chitownsportsfan

I agree with your conclusion about loyalty elrockinMT, but I don't think that necessarily hurts the game. I think we've seen the evolution of the game from player based to team based.

Mags was a great player when he was with the Sox and one of my favorites. He was a quiet guy that lead by posting an OPS north of .900 for 4 straight seasons from 2000-2003. He got injured in 2004 and suddenly became a pariah. He rightfully had reason to argue he was not "injury prone" and demand the the market value for his services. Was he wrong to be secretive about his injury and not take a hometown discount? Not in my estimation. I won't fault a guy in a capitalist society--which is built on the "faireness" of the market--for taking what the market would give him. However, I will fault him for complaining after the fact. He took the money and ran, nobody but the most optimistic could have forcasted what the Sox did in 2005. Mags should look at his bank account and smile, not worry about what could have been.

Interesting reads. I think BP just did their's with PECOTA's projected WARPS. Pythag is flawed in general, but it's the best correlation we have, so I like it.

Great pics, thanks guys. Did you take any of them yourselves ?

You live in the Chi Honda?

Yea, no reason for you to know, he wasn't anything special, just another hard working Iowa kid. I've got some relatives in Iowa, it's a pretty boring place, but I the people are friendly imo.

Ames eh? On a personal note, when I was in HS a few years ago we had a transfer student from Ames, he was straight up the best athlete I had the priviledge of playing baseball with. He was in the mold of 6-2 190 SS's with a cannon arm and good hit. He and I were captains of the team our junior and senior years--he was a great teamate and competitor. He played a year for Albion here in MI then hung it up due to differences with the coach. I have great respect for Iowa and Ames' athletes because of him.

I agree completely. In fact, Hermie, Cotts and Politte each posted HR as percent of flies numbers that will be nearly impossible to duplicate. Cotts has straight up nasty control, but I'm worried about Politte and Hermie--not terribly worried, but worried enough that the might cost us a few more wins than they did last year.

Heads: love that counter. ONLY 42 DAYS TILL BASEBALL!

Yea, I did sorta ignore the good news from Hermie. Still, is anyone predicting Hermie to have an ERA under 3? I know I'm not. He shined last year, and thank him for it, but this year I see a bounceback.

Ah, spring training: where even the celler dwellers get good writeups and the WS champs--well they get the benefit of the doubt lets say. Am I the only one already sick of these puff pieces that say "blah, blah, go Sox, blah?" The only real piece of news in this article is that the Sox won't pidgeonhole themselves into taking a 2nd left, which given the options for 2nd lefty, seems like the reasonable thing to do.

I heart Mark Buehrle.

As someone vaguely familiar with the charms of cocaine, I wouldn't say that. I would say "PCP" however.

Given how many times Buehrle took the ND or L last year in a good performance, I don't blame him. Although calling a pitcher's win/loss record "personal" is a known "no no" around me!

I like Coop's philosophy of pitching: be aggressive and get ahead in the count. And if you don't get ahead in the count, don't be afraid to challenge guys. It's nothing revolutionary, but the players believe in it when they take the mound and that is important.

This is good to hear. I'm more worried about his back than the elbow. It's not like he's going to be playing that field that often, but his back could flare up at any time. I just hope it's something minor like muscle spasms (relatively minor anyway) and he only misses a few weeks if it does happen.

I have to say that I thought the Maggs departure was a bad decision. However, in hindsight, I'm sure KW knew much more about his medical situation than I did. KW did a great job finding Dye from the scraphead and locking him up for 3 years at a very reasonable rate.

We've had this discussion a million times but I'd go with: Pods Gooch Thome Kong Dye Uribe Crede AJ Anderson The top 5 are rock solid in my mind. The bottom 4 might need adjusting depending on who is slumping and what not.

For some reason I always type BABIB instead of BABIP. ISO just takes away the singles from slugging to give a better measure of "power" Ichiro has a decent slugging percentage but then again he bats .340 most years and isn't a good power hitter. PA is just a good denominator for getting averages for things like walk rate and strikeout rate.

Yea, I agree with everything except Uribe/AJ--I would bat Uribe 6th and AJ 7th. And I don't want Uribe to be switching places with Gooch at any point. And on a related note: why do you cite a certified idiot as evidence for your L/R/L lineup? I mean, that's like citing Joe Morgan on OPS.

I guess I didn't NorthSideSox72. Well good, I'm not that worried now, but I'll only really believe when I see it on April 1st.

Thome should bat 3rd according to reason and I'm sure he would if KW was managing. However, Ozzie is managing and I'm not sure if he'll agree with reason on this one.

Yea. Dye had a very solid campaign in 2005, overcoming a slow start to post a respectable 274 .333 .512. While not amazing numbers for a corner outfielder, throw in his salary and good defense and Dye is a keeper. Couple interesting things to note about Dye last year: 1) His ISO power numbers where the highest of his career. Also, the percent of fly balls he hit that turned into HR's was 16%, a very healthy percent. It seems Dye benefits greatly from playing at homer happy US Cellular. 2) His BABIP was around 285, among the lowest number of his career. He consistently posted a BABIB of over .300 in his "prime" years. This suggests to me that he's lost some ability to make consistent good contact at the expense of greater power--not a bad tradeoff given he plays half his games at the cell. 3) His walk rate continued to decline, to only 8% of his PA's. As recently as 03, his walk rate was 11%. Like most of Dye's stats, this one was hurt by a very poor spring. So what does this all mean? I think we can expect about the same from Dye this year. He benefits greatly from hitting at US Cell as a right-handed pull hitter, and he seems to have put his injuries behind him. Hopefully Ozzie's newfound depth in the outfield gives plenty of time to rest Dye and keep him fresh throughout the season. A line of 500 PA .279 .332 .520 is what I see for Dye.

Yea, I should have just said "expert prediction"

Should this be the official experts "prediction" thread?