Greg Hibbard

Yes, but it's not like we are talking about reverting to team like 2000....I'm talking about having enough power for a frontline of Sale, Q and Rodon to actually win a division and get into a playoff series where they could succeed.

QUOTE (Black_Jack29 @ Sep 22, 2016 -> 02:59 PM) You seem to think that Valentin's offensive production is typical for a SS and that it'd be easy to replace, and that just isn't the case. I think Valentin's offensive production is one of the reasons we succeeded in that year despite relatively mediocre pitching top to bottom, but that it played well for the Sox because he was able to have a career year in a hitter's park. I don't think it's necessarily easy to replace. I think that creating enough offense can be done in a number of ways, though, and Valentin proves that.

QUOTE (Black_Jack29 @ Sep 22, 2016 -> 02:59 PM) The OPS+ numbers that SS2K5 cited should answer your question. They should? Correct me if I'm wrong, but Valentin seems ranked in the top 5 SS in OPS+ in 2000. I think Cabrera is ranked 7th for LF.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 22, 2016 -> 02:27 PM) Melky and his .790 OPS is a 117 OPS+ this season. Again, Jose Valentin and his .835 OPS from 2000 was a 107 OPS+. In other words Melky is rated 10% higher than Jose was in his season, despite better looking numbers. True, but when you compare Jose Valentin's production at SS compared to other shortstops in that season, does he look relatively better than Melky Cabrera compared to other LF in this one?

QUOTE (Black_Jack29 @ Sep 22, 2016 -> 01:41 PM) The only point on which you and I seem to disagree which position players don't hit enough HRs. In the case of Anderson, it's too early to say that. In the case of Lawrie, he's Ray Durham with a .300 OBP. And while I agree that the slugging from our catchers has been below average, that's not a position where power is easy to come by. Not every team has a Buster Posey or Salvi Perez. My entire point is that if you're going to have Adam Eaton and Melky Cabrera in your outfield accounting for less home runs combined than a Jose Valentin or a Joe Crede of years would typically get on their own, and if Tim Anderson is in your infield with Tyler Saladino, and you have a BLACK HOLE at catcher..... beyond the 65 homers you can count on with Abreu and Frazier, WHERE ARE YOUR HOME RUNS COMING FROM?

QUOTE (Black_Jack29 @ Sep 22, 2016 -> 12:44 PM) You do a nice job of cherry-picking career high stats there, but the reality is that Alexei Ramirez was more typically a 15 HR, .740 OPS hitter. Iguchi had some power, but was basically a ~100 OPS+ hitter during his career with the Sox. Very average. It's true that Valentin and Durham had better power than average at their respective positions (especially Valentin). It'd be nice if the Sox farm system could develop another Ray Durham, but it hasn't. That said, I should point out that Lawrie slugged .413 this season. Extrapolated over the course of a full season, that'd put him on par with Ray Durham power-wise, but with fewer walks. If you think that the Sox need more HR power (and you wouldn't be wrong about that), the way to address it is through RF and DH. That's where the real power deficiency has been over the past few seasons. I'm cherry picking the seasons in which this team made the playoffs to highlight the reasons WHY they made the playoffs. Let me cherry pick another stat for you: the four worst white sox teams, record-wise, since 2000 have something in common - they all didn't really hit too many home runs. YEAR HR WINS 2007 190 72 2013 148 63 2015 136 76 2016 155 72 I'm not saying that this team needs home runs from every position to thrive, but in a home run hitter's ballpark, it's obvious to me that a big home run hitting team (and yes, career years from some guys offensively) correlate to winning the division, whereas low home run totals correlate very strongly with this organization's very worst recent seasons.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 22, 2016 -> 12:34 PM) It is tough to pull from the steroid era, but I think Tim Anderson will put up solid power numbers eventually. He has a super quick bat and hits a lot of line drives. I don't think he will be a big power guy, but something in the 15-20 homers, plus some solid doubles and triples power. In 2000, MLB teams average 190 HR per team In 2016, so far they are averaging 177 HR per team through 152 games played. Extrapolating this out to 162 games would be 188 HR per team.

