ScottyDo

QUOTE (JohnCangelosi @ Feb 15, 2014 -> 06:47 PM) Who is going to be the "I've lost 20 lbs and I'm in the best shape of their life" story this year? Alexei Ramirez. He now weighs -10 pounds

QUOTE (kitekrazy @ Feb 15, 2014 -> 02:52 PM) Not as long as you believe a players union really has power. Jayson Werth did not get 7/$126M because of the players union.

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ Feb 15, 2014 -> 03:37 PM) There is not a team in baseball that would want Dunn for anything more than a $1-2M tops, and that's probably overestimating things. That means you've already eaten at least $13-14M of that deal. Is it worth it to f*** the rest of the roster over in hopes of some s***ty middling f***ing prospect at the deadline? No it's not. You release him if you can't get anything out of it. SoxTalk: DERPA DERPA DERPA HE's MAKING TOO MUCH DERPA [blah blah blah, this continues for a while] Woah. I'm sorry we can't all be infinitely wise like you. Maybe the reason a lot of people haven't acceded to your correctness yet is because you haven't yelled loud enough and for long enough. You should keep trying, then we'll all see the light. Also, maybe we'll see that one type of beer is definitively better than another type and there is a character flaw in people who don't like the same brands as you. This is all really healthy.

QUOTE (Feeky Magee @ Feb 14, 2014 -> 11:23 PM) He's also mediocre, 33, coming off a PED suspension, probably gonna get something like $12-15m over 3 years, and would require us to give up the 3rd pick of the 2nd round. It's a terrible idea and thankfully not going to happen. Nail on head. He's Dunn without the walks and a very-slightly-better average.

My conclusion would be that Santana is hoping there are rumors of a team's interest somewhere out there. He may see the Sox as a possibility because we're rebuilding and thus appear to have rotation spots. I bet he's getting pretty anxious right about now.

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ Feb 13, 2014 -> 02:03 PM) I think it's already been broken, maybe not as publicly, but this Sam guy isn't going to be the first gay NFL player by a long shot. And I have no idea who else before him was gay, nor do I care to know, nor is it any of my business. And I really don't like comparing this to Jackie Robinson either. There is no gay baseball league where hundreds of equally talented gay players are held back; there are probably at least a few gay players in MLB who would get signed anyway due to their talent level but choose not to speak out because they want to focus on the game, not be the centerpiece of a media circus. Very few people, even the most ignorant ones, in this society are going to call for lynchings anymore. The gay issue is a religious issue, nothing else IMO, and the political hurdles gays face are a response to the thoughts of stupid religious voters who think about God's will when they cast a ballot. This is completely different from anything blacks had to endure here. Really, gays IMO have it probably easier than anyone, not that it has come easily, but blacks, native/indigenous peoples, Asians thrown in internment camps, women having no voice or voting rights and having to accept abusive husbands and live more or less as servants, etc. it's been really bad for them, and really no one got it worse than the natives here: forced off their land which they didn't even claim ownership of like we do, forced into one-sided treaties that were then broken, forced onto reservations, given no holidays except a completely historically inaccurate one called Thanksgiving which is football holiday teams like the Redskins play on that promotes gluttony and wastefulness. Gays for the most part have had to keep secrets. And I'm not diminishing the struggles they have had, and it's great that some things finally are changing, but let's not make the Jackie Robinson comps here please. And as long as there are morons who believe they should be able to control the intimate lives of other people through the political process there are still going to be problems. The comparison isn't exact, but it's definitely there. This hasn't happened in over a hundred years of major organized sports for a reason, not just because gay people are independently secretive. Because there has, historically, been active aggression against the group. Eventually, sentiments change and someone is the first person to definitively defy the ugly history of the sport. There is no denying the comparison in that respect. Jackie Robinson was certainly more momentous for the reasons you mentioned, but to deny the significance of this event is, in my personal opinion, terribly offensive.

