ScottyDo

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Jan 30, 2014 -> 01:35 AM) No doubt Viciedo has been a huge disappointment, but I still believe in the talent. Also, I feel that working with Steverson will help Dayan as much as anyone. Selective aggressiveness is Steverson's big philosophy and the lack of it is what's preventing Viciedo from becoming an impact hitter. Don't get me wrong, Dayan will always be a bit of a free-swinger, but even a small improvement in his selectiveness would make him way more dangerous at the plate. Definitely agree with this. In the view brief periods during which Viciedo was completely eating MLB alive, it's not as though he was repeatedly being served meatballs. He was laying off some pitches and clobbering the ones in the zone. I really still think he has it in him, it's just not manifested itself. One of my biggest hopes for 2014 is that we can clear the DH spot so he can occupy it and work on his hitting while not costing us in the field.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jan 28, 2014 -> 07:25 PM) I want you to be aware that I am trained in the classical martial arts of internet b****slapping. I see you have been successfully spited. VICTORY!

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Jan 29, 2014 -> 06:57 PM) Here's something crazy I saw on FB. Someone suggested: 1. Eaton (CF) 2. Viciedo (LF) 3. Garcia (RF) 4. Abreu (1B) 5. Ramirez (SS) 6. Dunn (DH) 7. Flowers © 8. Beckham (2B) 9. Gillaspie (3B) Hahaha I cannot imagine a worse 2-hole hitter than Dayan Viciedo.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jan 29, 2014 -> 12:16 AM) I don't agree. I think Hahn's answer is exactly correct. What does it matter if there are redundancies on a roster that is far from competing? If it provides value somehow (flexibility for the young players, including development at the AAA level instead of service time at the mlb level), those redundant players are providing value separate and apart from their mlb production, are they not? Kind of, but if Davidson's ready for an extended shot then Gillaspie's gotta hit the road, and there's no room on the roster to stash both of them. There's no way to get anything for Gillaspie at that point, whereas you might be able to get something right now. Same with De Aza, only his value was probably higher to begin with and thus there is more at risk by letting him platoon/ride the bench. If there was more room on the roster, I'd agree that you don't have redundancy, you have depth and insurance. But there are only 25 spots. Not much wiggle room.

QUOTE (Vance Law @ Jan 28, 2014 -> 11:38 PM) -Rick Hahn: “This is going to take some time, and there will be various junctures where the big-league roster might not necessarily look right, like today,” Hahn said. “You could say, ‘You have an extra DH or you’ve got an extra outfielder or there’s a little bit of a logjam in the infield, what are you going to do?’ The important thing for us is to have the right players under control, who have the opportunity to play and develop, so that they’re going to be part of that next run once we get there, not necessarily to have the roster be seamless on any given day. “We see the redundancies that are there, and that may, at some point, lead to trades. But we’re not going to force it, and we’re going to wait for the right opportunity to pull the trigger.” I like the answer and to some extent it's true -- they may be willing to deal with a 4-man OF rotation for a couple of months -- but it's not fully honest. The Sox absolutely need to trade some of their players, and sooner rather than later as those players slowly lose value. But they need it to appear as though they have absolutely no urgency or they'll never sniff their asking price. Hahn is trying his best to maintain a necessary illusion, though I'm sure nobody's fooled. If he can really sell this position, more power to him. I just don't buy that they're fine blocking their players or diminishing their assets. QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 28, 2014 -> 09:53 PM) If they weren't willing to give people away then they shouldn't have traded for replacements. As far as "not trading for their replacements without being willing to give the current player away", that's hyperbolic, and much better than the alternative. You need to be able to accept some lost trade value on those guys but it doesn't necessitate dumping them. And it's much better than trading ADA or Gillaspie before landing Eaton or Davidson. What do you do if you fail?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 28, 2014 -> 10:56 PM) You don't turn down trades that make the team better. Period. You don't hang up on a GM because you are worried about what to do with Alejandro De Aza or Jeff Keppinger, or whoever doesn't deserve to be starting anyway. If we lose Jordan Danks, oh well. There are a million Jordan Danks out there. It is why he went undrafted in the Rule V draft last year. If it means you have good players on the bench, all the better. Heck the Yankees have done this for years. The reality is if De Aza were half as good as people think, he would have been pretty easy to move. The fact that he is still here, pretty clearly shows that he has no real value. I'm with you on most of this, but not the bolded. If De Aza is ideally worth 5 Arbitrary Value Units and Hahn has only received offers worth 4 AVUs, then the fact that he's still around does not mean he has no value, only that the offers don't match what Hahn considers ADA's value to be.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jan 28, 2014 -> 06:01 PM) I see it done a lot - even by the professional media - so I mean not to call anybody out, but I just so happened to see Joe do it which brought it to mind... It's actually the Rule 5 draft, not Rule V. Semantics I know, but it's better to be correct than incorrect. The Rule 4 draft is the First Year Player Draft. I'm also sure it won't be the last time I do this too. I am calling it the Rule 五 draft to spite you

