Dick Allen

QUOTE (Baron @ May 28, 2014 -> 07:28 PM) The fact that Noesi is still making starts is astonishing to me If someone told you before the season Paulino and Johnson would be as bad as they were, Noesi would be getting starts. Scott Carroll would be getting starts. Sale would be on the DL. Abreu and Eaton would be DLd, would anyone really think this team would be anywhere near .500?

Sierra reminds me of a pre steroid Sammy Sosa.

That non error on Beckham in KC turned into an error. He went to the official scorekeeper and told him he should have made the play.

Wow.

QUOTE (flavum @ May 28, 2014 -> 06:56 PM) No runs in the first inning. That's not much to ask for. Small steps. Just 1 or 2 runs would be an improvement. Maybe they should have him throw an extra 30 warm up pitches. He seems to be really good after the first.

QUOTE (Baron @ May 28, 2014 -> 06:53 PM) The Royals once again got blasted Perpetual rebuilding sucks. Shields bolts, Ventura's elbow becomes a problem and they are bad another 5 or 6 years

Magic, MJ, Durant, KG and Hakeem and I have $1 left for my bench

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ May 28, 2014 -> 04:46 PM) It's Rick Hahn. If he misses more than he hits, he'll be fired. Put the pitchfork away and save it for situations that will actually affect our ability to compete. Like if we had signed Ubaldo or something. I see what you did there. I am absolutely shocked the moderators will let that slide. It is kind of funny the saber boys are ignoring his advanced numbers. His FIP xFIP and WAR don't suggest in the least he would hurt the Sox chances of competing. Why are you ignoring those numbers?

I just wonder what the final bill would have been if Chicago got the 2016 games. People were upset. I think we dodged a bullet.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 28, 2014 -> 02:59 PM) So like I said, there were obviously questions, or else his contract would have been much bigger. He was a slam dunk if there ever was one for the White Sox considering their lack of prospects and aging 1B/DH guys. Normally teams don't hand out $68 million contracts, the biggest in team history, to guys they don't feel are sure things. And I was talking about Paddy's impact on the signing, which IMO was limited at best. He joined the team in December 2011. The Sox knew about Abreu well before then. And even KW pointed out the bidding was all JR.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 28, 2014 -> 02:24 PM) Ignoring everything you are saying I said, and repeating what I actually said was that someone from the White Sox scouted Jose Abreu LONG before they put Kenny Williams on a plane to the DR to see him. I also said that if it was such a slam dunk when it came to Abreu, he would have signed a MUCH larger contract than $68 million. What you made up doesn't actually prove or disprove either of those two statements. Honestly, most of that post means nothing. Isn't $68 million the biggest contract the White Sox have ever handed out? I would think that means he's considered a slam dunk. I think every team offering him 8 figures for 5 or 6 years thought he would be really successful. And of course he was scouted by the White Sox. He was scouted by every team There was a concern about his bat speed, and they had the perfect storm where teams who really drive prices up like the Yankees and Dodgers and Cubs and Red Sox pretty much had 1B and DH filled up. From the article inside his showcase where KW stated he went to look at him hoping he didn't like him, : "If it hadn't been for those concerns, which have since proved largely unfounded, he would probably have been in the Tanaka nine-figure range," said an executive of one club that liked Abreu but determined it could not afford to bid on him. "From the video I saw, he reminded me a lot of Miggy Cabrera. Which now makes me wonder: If Cabrera was in Cuba putting up stupid numbers at his current age and in his current, somewhat slowed-down physical condition, what would scouts have thought of him? Interesting thought experiment." Here is another interesting thought experiment: Now that Abreu already seems a bargain a month into his six-year deal, what kind of contract might the next decorated Cuban escapee command? Rick Hahn, the White Sox' general manager, puts the bull market for Cuban hitters into some perspective. "We signed Alexei Ramirez in '08 for 4.25 [million dollars]," Hahn pointed out. "We signed Dayan Viciedo a year later for 10. In 2012, [Jorge] Soler goes to the Cubs for 30, and then Puig goes for 42 right away. Now Abreu. The escalation was so quick in this market for this type of player. Contracts went up 15-fold almost since '08. There is something about Jose having not played in the States that ultimately made people shy away, and you completely get that. In retrospect, thus far, it looks like it's going to be a sound deal. But you still had that unknown." Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/mlb/news/.../#ixzz332cAOlu2