And of course there's a media circus. Because it's a significant event. The mark of ultimate success will be when there's no longer a circus when a player comes out, but it's a stepwise process. To ignore the breaking of a barrier would be a great disservice. They made a freaking movie about Jackie Robinson 60-something years later. The event is important and commemorated frequently. That's as it should be.

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ Feb 13, 2014 -> 01:39 PM) I agree that comments like those made by Kenny Williams are great for gay people & gay rights. It's great for those who the issue is about but the resulting media circus is almost Dunn-like in its repulsiveness. I get what you mean by the not caring part, but really, if you're not gay why should you care? I support gay rights, I have no problem with gay athletes or gay co-workers or whatever, but I don't march in parades, and when I see a gay person I just go on with my day. Not everything needs to become a circus and IMO it is impossible for something like that not to become a circus. In fact if you've heard one thing out of the corporate media these last several days you can pretty easily see one great reason why gay athletes don't want to come out. Because it's a barrier that you don't think should be there, and it's weakening, soon to break. That's why you should care. That's why you should care about Jackie Robinson, too, even if you're white.

I hate that people are so dismissive of this event, as though it means nothing. There's a reason there has never been an out player on a major team sport, and it's not because there aren't gay people throughout all four of them. It's really monumental that we've progressed to the point that a gay player can be who he is in such an historically intolerant arena. You can say "what's the big deal?" because you don't care that the guy, personally, is gay. But that's akin to saying "who cares?" to Jackie Robinson because you don't care that he's black. Nobody has to care about the identifier of the person breaking the barrier, but it is ABSOLUTELY important that the barrier is being broken. It represents societal change, and change within the sport(s). I'm very glad KW has vocalized the right position on the issue. It can't be expressed how important it is that organizational figureheads comment in support of Sam. And it's not a political issue, it's a human issue.

Can we add Ervin and Santana to the language filter?

I suppose I should have seen this coming...it's well known that Keith Law loves the White Sox.

QUOTE (southside hitman @ Feb 11, 2014 -> 01:38 PM) http://insider.espn.go.com/blog/keith-law/post?id=1809 Three White Sox in the top 20 impact prospects for 2014. Which three?

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Feb 11, 2014 -> 01:35 PM) How do you get -1% of the vote??? Somebody figured out how to place an antivote

Ouch, rough outlook for Nate Jones

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Feb 11, 2014 -> 01:17 PM) Nobody here expects it, just that it's a mistake by Golden Boy Rick. And 28 other teams (one will eventually sign him)

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ Feb 10, 2014 -> 01:33 PM) It's that same general glaring trust/oversight problem IMO, I mean, how is it that like 70+% of your INTL budget each year is used up on guys that aren't worth half that amount? At some point don't you want to go down there and look at these kids for yourself? Nah, just the people in charge run the thing, they know what they're doing, they always have our best interests in mind. But that's not just Kenny, it's really the entire organization from the top down with JR IMO, and it may still be going on. Why was Buddy Bell promoted? Yeah but he was the General Manager. Just like any other sort of manager, one of his main responsibilities is holding his team accountable for performance and correcting performance as need be. If he doesn't performance manage the INTL talent team, it's ultimately on him. That's his job. JR's job is to make sure KW does HIS job...so if you're arguing that it's a system-wide issue, you're really saying that KW didn't get enough pressure from above.

Another determinant of draftee success is minor league instruction. Anyone gonna argue we've been any good at that? Pitchers, perhaps. Definitely not hitters.

