Balta1701

QUOTE (flavum @ Aug 4, 2015 -> 10:11 PM) Seeing the state of the team more clearly now that the 7-game win streak mirage is over, the Sox would be stupid to sign Samardzija. Waste of money for a bad team. Bring in Johnson and Montas, take your lumps, and stop fooling yourself that you're a good team. Montas is a full year away or more, just go look at his innings totals. He really 100% needs a full year at Charlotte next year first. It woulda been nice to have EJ up and working in August and September.

QUOTE (joegraz @ Aug 4, 2015 -> 10:28 PM) That's the problem....we won't. I personally have not spent a nickle on them Until the attendance is Holy Crap low, this continues. They will. They had a solid surge in ST sales this offseason, we saw that in the April attendance "low" figures where it's almost only season tickets sold. There was a boost of a couple thousand this year based on the offseason moves.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Aug 4, 2015 -> 10:13 PM) Aren't there typically more runs scored per game at uSCF from mid July to the end of September...better weather, and then you have September call-ups diluting rosters with 25-33% of the teams auditioning pitchers for the following season? If it were the september callups you'd expect the whole league to show that effect and that def. isn't true. Maybe the Cell does get warmer those months, but again, why would it be focused on us rather than a league wide thing? I seriously think it's a strong indication we just wear these guys down.

Hey congrats on the hit kid! Fun to have Sale and Quintana out of there isn't it?

So, barring an historic comeback, this will leave the White Sox 9-10 since the AS break.

QUOTE (WhiteSoxLifer @ Aug 4, 2015 -> 09:57 PM) The issue is how many other teams have better, equal or worse pitching in the second half of a season. The season is so long and generally the second half is trying to ride you pitching harder because of the chance for playoffs. League wide, over the last 6 years, maybe there's a trend downwards of about 0.05 runs on ERA in the 2nd half but it's darn close to first half = second half.

QUOTE (flavum @ Aug 4, 2015 -> 09:56 PM) We'll never know, but without getting to 49-50, I'd be interested to know who wouldn't be on this team right now, if anyone. Robin Ventura's managerial career is over in two months. I'll believe it when I see it.

QUOTE (fathom @ Aug 4, 2015 -> 09:49 PM) Drastic first half/second half splits My "wasted time when I should have been working" stat of the week. Since Cooper became the White Sox pitching coach, the White Sox's team ERA has been worse in the 2nd half than in the 1st half 9 of 12 times. 2 of those remaining years their team ERA got better by less than 0.1 run. Only 1 season out of 12 did the White Sox's team ERA get noticeably better in the 2nd half. I only did a mental average but usually our team ERA goes up by ~0.3-0.4 runs in the 2nd half.

Sale's ERA gone from 2.85 to 3.46 in the last 2 games.

QUOTE (Flash Tizzle @ Aug 4, 2015 -> 09:44 PM) It wasn't as if we were all on board for selling, or buying; with as many active members as post here you'd understand opinions differ. But not doing anything.......was pathetic and to me reeked of indecisiveness. Yeah I know, we'll never know the packages offered for Shark; but not selling him is looking to be a terrible move NOW, not even a week past the deadline. How is it going to looks months/years from now? No one will remember what we might have gotten for a player, we'll just continue to note how many roster holes we have. Just like we say how many roster holes we have but also people insist we didn't give up anything important in the 4 players we gave up. If people don't put 2 and 2 together with "we gave up 4 players and now we have no depth" when we actually have the names of the players, they'll even think less about the hypothetical players we could have gotten. We'll probably even have someone brag about the great return we got in the form of the drafted player 3 years away from their big league debut.

QUOTE (fathom @ Aug 4, 2015 -> 09:41 PM) Sale doesn't seem himself at all If he's still healthy...we might have just completely burned him out in May/June. Maybe there was a reason why they were so desperate to get him extra rest at the AS break.

QUOTE (fathom @ Aug 4, 2015 -> 09:35 PM) 3 of 4 bad to awful starts for him since the ASB His ERA in July was the highest for him of any month since he became a starter.

Last night, the Rays manager had the bullpen up in the 6th inning before their starter got in trouble one bit and pulled him as soon as Abreu tied it up. Tonight, Robin is getting Webb up as fast as possible just as Sale loads the bases.

FOX NEWS DEBATE LINEUP 1 Trump 2 Bush 3 Walker 4 Huckabee 5 Carson 6 Cruz 7 Rubio 8 Paul 9 Christie 10 Kasich

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Aug 4, 2015 -> 06:08 PM) I am inherently biased towards Trayce (have long been one of his biggest fans on this site) but I wonder if in this day and age he actually has a lot more upside then we give him credit. If you put him in RF, with his defensive skills and the new aged statistical measures, are we going to see a guy whose bat is mediocre but his glove is so strong, that we are talking about a pretty valuable overall rf'er (and a major long-term upgrade over Avi)? I'm probably overstating things but if Trayce's metrics grade out as good as his defensive tools suggest (and w/Avi's current struggles) this would probably be as good of an era as any to come up (and we might even see him be the type of guy whose bat, which initially will be below average, slowly grades into solid). To put some numbers on this I went to FG and sorted for right fielders. Out of qualified RF there are a couple guys who have an RC+ below 100 (so below average RF) who are putting up positive WAR numbers due to defense. Gregory Polanco has played basically the full season or close to it, has been worth 1 fWAR, has most of his value from defense and being a strong baserunner. He's put up a .678 OPS so far on the year. TT could be a better defender than him, but the 11/16 stolen bases this year at Charlotte suggests to me he won't be as valuable of a baserunner, at least to start, and that's without me taking any deserved shots at the coaching staff for the quality of baserunning in this org. If TT is a better defender than Polanco, over a full season, I think that's the OPS range we need to talk about for him to be a decent enough player in right field where we stick him at the bottom of the order and let him catch the ball. Guessing somewhere around .650 OPS might be the ~0 fWAR crossover, give or take a decent amount on each side since this is an educated guess game for now. Interestingly, those rough offensive numbers don't change all that much if he spends a fair amount of time in CF.

