Greg Hibbard

He has a 7.62 ERA with the White Sox. That's a f***ing AVERAGE. I suppose that means if James Shields goes out on the mound, if we don't score EIGHT RUNS, on average, we lose. Is this the worst acquisition in the history of major league baseball?

QUOTE (bmags @ Aug 9, 2016 -> 01:06 PM) My position is that Jose Abreu has declined. While I would certainly take an .850 OPS from him, it's not exactly the .960 6 WAR player we imagined at the end of 2014 when we accelerated our rebuild into oblivion. I'm open to the idea that him being distanced from his family has caused this steady decline, because being separated from your family in a completely new city with the pressures of a baseball player could feasibly cause this. But, I don't know how you could be both incredulous that baseball players personal issues could affect their play meaningfully and decide that Jose Abreu has not declined because of fun with sample sizes. Abreu may be fine next year, but this is 3rd straight year of meaningful decline. A .780 OPS first baseman who can't play first base is not a part ofa core. I'm hopeful this is just because of personal reasons, because if not, then it's going to be all the more sad when we sign Jason Castro and trade for a pitcher and say we are going for it in 2017. Ok, so after one rookie season, you expected Jose Abreu to be able to be a .960 OPS player and a steady 6 WAR? That would have made him one of the top 15-20 sluggers in baseball history. I'm not sure a single rookie season ought to earn that kind of expectation. Jose Abreu could be in decline, sure. However, all of us who follow the game have seen, hundreds of times, that there are rookies who come out and put up great numbers, and once the league adjusts to them, they experience some decline. One needs look no farther than Gordon Beckham to find an example of this. I'm inclined to believe the 2015 version of Jose Abreu is much, much closer to the "true" version, and that his rookie year was simply off the charts because the league hadn't made those adjustments they would make in the following year. Every rookie has holes in his game that haven't been exposed yet. Jose's holes are that he doesn't have great patience with pitches outside of the zone, and can be fooled on breaking balls badly. This has been exposed this year, particularly. I won't argue that defensively, he's been a liability. I have no problem shifting him to DH eventually, as we currently don't really have one. Still, an .850-.860 OPS player is nothing to sneeze at. I'd take numbers resembling Bernie Williams, Wade Boggs, George Brett any day of the week. And yes, Adam Dunn fits into that .850ish career range too, but Adam Dunn was a great run producer for a long time before we got a hold of him and he went south. And again, I'm not trying to offer any explanation as to why he had an off April and May, and didn't hit a homer in July. However, I think it's very, very wrong for several posters to enter this thread and be sanctimonious about how hard it is to be away from your kid when there is absolutely zero evidence that this is the reason why he's "in decline." I also would reiterate that it's ludicrous for us to try to find reasons to explain these things away, other than s*** happens and in baseball there are streaks. That's all we can really know. I do think it's much more likely that the 6 months of 2015 and past 2.5 months of 2016 paint a very consistent career picture for Jose Abreu, one that is a happy medium between his white-hot 2014 rookie year and his 2016 spring slump. I could be wrong, as well.

QUOTE (Hatchetman @ Aug 9, 2016 -> 12:43 PM) We have no idea if he is in decline or not. Let's hope not, but the stats are what they are. In 2016 he's been below league average 1B. http://www.espn.com/mlb/stats/batting/_/po.../true/minpa/275 He's really not that far off, and given his recent track record and historical numbers I guess I'm willing to give Jose Abreu the benefit of the doubt. I think that he's certainly capable of moving his WAR up from 1.2 to 1.4 and his OPS up from .770 to .785 in the next 7 weeks, which I suppose would be about league average 1B. I think he'll finish with 22 HR, .283ish BA, .790-.800 OPS. A down year, but if that's the worst we get from Jose he's far from the problem here.

QUOTE (shipps @ Aug 9, 2016 -> 12:38 PM) Dammit bmags, what is your position!? Apparently, it is that Jose Abreu's .932 OPS in April 2015 was indicative of a slow start.

QUOTE (bmags @ Aug 9, 2016 -> 11:56 AM) He had a slow start in 2015 too, should I remove that to show how much better his june-end of season was? Um, He hit .293 in April 2015 with a .932 OPS.

QUOTE (bmags @ Aug 9, 2016 -> 11:56 AM) He had a slow start in 2015 too, should I remove that to show how much better his june-end of season was? Is your position that Jose Abreu is in some sort of permanent decline, yes or no?

