Balta1701

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Feb 25, 2016 -> 06:50 PM) At any rate, if going with Avi and LaRoche does blow up, do you think JR blames Ventura, Hahn/KW or his own payroll limitations? I think with Robin not having been extended this year they have a real nice scapegoat situation set up. They may not call it that publicly but then they'll still be able to save their jobs for a year by telling the person making the decisions that 2017 will totally be their year! And replacing the manager doesn't even cost them anything.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Feb 25, 2016 -> 06:26 PM) But they still don't necessarily want to help us to earn a wild card, either. I would imagine Hahn just wasn't willing to part with the player Hoyer asked for...and/or they targeted Brooks a long time before he ended up with the A's last year, kind of like the Nestor Molina/Santos deal. Or maybe the White sox are just that content with their outfield. At this point that hypothesis is currently consistent with the available evidence.

Commercial breaks also shorten by 20 seconds in-between innings and there's now a 30 second limit on visits to the mound.

QUOTE (bmags @ Feb 25, 2016 -> 04:28 PM) While this is true, tax rates that high are more defensible when following a world war that we need to pay for, and people are pumped about winning. Technically, those tax rates lasted much after we stopped "paying for" the war and just continued as the debt stabilized (we mostly just paid for that war by growing the economy).

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 25, 2016 -> 03:47 PM) The defense isn't the same for every pitcher, and since a guy like Sale strikes out more guys, he isn't as defense dependent. Sale didn't have his best year either, but sometimes WAR numbers don't add up. To think that Shark's 2015 performance was really worth close to $20 million on the open market is IMO positively preposterous Batman. He went on a real hot streak before he got awful. Another problem was his 1st inning woes. It took any wind out of the sails on several occasions. But the specific statement I replied to said he was "below replacement". In other words, he was worth less than $0. I found that equally preposterous. Do you disagree?

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 25, 2016 -> 03:33 PM) That's great, but he led the league in runs allowed, and the defense was the problem has a big arrow pointing to his own defense. The fact is, the Sox defense was fine when after the All Star break, he decided to suck. It wasn't on Melky, or Avi, or anyone else. It was Shark. He was awful. WAR isn't the end all. If the choice was a pitcher who gave up fewer runs or a pitcher with the higher WAR, I'll take the lower WAR every time. The trick is...I kinda buy that, but at the same time there's information here. If Fangraphs is hanging too much on the defense, then that also means the other pitchers weren't as strong as fangraphs put them either. So, if you're going to say it's all on Samardzija and he's a below-replacement player, as is said there, then Sale was a 3.3 WAR pitcher by the same standard, no where near an ace level season. I think reality remains somewhere in-between. Yes, he got rocked in August, but at the same time, if a guy is pitching for a team with a terrible offense, if he gives up 5 runs or 9 runs you lose either way. At the same time, he also got the team a fair number of wins in June and September and definitely helped keep them in the "we're still in this!!" mode that Hahn was in at the end of July last year.

QUOTE (OmarComing25 @ Feb 25, 2016 -> 03:24 PM) They both will likely be better in 2016 but in 2015 Shark was replacement-level and Alexei was below replacement-level. His defense was not very good last year. It shouldn't be very difficult to get at least modest improvements from those spots in 2016. Just to note - by using the phrase "replacement level" you're indicating a stat that partially disagrees with your statement. Fangraphs clocked him at 2.7 WAR, which was exactly what he also put up in 2012 and 2013. B-R put him as worse than that I will also note - something I think is Fangraphs giving more of the credit for the terrible season to the defense and B-R saying the whole white sox pitching staff was weak last year (including Sale, FWIW).

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 25, 2016 -> 02:50 PM) I don't think it really has as much to do with rotations athough I suppose if for a team like the Rangers you could skip the 5th starter who throws RH and go all lefty, maybe they do that, but I think a lot of it as to do with bullpens. Managers love L/L, R/R match ups. If a team is mostly lefthanded, they are going to see more lefty pitching, and vice versa. Like I said, that translated to an extra 1000 PAs against left handed pitching for the Rangers compared to the Marlins. That's like 27 extra full games of facing lefties during a season. I'd have never guessed teams could pull that off.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 25, 2016 -> 02:29 PM) Look at their big hitters and see if they are LH or RH. That probably has a lot to do with it. The Rangers are really lefthanded. 1 or 2 a game adds up. Then that argues teams do a much better job of targeting your hitters with weak platoon splits than I would have imagined.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 25, 2016 -> 02:14 PM) It isn't really "everyday" though. Most teams have one left starter, MAYBE two. The AL Central lefty starters are pretty much all White Sox. This prompted me to go take a look at some truly bizarre stat lines - team stats against LHP, sorted by "total plate appearances against LHP". The Rangers somehow faced lefties more than 200 PAs more than any other team in the big leagues. They saw almost double the number of LHP of any team in the bigs - 2200 PAs for them, 1300 PAs for the Marlins. The White Sox were 20th, about 1500 PAs against LHP. Interestingly, this was not the lowest number of PAs against lefties in the AL Central - the Tigers only faced 1350 lefties. Cleveland and KC came in #2 and #3 on total PAs against LHP and I'd wager the White Sox had some to do with that. Minnesota was 8th. Detroit though, how the hell?