QUOTE (greg775 @ May 28, 2014 -> 01:58 PM) You've got to remember, the second you trade Alexei you are telling the average fan you are giving up. Be careful with that. It looks like Semien is not as good as many of us hoped, merely an eventual replacement for Beckham, and L. Garcia is horrific. Any minor leaguers ready to be Lexi Junior? SS isn't easy to fill either. My BP says Semien cannot play major league SS. I haven't ever seen him play SS so I couldn't tell you. Sanchez is hitting in Charlotte, but will he hit enough at the major league level to play SS every day? If you sign a free agent, they will be more expensive than Alexei and probably not as good. Until there is an obvious replacement, or a deal where you can't say no, keeping him is the play IMO.

QUOTE (greg775 @ May 28, 2014 -> 02:01 PM) We had so much fun on our seventh or eighth grade field trip to Springfield. I won a huge pot in a game of "in between" on the bus and the tour of the park there was awesome with everybody splitting up and having so much fun. It was fun back in the day when parents and teachers both didn't watch their kids' every move. On our 7th grade trip to Springfield, our school was told never to return. Spoiled suburban brats.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 28, 2014 -> 01:48 PM) Someone looked at Abreu LONG before KW ever went there. No organization sends their VP out to look at a guy first. Many teams had their top people at his showcase. He had been scouted before and had been well known for quite some time. He played in the WBC. If you are saying the White Sox would not have been in on Abreu without Marco Paddy, while you may be complimenting Paddy, you are dissing the rest of the baseball operation beyond comprehension.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ May 28, 2014 -> 01:21 PM) I think the cubs have already determined how much they will lose in litigation and decided it doesn't matter anymore. They do have a contract with the rooftop owners, but those owners made a mint off the cubs with no payback before that contract. Let's not pretend like they agreed on the contract and then decided to sink huge money into them, the investment was already made by the rooftop owners. They just legitimised the relationship before the Cubs upgraded so they could have a say in it. I don't think what happened before the contract applies. The Cubs do have a contract with them now. And yes, they did sink a lot of money into them before they had the contract. But they have also sunk a lot of money into them afterwards. Their revenues are sharply lower than they were 5 or 10 years ago. People used to pay $200 or more per person to go on one of those. Now they have groupons for 1/3 of the price. The contract to me makes all the difference in the world. What they are doing now is obnoxious. The last plans before they decided to go for an all out war only affected 4 or 5 rooftops. The Cubs could have bought them out for less than 2 years of Edwin Jackson, and seemingly all their problems would be gone. Now they just added $75 million to their construction costs. Considering what we are hearing about their lenders pressuring them, in some cases to sell their entire stake in the team, it has to be at least a partial bluff.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 28, 2014 -> 01:20 PM) That only goes so far. The guy signed a $68 million contract (which was the top bid by all accounts). That is no where near what the guy is worth, meaning that there was a decent level of uncertainty regarding Abreu, otherwise there would have been a 1 in front of that contract. That wasn't Paddy. KW was saying he recommeded a 4 year $40 million offer and JR was the one who upped it. Abreu has made the next Cuban sensation a lot of money.

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ May 28, 2014 -> 01:06 PM) Yep, looking for an "A-" level pitching prospect (probably that orgs best prospect) and then another couple top 10ish guys from that org as well. Bowl Hahn over, maybe he'll pull the trigger. Otherwise, keep him another year and see where you are at in July '15. If Cameron is accurate and teams won't give up much for him, Hahn's decision whether to trade him or keep him is very easy.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 28, 2014 -> 12:56 PM) Wasn't it also Phil Rogers who spent a couple years hyping Salvador Sanchez? Probably. Rogers was a pawn in the Dave Wilder scam. Wilder had his ear and would hype these basically fake propects which in turn Phil would buy and sell to the rest of the BA team. I read a long piece on the Wilder scandal, and how much he used and abused Phil Rogers. But back to Abreu. He was no secret. Giving Paddy credit for the Sox signing him, is kind of like giving the Cleveland GM credit for finding Lebron.