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 28, 2014 -> 03:36 PM) Yes. Although Viciedo ought to fit better in RF and Garcia ought to fit better in LF on this roster, but that ship has probably sailed. No no, we must slavishly adhere to the weird idea that the hierarchy is always CF>RF>LF! P.S. I agree.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 28, 2014 -> 03:27 PM) In addition to this, De Aza is a terrible fit as a 4th OF with this roster. He isn't a solid defender at any of the 3 positions so you're not going to use him as a defensive replacement and expect a big improvement. There's a lefty in the OF who might well hit leadoff already, so he's not going to take many at bats from the CF. The RF has good speed so he's not going to pinch-run for the RF very often. The LF is a righty without much speed so you could in theory get him some at bats there, but all 3 OF guys are players you want playing every day either to develop them or to see if it's time to cut the cord and let the RF go. On top of that, De Aza got off to a very slow start last year, which doesn't bode well for him coming off the bench a few times per week either. Jordan Danks is sort of the ideal 4th OF for this roster. Cheap, able to be used as a defensive replacement at any position, and a lefty so you can sit the 2 right-handed corner OF's when they actually need a day off. You mean LF, right?

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jan 28, 2014 -> 03:18 PM) Last year was the first year they actually played on the same team. They were in the same dugout in 2012, but John was obviously on the DL. They're big boys and realize this is a business. If John can't handle not being around his brother, than the Sox need to get him off the team. This is all likely a moot point as the Sox will almost assuredly find a taker for De Aza by that time. Sorry, I was mostly kidding. Nobody will really care if Jordan Danks is gone to any appreciable degree. It might make John very slightly sad is all.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jan 28, 2014 -> 03:05 PM) I've alluded to this before too, but the Sox don't HAVE to move De Aza. It'd be a waste of a valuable resource, but there are ways of making things work in the outfield where all of the players get their fair share of ABs. In that situation, Jordan Danks has to clear waivers before being sent back to the minors. Is anyone that concerned with losing Jordan Danks? Maybe John Danks?

QUOTE (StRoostifer @ Jan 28, 2014 -> 12:35 PM) You asked a question that was answered with multiple reasons yet were the ones not seeing the forrest? I can see the forrest just fine and the forrest is called spring training. Let's see what Nieto can before we send him back to where he came from, Phehley and Flowers aren't the stiffest competition out there by any means. Oh one more thing, any player selected in the rule 5 draft must remain on the 25 man roster for the entire season or be sent back to his former team, AA won't be an option. I think he's saying that, in the case that we trade for him instead of sending him back, we then put him in AA instead of throwing him onto the 25-man

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 27, 2014 -> 01:10 PM) With Peavy, if you knew the Sox would not contend in 2013 and lose close to 100 games, Hahn would have been torched for signing Peavy. That is the point. The reason given for not signing a pitcher now is the Sox realistically won't contend, and give guys like Rienzo a shot. Well, they didn't contend in 2013, but signing a FA pitcher paid of with a prospect. That FA pitcher didn't cost anything but money. It's different.

I mean, Hahn himself said something similar on the Score yesterday. He just said no SPs that cost a draft pick.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jan 27, 2014 -> 12:22 AM) I don't understand why Hahn is stopping right now. I'm thinking in the offseason, Keppinger and Gillaspie sound like very good players and Flowers/Phegs doesn't sound so bad and our pitching staff seems just fine. But that's wishful thinking, fool's gold. To all of you "rebuilding people" please please answer this. My assertion is if we added a real catcher, another starter and preferably a real second baseman we "could" win the division. It's doable to add all three. So tell me ... do you agree with my assertion we are THAT CLOSE to contending now? If the answer as I expect, is yes, then why not go for it? I'd hate to be out of the race in May when we are this close NOW. There isn't a pitcher available who can get us to the point of contention. Tanaka might have been able to get us there - potentially - but none of the rest of the pitchers available are nearly that high-impact. That moves the whole contention window past this year and makes the urgency for settling the C position less urgent. And there isn't really a great C available anyway, at least not one we can afford to trade for without sacrificing the organizational depth we just worked to achieve for the long-term success of the club. Plus, we've got plenty of question marks on the roster currently, and it makes more sense to get some answers before diving headlong in one direction.

