Balta1701

QUOTE (kitekrazy @ Sep 15, 2015 -> 10:19 PM) They come from the NL. Aging DH and pitchers don't translate well to the AL at least for the White Sox. They need to stop. "Paying premium prices for mid level free agents" seems to be a particular recipe for failure and it's been our favorite move for a decade.

QUOTE (soxfan2014 @ Sep 15, 2015 -> 09:47 PM) Yeah then he got hurt but it didn't matter since he was just keeping the spot warm for Bryant for like ten days. They totally were being honest when they said they would have kept Bryant down for the year and he needed the work. Totally. 100% serious.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 15, 2015 -> 09:44 PM) Wasn't Olt the Opening Day 3B for your Cubbies? For like 6 days.

Lol seriously? Not even bothering turning this on, going to write recommendation letter.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Sep 15, 2015 -> 04:42 PM) Winning a world series championship and making the playoffs twice in your run as a manager while posting a .524 record during that span is probably why he gets the benefit of the doubt (on top of his overall friendly relationship with the media). Ozzie did a lot of right but when it ended, it ended big time. Only way I see it happening is if Kenny is gone and you know what, if Ozzie has matured from it, you could do a lot worse. 4 out of the 8 years he won 88 games or more and that would basically be good for at least one of the wild card spots in the new era. Under .500 in 3 seasons, however, 2 of those 3 seasons the team was just 4 games under .500 while the other season the team was pretty bad (18 games under). His sons are still talking smack about the White Sox in recent months aren't they? Such that if you're looking for evidence the answer is "no" it's available?

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 15, 2015 -> 04:32 PM) I guess the Cubs won't sweep the Pirates after all. They're the best team ever. They'll find some way to overturn this game's results.

QUOTE (bmags @ Sep 15, 2015 -> 02:17 PM) more of a general sports media thing, but how do you guys feel about football media embracing gambling so much the past two years. It was crazy to me watching ESPN and seeing how many references to gambling lines, draft kings and even a segment talking about the worst gambling "beats" of the weekend. I find the occasional "oh the last touchdown swung this much money" type stories entertaining, but I found the segment showing sports clips and laughing how it changed from the under to the over last minute kind of weird. It's a sports show, who cares that someone made a bad guess? I don't feel like it's all that different to me. As far as I can remember newspapers have been giving the betting lines from some source every day during the week and sports radio has talked about favorites and betting techniques as long as I can remember. If there's a difference maybe it's just how much money is now being poured into fantasy sports, but fantasy has been running wild anyway the last few eyars.

Then someone brings in a gun and the grammar police flee, leaving the Pirates an opportunity to sign them in the future to improve their team's typing abilities.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Sep 15, 2015 -> 03:41 AM) Do we have to worry about the Cubs reaching the WS?? Will Pitt take care of Chicago in the one-game playoff? You shouldn't worry for the reasons others have said. That will, however, be one very intriguing one game matchup, with Cole and Arietta on the mound it could be a gem of a pitching matchup.

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Sep 14, 2015 -> 10:42 PM) Chuck Garfien ‏@ChuckGarfien 9m9 minutes ago One of Rick Hahn's best moves as GM: signing Matt Albers. Has a 1.38 ERA. Hasn't given up an earned run since July. We've made him a good amount of money on the free agent market since he's on a 1 year contract and we didn't make use of him at either of the trade deadlines.

QUOTE (elrockinMT @ Sep 14, 2015 -> 09:07 PM) You mean defensive shortstop with 34 errors? can't tell if you're being sarcastic back or you missed the sarcasm in mine.

QUOTE (Mike F. @ Sep 14, 2015 -> 09:02 PM) .......... Gray really doesn't look that good. I remember reading somewhere that the BABIP against him was really low, so perhaps luck has played a big role in his great season. Thing is...Oakland's not supposed to have a good defense either (you may have heard something about the quality defense of their SS). So if the defense is an excuse for why so many guys in our rotation are down, that should hit Gray too.

QUOTE (beautox @ Sep 14, 2015 -> 08:56 PM) Yeah, id rather have them all back than Shark, they're looking to finish collectively at 4WAR for a tick over 1.5m and Ravelo made it back from injury at AAA, where as shark should finish at 2.8WAR with a potential comp pick and the sox spent nearly 10M on him. In bWAR, we gave up 4.5 and got back 0.2

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 14, 2015 -> 03:21 PM) Avi is also playing his first full season in the major leagues, despite his ABs which have been flung around. I just think if you can't get off the Avi Garcia is awful and always will be, you should probably lay low on Trace Thompson for the time being. However, if your requirement for competing next year says "we need one of these guys to be all star quality", you probably should rethink your plans for competing next year.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Sep 14, 2015 -> 03:08 PM) They could backload some deals though. In 2017, they have roughly $70.5 million committed to Abreu, Sale, Q, Melky, Robertson, Duke, and Eaton. That figure doesn't include any arb raises for anyone else either. 2017 $$ Cabrera $17 million Abreu $13 million Robertson $12 million Sale $12 million Quintana $7 million Duke $5.5 million Eaton $4 million. Rodon will still be cheap at that point along with Fulmer and Johnson if they go that route. They should have some wiggle room if you look past 2016. Things definitely do clear out in 2017 a lot, but worth asking again whether this team is close enough in 2016 that giving away a chunk of that 2017 flexibility is a good idea (they're not. Maybe you make a case that you don't care because Heyward is that one special player and you'll never have as good of a chance to fill that position, but that's a different question).

