Balta1701

So comedy of errors already, even some help for the Bears by the refs blowing a whistle too early, big special teams play, on pace for a 3-8 start?

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Nov 15, 2014 -> 03:04 PM) Are you serious? You wouldn't do Sanchez for Castro straight up??? That's mind-boggling crazy to me. Even if you don't think he's an upgrade over Flowers, he'd give us a great tandem of catchers to work with when we currently don't even have a backup. Also, Sanchez's ceiling is solid middle infielder and I really think he'll end up being just a utility guy (although a good one). That has some value, but let's not carried away here. There aren't a lot good catchers out there and two years of Castro would be far more valuable than six years of a reserve infielder. He'd be worth more but he'll also be paid more, and he'll give us an "improved" tandem of catchers, not a great tandem unless he's the 2013 Jason Castro. As others pointed out in this thread, his numbers that year look like an outlier that he isn't likely to reproduce without significantly improving again. Look at it another way, Castro is 2nd year arb, so let's assume a $4 million salary in 2015 and $6 million in 2016 after $2.45 mil in arb year 1. Can you convince me that I couldn't get similar production for that money without giving up the middle IF?

QUOTE (Baron @ Nov 15, 2014 -> 02:13 PM) Who were you thinking about? More than likely they'll want some of our infield prospects I wouldn't give up any of those guys frankly. I think Sanchez or any of the other ones has a good chance of being more useful to us than Castro. Maybe not next year alone, but counting the fact that Castro is close to FA and the rest have 6+ years? Some minor league reliever is about my limit. Maybe one of the starters we have at AAA who isn't high on the list. You might be able to talk me out of Beck just because we have so many other starting candidates on their way up, but I'm iffy and that depends on what the org thinks of him.

QUOTE (Jake @ Nov 15, 2014 -> 01:49 PM) It's worth bearing in mind that 13 years from now, $30 million per year is going to be the number that guys like Nick Swisher get Depending on the NTC and him agreeing, he'll still be completely tradeable with this contract. Sure, it rules out teams like the Padres and so on, but >1/3 of the league would still give up something useful to take that contract on.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Nov 15, 2014 -> 01:53 PM) Lol...Flowers is going to regress because he got lucky last year. As I mentioned before, his K%, BB%, & ISO were amongst his career lows. You quoted a bunch of stats fueled by luck and said he progressed. If he doesn't either learn to K less or BB more, his stats will go down significantly next year. As for Castro, feel free to overreact to a bad 2014, but he is closer to the 2013 version than the player we saw last year IMO. His BB% has been at or above 9.3% in every single season of his professional career prior to last year when it dropped to 6.6%. That screams outlier to me and I strongly believe that rate will return closer to career norms in 2015. If so, he'll be incredibly more valuable than the player Flowers is likely to be next year. Again, just my opinion. I'm not saying he wouldn't be more valuable than Flowers, just that it's not worth trading anything particularly useful for that upgrade since it wouldn't be very big.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Nov 15, 2014 -> 12:59 AM) Listen, I think LF & DH are bigger holes for next year, but I think catcher is just as big of a problem long-term. Flowers may have enough defensive ability to be a passable starting catcher temporarily, but his offensive game will prevent him from ever being more than mediocre IMO. One thing worth noting...in 2006 the average OPS of catchers in MLB was .743. Last year, it was .687. Tyler put up a .693 OPS last year and the team put up a .688 mark as a whole. With a ballpark factor included that's just a tiny bit below the midpoint. That's not going to carry us, but "about the midpoint of the league" would be tolerable long term. Like a lot of positions, with he way offense has fallen off, everyone needs to rescale what they call mediocre.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Nov 14, 2014 -> 08:46 PM) http://voices.suntimes.com/sports/don-coop...raft-prospects/ It was Aiken in the beginning. There's a difference between Cooper liking a guy who wasn't available when we drafted and Cooper liking a guy that Hahn then passed on. If Aiken was 1 and Rodon was 2, I'm ok with that.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Nov 14, 2014 -> 08:36 PM) We will know five years from now. Cooper also had his favorites among the first round pitchers...Rodon wasn't #1. How do you know that? All I heard was he didn't like Kolek.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Nov 14, 2014 -> 04:47 PM) Except that Jason Castro is a potential all-star at his peak. Plus having two very capable catchers is not a bad thing. With him being pretty close to FA and off a down season, I'm not opposed, but the trick is that the price shouldn't be that high - someone with talent but who the org doesn't like and wants to move out of the way for whatever reason.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 14, 2014 -> 03:33 PM) I see where you are coming from, but I'd still rank Thompson higher as a prospect. Higher likelihood of more power, has shown he can perform at higher levels offensively and defensively, and frankly the extra speed of Engel by itself isn't enough to offset those things for me. This part bothers me a bit because he's done a poor job, IMO, of showing that he can perform offensively at a AA level. That might have been one of the biggest disappointments I saw from my time visiting the Barons - he looked the same in 2014 as in 2013, same weaknesses.

