southsider2k5

QUOTE (scs787 @ Aug 4, 2014 -> 10:36 AM) And again, I think this team is indeed close to winning. Fix the bullpen, get Avi back, add a quality starter and a quality LH hitter and I really think they're right there. With their payroll being as ow at is, and the Sox being a "Large market team" I fully expect this teams payroll to be at the very least in the 80M range. To get to the 80M range we're talking about 30M in contracts. I don't see why 5M of that could be used on a guy who is one of the most dominant set up men in the game this year. He's not just a loogy either, RHB are hitting just .174 against him as well. They aren't. We shouldn't be thinking playoffs this year. Realistically, unless Verlanders arm falls off after he runs int Miguel Cabrera, which knocks his legs off, we shouldn't be expecting to win in 2015 either.

QUOTE (scs787 @ Aug 3, 2014 -> 09:47 PM) If the TWolves view Wiggins as a future superstar there's really nothing the Bulls can do. The supposed Mirotic/McDermott/Taj offer is a HUGE offer and they can't any better than that. This. If Wiggins is in the deal, the Bulls can't do any better.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Aug 3, 2014 -> 07:59 PM) Duncan Keith's $5.5 million cap hit is quite the value. Those kind of deals make Kane and Toews look reasonable.

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ Aug 4, 2014 -> 10:01 AM) What you call a low IQ player is way too judgmental in young players. The more baseball you play the better you should get in understanding your abilities and the importance of making the right decisions based on situations. You see low IQ , I see youth and inexperience and extremely toolsy .On one hand you advocate a combination of De Aza and Tank and I know I've seen you bash De Aza's IQ in the past. If Sierra is making the same mistakes De Aza made at 29 yrs old I'll agree he is a low baseball IQ guy. To summarize more clearly: I see Sierra's ceiling as a high of a hybrid of De Aza/Viciedo, based on the outline I made earlier. I also don't see Sierra ever really getting there based on his other shortfalls.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Aug 4, 2014 -> 09:05 AM) ...and here are the others: Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming You wanna know, how I know, that your list is fake? Iowa is on it.

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ Aug 4, 2014 -> 09:49 AM) I don't see where you think I'm comparing Puig to Sierra regarding ceilings. You mentioned Sierra's outfield and base running IQ so I said Puig and Eaton make the same kind of mistakes . Puig especially in spades. That was the comparison not in their ceilings. Young players make mistake simple as that when they believe in their abilities and are aggressive in their throwing and base running. Talking about the speed and power of De Aza is pointless . The guy is 30 , he has no upside any longer .Sierra's arm is just as good as Viciedo's and his speed and defensive upside is way beyond Tanks. Again all I'm saying is he needs more AB's , to play more baseball to develop his talents. I just want him to get a chance. Are the chances of him becoming a Carlos Gomez type player high. No. But it is a small possibility. The chance of De Aza or Tank becoming that good are non-existent. It is my experience that low IQ players have less of a chance of succeeding, because even if they don't fully realize their tool set, their chances of contributing meaningfully to a team drop, because of the level of mistakes they make. I see a lot of Alejandro De Aza in Moises Sierra. I think there is talent there, but a decent level of it will never be realized. I have no problem with him as a 4th OF, I don't want to see him as a starter.

Also listening to Hahn talk, I got a couple of impressions. #1, the "target" isn't anyone who has been talked about by the media. It would surprise me if it were someone with the Yankees catching group (just based on Hahns words.) #2, I didn't get the impression that the Sox are going to hand out a big contract to starting pitching this winter. When Hahn talked about the off-season, there was no mention of free agent starters. He specifically mentioned he won't do anything, just to do something, and staying out of a "short term mindset". The interview is worth a listen. http://chicago.cbslocal.com/?podcast_url=h...mp;dcid=CBS.CHI