QUOTE (AlSoxfan @ Sep 14, 2015 -> 02:53 PM) Cotts has us at $118 with $4.5 coming off for Kepp. after this yr. Our high was was 2011 at $127,789. I can't see Garcia and Flowers combined getting any more than the $5 mil. coming off the books for Keppinger. If/when Shark leaves that's about $10 mil there, so with a quick guess it looks like around $108 assuming they pick up Alexei. That would leave us about $20 mil away from our previous high. I know there are a number of smaller contracts leaving but I'm just guessing a rough amount. If they had planned on signing Shark you gotta figure someplace around $20 mil then we're getting close to the 2011 high mark. What all this means to me is I think they're planning on going over $127 mil. mark. How much more I don't know? That's basically the rough numbers I used by saying Samardzija would put them close to $130 if he'd have signed and if you count filling out the roster. Worth noting that it's a fundamentally different setup than 2011 though; major drop in ticket prices since then, major drop in attendance, big bump in shared revenues, so that's the part we don't know very well right now. Also important to think about...does spending that extra $20 million and possibly totally maxing out what you can spend actually make this team competitive as is? (no).

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Sep 14, 2015 -> 02:28 PM) This. Either fix the schedule so the Thursday teams have their bye the week before or just don't have the Thursday game. Just to note the difficulty - if Thursday night games are going to continue the whole season, that becomes really difficult to do unless you're offering a 2nd bye week. "Our bye week isn't until week 15 because we've got the last Thursday game of the season" and "our bye week is week 1 of the season" are both equally poor scheduling and a major disadvantage compared with teams that have a bye in the middle.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Sep 14, 2015 -> 02:35 PM) I know this and you've been saying it for a year now. They planned on signing Samardzija though. How much were they willing to spend on Shark? In theory, they should be able to spend the $$ that was going to Shark on something else. Presumably if they put even a respectable offer on the table for Samardzija it would have been >$15 million. If you added him to the current roster that would have put them having $130 million committed, if he was signed and Alexei's option wasn't picked up that's ~$120 million payroll, close to the highest opening day payroll in team history. If they declined Alexei and offered Heyward, that would put them back in the $130 million payroll range if those were the only major moves. However, I also note that they were looking at a substantial jump in season ticket sales last offseason when they went past $100 million by signing Cabrera. Coming off this season, they may not have the same amount of money they thought would be available when they offered Samardzija that extension.

QUOTE (spiderman @ Sep 14, 2015 -> 11:31 AM) Do we know how much room the White Sox will reasonably have to spend this off-season? I think it's safe to assume they will continue to try and patch together a team that could contend for next season. I'm not going to wager a guess about the ceiling this time after being appropriately chastised for guessing incorrectly last year, but if they pick up Alexei's option and offer arbitration to Garcia and Flowers, they'll already have committed close to $115 million to the 2016 roster, which is comparable to what they spent in total over 2015 without any additional signings. If they spend more than about $5 million it would be the highest payroll the White Sox have ever had. Season Ticket renewal notices haven't gone out yet have they? The org itself might not know their 2016 budget yet too.

QUOTE (MexSoxFan#1 @ Sep 13, 2015 -> 04:05 PM) When does Jay's contract end? He's Guaranteed $20 million this year and next year. If he's not traded, he will be the Bears starting QB this year and next year, that's just way too much money. If he's cut after 2016 his contract will have $2 million in dead space per year during 2017 and 2018 (they reworked his deal last year moving $4 million onto the last 2 years to clear space for Jared Allen).

QUOTE (fathom @ Sep 13, 2015 -> 03:56 PM) Said this all year, but Montas should absolutely be trade bait this offseason. Good luck ever making him a starter And my response all year...worked great for Arizona with Scherzer.

"Same old Jay" - Green Bay DB like 4 seasons ago now.

QUOTE (GreenSox @ Sep 13, 2015 -> 03:40 PM) He's been the shadow manager, making the pitching moves. He's been KW's mole...been here long enough. Infield defense was fine during most of his tenure. Sox have invested plenty of resources (players and otherwise) into pitchers. Thornton and Quintana are his claims to fame. Over the past 10 seasons we're 29th of 30 teams in the big leagues in defense. Only Cleveland is worse. The White Sox regularly flat out don't care about defense. The best teams over that time have won an extra ~50 games due to defense.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Sep 13, 2015 -> 03:28 PM) So meaningless for a team that rarely spends on pitching (in part because of Cooper), has terrible defenses, and is otherwise effective. No idea how he's tied to Ventura considering he's been in the organization for 23 years now including under 3 managers as pitching coach. I agree with you in general on everything but the bolded. The White Sox always spend on pitching. They haven't yet invested $250 million in a pitcher like some teams but they always spend. Despite being 15th overall in payroll this season, they're 6th in amount spent on pitching. On top of that, they've invested 3 of their last 5 first round draft picks in their starting rotation and traded position players for pitching. They may not be spending money on pitching the last couple years because of Sale and Quintana, but they have poured resources of every kind into their pitching staff non-stop.

QUOTE (GreenSox @ Sep 13, 2015 -> 03:22 PM) One team ERA in the top 1/2 of MLB in 7 seasons. Tied himself to Ventura Bye bye As I pointed out the last time someone said that one, between the White Sox playing in a park that often plays as an above average hitters park and the White Sox having had the 29th or 30th worst defense in MLB over the past 10 years, ERA isn't telling you everything, and both bWAR and fWAR find the White Sox pitching staff a lot better than ERA does. A top pitching staff and a 30th ranked defense probably still won't have an ERA in the top 1/2 of the league.