Balta1701

QUOTE (Mike F. @ Sep 11, 2015 -> 09:35 PM) I figured this could bring up a nice discussion. There have been many great pitchers that have pitched for the Sox, but I think these 5 would comprise my all time rotation in this order. 1. Ed Walsh 2. Chris Sale 3. Red Faber 4. Ted Lyons 5. Mark Buehrle There are a bunch of honorable mentions like Wilbur Wood, Eddie Cicotte, Billy Pierce, John Danks, etc, but what would your all time Sox rotation look like? I don't know my history as well as I should but I'm genuinely offended that you mentioned John Danks and not Black Jack.

In case he ever checks Soxtalk...yeah kid you are f***ing awesome.

Bah humbug. I have no idea how this is a 1-0 game.

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Sep 11, 2015 -> 06:04 PM) NFL says New England had "nothing to do" with HeadsetGate/RadioGate/CommunicateGate and it was all due to the weather and an unforeseen electrical issue. Considering we've been hearing about this issue for a decade+ now maybe it's time for them to hire a competent electrician.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Sep 11, 2015 -> 05:47 PM) I'd imagine more are going to start falling off soon. Trump's sucking all the oxygen out of the room and none of the lower-polling candidates can get any traction. He was the only one with extremely well publicized money issues though.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Sep 11, 2015 -> 03:25 PM) Hopefully some teams will lose lawsuits for mega millions, thus baseball will finally put up nets. Would baseball or teams be insured for things like that?

QUOTE (bmags @ Sep 11, 2015 -> 03:11 PM) Considering the state of the team, I don't see why that is unwise. Worst case scenario he sucks, best case scenario he's good. As opposed to: -Finish outside top ten - Sign expensive Free Agent - Lose first round draft pick - Watch expensive free agent suddenly become worst offensive baseball player in history Seems like the fans clamoring him to smart are a lot more insightful then the nerds going "BUT GUYS BUT GUYS THE NUMBERS SAY" Because the White Sox insist that the 4 point strategy you outlined will work if we just try it enough and it must be better than "rebuilding".

QUOTE (shysocks @ Sep 11, 2015 -> 02:53 PM) But teams don't pay based on what a guy did last year, they're paying based on their projections and they understand that some decline is expected given the age of most free agents. They don't expect a guy to go all LaRoche/Melky/Rios, but they do expect probably half a WAR less, give or take depending on the guy's baseline. That's why the $6M has been surpassed. I did my own checks based on this link and came up with 38 names, not 31 like you had. Not sure why we differ but I did cut a few names because they were either international signings or they merely had options picked up. I extrapolated their final 2015 WAR just like you did and found there were 17 guys who do better than a 0.5 WAR decline. So yes, if 17 out of 38 will do better than you think, those are pretty bad odds. There are 6 more guys due to decline by 0.5-1.0 WAR. 6 more between 1-2 (the moderate failures?), and 9 who decline by more than 2.0. Those are the catastrophes. The Sox have two of those (LaRoche, Melky), along with one moderate failure (Duke) and one big win (Robertson). Yeah, a quick look shows that mine didn't include Kang or Tomas, so that's part of what's different. Out of your list, >50% underperform and 25% are absolute disasters. So we did get unlucky somewhat in disasters, but that's not unexpected with odds that bad.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Sep 11, 2015 -> 02:18 PM) FWIW, SS will still be around when we all retire unless we actively decide to abolish the program. It'll only be able to pay something like 80% of the benefits its supposed to starting somewhere around 2035-2040 if no changes are made, though. However, because Social Security benefits go up faster than the rate of inflation under the idea that if the whole country becomes more wealthy senior citizens should share in those benefits, the benefit payout rate after that 20% cut will still be greater than it was in ~2007 (I'm not sure how it would compare to today, probably still higher than the current rate, but last time I ran the numbers personally was in the "privatize it!" debate from 2007).

Sigh. And there's a great example of how far away our country is from being decent human beings. That's all I have to say in this thread.

QUOTE (Soxfest @ Sep 11, 2015 -> 02:09 PM) The ONLY reason draft picks have been better is change in CBA. Sox would still be drafting the cheapest player possible, nobody spent less 5 years prior to CBA change than the Sox. Well, another big reason is that we've been under .500 for 4 of the last 5 seasons, including a top 3 pick. Top 15 picks help too.

