Balta1701

QUOTE (The Ginger Kid @ Jul 6, 2015 -> 02:09 PM) not sure that I would classify Chris Sale as cy young as "long shot." There are some studs out there but what he's doing this season, the streak, cannot and will not be ignored come voting time. Hell, who knows how far this will go...might reach legendary proportions. Sale's problem is that his April was worse than all of the other contenders, so he needs to offset that clearly (especially when he's pitching for a team at the bottom of the league with no pressure games down the stretch). He needs to be clearly better than everyone else for most of the season to offset that. In June he was, but that pace is ridiculous. If he keeps this up for the next couple months, even if the K-streak is broken, he'll earn it easily. But, he was in about that position last year - Chris was getting close but Sale could have thrown one or two more great starts and made it clear, esp. by having an ERA come in under the magic 2.0 line, then Sale gave up 5 runs in his 2nd to last start and that probably knocked him out.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 6, 2015 -> 01:19 PM) If Forbes is to believed, the White Sox have cash in the 9 figures stashed away somewhere if you add all their profits the past 20 years and deduct taxes. Boras said the other day every team has at least $120 million to play with before they sell a ticket. It probably is at least slightly overstated, but not any more than the White Sox break even every year line they used for years. Do the math. Even if Forbes is correct and they make $20 million in year X, even if they raise the payroll $20 million the next year and make $15 million, they still have a pre-tax income of $35 million. And the only year Forbes has shown them losing money recently was 2013 when they lost 99 games and lost $3 million. Of course those figures included the $10 million bonus they gave Abreu after the season ended. I'd say each team having about $120 million in revenue before ticket sales is probably accurate. The other issue though is that running the franchise isn't free. It costs money to open the door, it costs money to run the front office, to pay drafted players, etc., and those numbers don't go away even though they don't show up in the team's payroll on the field.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 6, 2015 -> 01:09 PM) That they wasted 3 years, 30 million on Billy Butler You reminded me to check and he's been worse than last year. Impressive how he's completely fallen apart the last couple years and makes me glad we didn't sign that one.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jul 2, 2015 -> 04:48 PM) I kind of like him. This latest flap is stupid and overblown. He's against a swarm of immigrants entering the country illegally. Obviously he doesn't think they ALL commit crimes like rape. It's just more of America today ... piling on and acting all offended. But like I said, Trump is making everybody uncomfortable by NOT BACKING DOWN. Put him on your talk show and beware. He'll fight back and maybe your show will get boycotted depending on your (host) reaction. (Tweet was deleted after about 24 hours but obviously captured by people beforehand)

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 6, 2015 -> 12:55 PM) You could have 2 years ago but then he followed up a down year with a very good year and you could point to potential evidence (none of us know for sure) of an injury which significantly impacted his play in that down year. Nelson Cruz was busted too...doens't mean he isn't still a good offensive player to this day. Heck, he's been better since he was busted. Clearly the roids were always a risk but Melky also had good line drive rates / contact rates as well, which were further indications of his early season struggles being more to do with bad luck or even potentially a league adjustment period. Did he have his struggles that went with the bad luck (absolutely cause at the end of the day I'm sure mentally he was fatigued when he looked at the numbers he was producing and probably was pressing). Now Alexei on the other hand, his secondary stats and eye test are causes where I wouldn't blame someone to say he's done. I'd also say Sox best chance of getting anything is to hope he has some form of a hot streak between here and the deadline. I also don't have an appreciation for any "off" the field issues that might be impacting Ramirez (which has happened in the past). First point - he was in Torotno last year, so "league adjustment period" is hard to understand. Secondly, I did the exercise last week. I don't have the software to do a full statistical case, but his hits this year are generally falling shorter in the OF than his hits last year. There are definitely a couple clouds of hits in front of each OF that he produced last year which are simply missing this year and his OF hit clouds have moved more shallow. It's generally consistent with him no longer being able to drive the ball over the head of the OF and as a consequence the OFs gradually playing him more shallow, thus taking away hits. This was a major part of the criticism of his game when he was non-tendered by the Braves after washing out in New York, that he never developed a power stroke (not even HR power, extra-base power) and as a consequence the OFs didn't have to respect the ball over their heads, only the balls in the gap.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 6, 2015 -> 12:52 PM) Depends on how Sox treated Abreu's cost but the revenues are a great basis to go on and much more verifiable then the forbes number. I could also look at Forbes valuations and say that when teams have been sold they have been horribly inaccurate. I suppose someone could go back and look at Forbes numbers from a few years ago vs. some of those franchises who had financials leaked and see how close they were. Also, operating revenue could be misleading as it depends on what they include / exclude. Should be simple but again, could be more complicated. This is also another topic that has been discussed a lot. The White Sox franchise value has skyrocketed over the last decade, as has most professional sports teams. If the White Sox wanted to they could use that increasing value to lose $20 million or so every year and still turn out ok. They have made it clear they will not regularly cash in equity on the team in order to fund payroll. We've had a number of posters get angry about their refusal to do so in the past, but that's that. And yes, their estimates for the value of the teams are based on the financials, they're not treating them as a "luxury good" which is how many of the people buying them are actually treating them, so their numbers for franchise value keep being way too low.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 6, 2015 -> 12:49 PM) Melky has a historical trend of being an above average hitter so conclusions reached over a short term period were as dumb as people jumping to alternative conclusions based upon 1 Danks start or 5 Gordon Beckham games (they were completely against good, large sample sizes). Am I allowed to note again the large, important exception to the entire "historical trend" or can I just call it implied and be done?

