ScottyDo

Melton doppelgänger asks if he pronounced Viciedo correctly. He did. Melton must be the evil twin.

Beckham 2-R homer, nice! EDIT: solo. 2R makes no sense.

First pitch, Flowers grounds out. Tekkote K swinging. Dweezy up again, grounds out to first. Game still tied at 3 after 1.5.

Derrick Robinson singles off Danks to shallow left. Phillips singles, too. Robinson to 2b. Ahead of Votto 0-2. Votto grounds to 2b, Beckham bobbles the ball so no DP but recovers to throw out Votto. Runners at 2b and 3b, one out. Heisey lines a ball foul. Sounds like people are squaring up Danks very well. Heisey then grounds a single to LF, scoring one. 1st and 3rd, one out, one in. Bruce does something to get on base, wasn't paying attention. Frasier knocks Phillips and Heisey in. Tie game at 3-3. 5-4-3 DP by Burriss ends the inning.

Paulie K's swinging. Viciedo fighting off pitches (notice how differently I characterize Viciedo foul balls vs. Beckham foul balls). Flairs to shallow left field, but dropped by the Reds LF Heisey. Ramirez grounds out on a rocket (apparently) to 3b. Half-inning over, 3 runs scored.

Agree with Heads...he sounds like Melton.

Dweezy takes advantage of a dropped ball in foul territory by lining a single. Beckham down 0-2 (duh), fouls off several pitches, works it to 1-2 before striking out on a high fastball from Bailey. Keppinger (the anti-Beckham) immediately works it to 3-0. Wise takes off but it doesn't matter as Kep walks on four pitches. Dunn works the count, hammers a HR to center field to drive in three.

QUOTE (balfanman @ Mar 19, 2013 -> 12:36 PM) I agree with this, however I do have a question that hopefully some of you can give me some insight on. It would be nice if one of our bench players was capable of playing several positions such as both infield and outfield, outfield and catcher, etc. in a fairly competent way to give R. V. a little more flexibility late in a game for pinch hitting, running, injury, etc. Something like Lillibridge used to be able to do. Would someone like say Jordan Danks, who has to realize by now that his chances of making a major league club strictly as an outfielder are dwindling, be open to and actively seek to learn another position to make them a little more valuable to a team? In this case, if Danks could play, at least fairly competently for a few innings at most, 3rd base or even better yet, catcher that would increase his value tremendously. As a professional athlete I can't imagine that it would be too terribly hard to at least learn the basics of a position competently. Any opinions? - like I really have to ask around here I think it would take at least a season, probably several, to teach him to play an infield position competently enough to be used at the Major League level. Unless he played some infield in college, about which I know nothing. I don't think High School experience would be enough.

QUOTE (flavum @ Mar 18, 2013 -> 07:38 PM) With this Orioles/White Sox September 5th controversy, it got me looking at the schedule a little more closely. Noticed the Sox scheduled Friday, September 13 at 1:05 for Yom Kippur. Again, the Sox are the only team to do this. Why is it so important to them and not any other team? I dunno, is Reinsdorf very observant?

Hey guys, thanks for the advice! I've expanded my search westward, as recommended. Good stuff!

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Mar 17, 2013 -> 06:11 PM) I hope the Sox found a reliable starter in Quintana too. I'm cautious because of his 2nd half performance and that the Yankees released him (a 22 y.o. left-hander.) I also am cautious about Q. It's possible that he's in the Buehrle mold, but those pitchers are relatively rare. To be fair about the Yankees releasing him, though, a) they have done tons of stupid things with their young players and b) the Buehrle-mold pitcher is very easy to overlook since their most noticeable trait is results in the majors.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Mar 17, 2013 -> 06:15 PM) If it were best for the organization it should be done regardless. The Sox' reputation as an organization has long term, real effects. The reason we got a guys like Sale, Peavy and Konerko to sign team-friendly contracts is because people like to play here and the organization is well-respected by everyone whose last name isn't Guillen. On the other hand, the Marlins had to overpay like crazy for all their spending spree stuff last year, in part because the ownership is not at all respected.

Out of curiosity, how has your record been in these bets?

QUOTE (59th street @ Mar 15, 2013 -> 06:13 PM) Every year I enter into a few bets with a friend who is a bit of a negative SOX fan (he dwells on the negative aspects of the team, I know unheard of here). I try to select bet criteria that if I win will result in a very good season for the SOX. This year I have offered two: 1) Adam Dunn will increase his BA 10% AND reduce his strikeouts 10% from last year. Thus he must hit .222 or above AND strike out less than 200 times. 2) Over under on Gavin Floyd wins is 14; I win at 15 or above. Bet has been accepted (as I said he is a negative SOX fan and really doesn't like either player). Obviously I like both bets as I offered them and if they both work out for me it should be a pretty good year for the good guys in black! Thoughts? Anyone else with similar kind of wagers? Hope you didn't plunk down much I can see Dunn's average over .222 with some fair odds, but Floyd hasn't looked like a consistent enough pitcher to win 15 games since he did it in 2008. I see no reason to believe he finally figured it out last year. Plus, wins are a notoriously fishy stat so I would never put any eggs in that basket. Felix Hernandez has only won >15 games once.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Mar 15, 2013 -> 11:59 AM) Tackles for punters doesn't equate to good fielding shortstops who aren't good offensively. If that's the case, and you think the basis of the analogy is poor, then you should have quibbled with the analogy, not used the analogy to prove a useless point.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Mar 14, 2013 -> 04:28 PM) If the punter were owed the 5th most money on the team . . . The analogy is that you can't use the same metric to determine the worth of every player. Not that SS and punters are of equal value. A good defensive SS with a decent bat should command a fairly high salary. Whether his bat is still decent has yet to be determined, but the "punter getting the 5th most on the team" thing doesn't fly, because punter and SS are non-equivalent.