Nice job of turning my position into Jose being a "singles hitter," when I just said he's on pace for more doubles than he has had in his entire career. Let me make my position perfectly clear. I think Jose Abreu had a slow start / off April and May - for whatever reason. Since June 1st, he's been himself, albeit he had a hot June, a power (actually just homer) outage in July, and a hot early August. In the last 56 games, 218 abs, 67 hits, 8 home runs, 16 doubles, 33 RBI, 16 walks, .307/.367/.490/.857 In other words, Jose now has a HIGHER OPS in the last 56 games than he had last year. So, is it more likely than Jose had an off couple of months, statistically, or that he is in DECLINE?

Yes, Abreu has "declined" in three straight years. I guess. i would say his rookie year and 2nd year were not really all that much different in that they were both excellent seasons, but ok. He's currently on pace for: 1) within 5 hits of his rookie year (173 vs. 178) 2) more doubles than he has ever had (on pace for 37) 3) more walks than last year (not as many as his rookie year) 4) 20 home runs ALREADY, which is not 30 or 36, but it's not insignificant, and is likely to be HIGHER than that, so we all admit he's been slumping. Perhaps we should also note that despite his power outage in July (which I think is still just an anomaly of sample size), he's hitting about .300 since June 1st.

QUOTE (bmags @ Aug 9, 2016 -> 09:26 AM) No kidding. The ole "If I was making 20 million to play baseball I would have no personal feelings or family ties. I'd never smoke or drink. I'd be in locker room all day and be perfect" takes What's actually nauseating about this thread is that several people are being sanctimonious to others about the impact of not seeing one's child on one's baseball stats, when this thread was actually intended to be the next nail in the coffin about Jose Abreu being "figured out" or his career being "finished." Would the lot of you please get off of your damned high horse and see the forest for the trees, here? JFC, the explanations aren't even consistent. If he was missing his son, why just for the first four months of 2016 specifically was it a factor? Yes, I have no doubt it gets harder as more time passes. However....who the f*** is anyone to tell me that 2 seasons was fine but the 3rd is harder? What the actual f***, guys? Would you guys care to look at Royce Clayton's personal life and tell me what was going on with him that accounted for his abysmal first half in 2001? Maybe if we look hard enough under a rock, we can find personal reasons why Frank Thomas struggled specifically in 1998 with average and 1999 with power numbers. While we are at it, why not explain away a million other things about Adam Dunn, or anyone else over the years in terms of their personal circumstances at the time? In fact, why don't we have a sub-forum with 25 individual threads detailing the day-to-day personal struggles of each member of this team? ...let me bring this thread back into focus with what should have been said three pages ago 3 home runs in 4 games should put to bed this NONSENSE that Jose Abreu is "finished" as a major league hitter or that major league pitching has categorically "figured him out" ...REGARDLESS OF HIS PERSONAL CIRCUMSTANCES.

How many times did Jose Abreu see his son during the 2015 season? How many times did Jose Abreu see his son during the 2014 season? Was his performance affected by not seeing his son during the 2014 or 2015 season?

But the original point of the comment to make this was not making this about some personal thing about Jose. Yes, we are all sympathetic about Jose's situation, and wish he could have seen his son whenever he wanted to. However, I think this is more about the circus atmosphere the White Sox have cultivated, where fans are left in a thread to wonder about whether the presence or absence of a player's child might make or break a team.

Why should he feel bad for that post? Regardless of Jose's personal circumstances, it's ludicrous that the White Sox have cultivated an atmosphere where we as fans wonder whether the absence or presence of a child makes a difference on players paid millions to play baseball. It truly is a circus.

Or he might have hit 3 home runs in 4 games because Jose Abreu is a very good major league baseball player who, for whatever reason, happened to have his first career "slump" for the first four months of this season. Which wasn't even that bad, to be honest. But yes, by all means, let's keep strangling the sideplots to make sense of the current hot streak

Abreu with a home run

I suppose I should acknowledge that it's absolutely no surprise that statistics would bear out that there is SOME marginal improvement throughout the draft based on higher picks, but is that implicit marginal impact significant enough to want the team to lose? The other real question is whether anyone in this thread thinks that the front office will evaluate talent in the draft effectively enough for it to make a difference.

Thanks to all for your additions to the discussion. This has been fascinating.

QUOTE (ChiliIrishHammock24 @ Aug 3, 2016 -> 01:56 PM) Sure you can. As long as our bullpen, minus Robertson and Fulmer, implode and ruin every 5-1 lead we give them, it's entirely possible that the starter pitched well, and those 5 runs were scored through the help of Anderson, Tilson, and Saladino. This is baseball, individuals can have good games and the team can still lose rather easily. So how often do the right players suck at the right times?

