NorthSideSox72

So, FS had a big year interview-wise (among other areas). We interviewed 35 players (some multiple times), 6 minor league managers and coaches, and 5 members of the White Sox front office (including Hahn, Hostetler and others). This is truly exclusive content. Some is just fun stuff, but in some cases, players even revealed some truly interesting stuff. My personal favorites were Jose Bautista's brutally honest assessment of some of the younger pitchers, and Nick Delmonico basically saying he went AWOL from Milwaukee on purpose. You can click here to see all posts under "Interviews", and scroll around to find the ones you want to read. Enjoy!

QUOTE (Brian @ Oct 7, 2015 -> 08:50 AM) You guys must not be hip to the biz. Those first two were TEASERS not trailers. Peasants. /flips hair and drinks tea with pinky out lol, damn hipster. I readily admit I am not "hip". I guess to me that is a distinction without a difference (teaser vs trailer), or maybe at most a difference of scale (trailers maybe have more material).

QUOTE (GreenSox @ Oct 7, 2015 -> 08:58 AM) and thus Eaton should be traded. Sox could get a young third baseman and catcher for him. He and Trayce play the same position. Trayce is much better defensively. I'd be careful saying Thompson is "much better defensively", this early in his career, as a CF. Also, trading Eaton is removing one of the only two positives in the lineup this year, really. Trading him for Thompson will be a significant overall downgrade, probably. Thompson makes a lot more sense to replace Avisail than Eaton.

Avisail Garcia now has over a thousand MLB plate appearances - and still hasn't "figured it out". If he was a good defender to go with it, I'd be fine with letting him go another year and see if he can make the adjustments that everyone (including him) seem to know he must. But he's an atrocious outfielder, with a below average bat for the position and (now after 1000+ PA) significant improvement isn't the most likely outcome. I think you trade Garcia if you can. He should get you a prospect of some decent value, or maybe you include him in a larger deal. Try to upgrade via trade (that trade or another). If you can't get a good RF upgrade, then let Thompson start in RF, Shuck as 4th OF. At this point I feel reasonably confident Thompson will be an overall upgrade to what Avisail did this year. His defense alone is a huge offset, and even at .220/.300/.400 (which I think is a reasonable mid-line expectation for him) he's adding more value offensively with his speed. Invest heavily in 3B and (if possible) C. if you can upgrade RF externally too, great. If not, Thompson over Avisail. Not that the Sox will do that. But that's what I'd like to see.

QUOTE (Joshua Strong @ Oct 6, 2015 -> 05:04 PM) The first and only trailer to The Force Awakens comes out on October 19th, according to the reliable Star Wars News net. They are the only site to come out and put their name on the line and attach it to a date. By first and only trailer, don't you mean the third one so far? I've seen at least two. Do you mean first and only to be played in theaters?

QUOTE (bmags @ Oct 6, 2015 -> 01:11 PM) Yeah, before you purchase it ask the creators of the themes on the forums. They can usually point you in the right direction. if they can't, that's a sign you are buying something that will not be supported long. The database, you'll have to see. My impression would be with a real estate theme they are allowing data to be uploaded through csv or json or something. You can see if that would flow the other way. Good call, thanks. By the way, if there are any web designers out there looking for small jobs, I'd be willing to pay someone to set this up for me. I am tech-savvy enough to maintain it, but building it would take me way longer than someone more trained on these specific technologies, and I'm willing to pay to avoid the startup time.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Oct 6, 2015 -> 01:33 PM) Yeah, but for every Nick Hostetler or Marco Paddy, there's still KW or Buddy Bell to cancel all of that out. The biggest impact talent of the early bunch, Adolfo, isn't on a pace to even make a dent in the majors (assuming injuries or non-performance don't get him) before the new tv contract negotiations in 2019. They also have stayed within the parameters on intl. signings, unlike many of the big market clubs like the Cubs, Red Sox and Dodgers who have been scooping up the most talent. Finally, Courtney Hawkins and Tyler Danish sank quite a bit as prospects. That has hurt, as well. While most of the above is true, the bolded isn't, at least not in entirety. Hawkins did basically what you'd think he would in AA at his stage of development, maybe even a little better (though he missed some time to injury). So he's about where he was a year ago (though that is below where he was when drafted, if that is what you mean). Danish, again, did what you'd expect in AA as the youngest pitcher in his league without an overpowering fastball. He's pretty much on track. Both will repeat AA. There are plenty of prospects who fell hard the last year or so, neither of them are on that list.

