Balta1701

QUOTE (TaylorStSox @ Jan 23, 2014 -> 12:39 AM) Phegley doesn't pass the eye test. He has an atrocious looking swing. It has a bad plane, it's forced and it looks manufactured. He's really bad behind the plate. He isn't athletic. He doesn't move well and his reactions are bad. He's also a prime candidate for PED's. Flowers is already a juicer, but his swing, while flawed, is much more natural. It has easy pop and he demonstrated a very good eye in the minors. He moves well behind the plate for a big guy and frames pitches well. He has a much better pedigree. Most likely neither player is the answer, but I would roll the dice on a healthy Flowers. Plus, I made an awful bet on Flowers so I need some redemption. Also, the Sox wouldn't have signed him to a $900,000 deal if he was totally out of the plan. Josh Phegley attempting PED's is a recipe for Josh Phegley's funeral.

QUOTE (Bigsoxhurt35 @ Jan 22, 2014 -> 09:39 PM) Unless Davidson falls flat on his face this spring, he's starting. As of right now he doesn't have a spot on the big league roster.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Jan 22, 2014 -> 06:16 PM) Marty has a legitimate point here. Our starting pitching depth is incredibly overrated, and don't take this the wrong way, but you're probably the biggest culprit of hyping it up. Sale & Quintana are legit, Johnson is extremely promising, but after that we have a bunch of question marks. I actually think Danks will rebound and if he does we'll have a damn good 1-4, but I'm much less confident in Paulino, Rienzo, or Surkamp being more than inning-eaters. After them, we have Chris Beck and a bunch of wild card prospects. Honestly, the only other prospect in the system with front of the rotation potential is Tyler Danish and while he may move fast, it would be foolish to expect it. The point is we're one injury away from our rotation being in trouble. On top of that, we could really use a #2 starter to fit between Sale & Quintana if we're looking for a championship caliber rotation. Maybe Beck breaks out this year or Danish goes Dan Hudson and ends up in AA by the end of the season, but there's a reason Hahn went after Tanaka so aggressively. We need that #2 starter and I'll be surprised if they don't continue committing all their available resources to finding one, including taking Hoffman in the draft if available. That is all 100% fine. I'm completely ok with that. For this season. If Paulino, Rienzo, and Surkamp are all terrible and put up ERA's in the 5's, great, what exactly is the harm? We see if Beck can handle it in AA, we see what we get in the draft this year, and we go into next offseason knowing that rotation depth is one of our needs. If everything goes wrong...I don't care, because we're running a roster out there that on paper is not built to be a competitive team this year. But we're still sitting there holding 3-4 lottery tickets as it is for that 5th starter spot, if 1 of them is a winner then we suddenly have a glut of starting pitching again.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Jan 22, 2014 -> 06:15 PM) The core of this team is at least major league ready. If drafting is being counted on to build this team then Sale should have been put on the trade market. Which guys are you counting as major-league ready? Abreu? Eaton? Viciedo? Davidson? Webb? Semien? Petricka? Phegley? Flowers? Neito? We could legitimately have >50% of our starting lineup covered by rookies this season. 2/3 if you throw in the catcher's position.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 22, 2014 -> 06:06 PM) Which is why I think it happens. Plus it won't hurt him to work on his defense some more. Based on our previous luck I'm assuming everything will go wrong in ST. Nieto and Flowers will both hit .100 and Phegley will hit .500.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Jan 22, 2014 -> 06:03 PM) It will cost them more in terms of money or talent the longer they wait to address it. Why?

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Jan 22, 2014 -> 05:46 PM) If they stand pat with this rotation big trouble ahead. And this is bad why?

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Jan 22, 2014 -> 05:10 PM) FA pitcher + Beck allows them to deal a Danks or Quintana next offseason. No FA pitcher + successful major league innings from 1 of Surkamp/Rienzo/Paulino allows the White Sox to keep beck at AAA next season and still have money available to upgrade the catcher's spot or other weaknesses without having to trade Danks/Quintana to do it.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Jan 22, 2014 -> 05:05 PM) Signing a free-agent pitcher prevents none of that. Except for the part where we actually see if any of those guys can get big league hitters out. And potentially the part where we have money to spend to fill holes next year.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jan 22, 2014 -> 04:52 PM) Sherman touched on the "thug = n*****" correlation. I agree with him. I still think he's a douche, but there are some people criticizing him unfairly which is making me sympathetic towards him which I hate. I concur with this assessment.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Jan 22, 2014 -> 04:58 PM) What happens if they face big league hitting and aren't very good? Then the White Sox lose games in a rebuilding year with a roster loaded with rookies already and replace those guys next offseas, or potentially even later in the season if Beck performs at AA (as happened last year btw).

