Balta1701

QUOTE (L. Ron Paultard @ Aug 8, 2015 -> 09:29 PM) What I am saying is that Sox FO is in a UNIQUELY DIFFICULT position year-in and year-out. Almost lose-lose. Sure it's one of those chicken-egg dilemmas. Some of the short-sighted executive decisions only compounded & perpetuated the existing (systemic) problems. But it is what it is. They can't just tear it all down and risk going the Royals or Pirates "route" (read: almost 20 years of ineptitude). PS. And also to be fair, Sox fielded competitive and semi-competitive teams in 2009, 2010, 2012 and even the pre-season favoured 2011, 2015 incarnations. Easy to forget that 2011 as horribly disappointing as it was, Sox were within only 3 games of Detroit juggernaut in early September. Like I said, many Sox fans it's impossible to please, period. And the end result of the thinking that "We must compete this year and we can't field a below .500 team multiple years in a row" is going to be 4 years below .500 in a row and a team that isn't nearly competitive the next year wihtout a huge FA splurge, again. Because we must compete every year, we've been uncompetitive 3 years in a row. You can't tell me "This team can't afford to be uncompetitive 2 years in a row" when they've been an utter failure 4 of 5 years. They're going to be worse next year in attendance because the foolish fans that bought into the 2015 BS are going to be even more angry because of the 2015 failure. They bought into this bullcrap and the team took advantage of them - how on Earth do we expect them to repeat that mistake next year? We're now going to be in Cleveland Indians attendance territory because we took the people who were interested and flicked them off with the 2015 season.

QUOTE (BigHurt3515 @ Aug 8, 2015 -> 09:28 PM) How much longer Mr. Balta? July 2016? or wait until 2017? Let him play out 2015 at AA. He's been improving every month, this is a good thing. Let him start 2016 at AAA and see what he does. If he's ready to come up in July or August, great. If he struggles more than that at AAA, at least you were patient and didn't count on him as part of your competitive big league roster in 2017.

QUOTE (SoxPride18 @ Aug 8, 2015 -> 08:20 PM) Call him up to the majors. GOD NO I HATE YOU I WILL HURT YOU FOR THIS COMMENT PLEASE GOD NO NO NO NO NO NOONONONONONONNO

QUOTE (L. Ron Paultard @ Aug 8, 2015 -> 09:17 PM) Balta please you're defending John freakin Phegley. A guy with long-term health defect. An absolutely horrrific defender at an elite defensive position. Someone who cannot hit a breaking ball even in the minors to save his life by all accounts. Could he improve and become a respectable back-up catcher? Sure. Just like there are washed-up 40 year old LOOGY's sticking around the bigs simply because. That doesn't mean anything. Do I look like someone who is a Jeff Samardja cheerleader? Not even close. But as of 2014, he WAS an elite starter if not in terms of actual results, then certainly in terms of UPSIDE. And like it or not, you always pay extra for 'upside'. In retrospect, I think Billy Beane pantsed the White Sox GM yet again. I don't believe Shark is 100% healthy and if he weren't in a critically important pre-FA period or in a middle of a pennant race... I bet we would hear some rumours of "fore-arm tightness" or a prolonged "dead-arm". IMHO. Josh Phegley has been worth 1.3 bWAR this season. Soto has been worth 1.3 bWAR this season. Yes I'm defending Josh Phegley. Giving up on him because the org decides they didn't like him was stupid and it's exactly the kind of mistake this organization has been making for years - we don't like a guy even if they're talented so we assume they will never learn anything at the big league level. We then give them away because we don't like them. Then we assume guys we like will learn a ton at the big league level, like Avi, then they are slow to do so and somehow we are surprised when we're a below .500 team as a consequence. As long as we're ok with being a below .500 team permanently, it's a successful plan.

QUOTE (SCCWS @ Aug 8, 2015 -> 08:51 PM) I think Robin and staff should be replaced. I agree the team started poorly in April. But you say they were ill-prepared. Sale was hurt and Melky, Eaton and LaRoche had lousy months. How should Robin have gotten those 3 better prepared??? They are veteran players. The defense , especially, Johnson was bad. But that is on Hahn not Robin. The defense has been much better since they added Sanchez and Saladino but again that to me is on Hahn for going into this season w Micah and Conor as the incumbent infielders. I think Hahn gave Robin a flawed team in several areas, several veterans did not produce and Robin and staff are not able to react to correct players who are struggling. Take Melky. He stunk for several months and he has been on fire lately. Is Robin responsible for his slow start??? Is Robin the reason he is now on fire??? I would say Melky was in a slump and worked his way out of it. My guess with Melky remains that he was clean for 2 months and then resumed breaking the rules and hoping the testing regime wouldn't catch him. Only possible way a guy goes from that punchless to suddenly having huge power. But aside from that, if 3-4 guys on a team in the regular lineup all struggle for 2 months and under-perform...and they're not hurt, yes, that's the kind of thing that should fall on the manager for not having them ready to go.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 8, 2015 -> 08:49 PM) Anywho, F*** tonight. 10-11 now for this team since the AS break and 2-6 since Rick Hahn said "if we keep playing like this we'll be right there at the end." 7-1 against teams that have quit and 3-10 against teams that haven't. Congrats on your success and I hope you are judged on it Ricky. It's 100% what you asked for. F***ING PROVE ME WRONG.

