ScottyDo

Okay, so Oney's stuff, while pretty humorous to me, was definitely irresponsible and uncalled for. But if Jenks got drunk and punched some dude in the face, that's the type of dirty laundry I think SHOULD be aired. Definitely not in the manner that they were aired, but I think more athletes should be exposed as arrogant pricks who need to be reined in.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Dec 29, 2010 -> 12:30 PM) No of course not. Let's take it to the extreme? However, good experienced closers will lose fewer games. The Sox currently have no one on the roster with experience closing more than just a few games. There are exceptions like when Jenks did well in 2005 but he at least was closing the whole year in the minors so he was used to the situation. Hopefully the Sox will find another one this year. All closers were non-closers at some point, and more often than not, they make the transition at the major league level. On a pretty frequent basis, they find success early as well. Thornton has had some experience closing, and I think he deserves a shot, aside from the fact that I think the closer is a stupid pigeon-holed role.

QUOTE (Brian @ Dec 28, 2010 -> 09:13 PM) Oney owning Bobby on twitter and I hate Oney Haha I hate the dude but that is damn good entertainment!

QUOTE (ptatc @ Dec 28, 2010 -> 04:27 PM) Just found out I'm related to Jayson (I will refer to him as Jayson now). He is from my father's hometown and is my father's cousin adopted son. I think this is a close enough relation to ask for a loan. Maybe I could become his posse. Or maybe you can do his PT when he's 37 and injured and still getting paid $10693M/year

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Dec 28, 2010 -> 03:08 AM) When have the White Sox ever been able to call on their system in-season to compensate for a player injury or poor performance during the KW era? I've been drinking. So a time or two could be alluding me. But I doubt it. In the past, pretty much never. But they could with Viciedo, that's my point, so there's no hurry to dump him because of a logjam.

QUOTE (R.J. @ Dec 28, 2010 -> 02:48 AM) So outside of Sale (who I think is being counted on for the back end of the bullpen) our options A & B are Lucas Harrell and Carlos Torres? I agree in that assuming Peavy will be out until May or later, we need a 6th starter type option who can be had on the cheap to eat innings and back up our other arms. Looking at who's out there, who among these names could be had on the "Freddy Garcia" type contract we could offer them? What about minor league deals? Courtesy of MLBtraderumors.com: Brian Bannister (30) Jeremy Bonderman (28) Brian Burres (30) Dave Bush (31) Bruce Chen (34) Doug Davis (35) Justin Duchscherer (33) Jeff Francis (29) Freddy Garcia (35) Braden Looper (36) Rodrigo Lopez (35) John Maine (30) Pedro Martinez (39) Kevin Millwood (36) Brian Moehler (39) Carl Pavano (35) Brad Penny (33) Andy Pettitte (39) Nate Robertson (33) Ben Sheets (32) Ian Snell (29) Jeff Suppan (36) Jarrod Washburn (36) Todd Wellemeyer (32) Chris Young (32) Now a lot of these guys are/were god awful, and those who weren't will be signed up by teams with more pressing needs than a temporary 5th starter, but if you were looking for a lottery ticket or an insurance policy, is there one in there? I'd take a flier on almost any one of those guys and consider it about the same as a Garcia signing. There are a lot of guys with fix'em potential in there, notably Maine, Bondo, Young, and Penny. I think I'd rather have Garcia, though, just because of familiarity. If Coop were high on pretty much any of that list, though, I'd be totally fine with most of those stopgaps.

Also, under no circumstances do I want Viciedo to be traded for a reliver, unless it's someone truly dominant (not likely), but a right-fielder? Sure. Don't you think Q + Viciedo would net us something significant for RF, were someone available?

