Balta1701

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ Jan 13, 2014 -> 09:17 PM) .301/ .360 OBP/ .910 OPS 37 HR/ 108 RBI I'm going to give some props on this one. A little low on the slugging estimate.

Yeah, so that's how it goes for the Bears @ Green Bay.

QUOTE (fathom @ Sep 28, 2014 -> 03:09 PM) I will be very disappointed if Semien doesn't win the position over Sanchez. Sanchez just doesn't bring enough on the offensive end. If Semien can play more than 1 position (3b?) there would be enough at bats for both of them. Can Sanchez be a legit plus defensive 2b like we've dreamed of having the last few years? Because a big defensive upgrade can be worth having a weaker bat in there.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Sep 28, 2014 -> 02:36 PM) Come on now, that play was wide open and Bennett fumbled it momentarily and cost him the walk in. Cutler is absolutely tearing apart the Packers secondary and being smart with the ball Of course it was wide open, he wasn't in the end zone. The Packers probably were told on D to leave anyone shallow of the end zone wide open because throwing it short is a huge risk. Even if the D is out of position, they still will have a good shot at tackling the guy since the field is so short. Put everyone in the end zone, play a zone with the safeties, dare the QB to throw it short. Throwing the ball away is a better option than throwing it short if there's no time outs and we just saw why.

Well. Done. Trestman.

QUOTE (Brian @ Sep 28, 2014 -> 07:36 AM) So today could create a mess, if I'm reading it right. If the Royals and Seattle win w/ Detroit and A's losing, doesn't that create a match up on Monday between KC/Dtroit with the winner going to the ALDS and the loser going to the WC game between the winner of A's/Seattle? Or am I wrong? Post season may end on Thanksgiving. Not really, but you know what I mean. The one nice thing about the 2 days off is that the extra games shouldn't delay things.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Sep 26, 2014 -> 09:18 AM) So John Oliver makes a good point - why is ISIS our problem? They're attacking non-Americans too. Also as much as I despise Fox News, flipping through the channels last night, they had a pretty amazing side by side of Obama's recent speech with Bush's from 2004. Eerily similar arguments for justifying military intervention. Favorite quote I heard on news magazine show: "We don't have a Syria plan, we have a spending plan".

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 27, 2014 -> 10:44 PM) So in the same thread you falsely accuse me of exaggeration you now claim signing him bumps the Sox payroll up to $100 million and only will improve tithe team 1 or 2 games. LMAO Because I can't think of any team with a $120 million opening day payroll that won 63 games in recent memory.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 27, 2014 -> 10:13 PM) He will be a 37 year old DH in 2016. Congrats. You've caught a minor error. You may now celebrate your 75 win, $100 million team.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Sep 27, 2014 -> 06:49 PM) If he's going to cost way more than I suggested then don't sign him. I'm just saying if the risk is limited to three years, I'm willing to give him $15M per and lose a 2nd round draft pick. As I said before, it's possible he falls off a cliff, but so could any major league player. Adam Dunn was one of the most consistent players in major league history before we signed him. Do we just stop signing players over 30 years of age like Balta would do if he was GM? Hell no, you always take calculated risks if the reward can be significant. The offensive environment is way different today than it was a few years ago and Victor Martinez at 80% to 90% of his current production is still an impact bat. We have money to spend and a huge need for a left-handed bat. Keep Victor strictly at DH, give him a day off every couple of weeks and I'm feel pretty good about his odds of staying productive over the next three years. What I find amusing is people are so risk adverse against signing older free agents, but would prefer to wait for this magical core to come up through the minors and fill all our remains holes. IMO, the biggest risk we can take right now is wait much longer to supplement Sale, Quintana, Rodon, Abreu, Eaton, & Garcia while they're still young, cheap, and healthy. Fills needs now as best you can and not waste the surplus value these guys are currently providing. This isn't true. My question is whether signing the guy over 30 is likely to put us over the top during the next season. From my impression of the current White Sox, this seems almost certainly to not be the case. We're going to be running a rookie out at 2b, Danks and a rookie and Noesi in the rotation, a completely reassembled bullpen again, and a bunch of other injury questions out there. We need a helluva bunch of people to massively improve next year for a 37 year old DH to suddenly make a difference. We got the 8th best OPS in MLB out of our DH spot this year and a moderate upgrade to VMart isn't going to be a huge push from that. It's a small upgrade. If we're an 88 win team without Martinez, fine. Right now, we are no where close to that. Find me an all star caliber right fielder in a trade and a new closer and we're set and I'm ok to blow money on the DH spot to win next year. If we're a 75 win team next year without Martinez, and we're going to sign him to a 3 year deal so that he can help us win next year, this makes no sense to me.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Sep 27, 2014 -> 04:06 PM) What does Martinez not do well enough to be considered a great hitter? An .848 career OPS?

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 27, 2014 -> 03:54 PM) .306/.373/.848 for his career. An average hitter this year is .251/.314/.701. I think he is a bit better than above average. He is a great hitter. His career split line and Magglio's career split line are almost identical. You have a really weak definition of a "great hitter".