QUOTE (Black_Jack29 @ Sep 22, 2016 -> 12:19 PM) (3) Agreed here but, again, these are middle infielders. Most middle infielders don't hit like Robbie Alomar. Most middle infielders from those aforementioned teams: 2000 Jose Valentin - 25 HR, .835 OPS 2000 Ray Durham - 17 HR, .810 OPS 2005 Tadahito Iguchi - 15 HR, .780 OPS 2008 Alexei Ramirez - 21 HR .792 OPS

I was watching Ken Harrelson drool all over Kansas City the other night, as he is wont to do, and like stopped clocks that are always right twice a day, he actually stumbled upon an excellent point. He said that at some point the KC "grinderball" Royals had won because they had designed their team for their ballpark (just like the 2000-2005 Minnesota "grinderball" Twins that got a bunch of skinny, fast dudes that Harrelson ALSO LOVED to beat the ball into that astroturf as hard as possible to fly down the first base line in hopes of singles, had the staff turn on the AC in the ninth, and hope the lead held). That ballpark in Kansas City is NOT a park where you can hit home runs, which is why the stadium has been a House of Horrors for the Sox over the years. But this got me to thinking - the Sox don't actually hit homers. And then, it got me to more thinking. It has been beaten into our skulls over the past umpteen years that US Cellular is a home run hitter's wet dream of a ballpark. And Guaranteed-to-Not-Call-It-Guaranteed-Rate Field in 2017 is still gonna be....you guessed it....a home run hitters ballpark. It used to be that we made sure we got a few dudes who could hit these things. Used to be. These days? No. So my question is....when the hell did this team lose this mantra? And why did we stop doing this? Because whenever the White Sox HAVE succeeded, it is because their lineup HIT HOME RUNS. A LOT OF HOME RUNS. I think there is this pervasive myth that the successful teams from the last 15 years were built on pitching and a good mix of power, speed and bench. I would say that it's much more simple than that. It's about home runs. The 2008 Blackout Sox won their division largely because they led MLB in home runs in a home run hitting ballpark. That lineup hit 235 of them. If you divide 235 by 9, that's as if every single of the 9 regular slots of that lineup was responsible for 26 home runs. Every single slot hit a home run every six games. Can you imagine that with this team? I sure can't. Yes, it was nice to win that blackout game with some pitching. But we got there because men hit balls out of the park with runners on base with one swing. The home run. The 2005 World Series winners with 5th in homers in MLB. Yes, they had great pitching, and yes, they had the emergence of a genuine flash-in-the-pan phenom closer. But that lineup still hit 200 home runs. Again, this is as if every single slot was responsible for 22+ home runs. Oh and by the way, the best white sox hitter of all time, Frank Edward Thomas, was severly limited in the number of games he played due to injury. Remember that 2000 team that won the division? There's a reason why Cal Eldred looked like a world beater until June and James Baldwin started 7-0 and it had NOTHING to do with their pitching skills. It had to do with the lineup hitting the cover off of the ball. Future $100,000,000 man Carlos Lee hit SEVENTH in that lineup. 216 home runs for that team. This current team? Does not hit home runs. They are 23rd in homers. If pace holds, they will hit approximately 165 of them total. That's atrocious considering our stadium, considering the number of homers our opponents hit against us, and considering the history of this team. Does it get better next year? Not if we sport this lineup again. Because: 1) Tim Anderson, at first glance, seems like a great little player. A little-known rookie with no expectations hitting .279 with a bit a pop and some wheels, the future seems bright. However, like many, many other players in this lineup - the looks are deceiving. Because: a) He has a .279 average and a .300 OBP. This is a worse OBP than Todd Frazier, who hits roughly 60 points worse than Anderson. b) He has a 10 to 1 strikeout to walk ratio. That's an absurdly bad statistic. c) He has a .702 OPS. d) He does not hit home runs. e) He does not hit home runs. f) HE DOES NOT HIT HOME RUNS. 2) Melky Cabrera and Adam Eaton are good players - who do not hit nearly enough home runs. Can this team acquire an outfielder who can have an OPS north of .800? Apparently not! Note: I am not complaining about these players. However, they are symptomatic of the White Sox building a team that has great stats for the ballpark they do not play in - and many of the wrong strengths for the ballpark that they do. It is wonderful that Eaton has ostensibly transformed into a gold glove defender. It is commendable that he gets on base at a nice little clip. However, The third best home run hitter on this team CANNOT have less than 15 home runs for a season, so if these guys are NOT going to hit home runs, we need another Beefcake slugger to pick up the slack. Normally, this would be a designated hitter, but the White Sox have also decided to have a year long joke with the fans that they now play in the National League and their Designated Hitter should actually hit like a pitcher, which is why Avisail Garcia cannot maintain an OPS north of SEVEN HUNDRED and you get people like JB Shuck and Jerry Sands laughing all the way to the occasional start. I don't even know that those guys should be called AAAA players. 3) Brett Lawrie and Tyler Saladino are nice little players - who do not hit enough home runs. Again, if your outfield cannot hit homers, the rest of our infield besides Abreu and Frazier better. Abreu and Frazier only come up so many times in a game, and without power protection why wouldn't teams just pitch around them? 4) Our catchers cannot do apparently anything at a major league level, and I don't know that there's a remedy for this. Our best offensive player, Jose Abreu, is ranked 43rd in MLB in OPS. The next best offensive player, Adam Eaton, is like 86th. Yeah, 86 for 86 this offense, I guess. There's a reason why James "Big Game" Shields has NINE QUALITY STARTS as a member of the White Sox and is only 3-3 in those 9 games. There's a reason why the bullpen comes up so many times in the 6th, 7th, 8th inning protecting small leads that we have no hope of retaking if we lose them (and we do with the likes of Cat Albers holding so many games in his fat little hands) There's a reason why mediocre starters have no chance to recover if they get touched for say 4 runs in 6 innings. There's a reason why Jose Quintana has "bad luck" and can't win games. WE CANNOT HIT HOME RUNS. Fix the home runs, fix the OPS. We need to remedy this, stat. How the hell has this organization lost this simple fact?