QUOTE (shysocks @ Sep 11, 2015 -> 09:56 AM) That's good stuff, thanks for the research. Just want to point out that I think the $6M per WAR figure is a little dated, people have been placing it at $7M or above for quite a while now. But nobody had it above $9M. I think the trick is that "you're paying $6-$7 million based on what the guy did last year". You then wind up paying $9.5 million because "what they did last year" doesn't take into account the chances of a guy going all LaRoche/Melky/Rios/etc. And that is so common - guys underperform so incredibly much - that failures like them are the norm, not the exception. You sign a couple guys and you're bound to find someone who completely disappoints.

QUOTE (bmags @ Sep 11, 2015 -> 12:24 PM) I just don't understand the handwringing worrying about Trayce. Everything we get from him at this level is gold as it did not look last year like he was going to make it or be much more than a possible defensive sub in a pinch. Because people also want to make decisions for next year that put him in a starter's role.

QUOTE (LDF @ Sep 10, 2015 -> 09:47 PM) this is the wild card going into the off season. i have been thinking long and hard and have asked some posters on their opinion. basically it comes down to this. will the owners allow the FO, Hahn to go out and make some necessary acquisitions via the FA rt??? the answer i get is maybe and if so, it will not be major deals or money being spent. so the Heyward kind of wish list is out the freaking window. so it will be thru trades. i just hope it really isn't for prospects... i am kinda of hoping that the sox get players who are the mlb roster now. so imho, no outfielder on the wish list and adam laroche is and will stay as the dh. that leaves getting a 3b and catcher. i really do hope i am wrong. It's not just "Will they make some necessary acquisitions via FA" or however you said it. The reason why I pointed out in the other thread HOW TERRIBLE the return on free agent investments was in 2015 was that at least last year, if you tried to completely overhaul your roster, fill multiple positions through FA, it was an abject failure. Maybe Heyward you go after because you think you're going to be able to compete in 2-3 years, but "making necessary acquisitions via the FA rt" is fundamentally flawed. They can't be necessary acquisitions in FA, you have to have a strong roster without them. If you don't have a strong enough roster that you need to fill multiple positions, some of the big money you spend to fill those positions is likely to wind up completely wasted. That's one we need to recognize. A big part of the reason why last offseason's "plan" failed was that it is fundamentally flawed. In this market, with this much money out there, you cannot completely overhaul a roster in free agency any more. You need to have a roster that you're adding small supplements to in order to make the FA market work.

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Sep 10, 2015 -> 09:04 PM) Cabrera doesn't bat 1-3 anymore, anyway. At least not often. And Fowler's OBP is .350. Nothing special. The White Sox have 1 regular who's OBP is .350, Jose Abreu, and his is exactly .350. Literally every other player on the White Sox who has a decent number of PAs (basically excluding TT) has an OBP of .350 and below. The White Sox have had 0 players who you'd describe their OBP as "special".

QUOTE (DaveBrown85 @ Sep 10, 2015 -> 07:12 PM) No, it says you're from Pittsburgh. But in reality. Do you think the White Sox think this will make more people come? Oakland is a neighborhood in Pittsburgh, that was a test to see if you actually knew the area or were just making a a joke I didn't get.

QUOTE (DaveBrown85 @ Sep 10, 2015 -> 07:05 PM) that'd be a cool thing to have but I'll be in Pittsburgh at the Reds vs Pirates game getting my 2016 magnetic schedule. Um, hi from Oakland.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Sep 10, 2015 -> 06:17 PM) Torso doesn't seem like a smart way to commit suicide Suicide by definition isn't a rational act, so expecting people to behave rationally while doing it is a mistake. That said, I'd have expected some sort of forensic evidence of a gun being at close range if he were shot in the torso at close range, wouldn't I? Your body would be exposed to all of the gas and residue coming directly from the gun.

Can we all at least agree that saying this about his own daughter is a little f***ed up? Somehow I think Bill Clinton saying that about Chelsea would get a little bit of press....