QUOTE (L. Ron Paultard @ Aug 8, 2015 -> 08:58 PM) You are right, to a point. A deep farm system is indeed an asset overall --- it certainly beats a depleted one, as Sox have unfortunately found out the hard way a few years back. However, since overwhelming majority of prospects end up being big busts.... quantity only takes you so far. You need QUALITY. You need STARS. And since you're paying for future performance/upside, Jeff Samardja seemed to offer that in the eyes of Rich Hahn. It doesn't always work out in reality, but his reasoning was solid. This is where you are confusing the 2 things: contrary to the common media wisdom, the Sox problem is NOT that they traded away too many non-prospects like Semien or Ravelo. It may appear that way on the surface, but trust me it's NOT. No, the real, long-running, STRUCTURAL problem for the Sox has always been: terrible scouts + terrible "loyalty hire" coaches + lack of unified professional philosophy. Yes bright spots like Frank Thomas or luck-outs like Chris Sale aside... those many years of organization ineptitude add up to poison even the few good things that this franchise used to have going for it.e y If not for 2005 semi-fluke World Series... White Sox might have been contracted or relocated by now. True story. So unless this fundamental, structural ownership issue is addressed... don't expect Rick Hahn or anyone else to magically make beautiful trades. PS. Now, with that being said, baseball is one WEIRD-ASS game. Which is one of the reason we all love it. So if Sox were somehow to back into the playoff this year... they may just win the World Series again, hahah October is total crapshoot with Chris Sale on the bump! You're right, the structural problem with the White sox is "Terrible scouts + terrible decisions associated with that scouting." Problem is - giving up on Phegley, Semien, Bassitt - is exactly the "terrible decisions associated with that scouting." Josh Phegley is a backup C - like you say - and catchers never learn anything with additional work right? Players never learn better defense when given the opportunity. That's buried into the White Sox system. Rush guys up to the big leagues and make decisions on them as fast as you can because they never learn anything and never get better. So why not deal them for a pitcher 1 year from free agency, because Phegley will never do better in the next 5 years than he did in 2014. The reality is...if your players rush up to the big leagues and never develop...that's an indictment of your organization and your development more than anything else, because Phegley is already doing more than any other catcher in our Org is.

Jose on fire.

Anywho, F*** tonight. 10-11 now for this team since the AS break and 2-6 since Rick Hahn said "if we keep playing like this we'll be right there at the end." 7-1 against teams that have quit and 3-10 against teams that haven't. Congrats on your success and I hope you are judged on it Ricky. It's 100% what you asked for.

QUOTE (L. Ron Paultard @ Aug 8, 2015 -> 08:46 PM) Oh yeah, about that. It's hilarious poking fun at old Melky-pants, but Balta I like to point out that probably like 3/4 of big names we all know are or were on some sort of suice, HGH, greenies, designer stuff. For instance, oh say....Carlos Quentin circa 2008.... Jose Batista.... A-Rod/Texeira/Pujols types probably even this year.... or Mike "Mantle" Trout for that matter are legit.... you'll prolly be very disappointed. It's crazy. One of the things I always felt proud to be a Sox fan is because it's a relatively clean organization --- emphasis on relatively. /end OT And congrats on defending Melky. I'll continue to be proud of those defending him until his next suspension comes down.

QUOTE (Knackattack @ Aug 8, 2015 -> 08:29 PM) I think we gave up 4 players that might be lower end major leaguers.. Semien won't be anything special, Phegley is a backup C, Ravelo is a light hitting 1st baseman in the minors and Bassit is a back rotation starter.. the comp pick could end up being a star or another one of them or no one You're underselling all of them IMO. Lower end major leaguers, if they are 1-2 WAR players, means that in 1 season they are more valuable to us than Samardzija would be and they control them for 6 years. And there's a nonzero chance of each of them winding up as all star players, we just didn't want to develop them. We wanted to win right now instead of developing people and now we see how well it worked. The A's wanted to develop people and they're going to get more out of thsoe player this year than we get out of Samardzija. Then they have those 3 for 2 more years pre-arb, 3 Arb years, and then Ravelo on top of that. If we were a deep roster, ready to compete right now, that would make sense. We are not. The fact that our front office thought we were means that we'll be rebuilding again in 2016. That trade and our fail to trade Samardzija at the deadline has delayed our move back to competition by 2 years.