Let me get this straight: we want a strong farm system so we can have replacement-level or greater depth at positions, but if we have a guy who provides just that, with plus-potential, it's bad because he's logjammed? I mean, sure, logjams are not ideal but they're one of the best problems to have. I just think you're talking out of both sides of your mouth here: good prospects provide good replacements in case of injury, but we can't keep him because we have people who aren't currently injured? If we're not gonna get fair value for him, then we should keep him somewhere, possibly the minor leagues (where he still has plenty to prove, IMO). If our logjam is somewhat long term like ours appears to be, then a half-season of bad stats shouldn't be particularly detrimental, because he'll have plenty of time to build value.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Dec 27, 2010 -> 04:24 PM) Which ultimately brings me back to the organization's mishandling or mis-judgement of younger players. Or guys that we either draft or sign. We seem to be really good at raiding other teams inventory. But horrible at the other aspect. I don't want to see Viciedo go for a struggling yet talented high A pitcher that Scott Merkin will inevitably dub Cooper's next great experiment and then reference Thornton, Floyd and Contreras. Can't raid another teams' inventories without having some inventory of your own. Also, why would KW just give Viciedo away for low value? We can still keep him. We dont have an urgent need for a High A pitcher, or really any other piece. If anything, Viciedo is traded to immediately assist the current Sox team. That is, and always has been, Kenny's MO. Whether he gets fair MLB value might be debatable but there is zero reason to just dump Viciedo, and it will never happen (unless he someday becomes a 28 year old AAAA failure...which will also not happen.)

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Dec 27, 2010 -> 03:22 PM) Then the signing was ultimately a failure. Does anybody really trust KW to get fair value, whatever that is, for Dayan? Maybe I'm missing the context of this post, but I hardly consider the Dunn signing a failure just because it may or may not marginally affect the value of an ancillary player. EDIT: Or were you referring to the signing of Viciedo himself, perhaps? In which case, I kind of agree.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Dec 24, 2010 -> 04:12 PM) Deceleration involves the external rotators such as the rotator cuff and posterior deltoid. The lat, which was torn is an accelerator which is why it is such a uinque injury for a pitcher. Most injuries in a pitchers should involve the decelerators or the stabilizers. Cool, thanks! I know my A&P but I have no idea about kinesiology! Either way, it wasn't gonna be fixed by a 15 day DL stint, am I right?

Not saying we're great, because clearly we're not (although we are clearly headed in the right direction in terms of drafting and development). But if the vaunted Royals prospects made the big club this year, then their farm system ranking next year would suck. What does that say about the Royals farm system? Absolutely nothing. We're suffering from a similar problem, and if not for that, we might have been in the low 20's on the ranking list. Not good, but not dead last either.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Dec 24, 2010 -> 10:08 AM) Forget the start before it gave out. What about the first time he felt it? Perhaps all of that detachment occurred within that 4-6 week period. If he tells the team about it ahead of time, he takes 10 days off, lets the muscle heal itself, and he's good to go. If it were late October, like game 5, Peavy had been pitching well, and the series was tied at 2 - sure, I understand, blow out your f***ing elbow for that s***. World Series' don't come often. When it first came up, in like early June...you're absolutely crazy to defend Peavy's decision, especially considering Peavy is criticizing himself for it. I could be wrong, but I don't think his shoulder tightness had anything to do with the tendon tear, and even if what he was feeling was his tendon weakening, the only thing that would have fixed it was surgery or a LONG layoff. Ligament and muscle damage work very differently. This season was lost no matter what, unless he adjusted his mechanics to reduce the stress on his decelerators. Even that isn't a sure thing, as lat tendon avulsions are completely unprecedented in pitchers.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 22, 2010 -> 04:13 PM) In fact, they probably have to trade away at least 1 veteran (Billy Butler) if they want to make room for their young guys as well. They also get out from under Gil Meche ($12) and Jason Kendall's contracts ($3.75) at the end of this year, so they do have money available if they want to spend it. They always have money available, they just historically don't spend it. My point is that while they're in decent position, they're not really even close to there until a lot of other things pan out, including a shift in philosophy regarding free agency. Having a buttload of young talent is a great thing, but it's not even close to the only thing that makes a contender.