QUOTE (Jake @ Jan 22, 2014 -> 04:43 PM) What I would do: more AAA. We need more info, he clearly needs more reps, and he has to learn to catch a f***ing ball. I've never seen a guy who is pretty great at blocking pitches yet still has a terrible passed ball problem. It is not a non-issue. His minor league career averages would have him with 25 passed balls if he catches 100 games. In the past nine seasons (an arbitrary selection just so I got several years of data), only two catcher seasons have above 20 - one was Saltalamacchia (Wakefield) and the other was Wilin Rosario. There have been 20 such seasons in that timespan that have more than 10 and 7 of them had knuckleballers on their team. This is a really big deal because his arm can't make up for this. Can he just suddenly stop having passed balls? I don't know. Since PHegley does have options, sending him to AAA to start the year and going from there is a sensible move. However, here's the one question to consider...what happens if he outhits everyone in ST by a fairly good amount? That's the scenario it would take for us to consider putting him on the team right?

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Jan 22, 2014 -> 04:37 PM) If any of those three can pitch they'll find a place for them. But you'll never figure that out if they don't get to face big league hitters.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Jan 22, 2014 -> 04:32 PM) Our insiders here have said the front office was trying to move both Danks and Dunn. Why haven't they? I meant that Danks was strapped to the White Sox because of his salary not that the White Sox were strapped financially because of Danks. Because they're not giving them away for free and teams won't give up anything of value for them.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 22, 2014 -> 04:28 PM) I think people should be more focused on realistic expectation of performance than "upside". Waiting for players to get close to their upside gets a lot of guys looking for new jobs. If that's the case, then we're going to be in for a long slog to get back to respectability, because we just spent the offseason acquiring guys with high upsides.

QUOTE (Knuckles @ Jan 22, 2014 -> 03:58 PM) I wouldn't mind Garza if the price is right, I hate the guy but id root for him on the White Sox, I think he's a fit. I think signing veteran guys in their rotation is the exact opposite of what the white sox should be doing right now.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Jan 22, 2014 -> 11:43 AM) We gotta move an OF, ideally for a C. If not a C, then best prospect available. That's all though. None of this Matt Garza garbage We have to dump an IF too. Possibly two.

QUOTE (GoSox05 @ Jan 22, 2014 -> 11:25 AM) They force teams to be on Hard Knocks? New rule as of last summer they can force teams to be on there if they haven't recently made the playoffs and don't have a first-year head coach.

QUOTE (southside hitman @ Jan 22, 2014 -> 11:21 AM) They are paying his contract in 2015-2017 no matter what. They just got 27 million in relief when he was suspended for the 2014 season. Don't count out the legal games just yet. He's suspended outside of the collectively bargained drug program 50-100-out format. A lot of us have guessed this will give the Yankees an opportunity to attempt to void the remainder of his contract.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jan 22, 2014 -> 11:07 AM) No. About the only time the Sox would release/DFA Dunn would be like mid-August if it were obvious they weren't going to get something for him and he wanted to sign on with a potential playoff team to help them out down the stretch as a bat off the bench. And if that were the case, the Sox would instead find a way to do a waiver-wire trade that saves them $75k or something non-zero instead.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jan 22, 2014 -> 11:05 AM) It's not far fetched to believe that Johnson and/or Paulino could have better years than Garza both this year and over the next 3-4 years. If the sign Garza, I want it to be for no more than 2 years, and really, I'm not sure I want that. I think Garza's name is bigger than his production. I absolutely do not want Garza, Jiminez, or any of the other remaining veteran-named pitchers. If we missed out on the 24 year old...play the kids.

QUOTE (chisoxfan310 @ Jan 22, 2014 -> 11:02 AM) I would still love to see Rick move Dunn but we all know that is unlikely. Does anyone see the Sox releasing Dunn in June if the Sox are playing bad and he starts off bad for the first 2 months knowing that they have Paulie and Viciedo who could get DH at bats? Assuming they hang onto De Aza, it wouldn't be bad since we would be stuck paying him either way. No, they will not simply "release" him.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 22, 2014 -> 10:25 AM) Aren't Cali and Illinois both pretty high in taxes? And you only pay that tax rate when you're playing the game in that state, road tips get counted at the local state's rate, so there's lots of gimmicks going on and that's only a small portion of the difference in these deals.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 22, 2014 -> 10:12 AM) We might see De Aza traded, but I get the feeling we are pretty much done for the winter. We still have an insane logjam on the bench/infield in addition to De Aza being on the bench in the OF when he should be starting somewhere and no roster spot for a backup catcher without releasing someone or going with a 6 man pen. We might well go to ST with this roster, but at the very least there's going to be some turnover before the spring ends.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 22, 2014 -> 10:16 AM) I can't recall that ever happening in baseball. It doesn't. The players don't want to have to do that, and in MLB the union is strong enough for all contracts to be guaranteed. Sale could offer up a couple years of FA in exchange for making those last couple option years into guaranteed years with more money and the Sox might bite on that at some point.