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ May 28, 2014 -> 12:53 PM) Cameron doesn't "run" fangraphs anymore than Keith Law "runs" ESPN. In general, Cameron is an annoying know it all that likes to make snap judgements for eyeballs/readers instead of using nuance. As for the dollar amounts those are just hard calculations using the cost of a win on the FA market it's a pretty crude measure because the inputs (like defensive WAR) have pretty big error bars. That said, Ramirez is easily worth every penny of his contract even if he falls off to a 270/300/400 hitter as there just aren't many good SS in MLB right now. If some team is offering you a legit top 50 guy and another "B" prospect for Ramirez you gotta look hard at that IMO. It's not that they are shopping him around, just listening to offers -- if a good one comes it might make sense to jump on it. He is the managing editor. I wouldn't do it for a guy in the 50 range. It has to be a guy you definitely can be excited about, not some guy who you hope will master AAA next season. Alexei is too good and his contract too reasonable not to just let it play out until it expires, if that is what happens. You need a SS. Might as well stick with one of the better ones unless someone really wants to make it worth your while trading him. IMO, that would require a prospect or prospects more highly ranked than any they got back this past year. SS is a tough position to fill. The Cardinals are a model franchise and they paid Jhonny Peralta a ton to be a statue on their infield.

If the White Sox needed Paddy to tell them Abreu was a ballplayer, they need to scrap the entire minor league deal. They would be beyond clueless. Phil Rogers had been hyping Abreu for several years.

It seems peculiar to me that the guy who runs Fangraphs which claims Alexei's performance last year was worth $15.6 million and his performance this season has already been worth $9.8 million, and whose worst performance of his career was worth $8.5 million, doesn't think he has the correct skills to bring back anything major when he is owed $10 million next year with a $10 million option with a $1 million buyout for 2016. Seems he isn't buying what his site is selling.

I wonder what he means about specializing in the wrong skills. He can run. He can throw, he can get to balls not a lot of SS can get to. His power has returned. He isn't going to walk much, and his BA and OBP are always going to be quite similar, but couldn't you say that about most SS these days?

QUOTE (RockRaines @ May 28, 2014 -> 11:52 AM) His line since he got back doesnt look sustainable to me, especially moving forward but what do I know. I just go back to last year. He lost all his pop with the wrist injury, yet still had decent slappy numbers until his quad got him. 2012 he wasn't great but he was 2nd in homers to Cano for AL 2nd basemen. He might pull up lame tonight. But to me, that is the question. I am confident, healthy, he is a legit hitter now. I think he's turned the corner with that stuff. He has hit a ton of hard outs this year. Even when he started out something like 4-25, he looked confident at the plate. Something that has been lacking consistently for a while.

If Beckham can stay healthy, he is a guy you want on the White Sox. Not trade fodder.

QUOTE (Big Hurtin @ May 27, 2014 -> 07:11 PM) Who cares? Do people really feel sympathy for them, or is it just an anti-Cubs thing? The Cubs do have a contract with them, and now want to basically change the terms. I don't know any rooftop owners personally, but do know they have spent a lot of money on those places and Ricketts and the Cubs want to basically take their revenue stream almost totally away. Who is going to spend a lot of money if you can only see a small part of the field? If the Cubs didn't have a contract with them, I would have no problem, but the Cubs hold others up to their end of contracts, why shouldn't they have to do the same? And does anyone find it very weird that the Cubs seem to go out of their way trying to act as if Sammy Sosa never existed, yet they hire Manny Ramirez as a player/coach in the minors?