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 6, 2015 -> 12:46 PM) The gate is minor to all the revenues coming from tv deals. Beginning in 2014, each team got an extra $25M per year alone from national tv deal(Roughly $52M per year). And according to fangraphs, the Sox get $450K for every game broadcast on their network (plus they have an equity ownership). While not all games are on comcast, I'm going to just be lazy and assume they did (and any difference for the other games would probably be a rounding figure of +/- $5M) but that would equate to $72.9M on TV revenue for local deal (I will say this seems high but nothing compared to deals like the Angels signed (thought relatively relevant example given 2nd largest team in a major market, albeit they have better draw, etc). That means with just tv deal you are talking $125M / yr. According to a link from statistica (no idea how valid), Sox took in $43M in gate revenue last year (by far the lowest in a long time) and that gives you revenues of $168M (excluding radio rights, which I presume are small and random advertising + merchandising). The Sox also, according to forbes, had operating income of ~32M (I say this with a grain of salt cause they are totally guessing here) but bottom line, you take out your G&A expenses (which probably get largely off-set from the merchandise / advertising / etc) and you could easily justify a net even profit base with a $150M payroll (I'm leaving in $18M for minor league and international + buffer for G&A not covered by those smaller costs). Oh and lets not forget the valuation of the club continues to go up. Sox can do what they want, but even with horrifically low gate sales, they can support a payroll much larger then today's (based upon my very rough math and by now means do I say this is exact). I still think that by far the most important number in that list is the $32 million. Their operating income last year based on the Forbes estimates was about $30 million, and then suddenly we saw a payroll increase of just about that amount. We've played this game for years and it actually works out quite well, the Forbes numbers generally do track the White Sox payroll.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jul 6, 2015 -> 12:44 PM) lmao i love the Viciedo revisionist history here! I loved that one time that he totally misplayed a ground ball into a triple or inside the park homerun. Except it wasnt just one time. But i will forget all of those times because once, in between striking out 4 times swinging from his heels at whatever the pitcher threw, he hit a homerun off a lefty. good times You're doing the exact same thing with Melky Cabrera.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jul 6, 2015 -> 12:45 PM) I would take Melky and all of his phantom Balta branded steroids over Dayan Viciedo every day and twice on sunday Phantom? Seriously?

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jul 6, 2015 -> 12:40 PM) Yea no Take a look at Viciedo's numbers. 50-100 points better OPS than Melky and ~comparably bad defense.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jul 6, 2015 -> 12:37 PM) yea they really miss a guy who isnt even in the league this season Still would be upgrade over Melky.