QUOTE (ChiSoxFanMike @ Sep 16, 2016 -> 12:07 PM) You sound angry. You're not wrong. The man is having an absolutely torrid second half, and deserves unqualified praise for it.

My lord, you f***ing people. Do you seriously strangle splits for "when it mattered" with other players in other eras? With other players on other teams? Math nerds, please do me a favor and tell me how many more wins Jose Abreu would have netted us if his second half was his first half. Add that total to the Sox's win total and tell me if we're in contention yet because Jose Abreu hit "when it mattered" By the way - newsflash - if it turns out that Jose Abreu wouldn't have made a difference by himself "when it mattered" then guess what IT DIDN'T MATTER. JFC. A lot of you are looking WAY TOO HARD to find ways in which Jose Abreu had a bad season. I'm sorry, but Jose Abreu did not have a bad season. His season will end up being very, very similar to last season. Last season was a good season. Not spectacular, but good. If Jose Abreu had the 4 more home runs in the first half to make his numbers "acceptable", and if every one of those home runs turned a loss into a win, the Sox would still be out of contention.

QUOTE (ron883 @ Sep 7, 2016 -> 09:50 PM) Jose starts finally producing when it doesn't matter and people keep calling me out? Too bad he couldn't do it back when it mattered. I'll reiterate what I've previously said. Jose isn't what we thought he was. The league adjusted to him after his rookie year. He is a mid-tier first baseman. Ron obviously thought that Jose Abreu would automatically sustain a .964 OPS after a single season, which would make him....one of the top 20 baseball hitters of all time. My lord, man. It must royally suck to have to root so hard against one of your own players every night.... and to have be proven wrong literally every single day since August 1st. Please. Give up the ghost. There isn't a better offensive player in MLB since August 1st than Jose Abreu. IN ALL OF BASEBALL. AT THE MAJOR LEAGUE LEVEL. Oh and Frank Thomas also produced a lot when it didn't matter....I wonder if you qualify his career numbers in the same way.

If they're gonna buy, they need to bring in a good DH and a couple of other bigger supplemental offensive pieces. 23rd in team home runs 23rd in runs scored 23rd in OPS ....in a hitter's park It's killing us

QUOTE (harkness @ Sep 4, 2016 -> 06:17 PM) The guy is on a crazy hot streak no doubt... I hope next year he doesn't take 4 months to get it going. I maintain that he was only really cold in April and May. He had a homer drought in July but still hit a lot of doubles and had a good BA and he had a pretty good June all around

Abreu now at .814. He's so hot he might finish with a better OPS than last year, who knows?

