chitownsportsfan

He had a problem throwing strikes again for about 5 starts and it was also coupled with diminished velocity iirc. It wasn't bad but he dropped to like 91-93 instead of 93-96 and was missing his spots with every pitch. I'm almost glad he stumbled a bit because it showcased his new found mental toughness. Just awesome to see.

Wow, one start gave him .6. I guess when you have a ZERO FIP over 9 innings you get rewarded. Mercy.

I've long ago learned not to argue what an "ace" is and isn't on a baseball board. Some of the most pedantic dead end conversations anywhere around. I happen to believe there are only about 3-6 aces at any given time in MLB. For me that's what it is, and it's relative. He's a helluva pitcher and a great story and a very positive development.

There's plenty of stupid to spread around nice and thick that's for sure.

Lowered his FIP to 3.2 after today's start and that will push him to around 4.5 fWAR. He can still have a 5 fWAR season, which while not quite an "ace" is certainly "really good 2nd starter every team would love" territory.

What a disheartening two days of asinine comments from the Sox FO.

The years they had a top 5, I believe there were 4 of them from 2006-2013, they were still a good 40-80 million below the top 3 or so teams. They were a bigger mid market team but they never got close to leading the league in payroll. Expecting them to exceed around 5-7th in the league seems a high expectation. I'd be satisfied just getting back into the top 10.

They had a 5th best payroll for a few years in the mid aughts. That's about it. Their historical norm, at least since around 1990, has been middle of the road or bottom 1/3. They've never consistently been a big market payroll. They are mid market and I would not expect them to approach the luxury tax. At best you'll seem in that 5-15 range like we saw throughout most of the last 20 years prior to the rebuild. http://www.stevetheump.com/Payrolls.htm

lmao, jfc. Rickie is a nice guy but he's a simpleton.

What evidence do we have of this? I was with you maybe 5 years ago. I've seen nothing that tells me there's been any changes. You can handwave away the RR hire (I guess) but what about Don Cooper? Don Cooper is clearly of another mind from the top pitching minds in the game at the moment and yet here he is. Giolito had to go somewhere else to fix his delivery.

What a bizarre pivot from my post. I don't have any doubt JR wants to make money. I also think he likes to win, even a little. His manager is actively preventing that, in my obviously imperfect analogy (all of them are you know, that's why they are analogies) the point was that JR has ossified, stagnated and completely divorced himself from quality in his FO.

Great orgs win at the margins. The Sox lose on them. Over and over and over again. Death by a million paper cuts.

I own a business if I had an employee that said in so many ways that while the numbers are bad when he works he knows what's best because "he knows his customers" I'd fire him on the spot. What a disgrace.

Strange hill to die on. Give the ABs to guys that actually have a chance to be here going forward. Not some vet that both sucks and has no future here. On top of that you could make an argument Jon Jay has been worse than Yonder. He's currently at -.8 fWAR in about 40 games. I'm fed up with this club in so many ways. I'm having a hard time once again seeing where this rebuild will have any sustained success with the idiots running things again saying and doing asinine shit.

two ways to say the same thing. He'd rather weakly see his org rot then do the hard job of cleaning house and firing his buddies.

Now I'm wondering is his ignorance has anything to do with their antiquated defensive positioning. FFS following this team is just tiring.

There are a lot of weak wills in this org. It starts with the owner.

The horrifying possibility is that Hahn and KW and whoever the hell us is running this clown show agrees with him. Hahn should have stuck to finance.

Nice, Rickie just convinced me to buy a seat behind the dugout this year and heckle the shit out of him at Safeco. WTF.

Just because you hit on 18 once and made 21 doesn't mean you should ever do it again. Unless you like losing money I guess.

lol the on point rebuttals are coming two a time now. We ain't no WSI.

They weren't even close, they were a bog standard team (7th in the AL in WAA) that's pythag was 81-81 that went 78-84 in a good division. But continue your asinine rant based on your feels, please. Nobody has ever said WAR is perfect. It's the best we have and it correlates with wins on a team level quite well.

I don't care if he's a saint off the field if he can't produce. And if a stud producer is a jerk as long as he's not hitting women or driving drunk all the time I'm completely cool with jerks.

I really don't. His batted ball data (and just watching him) indicates a guy selling out out for power but losing his ability to hit for average -- without a big enough bump in power to make it a worthy trade. Classic aging slugger profile and without the juice these guys fall off a cliff around 32-34 quite often. Just to go on the record I'm fine with 1 year 10 million. Anything, and I do mean anything more, is a horrendous overpay and indicates this franchise has learned NOTHING from the last decade of player evaluations.

And with a wRC+ of 107 as a full time DH Jose won't sniff 2.0 fWAR. He'll be closer to .5 fWAR.