My counterpoint is essentially that by putting players you have (and will have) next year in a position where they are playing hard in august and september as spoilers, even in meaningful games, has an intangible carryover to the following season if you retain that core. I don't disagree that the difference between winning and losing 70-80 games doesn't matter - my argument is that intending to lose games goes against fundamental baseball strategy and undermines building a winning culture. In other words, I see no empirical value in willfully losing. Sure, getting a higher draft pick may net you a really good player - like 3% of the time. Or the team ahead of you may pick the lesser value anyway.

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Aug 3, 2016 -> 12:29 PM) I wouldn't even call that old fashioned, it's just wrong. Old fashioned is under the belief that the better draft pick you have, the more likely you are to add impact talent to your organization. It's why the worst team picks first. You know what helps build a winning culture? Having good players. Baseball is a stats games, so what I'm really driving at here is....show me the empirical data of the impact of the draft on something like WAR, long term. Or World Series titles? Pre free agency, the draft meant a whole lot more. It's how all teams assuredly got better. These days? It's a complete dice roll. With all the overseas players creeping in from Cuba, Japan, DR, other places, and with the huge impact of FA signings on teams, the draft and particularly the first round of the draft seems to have diminished impact on the chances of a team to get really good. It already had arguably a lesser impact anyway. At best you were getting a player 1-2 years away from ML ready, and at best he was one player in a lineup of nine. Sure, there have been those difference makers like Thomas, Bonds, Griffey. The list goes on. And certainly a player like Chris Sale - it's impossible to argue that his value isn't through the roof compared to most. However, I think there's little evidence to suggest that having a marginally higher pick in the draft is how certain teams have built winners recently. Do you disagree?

Call me old-fashioned, but I think it's much better to cultivate an atmosphere where you expect to win and play absolutely as hard you can with what you have, every day, than to try to lose 90 games instead of 85 in order to get a crap-shoot draft pick that doesn't really pan out, help the team much, 80-90% of the time going back 26 years.

QUOTE (ChiliIrishHammock24 @ Aug 2, 2016 -> 02:12 PM) If that's how you choose to rationalize it in your head, then yes. Gordon Beckham's CAREER WAR with the Sox was 7.6 What's the average career WAR for a first round pick from the White Sox? How many games do you lose to get that pick to produce that WAR? If we make decisions based on expected value, which is an extremely rational way of looking at things, it seems like we are rooting to lose 5 games now to hit the once in a lifetime lottery for a superstar or....get those 5 wins back incrementally? It would be one thing if top draft picks made a HUGE impact on games, but unlike, say, basketball where a top draft pick can completely change your team, it seems like a once in a lifetime thing for a baseball team to get that kind of pick, and even then it's more about luck than a particular draft position. I suppose I'm saying I can't come up with a reason to lose games to improve upon a draft position that seems to have an arbitrary impact on the team as a whole.

Ok, so, in other words, we should deliberately lose in the hopes of landing....Gordon Beckham, right?

QUOTE (ChiliIrishHammock24 @ Aug 2, 2016 -> 01:44 PM) Gordon Beckham. And besides, was Nick Hostetler running those drafts? Don't pretend nothing has changed in the draft room. a .678 career OPS is a bonafide major league talent? huh.

QUOTE (MEANS @ Aug 2, 2016 -> 07:43 AM) and I don't know why we have to explain it to you every August....root for the young guys to develop, hope everyone stays healthy and lose lose lose. Except the White Sox don't do a great job of identifying future stars in their first round draft picks? And before you say 'it's all a crap shoot' then why willfully lose for a low-percentage crap shoot? Since 1990, how many 1st rounders from this list not named Chris Sale turned out to be bonafide major league talent? http://espn.go.com/mlb/draft/history/_/team/chw

QUOTE (ronkark @ Jul 28, 2016 -> 09:02 PM) ARe you really comparing him to Konerko? He hasn't earned it. He's had two good years of offense. None of defense. Konerko was MUCH better defensive player. Range? Not so much. Jose even less. But paul much better hands and much better thrower and much better decision maker. And much better clutch hitter. Yes he had a bad 03 after 4 stellar full seasons. And are you really reading this season as a bad april and lack of power and that's it? Horrid defense. Horrible with runners on in key postions. 8 rbi in july. That's not power. That's productivity. So tell me again how he's had a good July. Happened again tonight. He's the master of the dinky grounder and chasing the same pitches out the zone he has for 3 years. Konerko had 4 good seasons of offense when he had 2003. So yes....I'm comparing him because it's an extraordinarily apt comparison. Konerko also had a much much worse than Abreu that year. As for Abreu's glove....ok, fine. I don't need a 1B to be spectacular especially since we need a DH long term. Yes, 8 RBI in July. How many RBI in June? How many homers in June? How small of a sample size are you gonna strangle to make your point?