QUOTE (L. Ron Paultard @ Aug 8, 2015 -> 08:21 PM) Ya think this is why Oakland gave him up for a song? Maybe they knew that all those nasty sliders and splitters have slowly been shredding his right elbow, so it's a matter of time before his stuff is in decline. This is where Fangraphs is hopelessly behind the curve. Samardja stuff is nothing like I remember it was in the 1st half of the season with the Cubs during interleague starts (even if nominal average velocity hasn't dropped off by much. ) His stuff is just flat and he is overthrowing the four-seamer in order to compensate --- which only hurts his control and/or tips his secondary offerings to the opposing hitters. They didn't. They got 4 "close to big league players" for him. I've been saying this the whole year - the comp pick for Samardzija has a ~75% chance of being "just about as good as 1 of the 4 players we gave up for Samardzija". When we complain about having no depth to replace players, we gave up our depth to get Samardzija. When he complain about not developing a catcher or so many other positions, we gave up those positions to get Samardzija. We didn't give up immediate all stars for him, but we gave up players who could be really good with some work. The fact that people buy into people saying "we didn't give up much for Samardzija" is a big part of the problem with this team - the organization is obsessed with big names and is willing to sacrifice a deep, solid roster in exchange for it. Even if a big name doens't make up for weaknesses at other spots.

Samardzija has 1 strikeout through 4 innings. He simply cannot win when he's not striking people out. It's not his game. He's been down on strikeouts all year and the teams that don't chase stuff beat him. The Royals aren't chasing stuff so they just need to wait for him to miss a few pitches or for something to drop in and suddenly they'll score. They know that.

QUOTE (sin city sox fan @ Aug 8, 2015 -> 08:08 PM) We recently won 7 games in row. If we win 6 out of every 7 the rest of the way, we'll go better than 45-10. Can we play last place teams that have quit the whole time? Because since the AS break we're 3-9 against teams that aren't in last place in their division. 3-2 Royals, Perez hammers a ball to right. Rios singles, so 2 on, 2 out.

2-2, tie game, really hard hit ball to Saladino scores runner from 3rd, two straight fielders choices to turn outs while scoring runs. Really decent block of the ball by Tyler to keep the ball from LF but both balls were too tough to turn DPs.

2 on 0 out in the 4th for Samardzija after a walk on a close pitch. Close = probably a strike. Samardzija has 1 strikeout through 3 innings. When he's successful he strikes out 2.6 per 3 innings.

Cabreroid had some face 2 face words with Perez after he scored on that GIDP. Watch for things getting chippier later.

2-0 Sox on LaRoche GIDP. No RBI. Cabreroid scores.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Aug 8, 2015 -> 03:58 PM) Good luck to the people over there if they let him out. I'd make him wear a tracking device at all times so they know where he is and what he's doing. Dude come on, there are literally 3 comments explaining why this is wrong that you ignored.

QUOTE (L. Ron Paultard @ Aug 8, 2015 -> 03:56 PM) That's nothing if not, ahem, "substance-intensive" there, Balta. Snarky "gotcha!" Twitterism burnnnn ouchie. As I said, this is why politics is such pits at its general best, and the Iran thing? Hail Allah the Mercifully Magnanimous, it's partisan shibboleths and dog-whistles non-stop. And yes, compared to my peers I am only *moderately* liberal. Somehow I question your sincerity.

HR Abreu, 1-0 Sox. Happened within 5 seconds of the Pirates beating the Dodgers. That was NCAA Tourney worthy fun.

Also, Hawk said Eaton had an MRI on that shoulder today. His statement was "it was probably obviously sore" or something like that. I think it's crazy for a guy to be sore enough to have an MRI on a joint in the afternoon and still be in the lineup that night. That just strikes me as nuts. If a guy has to have an MRI during the day and is that sore, he needs to sit that night. It's one night, this is literally the definition of why you have a bench. He'll probably homer later because of this comment and I don't care. You are hurt enough for an MRI, you sit, that's crazy.

So let's see... While cleaning up after grilling, Hawk denied being part of Jesse James's gang.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Aug 8, 2015 -> 03:52 PM) Third base isn't that position anymore. It used to be and the top guys at third still are, but now it's a place where 10-15 homers and 50-70 RBIs is plenty. The average OPS in baseball among 3b is .747 this year. That's still 50 points higher than 2b and 75 points higher than SS. I just don't know if defense is enough to make up for Saladino's offense there if he's a .650-.700 OPS ish player...at least not on this roster unless there's someone else who is above average and actually producing runs.

2 starts against the Royals this year Samardzija has a 6.23 ERA in 13 innings. 6 walks, only 4 Ks, 2 HBP, 3 HR. So far this year he hasn't been able to strike the Royals out. They work him over and eventually he gives them pitches to hit because he can't strike them out. Either he has to get some Ks or he needs to really get these guys to make some weak contact for once.