> 10:45 PM) I wonder if KC's announcers are mocking the Sox now. Reverse karma, b****es. Great catch in cf. it was awesome Greg! They were s***canning Conor so hard when he got down 0-1 and 1-2. Then boom they went silent so quickly. Screw'em!

avi is a fast big dude

the royals announcers can f*** off. You're the team that is struggling to beat this awful team, jackasses.

the problem with using WAR to project is that WAR is a description of what happened, not "what's going to happen".

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Sep 15, 2014 -> 11:09 PM) Twins tied up the game in the 8th vs. the Tigers.....and then Torii Hunter and Miggy went back-to-back to lead off the 9th. Sigh. wtf do we care? let the twins lose. draft pick?

Hey, good job Danks, didn't see his start, was at work, but looks good in the box score. How was he getting his Ks? I still think he's toast but hey give credit where credit is due. f***ing 8th in typical sox this year.

His FIP is 4.86. That's one of the worst in the league. OH BUT THATS SABERMETRICS. His ERA is 4.99. I screwed up his contract stats but who cares, he's been f***ing awful. Anyways, go Sox. The guys they need to produce to win in '15 are producing so that's nice.

CHRIS SALE IS f***ING AWESOME YEA ALL THE PROFILES FOR SALE.

John Danks tonight's prediction: 5.2ip, 5ER, 6H, 1HR, 3BB, 3K. He's been (literally) one of the 3 worst starters in baseball this year. Most pitchers that are this bad don't get to keep getting to start games. But hardly any have 50 some million left on their deal either. Stupid injuries.

QUOTE (flavum @ Sep 15, 2014 -> 04:09 PM) If Carroll has a broken fingernail or whatever, they should just finish it out with Danks, Bassitt, Sale, Quintana, and Noesi. I really don't care if Sale makes two or three starts, but my point is if they want to give Sale three starts, they can without pitching him on short rest. It didn't seem like Ventura was even aware of that. Par for the course for Robin.

I am completely apathetic about PK's last couple weeks but this is the last time I've followed a ~75 win Sox team this late into September. The team has a lot of new pieces, exciting new pieces even if there is much more to be done. I'm glad that PK was able to help out with Jose's transition (Jose said so himself otherwise I'd discount it) but he should have hung it up awhile ago.

QUOTE (flavum @ Sep 15, 2014 -> 01:41 PM) The follow up question should have been: Will he start on the 17th, 22nd or 23rd, and the 28th? He doesn't have to pitch on short rest to get 3 more starts. Eh, no reason to push him. He did well to come back from the muscle strain and put up a Cy Young caliber season. Let him make a couple more starts and give the other one to bassitt or hell even Noesi or something.

If anything Tank has the opportunity to prove he should be "in the mix" for next year but if there is an upgrade available at 1B/DH/LF then obviously you take it. And let's be honest say absolute best case Viciedo turns into a league average 1B that hits 260/300/450 -- that's still hardly even a 1.5 WAR player -- and that's best case. I just don't see him ever having enough power to carry his lack of fielding.

Viciedo honestly looked better when he was just coming up then he does now. I have no idea what happened but his swing is actually worse now than in 2008. Maybe it was the wrist injury but his top hand action is MIA and has been for a couple of years. SSS did a look at Viciedo today and I will say in two words what they tried to say in 2000: he sucks. His "power" is really just an artifact of "swing hard in case you hit it". Now that works fine for some guys but Viciedo can't generate any power with max effort swing and his max effort swing sucks. He pops so many balls up because he drops his back shoulder and instead of powering through the ball he is off balance. Now obviously if there were easy fixes they'd have been made but Tank just isn't that talented of a hitter, or player for that matter.

QUOTE (Swingandalongonetoleft @ Sep 12, 2014 -> 04:10 PM) With the weather the past couple of days, this, combined with an early game yesterday and NFL in the evening, it really does feel like fall. Here in Seattle it's still 75 and sunny (typical summer weather). Even though the days are getting shorter I'm hoping the warm weather lasts well into the fall. El Nino is predicted so that means a wet warm winter for the west coast -- not sure about Chicago but it can't be any worse than last year right Chicagoans?

blah

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Sep 12, 2014 -> 12:04 PM) The kind of crap I do when I'm bored at work on a Friday afternoon: Chris Sale averages 1.087 K/IP. If he averages 1.35 IP per team game played, which rates out to 218.7 IP per season, he will break the franchise strikeout record in June 2019, or just a couple months after his 30th birthday. Wow, knock on wood he stays healthy. Some good posts on the Cy Young here. I agree that Chris and Felix are equal enough on rate to where Felix's "extra" 40 or so innings should give him the Cy. Chris has had an excellent year but Felix has done about the same with more innings so in fairness the Cy should go to him.

yes eaton has to play at least 130 games next year otherwise forget it. He's the difference between 82 wins and 86 probably and maybe even 87 if he can play 150.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Sep 11, 2014 -> 10:32 PM) Keep in mind that Rock thinks Avi Garcia is the next Ordonez I think Avi can be a 290/330/500 type with average defense and above average running. All things considered in today's s*** offensive environment that's a 4 war player. (hi Adam Eaton). That's about as good as Maggs was. Maybe his peak won't quite be as good as Maggs' but he could have a very similiar impact.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Sep 11, 2014 -> 10:26 PM) I believe they think one other good pitcher with Sale and Q as well as a reliable pen could contend right now. One bat and it could win. Mind you thats with a fully healthy squad. IMO they need a really good LH hitter. Wilkins is NOT the answer we can hope. history hasn't been that kind recently.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Sep 11, 2014 -> 10:13 PM) IMO, I believe we can contend with a better pen, one good arm in the rotation and maybe one solid bat (not middle of the order). change that to two bats and I agree. Tall order in one offseason. If Avi takes a big leap forward and Jose doesn't regress too badly OK maybe one but ideally they better production from at least LF and 2B and probably C and one of DH/1B. Where that comes from who knows and Sanchez may be the answer but not everything is going to break right and I don't think the Sox can expect to contend with all of Sanchez/Semian, Viciedo and Flowers in next years opening day lineup.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Sep 11, 2014 -> 06:00 PM) Speaking of which, does anyone know the last time an AL pitcher has done that? Pedro in 2000 had an ERA of 1.74. That was an ERA plus of (get ready...) 291. Sale's ERA+ is "only" 190. Pedro Martinez is possibly the greatest pitcher of all time. You check his B-Ref page and it blows you away. Dude was dominating during the steroid era, just filthy.