Nobody's saying we're set on pitching. All anyone is saying is that we are not desperate for it, and that signing a mid-level FA that requires putting a small ding in the rest of the Sox talent pool is not the best way to go about it.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Jan 26, 2014 -> 05:38 PM) If Paulino works out and he's at Charlotte that's best case scenario, that is what we want. How is this best case scenario? Why not Paulino working out at the MLB level? That's...what?

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Jan 26, 2014 -> 05:13 PM) I'm just saying stats can't nail down the precise value a contract should be. There are many factors and they differ for each franchise. This is certainly true. I can't imagine anyone would argue with that. However, when you're discussing future value, you gotta start somewhere, otherwise we're all blowing numbers out of our a**es. You're saying 3/$40M would be a steal. You don't like WAR, and you don't like $/WAR. So what, then, are you basing your assessment on?

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Jan 26, 2014 -> 05:07 PM) No. Backfill the rotation with Johnson and Beck and deal Quintana if need be and hope that Hoffman is there at #2. If Johnson shows he can't replace Quintana, deal Danks. You can do the exact same thing with veteran fliers like Paulino, except then you haven't lost the 2nd round pick to begin with, so the marginal increase in value is that much higher. In your scenario, you haven't made up for the value you lost, you just took it off the value of Quintana.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Jan 26, 2014 -> 04:57 PM) Nothing could be dumber than the ones used to say Dunn was a good signing. I mean talk about go back to the drawing board. Name a stat you like. I promise it's not a predictive stat either, but you can use it to try and evaluate future outcomes, even though it's imprecise. Do you like OBP? Then you should like the Dunn signing AT THE MOMENT IT WAS SIGNED. Since it failed, you must hate OBP. It's useless, nobody ever talk about it because it's dumb. BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD!

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Jan 26, 2014 -> 04:52 PM) After the Dunn signing I have no faith in predictive stats. Well, this is just brilliant. Let's not look at the body of evidence as a whole, let's pick a signing that failed and use it to reject predictive stats like WAR even though it's not a predictive stat.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Jan 26, 2014 -> 04:46 PM) Adam Dunn was a bad signing that WAR never alerted anyone to. Retrospectively, indeed he was. That doesn't really have anything to do with whether or not WAR is a good statistic. Additionally, no one is telling you that value/WAR is a perfect metric for a signing, either. It's just a way to set a benchmark so that people don't throw out random numbers and say "this is good!" or "this is bad!" without any evidence. QUOTE (Marty34 @ Jan 26, 2014 -> 04:41 PM) The draft pick is meaningless in this because its value can easily be recouped. You keep saying this, but how and when will the value be recouped? Are you saying we can trade Santana for a 2nd rounder or something of equivalent value? Are you saying we will get the pick back when he inevitably hits free agency as a Type B or A? How are you factoring in the very reasonable possibility that neither of those things happen?

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Jan 26, 2014 -> 04:39 PM) How was it that Dunn's contract was deemed a good deal for the Sox when it was signed? Every player transaction is unique and at this point in time it would behoove the Sox to shore up the rotation for a moderate investment in order to give themselves more options to improve the team in 2015 and 2016. It was considered a good deal because he wasn't supposed to play defense in Chicago. His WAR would have been much higher prior to the deal had he been primarily a DH. You can shore up the rotation and give yourself options in much cheaper fashion. I am sorry you are fixated on this mid-to-high price deal but it's not going to happen and I think it'd be a foolish allocation of resources.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 26, 2014 -> 05:33 PM) 7X3=33? He's saying 7*4.6 = ~33 4.6 is Santana's fWAR over the last three seasons. Still doesn't explain how $40M is a steal, nor why we would expect Santana to repeat his last three years given his age.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Jan 26, 2014 -> 05:10 PM) $7M per puts it at 3/$33M. $40M over 3 years is a steal on the free agent market. I get where you're getting your 3/$33M. How does that make 3/$40M a steal? That's $7M unaccounted for if he forgets to age and puts up the same rates he has over the last three years.