Balta1701

QUOTE (SoxPride18 @ Nov 17, 2014 -> 07:46 PM) I'd love LaRoche and Sandoval/Melky Not the kind of leadership I'm hoping for.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Nov 17, 2014 -> 06:34 PM) Barring any major surprises (spending $10-12 million per year on a 3/4 guy), there's little to lose giving Bassit a shot at starting...or even Beck. There's a strong case to be made that both of those guys could get very useful time in the minors next year and that there's not "little to lose" in either case. Beck has 7 starts at AAA. Bassitt has 110 innings above A ball. Yes, calling guys up who just arrived at AA is a thing the White Sox do, but there's reason to think both of those guys should have plenty of stuff to work on next year.

Well at least we have confidence that the grand jury proceedings were fair and that no one has gotten an inside view about how it's going.

Just so it's said, I want neither him nor the fake company he created to try to cover up his juicing to receive money from the white sox, but y'all knew that anyway so I'm shutting up.

QUOTE (WhiteSoxLifer @ Nov 17, 2014 -> 02:35 PM) Would you be happy with a 4 plus era and say 20 starts with about 150 innings or less. It depends on what we're paying for that. IMO, someone who is likely to give McCarthy might have priced himself out of that realm by pitching very well in 2014 and putting up 200 innings, but a righty with a good chance at throwing 100-150 innings and maybe being pretty good at it seems like a perfect fit to me. We already know who the insurance policy is!

Thibs says Rose is doing a little better, did a little more today, but he will not play against Clippers. — Nick Friedell (@NickFriedell) November 17, 2014

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 17, 2014 -> 02:24 PM) The counterpoint to that would be that Cutler seems to have regressed this year. His numbers on most counts actually seem better than last year. Higher completion %age, higher rating, more TD, more yards, similar Y/A. And yet the offense is performing far, far worse.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Nov 17, 2014 -> 02:28 PM) A lot of employer plans were above and beyond the ACA so what happened was they either cut the costs or brought their plans down for various reasons. That didn't happen to be the case with my company but it also comes down to people's use, etc. If costs of care are up, then insurance costs will be up too. Also an important addition...a cut in benefits from a company like you've described is basically a company wide paycut. If there is a strong economy where wages are rising, a company wouldn't be able to afford to do that without knowing it would be susceptible to losing workers to better paying jobs. The crappy, high profit/low wage economy we're developing plays into this conversation through that important mechanism.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 17, 2014 -> 01:24 PM) How did we get them so cheap, considering what Robertson turned down in NYY. I think Robertson turned down the QO because something like 4/$40 gives him a lot more guaranteed money. 3/36 as quoted isn't far from that, and it would guarantee him $20 million more.

So what the **** was the deal with lind? They're trying to save money to spend on overpriced FAs so they're giving away their fairly priced players?

QUOTE (flavum @ Nov 17, 2014 -> 01:18 PM) Not that it's going to happen, because it's not...but if the Sox announced that they signed matching 4 yr/36 mil contracts for David Robertson and Andrew Miller, what would your reaction be? I'd be genuinely surprised that the White Sox gave up their 2nd round pick for a pricey relief pitcher and expect that they're probably going to look for another major FA signing somewhere as a consequence.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 17, 2014 -> 11:31 AM) Webb is a guy who just needs to start in a less intense role. Give him the 5th/6th maybe 7th inning work. Let him get his reps and earn a move up to the later innings. No reason to rush him. I could actually see Webb benefiting from some extra time at AAA (and I note that Carroll isn't on your list of relievers and I do think there's a role for him out there)

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Nov 17, 2014 -> 10:31 AM) Why aren't you taking percentages into account? And if they were just as bad in the 7th inning, it shows the bullpen cost them when the game was tied or they were down a run or 2 but got blown out when a blown save wasn't recorded. The bullpen was horrible. The team won 73 games, but some of that was because guys like Wilkins were playing. If they were playing to win as much as possible after they were basically non contenders, it isn't inconceivable this team would have won 2 or 3 more. There needs to be several moves made, but a solid bullpen makes this team a lot better. Their save percentage was 4th worst in MLB. A team that made the wild card play in game (oakland) was 3rd worst. No matter how you slice it, this bullpen was bad but not historically so. It contributed to us being bad but it was one problem in a hugely long list. That's why throwing big money at single positions is, to my eyes, a mistake - because we have failures up and down the list. Fixing one or two of them isn't enough.

QUOTE (Al Lopez's Ghost @ Nov 17, 2014 -> 10:05 AM) Not all blown saves are created equally. There's the bone crushing ninth inning blown save, and there's the statistically accurate, but less important seventh inning blown save. I'm wondering if a little deeper analysis would show that the Sox were worse than these numbers would lead you to believe. I've still got nothing after looking through a variety of stats. We're not the worst in 9th inning ERA, we're just about as bad in the 9th as we were in 7th-9th, and in all cases not historically so, a couple teams were worse in every ranking. We're 6th from the bottom in fWAR out of the bullpen. Pretty much every stat you want, we're ~bottom 5, with the same teams about tied with us and the same teams worse than us. I know it's tempting to say this is the worst bullpen in history and all we have to do is moderately improve it and we'll be competing for the central but it's just not true. This was a bad bullpen, but not ridiculously so, and pretty much every stat says the same thing. A great bullpen would be a big boost but it wouldn't make this anywhere close to an 88 win team on its own.

