Balta1701

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 22, 2015 -> 12:38 PM) His 2015 WHIP is actually lower than it was as a Cub. His K rate is down 1.5 from his Cub days. His walk rate is down 1.5 from his Cub days. He just was never really all that good. Football at ND and pitching for the Cubs apparently makes your reputation a lot better than your results. He's walking fewer people but he's also striking out fewer people. That means more balls in play, more reliance on your defense, probably more solid contact, more home runs/PA. You wouldn't have guessed from those numbers he was going to collapse in August, but you did have reason to say "please don't sign this guy long term there's a real big risk here".

QUOTE (BlackSox13 @ Sep 22, 2015 -> 12:51 PM) Thing is, Viciedo no longer produces those numbers at the MLB level which is why the Sox signed Melky in the first place. And Viciedo being paid $13 million for them would have infuriated people.

If given the choice strictly between the two, I have to start with Avisail Garcia for contract reasons. Avi will be a first-year arb player in 2016, meaning his salary goes up to ~$2 million. That's not bad, we paid Viciedo that, but by the time 2017 rolls around his price will go up to >$4 million. TT we have control on pre-arbitration for a couple more years. Unless we're willing to completely let Avi go, he needs PAs to see if he can become anything. It wasn't all that long ago that people were thinking he was going to hit 30 HR and be a key contributor on a playoff team this year. A moderate improvement could at least turn him into a decent baseball player and IMO we're not in a position to discard decent baseball players until we know they won't improve with us.

QUOTE (scs787 @ Sep 22, 2015 -> 12:21 PM) There's certainly nothing in his previous stats that say worst pitcher in baseball either. At the very least you can say he's been a pretty good #3 pitcher in his career. I definitely didn't predict the end of season disaster, but there was signal in his stats that he was trending downwards even early this season.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Sep 21, 2015 -> 02:14 PM) For reasons that still aren't clear, Volkswagen had deliberately implemented controls on their TDI diesel cars that could detect for vehicle emissions test patterns and would then turn on the required emissions controls. The rest of the time, the car would be polluting far more than legally allowed. This impacts almost 500,000 cars, and VW could face fines as high as $18B. http://jalopnik.com/your-guide-to-dieselga...ng-c-1731857018 edit: really glad I didn't end up going with the Jetta TDI I considered last year. I have some friends in california who just had a new baby this summer. They were looking over the past couple weeks to switch to a larger car than their 2010 or 2011 VW car and of course were going to use that as the trade-in. They suddenly can't buy that car because the trade in value of their vehicle has instantly dropped to zero since it can't pass an actual unrigged California emissions test. They'll get part of a settlement in the end I'm sure but they're unfortunately stuck because of this.

QUOTE (bmags @ Sep 22, 2015 -> 10:52 AM) Pretty sure the story is they took off their jackets as they posed, he probably had no idea. I'm sure that's what it was and I can still laugh.

QUOTE (BlackSox13 @ Sep 22, 2015 -> 12:44 AM) I would trade LaRoche in a heartbeat but its not something I am counting on. I know if LaRoche were on another team I would not want the Sox to trade for him. Even if a team offered to pay 5M, no thanks. I hope I'm dead wrong but I just don't see LaRoche going anywhere so I've come to accept he will be in a Sox uni for one more season. I really hope that the Sox use him as a bench bat and move Avi to the DH spot to open up RF for Thompson. As for Melky, I think the Sox are getting exactly what was expected from him and he's one of the few bright spots offensively this season. He doesn't have much power but he never has. He started driving in some runs once he was moved to the middle of the order and imo, he provided some protection for Abreu. Protection LaRoche failed to provide. I really have no complaints about Melky and I'm glad he's on the team. Aside from HR's, he's better in pretty much every offensive category when compared to the player he replaced, Viciedo. I do realize though, that improvement came at a pretty steep price. Since we're in a thread on Viciedo, it's worth noting that I'm still amazed at how many people are genuinely ok with Melky producing basically Dayan Viciedo's 2012 and 2013 numbers while being paid $13 million for it.

WTF IS GOING ON

QUOTE (flavum @ Sep 21, 2015 -> 07:46 PM) 13th pick, here we come! Maybe they can get another Hawkins. *can get To be fair, the time before that when we picked 13th was 2010 and that worked out ok.

QUOTE (IowaSoxFan @ Sep 21, 2015 -> 03:43 PM) Where it matters is re-assigning the money owed to LaRoche to help in other areas like amateur signings and the ability to take on some money next summer if the team is in the race. If the Sox can move LaRoche over the winter I see no problem replacing his roster spot with DV's minor league deal. It allows the team to get Melky out of the OF more often, allows them to spell Abreu at 1B, and gives them some legit power on the bench. Why on Earth would anyone take LaRoche?

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Sep 21, 2015 -> 03:29 PM) They've been telling him this for a few years. Sometimes he does it, sometimes he doesn't. His fastball and slider both do better when he doesn't over-throw, and he has better command with them too. Its a question of whether or not he sticks with the gameplan consistently. Learning how to do this also has been a multi-year project for the other recent starters who've hit triple digits (Verlander, Scherzer).

Hawk and Stone giving long case for why they think team will offer him Qualifying offer and why he'll still get a lot of money from someone.

So do I need to requote my "6 games back" post from a week and a half ago?

QUOTE (oldsox @ Sep 20, 2015 -> 09:35 PM) Balta, are you saying that it has never been done before? Huh?