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ Mar 14, 2013 -> 06:06 PM) The runner could theoretically be maybe 1/2 way between 3rd and home when the ball lands and go the rest of the way home by the time a fielder picks it up and gets the throw home. What would that do to the numbers ? I'm just encouraging your nerd streak by asking. So first off, I completely botched the first set of numbers. I know you're all very disappointed in me. I am going to turn in my physics badge and potato gun immediately. I don't know where I went wrong -- probably trying to use my phone's calculator -- but the true answer to my first attempt was: Ball speed: 131.5 mph Height: 578 feet Not nearly as implausible. Given Q's parameters, that should shave ~1.5 seconds off the required hang-time if they're a sprinter-caliber runner...so that would give us: Ball speed: 115 mph Height: 443 feet Still not possible because a) air resistance selectively dissipates energy from the beginning of the ball's flight path and b) even Albert Pujols' best HR exit speed in 2009 was 119 mph, and you can't replicate that type of swing straight up. Anyway, the point is that Balta should rescind his hug and you should all be terribly ashamed of me.

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ Mar 14, 2013 -> 03:12 PM) It was in the Babe Ruth movie starring John Goodman but really seems nearly impossible to hit a popup so high that one would be able to round the bases. But that is the stuff of legends which is the point. Because I am on a nerd streak on this site lately: for a pretty fast player to round the bases on a ball hit straight up in the air before it hits the ground, he'd have to hit it ~6500 feet in the air and the ball would have to leave his bat at about 675 mph

God, I hope Phil Rogers starts posting here so we can have some threads about random trade (im)possibilities with no basis in reality. In fact.....is it possible that Phil Rogers already has a Soxtalk handle?

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ Mar 14, 2013 -> 11:59 AM) It's going to be hilarious watching the reactions you guys have once you realize that we're still going to be run on. You all have been underrating AJ's contributions for years. Catching is the hardest position on the field to find a good player. AJ was an objectively poor thrower. Flowers played with the same pitchers in the same year and performed better. Of course we'll still be run on -- nobody's saying he's Ivan Rodriguez -- but the runners will be thrown out at a higher clip. I know you miss AJ, but it doesn't do any good to pretend he was a decent defender. He blocked balls really well for several years, but there is absolutely no case to be made for him being a good CS man.

QUOTE (TomSeaverFan @ Mar 11, 2013 -> 07:05 PM) Anybody worried Paulie's hitting too well this spring? Is he wasting the power in meaningless spring games? My dad used to worry about stuff like that so I guess it's been passed on to me. This is the best

I always wonder if the webcast people realize that since they don't have commercials, they don't have commercial breaks.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Mar 12, 2013 -> 09:24 PM) I was hesitant to include Castro in that group, but he did so well this spring I'm holding out some hope he can put it all together this year, although I don't think it's very likely. I think he ends up in the bullpen down the road. I like what I've seen from Axelrod, he's pitched pretty well for us all things considered, but I think he's more of a long reliever/spot starter on a contending team. Molina is a complete unknown at this point. Maybe he rebounds this year, more likely he doesn't IMO. I haven't given up on him yet, but I'm not very optimistic after the season he had last year. However, you do have to wonder why they valued him as highly as they did. I mean, he was on the Sox's short list of targets the offseason we traded for him, so someone in the organization really had to like him at the time. The good news is that we at least have some starting pitching depth in the upper levels of the system. I think it's been directly stated, but if not it's a fair assumption, that Marco Paddy is the one who was unreasonably high on Molina. Molina was Paddy's guy in Toronto too.

FWIW, the identities of the lower distribution of graph 2: 2011 Royals 2011 Rockies 2010 Indians 2012 Blue Jays 2012 Mariners 2011 Twins 2010 Cubs So not all perennial losers with highly-rated systems. I may be, and probably am, wrong about my working theory. Back to the drawing board.

So I've been slightly annoyed by the small contingent of people around the Interwebs suggesting that KC's spring training dominance this year has any significance whatsoever, so I decided to look into it. Then, I started seeing some pretty good teams (SF, Oakland, etc.) atop the ST winning percentage list, so I got curious and made a scatter plot of ST win% vs. Regular Season Win%, just to prove to myself that there isn't a correlation. This is probably incredibly stupid because I'm sure someone has done this before, but I'm avoiding doing actual homework so I did it anyway. Now, of course, there are problems with sample size (3 seasons isn't nearly enough) and the fact that ST has so many fewer games played so the winning percentages on one axis are far more varied than on the other. However, since I went through the effort, I decided I'd post the results anyway: So the slope of the linear regression is positive...but just barely so. The R-squared value is insanely low, too. Basically, even with the problems above, there is essentially no significance to winning in Spring Training. But just to see if there was anything to be gleaned from the very top ST performers (since it looks relevant when you glance at the standings) , I took JUST the top 5 teams in each Spring Training and plotted them vs. their regular season win%. Now, obviously this introduces even MORE sample size problems, plus a selection bias. But, on the other hand, whatever. Even lower R-squared value. Interestingly, though, a bimodal distribution split around .500 regular season win%. So my acting theory, with nothing but really sh*tty evidence to back it up, is that two kinds of teams win in Spring Training: those who suck and thus have stocked up on great draft picks who get a lot of spring play (KC), and those whose talent is just so good that they can't lose even in Spring Training (SF). It remains to be seen how the Kings of the Cactus League, the 2013 Royals, fit into this hypothesis, but I'm thinking they belong to the former group.