QUOTE (Swingandalongonetoleft @ Nov 17, 2014 -> 09:38 AM) That's surprising. I guess it just feels and sounds worse than it is. There was a period of time this past season where it felt like it was a daily occurrence. We were not good or even decent by any stretch of the imagination, but the pen was not legendarily bad. Improving it will help, but improving the pen alone doesn't make the White Sox an 88 win team from the position they're at now.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Nov 16, 2014 -> 10:53 PM) Trestman doesn't seem to think that is a good idea. This takes away so many of his big plays by oversimplifying everything and making it about quick pre-snap reads, etc. I just think Jay is a very bad fit for what Trestman is trying to do but again, Jay has to stop giving the ball up so much anyway. I say trade him if we can or bring in a defense coach and figure with the weapons and a solid OC who focuses on the run, we can protect Jay enough if we can rebuild the D to be completive with Jay while we try to find a new QB. By the way, this more just shows how bad Minny is then the Bears being all that good, imo. Jay had some awful turnovers in this game but at least he also had a number of very big plays and the offense appeared to be opened up quite a bit more. I still don't know where and why we don't run the ball more. This really does make a great case that Jay is a coach killer. If Jay's such a bad fit for what Trestman does, and Jay's such a bad fit for what Martz does, and he's such a bad fit for what Mike Tice does...at the very least it seems incredibly tough to find a coordinator that Jay is a good fit for.

QUOTE (Swingandalongonetoleft @ Nov 17, 2014 -> 09:18 AM) That's so depressing to actually see written out. 6 teams had more blown saves than the white sox and 3 other teams had 21. 2 teams with 21 or more blown saves made wild card play in games. The median number of blown saves in MLB was 19.

QUOTE (WhiteSoxLifer @ Nov 16, 2014 -> 08:49 PM) So say rodon isn't ready to go into the rotation right off the bat, doesn't sox then technically need 2 starters plus sale and quintana to go into the rotation so that only one of danks/noesi is the 5th starter. Correct. Unfortunately, the White Sox have so far been unwilling to say that Danks has a shot of being pushed out of the rotation. I still am holding out some hope that Noesi, with a full offseason under coop, will continue to show some improvement and wind up a tolerable, back of the rotation piece.

QUOTE (BigHurt3515 @ Nov 16, 2014 -> 09:04 PM) I assume they want pitching/MI At least for now I think the pirates are pretty happy with their middle infield.

QUOTE (Tex @ Nov 16, 2014 -> 08:25 PM) I am not certain what it will take until the pendulum swings back to statesmanship and cooperation from the present state. At some point healthcare will be like Social Security, both sides will threaten that the other plans on taking it away. The other side plans on taking away the health care of tens of millions of people.

QUOTE (WhiteSoxLifer @ Nov 16, 2014 -> 08:09 PM) the only really weak link last year was paulino which ended up true. but then sale got injured and johnson ended up blowing up. sofar the rotation right now is sale, quintana, danks, noesi and someone of bassitt/rodon etc. even if you sign someone and rodon isnt ready yet then you have still have danks and noesi in the rotation. honestly the sox better hope that rodon is ready to slide into the rotation. still not that good to compete if noesi and danks is your 4th/5th starter. Rodon has never pitched more than 130 innings in a season and that was a college level. He might well contribute even to a contending team, but you absolutely can't count on him to absorb a full season as a mid-rotation starter on a contending team. Someone else is going to have to provide some decent innings in that role for at least 2015.

QUOTE (StRoostifer @ Nov 16, 2014 -> 04:19 PM) I'm with Baron on this. The Sox blew 21 save opportunities in 2014 and have money to spend so spend it wisely and not on some cheap s*** fresh off the bargain basement scrap heap. If they converted just half (10/11) of those opportunities, they end the season with 83-84 wins and fan base with a much more positive outlook on 2015. I know it sounds like a nice easy thing to do, oh just don't blow 1/2 of those saves, but go a step deeper. Exactly 1 team in all of MLB had 11 blown saves or fewer - the Padres. Even the Royals tallied more blown saves than that. So to say yours a different way, "If their bullpen was replaced by a bullpen even better than the Royals, they'd have been above .500!". Does that put into context how truly huge of a jump that would require?

QUOTE (Jake @ Nov 16, 2014 -> 04:00 PM) Yeah I think it will certainly look like we tried to address the pen by the end of the offseason, which likely means signing at least one recognizable name to a contract That is kinda what they did last year, Scott Downs is at least a consistent name who had been around for a decade+ and quite reliable.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 16, 2014 -> 12:38 PM) That is my question. Suppose the idea that we have 40 million is right. Suppose we offer $25 million to Moncada, and win. That gives us $50 million in payments and penalties. Are people OK with forgetting about the free agent market to spend that kind of money on Moncada? Remember he can 't sign a major league deal, so I don't believe you can spread that money out like a normal dea. If they think he's worth a >>$50 million contract, I'd think spending it on him is a better setup than spending it on lots of the other mediocre guys available so far.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 16, 2014 -> 12:40 PM) What are the odds of Johnson or Anderson staying healthy in reality? Probably 1 in 3?" That's fine. I just want the first 1/2 of a season from them.