QUOTE (Tex @ Nov 14, 2014 -> 03:17 PM) Moving 250 miles north means about 20 degrees colder. Welcome to the party.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Nov 14, 2014 -> 01:46 PM) What were their problems with it? If you want to read it as cynically as possible, that any sort of publicly-available plan would be too good and private insurers couldn't compete with it. "This is why we can't have nice things."

QUOTE (bmags @ Nov 14, 2014 -> 01:38 PM) Talk to Nelson/Landrieu My personal favorite will always be Lieberman. Trying to find a way to sabotage it close to the time there was a final, passable bill, in December of ~2009 (I think) he did a press conference where he outlined a plan to replace everything that was being talked about with a proposal to drop the Medicare age to 55. As soon as all the Democrats said "Absolutely OMFG YES" he decided that was a terrible idea and never spoke of it again.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Nov 14, 2014 -> 01:30 PM) I know I probably say this every year about this time, but there is a very simple way to do this: I just got my listing of Federal employee plans/premiums for 2015. There are nationwide FFS plans ranging from $375/month for an individual up to $1650/month for a family, plus there are dozens of regional HMO plans. There is no reason that these plans couldn't be offered to everybody. Much easier solution than the convoluted law we ended up with. We know.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Nov 14, 2014 -> 10:29 AM) I've maintained from the start that this would fail for these very reasons, not because it didn't have good intentions or even accomplish some good things, but because it looked to "fix" only one area of the industry, insurance. It was an easy villain to target, everyone hates insurance companies, but nobody looks at the people behind the curtain that actually send out the bills. In the end, the law did absolutely nothing to curtail the rising and arbitrary costs charged by hospitals/physicians. And so long as insurance companies can justify rate increases (and they can, because of how much doctors/hospitals charge), they too, will in turn continuously raise what they charge for their insurance packages. Just to point out, it didn't do "nothing" about these problems. It did not go far enough, but it also did not go far enough to rein in the insurance industry. The PPACA required hospitals to actually begin publishing their rates for various procedures and how they come up with the numbers. Those began being published last fall, and made quite a few headlines. That data is only publicly available because of the PPACA. Having anyone able to do anything about it is of course a much bigger issue, but we can say the same things about a lot in this industry.

QUOTE (StRoostifer @ Nov 14, 2014 -> 10:04 AM) That depends on what the plan is for 2015. If the Sox are really trying to contend then there's no way I would trade Alexei but if 2015 is another step towards building a contender, I trade Alexei while he still holds value and can bring back a good return, provided the Sox get a good offer in the first place. There's no way the White Sox aren't going to be trying to field a competitive team by 2016, and IMO no way Tim Anderson should be starting on the big league roster in 2016. If they're going to trade Alexei it has to be a killer offer. Letting him go is a major setback for building a competitive team, so someone needs to really pay up. It's not a perfect comparison, but to give a little context, over the past 2 years, Alexei has put up 6.4 fWAR, Jeff Samardzija put up 6.7. Alexei is paid more, but he's also under team control for longer than Samardzija was when he was traded for.

When he fell down my wife made an attempt at a joke saying "oh he's probably hurt". That's one of the worst death-stares she ever got.

QUOTE (StRoostifer @ Nov 14, 2014 -> 01:10 AM) I think the best the Sox could hope for is JR Murphy or a prospect of equal value. I cannot say it enough, Alexei does not have the value people would like to think he has. Put it this way. If I were looking for a SS, I would not be willing to give up too much for Alexei for reasons I've already listed in this thread. Honestly, I'm not so sure I'd give up Greene for Alexei straight up. Then he shouldn't be traded.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Nov 14, 2014 -> 12:06 AM) Had Stanton not gotten hurt, I think it would have been a lot closer. But Kershaw did have a historic season and I think it was well deserved. Ditto McCutcheon. All 3 of them had injury stints, frankly.

QUOTE (MexSoxFan#1 @ Nov 13, 2014 -> 10:39 PM) I'm having mini heart attacks. This team is a legit title team, if healthy. Apparently they're not a legit title team.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Nov 13, 2014 -> 10:35 PM) Gotta rest those ankles more than a day or two. They aren't improving. Sigh.

Sigh.

Sigh.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 13, 2014 -> 05:40 PM) The sad thing he is actually be taking a discount if he signs that deal. Well, if he's getting that before he reaches FA then fair trade. He did get the "brush with the end of career" hit in the face last year.

QUOTE (flavum @ Nov 13, 2014 -> 06:58 PM) Susan Slusser left Abreu off her top 10. So did Mike Berardino from St Paul, and Mark Whicker from LA. A writer from Houston left Victor Martinez off his top 10. If all I did was follow fWAR, Abreu was 12th, VMart was 18th in the AL last year.