I will say that things appear to have gotten much better when he overturned the scouting personnel (which is a knock against the idea that our draft success was random), I just don't know why he had to wait so long to make the change when sustained failure was painfully apparent to everyone else.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 10, 2014 -> 01:09 PM) Exactly what I stated from the beginning is 100% true. The White Sox spent 15% less than any other team in all of baseball from 2007 to 2011. They spent about 1/3 of what the top team spent. Both Hahn and Williams have clearly stated that they took money from development and put it into the major league team. Spin all you like, the facts are the facts. They flat our sacrificed the minors for the majors. If you want to stay in denial, by all means, do so. I'd be interested to see the relationship between your $$ rankings and DA's results rankings. If there is, indeed, an effect like you suggest, you'd probably see it on a scatter plot.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Feb 10, 2014 -> 12:58 PM) I agree with pretty much all of this. I've never been one to get into rankings either, but the Sox were incredibly poor. There are a number of different reasons for the poor minor league system though too, and I think it's hard to say one of them is more important than the other. I mean...no matter what, KW was the captain of the ship that yielded this result. Say what you want about our ranking indicating that he was bad, but there definitely is NO evidence that he could have been great at building up a farm system. What would anyone point to that was excellent about the Sox' drafting under his management?

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 10, 2014 -> 12:37 PM) It isn't easy. It is why saying you could have a top farm system if you wanted a top farm system is ridiculous. Thank you for agreeing with me. But if you look at the totals of my chart, the White Sox are way below the average team in drafting WAR. As I mentioned, they haven't had a homegrown hitter but up a 3 WAR since Joe Crede in 2006. Since 2006, the average team has had 7 seasons of homegrown hitters putting up a 3 war. They also didn't have a 2 WAR hitter for them in any draft from 2001-2007. You are saying "show me one team", if everyone is terrible at it, why from 2001-2007 did the White Sox total WAR drafted come out to less than half league average? The league average was 94.7. The White Sox drafted 44.6. The only team worse at drafting players were the Brewers. I understand the arguments others are putting forth, but how can you argue with SECOND-TO-WORST? Like, come on -- if you think the second-worst drafting team over a decade was in that position due mostly to chance, then you might as well say the entire thing is a coin toss and that no difference exists between teams. I don't buy that.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 10, 2014 -> 12:37 PM) It isn't easy. It is why saying you could have a top farm system if you wanted a top farm system is ridiculous. Thank you for agreeing with me. But if you look at the totals of my chart, the White Sox are way below the average team in drafting WAR. As I mentioned, they haven't had a homegrown hitter but up a 3 WAR since Joe Crede in 2006. Since 2006, the average team has had 7 seasons of homegrown hitters putting up a 3 war. They also didn't have a 2 WAR hitter for them in any draft from 2001-2007. You are saying "show me one team", if everyone is terrible at it, why from 2001-2007 did the White Sox total WAR drafted come out to less than half league average? The league average was 94.7. The White Sox drafted 44.6. Just curious, where are you getting your numbers? I've done a lot of googling and come up with nothing useful.

I mean, no matter how you frame it, KW's tenure as GM resulted in an abysmal farm system. I get resource allocation, and I get that they focused on floor rather than ceiling, but I don't buy that he wasn't trying to amass talent in the minor leagues. As someone who looked at prospects like poker chips, why wouldn't you want to maximize the value of your chips? He did a bad job at that, as DA's graph shows pretty conclusively. Some of it might have been priority and resource allocation, but you can't write off how ugly it's been.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 9, 2014 -> 06:47 PM) Right. It is every pick. The 14.2 in 2004 in fact is basically all Gio, and none of it is with the White Sox. His drafts were beyond awful. Cool. Just checking. Yeah, that's ugly. 2008 looks like it's mostly Dan Hudson, too, with a sprinkling of Gordon Beckham. Sigh.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 9, 2014 -> 05:36 PM) The IPad screwed up the columns. The first number is the collective WAR of the White Sox draft picks that year. The second is the average collective WAR per team that year. But not necessarily WAR just with the White Sox, right? Because we traded tons of minor leaguers, so their WAR with the White Sox would be expected to be low. It's the WAR of Sox draftees throughout all of the teams they end up with that would really show how crappy KWs draft classes were (which they were).