QUOTE (ron883 @ Sep 1, 2016 -> 11:41 AM) Our first baseman finally pushes his OPS above .800 and people want me to apologize for saying he was figured out. News flash, .805 ops and 19 homers isn't all that great for a below average fielding 1B. Jose just isn't what we thought was. Yes, I want you to apologize for saying he was figured out by MLB pitching, which has nothing to do with his fielding. Stick to YOUR point. He had a 1.062 OPS in August. Just admit you were dead f***ing wrong.

Jose Abreu's final August 2016 numbers: .362/.414/.648/1.062 8 homers, 6 doubles. second best OPS month ever and best since mid 2014. Yep, MLB pitching has sure figured him out. Can anyone claim he's even having a bad year overall at this point, despite his first half numbers? If he stays hot, he might actually approach his 2015 totals.

I wouldn't say the blame lies with Robin, but he's clearly been a non-factor in making a positive difference in any season. If we had been able to somehow sustain the hot early start, he could have proven himself. Instead, he's been a bystander. The record against the division....I dunno. Something is just WRONG there. Also, every press conference I've seen after a loss seems to be him shrugging his shoulders "what CAN you do" and saying things like "we NEED to be better". Great, and THEN what?

How many managers have lasted 5 full seasons with a winning percentage as bad as Robin's in the last 30 years?

QUOTE (shysocks @ Aug 30, 2016 -> 02:41 PM) I don't know, but it's the defining characteristic of the Robin Ventura Era, fair or not. Yep. For sure. 2016 Sox vs. Central (gotta include twins) - 20-30 2016 Sox vs. everyone else - 43-37 2015 Sox vs. Central - 32-44 2015 Sox vs. everyone else - 44-42 2014 Sox vs. Central - 33-43 2014 Sox vs. everyone else - 40-46 2013 Sox vs. Central - 26-50 (holy s***!) 2013 Sox vs. everyone else - 37-49 2012 Sox vs. Central - 37-35 2012 Sox vs. everyone else - 48-42 Robin Ventura vs. Central - 148-202 Robin Ventura vs. everyone else - 212-216

I'm asking because I honestly don't know. We are 52-40 against everyone else, and 11-27 against the Tigs, Royals and Indians. What is it, exactly? How do we handle good teams like Toronto, Texas and Boston just fine, but scuffle so much against our own division? The disparity doesn't seem to really make any sense, whatsoever.

Alright, let me start over. No, I do not believe the front office based their construction of this team around the assumption that they could plug in .317/40 for Jose Abreu each and every season. Nor do I believe that Jose Abreu was the only player they were building around. Obviously Sale and Q (and others) were relied upon. I do think they assumed Jose would be "very. very good". I think his 2015 and 2016 numbers were actually reasonable to expect, and obviously, expectations have been, for the most part, met. I suppose my main point is that Jose Abreu is pretty far from the problem this season, and that as usual, the White Sox constructed a team of "we hope the rest of the guys are good enough!" They weren't. I think 5 times in the last thirty years they've caught lightning in a bottle from dudes like Herbert Perry, and the whole organizational philosophy seems to assume that they were somehow geniuses for cracking the code and the next scrap heap undervalued diamond in the rough is just around the corner at bargain prices. It's f***ing nauseating.

QUOTE (lasttriptotulsa @ Aug 24, 2016 -> 02:21 PM) This is one of the more ridiculous posts in awhile. Yes it was just Abreu that they centered their rebuild around. It had nothing to do with Eaton, Sale, Quintana or Rodon. Does the front office know anything about baseball? That is such a clown question. Reinsdorf has owned the team and been involved in the day to day for 25 years. Williams played professionally for 10 years and has been a GM or higher for 16 years. Hahn has been with the team 12 years as an Assistant GM/GM. Not to mention the rest of the scouts, coaches, assistants and advisers who have been around the game their entire life. But yes, some schmuck on a message board knows more than they do about the game of baseball. You based this entire post on assuming I was asserting what I posed as a question about someone else's ridiculous line of reasoning.

I don't think he sucked at all during his sophomore campaign, but the notion that people would just expect his rookie numbers to extrapolate out over his career seems silly to me. He seems to be settling in to a .290-.300/25-30 guy with an .850ish OPS. Which is great, IMO.

Yeah, that's really nice that our front office just automatically inserted elite numbers for presumed elite players and ostensibly filled up the rest of the lineup with hot replacement level garbage, in a hope that the dumpster would catch fire seems philosophically sound to me