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ Aug 4, 2014 -> 09:02 AM) Puig makes a lot of mistakes too. Eaton's made a few boneheaded base running errors too.That just comes with the territory often with young players. They believe in their abilities to make things happen. It just has to be harnessed. Getting playing time is a chance to grow in all facets of the game. I know the Sox need to see what they have in Viciedo too and Tank will never be a fast runner or plus defender because of that difference in speed. So Sierra is just as deserving if not more so than Tank because of his tools alone. Just throw out the Puig idea. He doesn't have anywhere close to that ceiling. Actually De Aza/Viciedo hybrid makes more sense. The power and speed of De Aza (15-20 homer top, 30 steal top), with the arm of Viciedo (but better, really a plus/plus arm). The baseball IQ of both of them, including defensive instincts.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Aug 3, 2014 -> 08:38 PM) Do I have a simple fix? No. But Andrew Miller is gonna get a hefty contract, and bullpen guys can be so fickle, I hate to spend that much salary on a guy. Scott Downs was one of the most reliable lefty relievers in all of baseball the last 10 years, so the Sox gave him $4 million and now he's in Kansas City. I bet you can find a guy for less than half the price that will be just as reliable. So was Scott Linebrink when we signed him too. Relievers are such a bad investment in general. Especially when you are looking at the difference between 78 and 82 wins.

QUOTE (scs787 @ Aug 3, 2014 -> 02:36 PM) Meh, the team is .500 because of the pen for the most part. I'd to waste another year of Sale/Abreu by having another pen that is not very good. Sox payroll is gonna be under 50M next year before arbitration, with not many arb eligible players to pick back up. 5-7M barely scratches the surface of what I believe will be back up to ~90M payroll. Spending money, just for the sake of spending money, is stupid. That is how you end up with Edwin Jackson on a 100 loss team. You add $5 million relievers when you are close winning, not just cuz.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Aug 4, 2014 -> 07:33 AM) From the standpoint of roster construction: when you acquire players, you are acquiring probabilities. That is, each player comes with a range of potential outcomes for each appearance and, by extension, each season. A GM has to make an assessment about what the most likely outcome is for each player he has, weigh the chances of a substantially better or worse outcome, and decide whether or not he is comfortable with said probability holding down the role he has in mind. What we're witnessing is close to the worst possible outcome of this bullpen. Just one pitcher is pitching near what was probably projected as an expected performance. The top two pieces were injured for nearly the entire season, two more pieces pitching close to as poorly as they could realistically be expected to pitch, and the rest pitching below expectations to the point that should have been realistically expected. To me, it doesn't look like there were any surefire signs that these guys were to going to pitch worse than normally (injury, decline), so I chalk this up to bad luck from Hahn's point of view. I don't think there's anything wrong with the process, I think it was just a rough year. I'd expect him to approach building next year's bullpen in a similar fashion, and I'd be pretty happy with him doing so. I certainly wouldn't want him to panic and start paying steeply for Proven Closers™ who have shown to be, at best, BARELY more reliable than a random live arm in terms of sustained effectiveness over several years. Also a very good post.

QUOTE (sin city sox fan @ Aug 3, 2014 -> 11:38 PM) The career stats back up my belief that our bullpen sucks because of Robin's complete ignorance in using it and lack of defining roles for anyone. He's ccmpletely destroyed the morale and confidence of all our relievers and it would make no difference who was in our pen. With as many things as he's done to damage this team and ruin our playoff chances, I don't see how we can continue to keep him in the position. The time has come for the organization to make a change and there's no need to wait even one day more. Fire Robin now! This is the kind of posts that Cub fans would copy and paste to show how insane Sox fans are.

QUOTE (scs787 @ Aug 3, 2014 -> 10:55 PM) Since you're using ERA here... Last 2 years... Belly-3.97/2.54 Downs- 2.49/3.15 For those fancy gentlemen here FIP Belly-3.64/3.09 Downs-3.09/3.66 If those guys pitch up to those results and Jones/Lindstrom stay healthy we aren't even having this convo. s*** happens though. Jones went down which messed up all the roles, then Lindstrom went down and even further f***ed up everyones roles. The intentions were good. The results were bad. Too bad this won't end things... But the villagers with pitchforks want answers

What I saw early from Sierra scared me. He seems like a low IQ baserunner and a guy who depends on his plus arm more than making the right play. I've seen him fly his cut-off man more than once trying to make a play, instead of making the smart throw and keeping a trail runner from taking an extra base, and eliminating a DP chance. He also doesn't seem like a very smart baserunner. Maybe those are things that can be fixed, but mixing that, with the fact that Toronto was already ready to let the obviously talented kid walk away, makes me wonder if Sierra is someone that Ventura and his team have been really successful at finding good match ups for, and if some of his numbers are looking better because of that.