QUOTE (LDF @ Aug 4, 2015 -> 05:56 PM) well that is why i was sweetening the deal at 23 per, so that he and his agent can get the extra 3 mil per for a 3 yr deal. however what you are stating and the reason is perfectly understandable and is prob the better move, for in case of any injury. but again many thanks for the discussion. If you want to get him to drop the $80+ million in extra guaranteed money you'll need to do a lot better than a $9 million sweetener. You could probably get him to go 3/$120 or something ridiculous like that.

QUOTE (LDF @ Aug 4, 2015 -> 05:46 PM) if i remember correctly, before Adam laroche was signed, there was a discussion on this site of a nice signing for the dh. KM was discussed then as well. He was my preferred option, but I thought LaRoche would be more of a "sure thing" given that LaRoche had outperformed him in the past several years. Made sense to pay the premium for that guy since we were going to succeed and win the division with our strong roster this yera. D'Oh.

QUOTE (LDF @ Aug 4, 2015 -> 05:39 PM) i just want to verify. we are talking about Heyward, right?? now i see and agree with what you are saying. buy at 3 yr or even at 4 yrs with a 23 per is a nice option for the player. it will give him a chance to get a nicer contract at 30 yrs of age. No. He'll get something like 7/$140 with an opt out after 3-4 years. In other words you'll probably only pay him $60-$80 million, but the team takes on the risk of the full $140 million or whatever it winds up being in case he has a severe career setback or gets hurt, not the player.

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ Aug 4, 2015 -> 05:36 PM) Actually it probably can hurt. One reason Avi can't turn on the ball is because he has a huge upper body and is terrible at short arm hitting ( pulling your hands in, bending your arms to get the barrel on the ball to drive it while still keeping it fair.) That's why I suggested he open his stance because the way it is now he's too big too pull it. He's what the old time baseball coaches feared about weight lifting , getting too muscle bound . He need to lose upper body weight and become more flexible . Adding the pushups would only prevent him from pulling the ball even more. Ok, a hard running set

QUOTE (LDF @ Aug 4, 2015 -> 05:29 PM) oh man, i like to complain about everything. but serious, you are saying that 3 yrs at 23 per is not good enuf. this would give him the opportunity to get another contract at 30-31. You could give him 3/23 per where the opt-out is after 3 and that's what you pay, but he's going to get >>$100 million guaranteed. That's a way for teams to attract players - give them the security of a long-term deal but a chance to still take advantage of the market in a couple years.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Aug 4, 2015 -> 04:49 PM) edit: how did this reply make it in THIS thread? I just moved a bunch of posts into the other thread, sometimes things bounce into the wrong forum right after that happens, honestly beats me. Moved it over for you.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Aug 4, 2015 -> 04:31 PM) O'Malley, quoting a press release, from PP, on Politifact. Get me a CBO link or something. You couldn't bother going through where it evaluated the veracity of the claim?

QUOTE (AlSoxfan @ Aug 4, 2015 -> 04:18 PM) So how do you fix it? But my biggest question is Is he aware of it and working on it? The way he acts sometimes makes me think he thinks he's a star. I can't disagree with your thoughts. I think you're correct but if he is to be what this team's hoping him to be then he needs to spend all his time with the batting coach and thats not saying anything about his fielding. I don't know if he can be fixed, a lot of guys with talent never are. My belief is that the only way he'll ever have success is if he faces big league pitching but he'll never have success against big league pitching with his current approach and swing. His swing is entirely inside-out, which means he can take an outside pitch and bloop it to right field or bounce it up the middle, but he is totally unable to pull the ball with authority, so even if you make a mistake out over the plate to him he will not hit it out of the park. The only mistake zone is high and outside where he can line it the other way, if you keep the ball down, inside, over the plate, or out of the zone, he can't do any damage. Last week someone suggested having him open up his stance. I think that seems like a very good idea, it could force him into a position where he has to turn on the ball middle/in and drive it to LF with authority. If you sent him down to AAA or to Winter Ball with that swing reconstruction in mind, that could be a successful path, but no guarantee it works - it could take him from a .270 hitter with little power to a .200 hitter with more power. He also needs to either be more selective and change his thought process or see the ball better from the pitcher's hand, I don't know what his problem is there because I've never worked with him. Could be both. To your bigger question, I also have no idea if he's actually working on it. His approach doesn't seem like it's changed one bit this year, including either his batting stance or position at the plate. I'm sure he works with the hitting coach but they may think all he needs is mental tweaks or more practice and IMO that will not work. Personally though my favorite plan is still "40 pushups every time you hit the ball to the right side". It really can't hurt.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Aug 4, 2015 -> 04:05 PM) Really? Got a link for that? What else do they do, mammograms? because according to this, they don't operate ANY mammogram facilities. http://thefederalist.com/2015/08/03/guess-...arenthood-runs/ This one seems pretty fair.