I'd like to note a few things on the development side, that are worth keeping in mind... 1. The draft tactics have changed, pretty substantially, in part because of increased voices from people who aren't Sox lifers. They got away from the piling on "safe" picks with a few football players thrown in, and are generally drafting higher ceiling talent. This has been going on for a few years now, and the farm system in the lower levels is starting to show signs of that improvement. 2. The team's international (primarily LatAm) pipeline was basically empty until around 2011, but starting in 2012 they have dramatically increased spending there and really opened up the talent pool. You are starting to see some of those players in the state-side minors now. 3. While the team has generally been really, really bad at developing hitters, let's remember that this year's full time 2B's (Johnson, Sanchez) were developed internally, as were Thompson (who is looking like a major leaguer in some capacity) and Saladino (who looks like a competent utility man). Those aren't huge steps, but they are steps compared to the past... oh... decade. That doesn't include Semien (who is a starting SS, though he should really be a 2B) or Phegley (who is a competent platoon bat, albeit with poor defense) who are with Oakland. Not that everything is rosy, but development-wise things have absolutely been changing. And generally for the better. Unfortunately, it may take another 2-3 years before we really start seeing the MLB expression of full value from those changes.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Oct 6, 2015 -> 11:35 AM) From what I read if the people responded 'Christian', he shot them in the head, others he shot more to wound. if that is the case, they yeah, he singled out Christians. Hard to make out what is really going on here, but it does seem he was pretty anti-religion in general, not to mention pretty messed up in the head.

QUOTE (3GamesToLove @ Oct 6, 2015 -> 08:49 AM) The sky is not falling, greg. Look up crime rates today compared to those of previous decades. They're basically comparable, if not lower. We just have a crazier media cycle now. RElax. http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm The bolded is the key here. Greg, you are hearing about certain things more often - they aren't (for the most part) actually happening more often.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Oct 6, 2015 -> 08:58 AM) The power 5 conferences (and ND) have such massive football TV deals that even schools like Iowa St, Kansas, Kentucky, Duke, etc, make far more from football than basketball. Schools like Butler and Villanova probably make more from basketball than football. Interesting. Shows what I know, haha. Also I didn't realize Butler and Nova even had football teams.

QUOTE (Heads22 @ Oct 5, 2015 -> 09:10 PM) Football makes way more. All the information was true, the opinions, not quite all true. Football makes more money, really? I mean I know it does in college in general, but at a "basketball first" school I would think ISU might be an exception. Interesting.

QUOTE (bmags @ Oct 5, 2015 -> 03:41 PM) You can look at something like this and see how far you can stretch it. Good luck. I hate php and bootstrap. http://themeforest.net/item/javo-home-real...review/12590130 Thanks, bmags! It looks like that theme you found could be useful for nearly everything I want to do, with some tweaking (which I can do). The ability to select a spot on a map and get pick up the geo-location data is an open question, but i can search for that type of tool online by itself. I appreciate your help! Of course, I also need to deal with the database issue. When it comes to web applications and code interfacing with a true database, I just don't have that experience.

It is possible they bring up an announcer from the minors, just like they do with players. The Sox have a few good ones, though the best ones (in my opinion) are in the lower levels (the A ball teams have terrific ones). Not the most likely scenario, but a guy like Tommy Viola from Charlotte is not out of the question.