"The worst thing a manager can get from his front office is a vote of confidence." The worst thing a front office can do is deny a conflict within the front office?

So here's one that drives me nuts yesterday. When commenting on the defense, people will note that the White Sox simply don't have good defenders and nothing the manager or coaching staff can do will change that. Here's an example of where this hits the coaching staff and organization. First inning yesterday, ground ball to the left side, Gillaspie has to move a good distance to get to the ball and he misses it. It wasn't an impossible play, it wasn't an easy play, but he was given an error on it. He's not a great defender so he might make that play some fraction of the time and miss that play some fraction of the time, maybe 50/50, 75/25, who knows. Even if he practiced it every single day there's so many little differences in every hop that he's still going to miss that one sometimes. Fine. He's not a great defender and that's not on the coaching staff. Gillaspie then becomes an idiot. After missing the ball, he picks it up and rifles it as fast and as hard as he can in the direction of 1b without setting. Even if he made a perfect throw he wasn't going to get the runner. This was a completely stupid throw. There were probably 5 year olds in the stadium who have seen enough baseball to know that ball was ticketed for the dugout, and of course, the runner goes to 2nd on the play. Gillaspie gets the 2nd error on the play, runner scores a few batters later. The first one? Fine, Gillaspie just physically could not make that play every time and the coaching staff can't change that. The 2nd part? How on Earth can a player not know to stick that ball in their pocket and take the error rather than making things worse? That's what I mean when I say there's a difference between being weak defensively and what we see with this team: sloppy, stupid, poorly coached, and poorly prepared. We could be weak defensively, have weak defenders, guys who don't have good range, but we could at least be smart about it. Instead we have the guy who decides that he needs to be the hero and make an inhuman play and it ends up giving up a free run.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 6, 2015 -> 11:17 AM) Melky, who some excluded was done (and to which I have said consistently, it is was and is way too early to make those sort of conclusions), is also posting a .907 OPS over the past 23 games. Every other time this season someone has been proud of a player turning it around (Beckham, the whole bullpen, Danks) a few weeks later we were back to noting how terrible they had been.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 6, 2015 -> 10:26 AM) Agree completely with your post, As I pointed out about a week ago, adjusted for standard MLB inflation, Sox relative payroll from 5 years ago would be pushing $150M in today's dollars. New tv deals, etc. yes, gate attendance is down and the Sox TV deal isn't near as sweet as anyone who has recently renegotiated, but they have room in the coffers and have some cost controlled "elite" talent. To remind again...they also significantly slashed ticket prices during that time span.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Jul 5, 2015 -> 05:01 PM) Right but that's because we had Hector Noesi. Ideally, I'd like them to do better than that. We've been, once again, lucky with pitcher health. I think the dieal plan for Fulmer going into the season is depth with a September callup. We can adjust accordingly if we have options. While that might be my ideal plan as well, that's not how the White Sox treat pitchers like him and I'm going to reserve my venom for when they call up Anderson too early or something like that.

QUOTE (GreenSox @ Jul 5, 2015 -> 05:21 PM) Rodon certainly didn't force the issue....he was having command problems in Charlotte The Sox front office forced the issue. He's not learning the 3rd pitch in Chicago...Ventura and Cooper are using him to get the next out. What he's learning is how to be better than Noesi. And wasting service time in the process (and I realize he'd still get hit for a year anyway unless they sit him until this time next year) I'm not sure he wouldn't get better coaching from Dotsun anyway. Actually, he kinda is. He's gradually using the change more.

Now webb in heaps of trouble.

QUOTE (BigHurt3515 @ Jul 5, 2015 -> 04:19 PM) 2nd My bad, I'm paying as much attention as the players.

Another out on the basepaths. First out of the inning made at 3b.

Joseph really worked a great at bat there and finally outdid Webb.

Looks like Herm tending to a blister on one of Rodon's fingers.

One good thing about Abreu being so tall is that when the infielders don't pay any attention to each other and all call for the ball, Abreu can just catch the thing and everyone else will just bounce off of him.

Much more impressive stats for Webb so far this year than last. 10/2 K/BB.