5 relievers pitched today. Each of them gave up at least 2 runs. 4 relievers gave up 3 or more runs. Fire Ventura, the worst manager in the history of MLB.

QUOTE (oldsox @ Aug 3, 2014 -> 07:40 PM) 4-5 days ago I made a simple, one sentence, non-combative statement saying that Sox trading Addison Reed didn't help the bullpen, or if he were still here it would be better, or something like that, and I was promptly villified by 3-4 posters, 2 of whom are mods, basically insinuating that I don't know what I'm talking about, calling me a troll and that our bullpen is fine without him, even telling us what the Sox bullpen ERA is vs Reed's ERA, etc. etc. as if his 26 saves are irrelevant to the discussion, or words to that effect. The fact is the Sox bullpen imploded this weekend, and Reed had a scoreless inning today with 3 K's, not that that makes any difference. I still say Reed would have helped this team this year. A lot. Just stop. If you can get a potential 30 homer 3B with six years of control for a closer who is going into his arb years you make the deal, every, single time. And you can also stop pretending like Addison Reed has put up some special season, because he has been a very bad closer this year, no matter what is save total is.

Bernie Pleskoff ‏@BerniePleskoff 2m #Pirates today have signed free agent OF Jayson Nix and he is expected to be active for today's game. Brent Morel was optioned to Triple-A.

QUOTE (scs787 @ Aug 3, 2014 -> 12:02 PM) If Andrew Miller hits FA he should be the top target IMO. I don't care what those who bring up finances say, this team has such a low payroll that it can sacrifice 5-7M on a guy who makes this team A LOT better. Casey Janssen or "taking a flyer" on Jim Johnson would also be nice. Johnson is available right now, so I'd really like to see him brought in this year to see if Coop can fic em. The Sox aren't in a position to pay $5+ annually to a reliever. That is a last piece move, not a .500 team move.

QUOTE (scs787 @ Aug 3, 2014 -> 12:55 PM) This. There's not a single guy who you can say "Robin should have put ____ in with a 1 run lead instead of ___" and be right. All the bashing is done in hindsight. Wasn't Belly in when De Aza botched that catch? He makes that catch we aren't saying a word about the decision. Bingo.

Chuck Garfien ‏@ChuckGarfien 54m At this point last year, White Sox were 27 games under .500. They're 3 under right now. They should be better. But that's big progress.

QUOTE (Knuckles @ Aug 2, 2014 -> 06:45 AM) Anyone watching 'the leftovers' on HBO? I've been watching it. Still not sure what I think. Interested, but not looked. Waiting for a couple of story lines to break.

QUOTE (Feeky Magee @ Aug 2, 2014 -> 10:29 PM) Not in OPSs of course but they show up in other statistics. The sum of those statistics being that he has been a very valuable player for the Sox. I would be pretty willing to bet money that no statistic adequately couches the two runs and lost game from tonight.

QUOTE (VAfan @ Aug 3, 2014 -> 12:43 AM) I would count tonight's loss to the Twins as another game blown by the bad managing of Robin Ventura. What is Bellisario doing coming in to start the 8th inning at home with a two run lead? The last time Carroll pitched against the Twins, just last week, Robin brought in Bellisario in the 7th inning with a 1-run lead. Guess what happened then? No outs, 3 baserunners, all of whom scored, in a 4-3 loss. That's the game that started this thread in the first place. (Only most of the criticism was focused on the way Ventura mismanaged the offense in the 9th, rather than the mistaken turn to Bellisario in a tight game.) Tonight, with only one inning to get to the Sox closer, Robin turns to THE WORST CHOICE. It's maddening. Sox should have won both games, and be a game over .500, instead of 3 games under. Just on THESE TWO GAMES. Of course, they aren't the only ones. Who should have gone out there, exactly?

QUOTE (Feeky Magee @ Aug 2, 2014 -> 10:09 PM) Please give examples of boneheadedness that do not show up in statistics Pretty sure that dropped baseballs don't show up in cherry-picked OPS's.

QUOTE (kitekrazy @ Aug 2, 2014 -> 09:47 PM) It didn't happen so who cares? Hahn said during an interview today that he still is hoping to trade for this particular target. I believe he said he hopes to introduce him to the fans this winter.