To put that in more useful terms: If you're buying 1 full priced guy on the free agent market, there's a decent chance you'll get a guy who will perform at or above his contract. If you need 1 guy to fill 1 hole and you've got a strong roster around them, you might actually fill that hole, but there's still a decent chance that guy will bust. If you're buying 2 or more guys to fill 2 or more holes, so many guys who were signed on the free agent market last year struggled that the averages are going to win and out of 2+ guys, someone is going to underperform a lot and your roster better be strong enough to deal with that. If you're trying to buy 3 or 4 guys, and you're spending $6 million per fWAR that you want to upgrade, you better be prepared 1/3 of your money to be completely wasted by guys underperforming or completely busting. If your roster is so weak that you need to replace 3-4 positions or more, full priced free agents in 2015 was a terrible, horrible strategy. You couldn't win that way, the odds are stacked completely against it. That may not hold in 2016, but that's what the market looked like in 2015.

So, while waiting for a meeting earlier today, I was screwing around with baseball contracts because why not. I compiled the top 31 contracts signed for people who were free agents last offseason - 31 was chosen because that's how many players signed $10 million total value deals or more. Basically an arbitrary cutoff but it does a good job of including anyone who got "decent' money. I then rapidly scrolled through their fWAR and divided their contracts up evenly into years. For simplicity I ignored the slight increases that happen yearly in some of these contracts and just averaged over the full contract. The cutoff is right after Luke Hochevar. What I was looking for was...given their performance this year, what was the total amount spent per fWAR on the free agent market? I did a bit of a rough scaling to account for the fact that we're 85% of the way thorugh the season and assuming people would keep piling up fWAR at the same rate for the last 15%. Given where we are now, the average price of 1 fWAR amongst well-paid free agents last offseason comes to about $9.4 million. If you factor in the fact that some guys contracts inflate with time, if you wanted to buy 1 fWAR on the free agent market last offseason it cost about $9 million plus an additional commitment the next year. That blew my mind. We talk about teams spending $6 million or so per fWAR on the free agent market, but spending last year was so ineffective that 1 fWAR cost over $9 million on average. I think that really hits home how ineffective it is to spend money on the FA market if you're trying to significantly overhaul a franchise, at least to me.

QUOTE (SoxPride18 @ Sep 10, 2015 -> 02:41 PM) I do too. Sox have a formidable starting rotation with a pretty good bullpen. You can win with Eaton, Melky, and Abreu, just a matter of finding couple more players to build around. And that will be the task at hand. That's why I mentioned Heyward and Arenado/Longoria/Seager/Frazier/Rendon because these types of players are still in their prime and build around the line up. Why would you say you can win with Melky and not Avi? Melky has also been one of the worst OFs in baseball this year, his defense hasnt been quite Garciabad but his offense has been worse. If Melky goes on your list of guys you can win with then Avi does as well.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Sep 10, 2015 -> 01:19 PM) Christie is fat and I think it's 100% ok for him to call him out on it. Gluttony should not be a key trait of the President of the United States. All I care about with a candidate with an issue like that is the potential health ramifications. He should, like most candidates, release full physical results and I might look a little more closely at who his VP pick is than a person who does not have such a health concern. I'd say the same thing about a person in their late 60s/early 70s. With Chris Christie, it isn't unreasonable for the public to know his cholesterol numbers, for example; if he doesn't want to share them he shouldn't run for that position. Beyond that, I care about things like policies and decision making ability. His efforts to ensure that the economy of New Jersey is destroyed in the next 20 years or so, possibly less, when the train tunnels to New York actually fail or are shut down for repairs with no other option, is a much bigger stupid decision.

The Will Ferrell "10 games in a day" thing from spring training is coming out soon.

QUOTE (3GamesToLove @ Sep 9, 2015 -> 10:23 PM) The catcher position is a wasteland right now, offensively speaking. Take Flowers's great pitch framing numbers (even with a grain of salt) and Soto's offense and it's plain that these team has problems more serious than catcher. Why are you projecting Soto back last year? He's not under contract. How much are you willing to pay for these 2 next year? Flowers as a 2nd year arbitration player will probably come in somewhere around $3-4 million. You prepared to pay $10 million+ for these 2?