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 24, 2016 -> 07:26 PM) DRose out tonight. Colonel General Soreness?

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 24, 2016 -> 03:00 PM) He's just taken the subtext and made it text. I think there is some difference though, how many white supremacist and neo-nazi organizations were openly and proudly endorsing past GOP candidates? Bernie has some leftist supporters that see things almost exclusively through a class lens and tend to discount racial or gender struggles, claiming it's all really a part of class warfare. Yeah that attempt totally flopped. I literally just read this (not the racist part, the sexist part, but somehow I think it's not a bridge too far to suggest those comment writers will overlap):

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 24, 2016 -> 02:14 PM) I'm watching the other thread try to talk themselves into why it's ok to vote for a person running on a flat out racist platform and it's terrifying me. QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 24, 2016 -> 03:22 PM) That is the problem with Trump. We literally have no idea who he is. A person with a flat out racist platform. I really don't need to see anything else, I'm going to lose all respect for anyone who votes for that.

QUOTE (bmags @ Feb 24, 2016 -> 02:31 PM) Is there a anti-mexican, anti-muslim position that he's made that has not been matched by Rubio/Cruz? Rubio seems to get this pass as most reasonable when he has tacitly or explicitly backed a lot of the same rhetoric. Dipping the bullets in pigs blood to offend their religion.

QUOTE (bmags @ Feb 24, 2016 -> 02:26 PM) Well, if it makes you feel worse I've begun to feel like Trump is the best case scenario out of the right's current trio of leading candidates. Yes, it does make me feel worse.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Feb 24, 2016 -> 12:38 PM) I just think that they don't think Fowler is that good. Then they should have spent more money on one of the better players.

I'm watching the other thread try to talk themselves into why it's ok to vote for a person running on a flat out racist platform and it's terrifying me.

QUOTE (blackmooncreeping @ Feb 23, 2016 -> 08:42 PM) A day ago the report was 'O's are close with Fowler on 2 yr/$24 million offer'. Suddenly it became a 3 year deal and done. I bet the O's had competition at 2 years, quite possibly from the Sox, and therefore upped it to 3 years to get it done, especially once the Gallardo deal fell through. They obviously didn't want to end up missing on both. Just to note...if that were true...the end result is that the White Sox were willing to put a worse team on the field in 2016 and 2017 because they couldn't commit money in 2018.

QUOTE (BigHurt3515 @ Feb 23, 2016 -> 05:04 PM) My phone has been having problems with its GPS for the past month or two. It will be fine to find the place I want to go to but once I actually start driving the signal always goes out and takes a few min to reconnect, does that over and over. At first I thought it was just the navigation app but then I downloaded another one today and tried it with no luck, had the same problem. Anybody experience this before? I have an LG G3 through Sprint First guess - something in the car interfering with the signal pickup? That seems to be an initial commonality. If you take a jog somewhere or walk around a parking lo does it track you?

QUOTE (fathom @ Feb 23, 2016 -> 08:06 PM) It's hard to imagine him having a worse 2016 than Melky's 2015 and there have been very few complaints about Melky this offseason Which still is bizarre.

White Sox might have a bargain in Jimmy Rollins

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 23, 2016 -> 01:08 PM) I think the first three years make sense, and if he hits the free agent market, he would get it. With the limited resources on the FA market this offseason, basically all he has to do is stay healthy and have one good season.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Feb 23, 2016 -> 01:31 PM) Isn't it time we stop pretending that Planned Parenthood is the only organization in the country that provides health services to women? QUOTE (Y2HH @ Feb 23, 2016 -> 01:34 PM) Get the f*** out of here with your facts...this is a political forum, we run on words like "rhetoric" and "divisive". Ok, someone wants facts? (knuckles crack). So, based on your desire for facts, I'm going to assume you now are a strong supporter of continued funding as you agree its presence as a major provider is an effective use of taxpayer funds, right? Otherwise, you're the one replying "get the f*** out of here with your facts". Well, you and the state of Texas. Texas responded to the publication of this report by firing the person who did the work.

QUOTE (Big Hurtin @ Feb 23, 2016 -> 04:40 PM) <!--quoteo(post=3306576:date=Feb 23, 2016 -> 01:19 PM:name=HickoryHuskers)-->QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Feb 23, 2016 -> 01:19 PM) <!--quotec-->They're all terrifying in their own ways. Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Hillary, Bernie. The least terrifying is Kasich but I'm not really thrilled with him either. This guy? To be fair, this one is a bit of a quote mine.

QUOTE (Tex @ Feb 22, 2016 -> 06:18 AM) Is this now the standard that other standoffs will be judged by? Only death was a suicide by cop? That's a pretty high standard to live up to, so yes. The 2014 standoff had a couple murdered cops IIRC.