chitownsportsfan

it's the increased forces on the elbow with velocity, at least somewhat, contributing to all the injuries. Another component is how hyper aware we all are of it now. Back in Hawk's day if a guy got hurt and missed the rest of his career that was it. Never heard from him again. There's probably so many of these guys from the past that never even got a chance because of a blown elbow in HS or college or otherwise.

@Lillian I think it will come with experience for him but I doubt he'll ever hit for a very high average. I'd be happy if he can settle in around 260-280 with 25-35 HR a year and a slash line around 270/350/500. I can't think of many power hitters that are also spray hitters. Jose comes to mind. Maybe Eloy once he gets up here. Konerko obviously was. Guys that can maintain a high average (above 280) and hit 25+ homeruns a year are pretty rare, takes a real talented hitter, not many of them around in this era or any era really.

Ricky shouldn't have said anything, just stupid to have the MLB manager speculating on a prospect's medical condition. Anytime there is pain and soreness in a pitcher's elbow, so much so that he has to leave the game -- it's concerning. Hopefully it's a minor tear, at worst, not requiring surgery, but it's certainly concerning nonetheless.

Would anybody like to see a little stricter moderation? Like in the Abreu trade thread the last 5-6 posts are just off topic general FA evaluations and venting. Maybe make a general "rant and raves" thread or "White Sox FO direction" thread and try and herd most of that conversation in there.

I feel like because of his toe tap that Yoan is going to run hot and cold throughout his career. At least until he turns into a complete hitter and not just a pull guy. Nothing wrong with being a pull guy, almost all the best power hitters are, but as we've seen he can get pull happy and off balance. Next step in his evolution will be to start looking opposite way against the tougher pitchers, but for now I'll settle for ripping pitches he should rip, like that 95mph fastball right down broadway he hit 410 feet yesterday. Also, his defense has picked back up again.

in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king.

I think he's a local rich dude (limo company owner?) that is basically a super fan. Him and his buddy have had those seats for at least 5 years now.

It's a contagion... Of hitting.

Former coach of the Bears, Mike Ditka's spot. I've been there a couple times, great atmosphere if you like Chicago sports. Food is solid as well. https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g35805-d429390-Reviews-Ditka_s_Restaurant-Chicago_Illinois.html

"Give up a run, I've got reservations at Ditka's"

Where's that guy that posted "plenty of good sections available" yesterday? That cracked me up.

Someone really needs to inform Ricky that he's the setup guy and not a LOOGY.

That was a really nice read by Engel. Something we don't see enough from him.

Got the run in but he should have crushed that ball.

It's the first official weekend of summer and the club is playing ~35% ball. Eloy isn't up yet. Only reason I'm here is because I had to come into the office, employee called in sick.

coulda been worse.

Nothing on twitter.

Lighten up Francis, it's a long season.

Team is showing signs of life. Win today and that's a winning streak. It has been done before.

I like Lopez. I know TA is trying a "just relax" approach this year after pressing last year but I'm not sure laughing there was the right response.

He's been batting down in the order against LHP all year guys...

I'm sorry but this is a fundamental misunderstanding of how WAR is generated from linear weights. It was a shock to my system reading Tango's original public work, but his insight is as true now as it was then -- scoring and preventing runs in baseball is a math problem. You've got discrete events that occur in a non infinite set. You can assign values to events with amazing precision given the inherent setup of the game. Dividing by outs makes it all possible. No clock.

Great question! What having a stat like WAR does it allow us to estimate how much MLB teams pay for a "win". Right now, Fangraphs estimates that in a completely free market (which obviously it's not, but it's close enough for our purposes) a "win" is worth about 9 million. That's how Fangraphs does their "trade value" rankings. Their trade value is projected WAR * Cost Per WAR - money owed. That's why Q and Sale and Eaton produced such awesome return, it wasn't just how good they are, but how good they are relative to their contracts. This concept is also commonly called "surplus value". And of course that is the reason that prospects are valued so highly now. Prospects doesn't cost 9 million per win -- they cost almost nothing per win. Let's look at Jose's "surplus value" given all we just went over. Jose is owned about 10 million the rest of the year. He's expected to produce about 1.5 WAR (~15 million) of value. So his surplus value is only about 6 million. Well, what sort of prospects are worth about 6 million surplus value? Not very good ones. Not top 50 guys. Probably not even those ranked 100-150. Another way to to think about how to value prospects is to look at a chart of historical WAR by draft pick: Look how a random pick around 50 is only worth about 2.5 expected WAR. A pick around 150 is only worth about 1. Obviously most picks in the 3rd round never even make MLB. So back to Jose -- his value is about a mid 2nd round pick in the draft. But Whitley and Tucker have already proven they are worth way, way more than that. Whitley was ranked #9 on pipeline coming into the year. A prospect that highly rated is worth incredibly more than 1.5 WAR or 6 million surplus value. He's worth about 5-15 (big error bars here) WAR and accordingly about 50-80 surplus value. There's no way you're getting that for Abreu. Anyways, I've kinda bored of this post, hope it helped some.

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.