QUOTE (Jake @ Sep 20, 2015 -> 08:57 PM) Must be demoralizing to her that she's still losing in those states. Of course, her vast resources are clearly paying off elsewhere. I do wonder if she has the ability to people truly excited for her candidacy a la Obama, Sanders, etc. Of course, there is no prerequisite that says your average supporter must be incredibly enthusiastic since most presidents win without that type of support. Don't count "losing" based on polls 4 months before the first vote is cast. Here's October 2007: Howard Dean was leading in Iowa at this point in 2003. While I'm at it, 9iu11ani would eventually spend about $50 million to win 2 delegates. And that doesn't even mention the roller coaster ride of the Republican 2012 race. I think we're almost to the 4th year anniversary of the Herman Cain boomlet.

Broken collarbone for Tony Romo, probably out for the season.

QUOTE (Flash Tizzle @ Sep 20, 2015 -> 04:35 PM) Not likely, but not impossible. And who's to say he doesn't come out of the bullpen one day during a blowout for a few innings if he's short? They're on their way to the playoffs. Personal stats like that shouldn't be that important to them.

QUOTE (Flash Tizzle @ Sep 20, 2015 -> 04:03 PM) I'd really like to see Montas start a few games this season. I know people are insistent on trading him or placing him in the bullpen, but I'd really hope they'd continue stretching out his arm to be a starter. Next season, around midyear, if he's dominating In tge rotation bring him up and find him a spot. I'd like him to get a full season of 150 innings or so in Charlotte next year, personally, maybe with another September callup. I think he has a lot of work to do on quality offspeed stuff and he doesn't need to be in the big leagues to do that, at least not yet.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Sep 20, 2015 -> 04:01 PM) I can't turn my mlb on today. Too sick of the same cast of characters being lousy. What a challenge to change this team this offseason. Just getting rid of Lexi and filling holes with Saladino, Micah and Sanchez, etc., doesn't really excite me. Oh I'm sure they won't do that. They'll spend some money and bring Alexei back and say that they're ready to go and they're going to compete for the wild card. Left unsaid will be the extra clause "We're ready to go to compete for the wild card.....just like we were in 2015".

QUOTE (greg775 @ Sep 20, 2015 -> 04:00 PM) I think it has something to do with all the lefties we have. Too many. Hitters get used to it and eventually square up and knock it out of the park. Except we've given up fewer homers than the average team, and plus I bet you can guess which hand the guy who has given up the most home runs on our roster throws with...so this statement has literally nothing to suggest its true.

QUOTE (flavum @ Sep 20, 2015 -> 11:16 AM) Update- Wednesday is TBA for Sox. Hayes speculates that if they don't have to use Montas before Tuesday, he'll start Wednesday, and Sale will start Thursday in New York. Montas is in today.

QUOTE (elrockinMT @ Sep 20, 2015 -> 03:49 PM) It just seems we are worse than that. I guess it might be the the timing of our homers allowed that is so frustrating I think it's just that we don't score very much and we don't get many people out when they put the ball in play normally so the ones we give up hurt a lot more.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Sep 20, 2015 -> 03:38 PM) I love Danks as a No. 5 starter, but I think I'd love him more in the bullpen. Sox have to develop a plan for next season. Bullpen is not exactly a strength. How bout rotation of Sale, Johnson (need righty balance), Q, sign a cheap veteran fill in type righty; and Rodon. Danks is our late inning lefty so trade Duke. Robertson is closer. Now just need to find better righty set up options. Start with Nate. Throw Montas in the mix as a starter or reliever. So Sale, Johnson, Q, veteran righty or Montas, Rodon get the game to Danks in the seventh, Nate in the eighth and Robertson in the ninth. "On paper" a wildcard contending staff? Really no, that rotation is on paper about as weak as this year's with Samardzija, at least on paper. "A cheap veteran fillin" and Erik Johnson are guys you'd expect to struggle. He might overperform that, but he's basically a rookie in his first full season - you should expect him to be a step below where Rodon is this year. Rodon is clearly improving but he's only going to be a 2nd year player so you still expect some struggles from him as well. Montas is clearly not ready to be a regular rotation contributor yet and needs at least another year before he even gets a full time shot IMO. I guess that could contend for the wild card with a strong offense and defense. It's not terrible, it's pretty good at the top and ok at the back side, but it's not going to be any sort of real upgrade from this year.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Sep 20, 2015 -> 03:29 PM) I hope you are right about Hillary being given a real challenge. I haven't seen any polls where Bernie has a shot to overtake her BTW. I think it's all a smokesscreen like when Obama would be falling in the polls. If Obama could run again, he'd win in a landslide. Hillary is in the same party, so that's my reasoning behind her easy victory. Plus the entitlement thing. It's her participation trophy. For a person who is "entitled" to the spot, she's sure been working hard at earning it. A number of writers have been impressed at her campaign organization, she's taking the "Obama" route of getting strong campaigns established in Iowa, NH, and in as many states as possible and ignoring the stupid daily talking points in favor of fundraising, policy proposal release, and organization building. I was particularly intrigued by her proposals on controlling college costs by tying the availability of federal education funding to the performance of graduates and ability of individual colleges to limit cost increases that came out a few weeks ago.

QUOTE (elrockinMT @ Sep 20, 2015 -> 02:47 PM) Well, I am not surprises Danks, or any other Sox pitcher, gave up a home run. I think we have like 127 offensive homers and I wonder how many our pitchers have allowed? This is probably the biggest disappointment and maybe outright failure of this team and that's our offensive output. We live in a hitters ballpark and yet have like the second worse offensive homerun output in the AL We've given up 150 HR coming into today, the average for teams in the AL is 155, so we're a tiny bit above average in giving up HR.