QUOTE (LDF @ Oct 5, 2015 -> 02:19 PM) many thanks for yours and all who labored at getting this done. can you answer this, i still think the lion share of top prospects are the pitchers but when i see the pitchers category, i see the RP having more, imo top prospects. how do you guys see it. Relievers in general are not going to be top prospects, with some exceptions. Especially in the lower minors, their ceiling values are just very low. Of the names you saw in this article, leaving Stephens (who will be a starter next year probably) out, only a few of them are even in sniffing distance of the top 30 overall prospects. So there are certainly far more ranked starters. That said, relievers can sometimes move more quickly and add their small value, sooner.

All- I'm starting a new website. I've built and managed a simple WordPress-structured site before, but I am not sure this new site will work without some professional help. So I am hoping that somewhere in the hive mind here, y'all can tell me if this is something I need to pay someone for. Without getting into the site details too deep (trying to keep it under wraps for now), the site needs to be able to allow users to search by location - both by address/zip/city or by clicking on a map or by mobile location service. They also need to be able to enter data in a form, with various text boxes and check boxes, and sometimes click a location on a map for that part as well. Then there are other static pages that I can handle easily enough. The information people enter - locations, ratings, etc. - need to be in a database so that the search can work either as a list output or a map output. Finally, I need to have a useful mobile version of the site. I guess the complicating factors here really are just the mapping/location aspect, and the search tools. Is this something I could probably pull off via WordPress add-ons? Or do I need a GIS-speaking developer to help me get it running? Thanks in advance!

QUOTE (Tex @ Sep 7, 2015 -> 10:27 AM) A couple weeks ago we welcomed our first grandchild into the world. He is the cutest baby, ever. :-) I've been a little busy since then with school starting and finding excuses to visit. Can't believe I missed this thread earlier - Congratulations, Jim!!!

Almost anyone they'd hire other than Hawk would be an improvement, so this is a good thing. They can try out voices to eventually be his full time replacement.

As I recall, there were people all up in arms about Shuck having this job. He turned out to be one of the few bright spots this year.

QUOTE (SoxAce @ Oct 5, 2015 -> 09:19 AM) You realize when he made that post? That was way before Seth Smith saved our asses. Ah, so in that case they were making an assumption. Got it. Seth Smith for MVP!

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 23, 2015 -> 01:26 PM) I think the thing with Shuck is that he has been well utilized by Ventura this year. You can't say that with all of the bench guys, but I think in this case, it is accurate. I think this is spot-on. He's proven to be a good 4th OF, and helps the team in a lot of ways. And he was used well. But he is not a starter, unless someone gets hurt. For that matter, I'd start Thompson before Shuck. QUOTE (Knackattack @ Oct 3, 2015 -> 11:49 PM) Shuck f***ed our #10 pick cut him immediately I assume this is sarcasm, but people do realize the Sox DID get the 10th pick, right?

We already looked at hitters and starting pitchers. Here is the final look at the 2015 statistical leaders among White Sox minor leaguers - Relief Pitchers. A 2015 draftee and a guy no one had thought about prior to this year lead the pack. Relievers in the minors are a lower value, less predictable bunch in general. But some of them make their way up quickly and can add value to a major league pen. Who among these guys hold some interest for you?

I thought they kind of created that job for him anyway - not sure they would have another one, exactly.

Apparently, there was substantial friction between Hoiberg and his program, and the ISU Athletic department as a whole. I have always appreciated that Iowa State doesn't bend as far as other significant DI programs on academics (though they still bend), but the nickel and diming for the department's biggest money-make seems awfully petty. Makes it less surprising Hoiberg left, though he may have anyway. Also not encouraging for the program's continued success.

QUOTE (SouthSideSale @ Oct 2, 2015 -> 02:01 PM) Yup. When they trot out Robin in '16 I won't be watching. Lots of people say this. Never ends up being true. I think Robin should go. But he won't. Fans will show up less often probably too, but no one is just turning it off entirely because they kept the manager.