chitownsportsfan

The only argument baseball wise you could make is that he'd see better pitches (the old "protection") and would thus hit better. I never really bought that argument. Who did Barry Bonds have behind him? He seemed to do OK... The point of the metrics like WAR is they provide symmetry across position, batting average, skill on the basepaths, park factors, and myriad other variables. It's a singular measure of a player's worth that doesn't change regardless of where they play. WAR really is not that difficult of a concept. It's just a way of summing up everything a player contributes on the field and at the plate and on the basepaths and on the mound and comparing it to a "baseline" (this is an abstraction but it's important) -- the "baseline" is a "replacement player". The easiest way to think of this is "a player that is freely available". These are your David Palkas, your Tilsons, the classic "AAAA" player. These guys are available either in your farm or someone else's farm for in essence nothing. It's only by giving value relative to these replacement players that MLB players are worth a spot on the 25 man roster.

There's plenty of confounders (namely weather) but if you ran a regression with games back in the division as the independent variable and Jose's wRC+ as the dependent I don't think you'd come up completely empty.

There we go, now that's good research. The Rockies would benefit hugely by trading for Jose. The Astros hardly at all, which makes this rumor pretty silly. Why would the Astros give up anything of value for Jose when they are looking at like a .5 WAR difference the rest of the way? But the Rockies appear to have a situation similar to the White Sox at 3B when they traded for Youk.

Lemme just say this: that has more to do with Jose's problems as a 120 wRC+ type at 1B/DH then anything to do with James Shields.

James Shield's FA status in 2019 is a feature, not a bug, for any team trading for him. He is the literal definition of a rental. He has value to any club looking for a competent 4th/5th starter, which is almost every contender come mid July, with no long term commitment. Meh. I'm coming at you with hard facts and you're coming at me with platitudes. There's no surplus value in Jose Abreu's bat, as I've illustrated. If you want to do a deep dive on every contender and see what their expected win totals would be with Jose instead of whatever they currently have at 1B/DH go ahead. If you find anyplace where he adds more than 3 wins, go ahead and @ me, because a team would actually pay for that.

@Chicago White Sox that's kinda a chickenshit response IMO after I went and pulled my exact quote from the Shields thread. As I see you didn't take my hint and go check Fangraphs or B-Ref I'll just leave this here: James Shields 2018 fWAR: .8 Jose Abreu 2018 fWAR: .9 James Shields 2018 bWAR: 1.2 Jose Abreu 2018 bWAR: .9 Their contracts are very similar. I love Jose Abreu and everything he stands for. I loathe James Shields and all he represents about the failures of Sox past. But the facts on the ground right now suggest that neither guy has much trade value and that the delta between any expected return is less than it appears at 1st glance.

Pouring all day?

You can usually put down a prospect like Moncada (universal top 5, some top 1) for about 10-15 guaranteed. More often than not that's 20-30, pre arb anyways. I believe one of the benefits for the Sox of the Moncada deal is that the signing bonus paid to Moncada was already paid in full by the Red Sox.

You made me dig, one day I will come to you for a favor... This is what I said: Package him with whatever reliever the contender wants and try and squeeze a B- type out of it. Pay his freight if necessary. Jose is a 1.5 WAR player over the next 4 odd months or so. He's not signed long term. He doesn't have much trade value, regardless of semantics with hypothetical prospect grade returns. It's hard to believe but Shields has .8 fWAR...I'll spoil the fun if I give you Jose's!

Madrigal goes down, not really too much he could do that AB, pitcher just aced him.

Not sure if anybody will see it in the other thread so I'll put it here: Madrigal has made a couple nice plays in the early goings tonight. He's very smooth. The one time his arm was tested however he didn't blow me away. Two hopped a worm burner into the plate from about 10 feet off the dirt in shallow RF. Did manage to keep the runner at 3rd though. He's coming up to bat here after the commercials.

They were projected dead last in fWAR by ZIPS. This is old news. But, in case you want a fresh whiff of the shit, you can tune in a nightly basis.

Boys, according to Fangraphs, this game is OVAH! Am I doing this right?

Arguably when he started taking his PAs into the field. Which is something you'd HOPE the fucking manager would help with, given his worthlessness otherwise.

Just stay off Twitter, it's a circle jerk. Twitter crowned his ass in early May and now they are burying him 6 feet deep in mid June.

Bingo. As I've noted before, If Moncada bottoms out at a 700 OPS and a few errors in a couple weeks that's a pretty nice bottom for a 23 year old toolsy guy. Christ, we are used to seeing prospects bottom out with negative WAR and an OPS around 600. It speaks to his talent that he's managed to somehow keep the ship afloat even though he's struggling mightily.

Fathom you have a strange idea of how 23 year old pro athletes handle failure and success. And, I'd note even if that's true, that somehow he's scared shitless and is all shook over Madrigal -- where the hell is Jose Abreu (and to an extent) his Latin Horse Whisperer Manager to help him out?

Holy fuck.

I'd suggest he tunes down the football style training next offseason as well and works instead on finding the weight range that will be optimal for him as a MLB pitcher for the next decade. I can't imagine it's easier to find a release point when you put on 5-8lbs of lean mass. Body is just positioned a bit differently in the motion.

It's about 6.5 million or so, pro-rated roughly? If the Sox won't pay that to get a little sweeter return well, shit.

I'd hope so. If they won't, greg will have a point about cheapness.

Well that and about a delta of 40 in expected wRC+. JD is an elite hitter. Detroit did OK in that trade but I wouldn't expect Chicago to really do that much better, even with the contract differences. Jose is just not an elite hitter -- not since his rookie year anyways. Very good? Sure. ZIPS thinks he's worth 1.5 fWAR the rest of the way fwiw.

Fangraph's primer from late Feb: Astros Top Prospects Rk Name Age High Level Position ETA FV 1 Forrest Whitley 20 AA RHP 2018 60 2 Kyle Tucker 21 AA RF 2019 60 3 Yordan Alvarez 20 A+ LF 2020 50 4 JB Bukauskas 21 A- RHP 2019 50 5 Hector Perez 21 R RHP 2020 45 6 Cionel Perez 21 AA LHP 2019 45 7 Freudis Nova 18 R INF 2021 40 8 Corbin Martin 22 A- RHP 2020 40 9 JD Davis 24 MLB 3B 2018 40 10 Gilberto Celestino 19 R OF 2020 40 Gimme the low level guys and as many as possible. Sox are already loaded with premium talent at most levels above low A, swing for the fences here with years 4-6 from now in mind. Their scouting of toolsy latin guys (and perhaps with rutherford) seems to have vastly improved. Put it to the test.

Trading Abreu would net the Sox about 2 wins in the negative the rest of the way, maybe more depending on what pile of suck replaces him (although it's probably Davidson to 1st, Palka to DH, which might be OK), and move them up a draft spot or two. Something to consider. It's a hard call. It's why GM is a tough ass fucking job. I value Jose, love his professionalism, how he's worked on his body, and so on. I thank him for signing in spring when I saw him and all that he's meant to Chicago in his time here -- but if it's better long term to move him, well, you do it.

Ironic coming from a guy that thinks this is a 48 win team WITH HIM.