If the Royals are really going to consider winning, they'll need to sign/trade for a few veteran pieces. I can count on one hand the number of teams in the last decade that really succeeded based on the successes of players who have been in the league It's my opinion that die-hard baseball fans are somewhat over-enamored with youth. It's important, but youth is mostly valuable because it is presumed to lead into maturity. You want guys who are good at 25 so they'll be great at 27-30.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Dec 22, 2010 -> 12:18 PM) I agree with the premise of Bill James' model. I still have a problem with the WAR concept. While it basically attempts to establish an "average" to use as a replacement, it discounts the availability or opportunity of this replacement player. In managers it's even more difficult. Many managers make decisions based on situations and don't always follow the same pattern for strategy. This is problematic enough without looking at the abstract concept of the managers impat on the motivation, mood or focus of a player on a day to day basis. I like what Bill James and sabermetrics try to do as a whole, I was a subscriber to his early newsletters in the 80's. However, as I've said before from a statisticians point of views he basically decides what he thinks is important and creates a formula in an attempt to quantify it. It has many hole in it and while it is helpful on making decisions people carry way too far. Being heavily involved in reviewing research articles for peer reviewed publications, sometimes you can microanalyze the numbers, make them say what you want them to say and lose sight of the big picture. +1. Except for the whole subscribing in the early 80's thing.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Dec 21, 2010 -> 05:51 AM) There are 13,000,004 reasons why Jesse Crain left Minnesota. Maybe they'll grow into it?

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Dec 19, 2010 -> 02:22 AM) According to fangraphs, here are his numbers in low, medium, and high leverage situations.... low - 3.80 K/BB, .271 AVG, 1.30 WHIP, 2.54 xFIP med-2.13 K/BB, .311 AVG, 1.88 WHIP, 3.78 xFIP high-5.00 K/BB, .227 AVG, 1.09 WHIP, 1.90 xFIP I don't think you want your closer to have a WHIP of >1.8 under any circumstance, particularly medium leverage which was probably a pretty frequent occurrence. I don't know the details of the "leverage" stats though.

QUOTE (bschmaranz @ Dec 17, 2010 -> 02:38 AM) The Rickettses say "no". But 3 years ago, he would have signed Teahen for 6/$90M

QUOTE (chw42 @ Dec 17, 2010 -> 02:33 AM) They probably shouldn't rely on that much power, especially since they play in one of the best pitcher's parks in baseball. I do like their lineup though. DeJesus LF Crisp CF Barton 1B Willingham RF Matsui DH Suzuki C Kouzmanoff 3B Ellis 2B Pennington SS There's a lot of OBP in that lineup and you'll get decent power from Willingham, Matsui, and Kouzmanoff. Not a fan of 6-9. I think their pitching will make up for it. But the OBP on top is nice. Still, I think they could do with a thumper somewhere in there. Dunn would have looked nice instead of Matsui. Too bad for them!

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Dec 16, 2010 -> 11:55 PM) He was non-tendered. We're getting nothing back. Oh yeah, I knew that. Finals have me fried. I'll be back in form by Saturday, promise.

Sorry if this was answered earlier in the thread: Bobby is a Type A or Type B?

I guess I can't simultaneously complain about the Werth/Crawford contracts AND this one.

QUOTE (dpd9189 @ Dec 16, 2010 -> 10:56 PM) As I said in earlier posts, I like 1 year deals for relief pitchers so I think this is a great deal for the Cubs. That being said the salary thing is fishy. I wonder if the Cubs and Wood came to a gentlemen's agreement where if Wood pitches good this year, they'll reward him next offseason when they have 50 mil coming off the books. Oh yeah, I've definitely got nothing against the 1 year, that's probably the best he was gonna get anyway, it's the $1.5M that's bizarre as hell. I mean, let alone the fact that he had better offers on the table with better teams, he could EASILY have leveraged a little more money out of the Cubs just based on the competition for his services. Whaaaatever, it's all his prerogative.

QUOTE (Charlie Haeger's Knuckles @ Dec 16, 2010 -> 07:03 PM) With all the money the Sox are throwing around this off-season, I think this might be the highlight so far... http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_..._video_13066619 I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!