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 27, 2014 -> 02:35 PM) Why wouldn't it? Switch hitter, high OBP. Low k rate. The White Sox are most likely not going to sign him, but he is a great hitter who, if you gave him a 3 year contract, would be 38 when that contract ended. Saying he will physically fall apart like Paulie just based on age is silly. There are plenty of examples of elite hitters remaining elite at this age. It tells me a lot that in order to sell him you have to exaggerate so much. He is not by any means a "great hitter". He's a solid above average hitter having one great season late in his career. This is literally the first season out of either of their careers where he's been anywhere close to the production of a guy like Miguel Cabrera who is actually a great hitter. He's a great hitter if he can, in his late 30's, do what he's never done in his career prior to this year for several more seasons.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 27, 2014 -> 01:56 PM) There are currently 15 qualified players in the major leagues who have at least an .850 OPS. Would that "really alter the lineup" though? There are another 15 who have an OPS over .817. The difference between a guy at the top of that list and a guy in the mid .800s is huge. Adding 2 of those latter guys, yeah that's a big lineup change. Adding one more of them? Nice contributor, but not going to suddenly turn this lineup into a force.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Sep 27, 2014 -> 01:47 PM) In theory I am against signing Martinez but he is the one player that could really alter our lineup. Imagine if we signed him and brought in another left-handed bat. How good is this other left handed bat? Because I look at Martinez's career and how much of an outlier this year is compared to the rest of it and think that adding his normal .850 OPS would be a good addition but wouldn't do anything like Abreu in "really altering the lineup".

QUOTE (greg775 @ Sep 26, 2014 -> 06:38 PM) My whole life I've been around Afr. American people and have been lucky enough to never even think of people as being different. I guess some fat-cat white Republicans simply haven't been as lucky as me and actually remain prejudiced. Amazes me. I am no better or worse than any other race; I don't see color even though I grew up in a racist southside neighborhood. So I consider myself lucky that I'm not a race guy. It's literally a Stephen Colbert "you should be embarrassed if you say this because you understand nothing" quote.

QUOTE (StRoostifer @ Sep 26, 2014 -> 03:28 PM) As a starter Johnson's fastball sat 90-92 and straight as an arrow, that's just too easy for MLB batters to hit. Give him another shot at starting for Charlotte next year but if he picks up where he left off the I'd try him in the pen. Actually this isn't right. Last year when he was moderately effective in a short stint, his fastball averaged 92, you're right on that. This year though his average fastball was 89.5.

QUOTE (scs787 @ Sep 26, 2014 -> 12:20 PM) Thing I love about VMart, and why I think he's got a few good years left in him, is his plate discipline and his eye up there at the dish. He's just a really smart hitter. I think those guys can stick around for quite some time. There was a point this season where from May 21st 2013 to May 5th 2014 he didn't have a single strike out looking. Going back to the ASB last year the dude has a strike out to walk ratio of 60/91 in 802 ABs. That's ridiculous. Even if the power goes away a bit towards the end of a 3 year deal I still think he'll be an extremely valuable hitter. He's just such a disciplined hitter, and I don't think that will change with age. I'd love if the Sox could give him a front loaded deal, or keep the years limited to a 2-3 year deal with a 3rd or 4th year option. Again just to point out...these sort of things were said about Paul Konerko, especially when he had that ridiculous first half of his 2012 season. He then had one small injury that built and fell off a cliff. You literally would never have seen it coming. We didn't and we wound up paying a big salary last year to a guy who was really, really bad.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Sep 26, 2014 -> 11:04 AM) 2. While I do believe reports that Flowers has improved defensively, I think there's a lot of evidence that the upgrade from Flowers to martin would be more than "slight." Here's Statcorner's pitch framing leaderboard for 2014: http://www.statcorner.com/CatcherReport.php. Martin is 10th in the league; Flowers didn't crack the top 100. By FanGraph's total defensive metrics, Martin ranks 4th in the Majors,; Flowers is 18th. http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=...0&sort=20,d I do not think Martin needs to repeat next year to be a substantial upgrade. Interestingly, it was also noted above that "improving pitch framing" is one thing that can help a catcher age well with time, so that might be a skill Flowers could make up some ground on as well. That said, Martin's been really good at that for a long time, but it is probably worth asking how much we really believe the numbers on how big a difference it makes at this time.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Sep 26, 2014 -> 10:54 AM) Read my post above (and the linked articles), you're arguing that he's more likely to decline rapidly because he's a catcher, but that's not true at all. If he has a huge jump in performance at age 31 relative to his performance ages 26-30, is he likely to sustain that jump in performance?

One other thing worth adding is a Martin/Flowers comparison. Martin is having a spectacular season, no doubt. For the last 6 years prior to this one, he's put up a combined .718 OPS (95 OPS+). Tyler Flowers this year put up a .693 OPS, that when park adjusted, comes to a 95 OPS+. Tyler Flowers was just about as productive with the bat last year as Russell Martin has been for the last 6 years of his career. Now maybe you're convinced that Martin is raking this year because he took on a new weight training routine (he did), and he'll be an 800+ OPS guy for the next 3 years, and maybe you're convinced that Tyler Flowers will never match what he put up again this year, I can believe both of those if you had a person with enough experience in player evaluation telling me so. But the downside risk on Russell Martin appears to me that he'll be Tyler Flowers/2014 with the bat for the next 4 years, maybe with a slightly better glove, for a much higher price. And on the other hand, Flowers is trending the right direction...which is something that isn't uncommon with catchers and happened to Martin himself. So there's a case to be made that its a large upgrade that hangs on Martin repeating his best year of the last 7 and Flowers no longer improving, and that's compared with a case that to me seems stronger that it would be a small upgrade at a high cost.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Sep 26, 2014 -> 09:15 AM) Just win out. Screw the Royals. I have no problem with this now.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Sep 26, 2014 -> 12:22 AM) So our government has identified the asshole doing the beheadings. This is AWESOME. For one, we someday will know who one of the most evil individuals in history happens to be. This lowlife has to be in the top 50-100 for sure. And his name will live in infamy as he'll be known as one of the lowest of people to ever grace this earth. Can't wait to hear his name. And now we know who he is. He will be caught and he will be convicted. Happy day. Please go back to school and take a history class. Please.

[quote name='Chilihead90' date='Sep 26, 2014 -> 12:10 AM' post='3058617' The Sox SECURED a protected pick. We clinched something! Yay!!! Thanks for keeping track of that!