Dick Allen

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 11:11 PM) Entertaining Iowa nd game. Excited for the isu game. The difference between Fran and Lickliter is incredible. Iowa can score a ton. Players like to score. I think he is going to start landing some big recruits in the next few years.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 10:40 PM) Wait a second, Syracuse, Pitt, and Notre Dame are in the ACC? So confused. I used to get into this challenge, but once the Big Ten won it, I lost interest in the other games. Just wait for the Rutgers/Pitt Big 10/ACC challenge coming next year.

QUOTE (daggins @ Dec 4, 2013 -> 07:20 AM) Well hopefully he signs with the Mets and the Sox keep their draft picks. I don't think the Sox will sign Granderson, but the odds are a lot higher he would help the Sox win a lot more games than the draft pick and slot money they would surrender signing him.

This has been an amazing couple of days transaction-wise.

Look at the bright side, if the Sox make no moves, they will be selecting high in the draft in 2015.#rebuilding

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 03:29 PM) Clearly the assumption with Salty everyone is making is that he's closer to the player he was last year than the guy who hit .228 from 2009 to 2012. But he got less than 1/2 as many PA's as AJ over that stretch and had an identical number of walks. I would take a guy who hit .270 with a .270 obp over a guy who hit .220 with a .270 obp.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 03:20 PM) You are CONSTANTLY deriding these metrics by using them in a context for which they are NOT meant to be used. These numbers are only inaccurate if you insist on asking them to do things they are not designed to do. They are NOT "the end all," whatever that even means, and absolutely nobody is claiming otherwise. The reason no one has EVER suggested that we "cancel the playoffs and give a WAR trophy" is because that's totally ridiculous. WAR exists in order to allow us to try to compare the sum of different players' contributions under a common frame of reference -- and that is EXACTLY how lasttrip just used it, and it lended an interesting insight to the discussion. It was never meant to be able to predict team W-L records or to imply that adding X player will add exactly Y wins to a team. It is a metric that STRIPS CONTEXT and it would therefore be ridiculous to expect it to hold up when context is introduced. It gives us a frame of reference, DA. That's it. Please stop pretending it's not useful just because it can be misapplied. That's a reference. If it isn't meant for W-L maybe you should mention it when someone says "his war was 2.0, the Sox catchers was -1.0, the Sox wouldn't have won 63 games, they would have won 66. I am not the one misusing it. I never said it wasn't useful. In fact, just the opposite. It is being misused in a big way, and a few of the people who misuse it know better, but do it anyway to try to make a point.

QUOTE (professa @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 03:19 PM) Salty 2007-2013: .738 Career WAR: 6.2 Projected Salary: 10-12 million Lobaton 2013 OPS: .714 2013 WAR: 1.4 Projected Salary: Around league minimum Only took 2013 for Lobaton b/c it was the only year he had 200+ PA I'd rather save the 30-40 million it'd cost to get Salty and go with a cheaper option like Lobaton or Jaso, or try out Flow/Phegley for one more year. You rebuild through smart trades and the farm, not FA signings. Salty would not make a whole lot of sense considering where we are at the moment. You sign someone like Salty when you are close to competing and need to fill a hole or two. We have holes a C, 2B, 3B, LF/CF (depends if Tank and ADA can give you 1.5 WAR+), and in the pen. Gain some high draft picks, develop the farm, play the kids. We're not the Yanks or the RSox. We have to be like the Cardinals, whose core is their players they developed (molina, adams, carpenter, craig, jay, not to mention their pitching staff) and add guys like Holliday, Peralta, and Beltran when they're close to competing. Nothing to worry about. Salty is going to Miami.

QUOTE (Stan Bahnsen @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 02:49 PM) This, exactly. And the hate for Salty is just silly. He's not some loser who's never won before. He was benched in the WS because he was in a slump. Slumps happen, and managers have to go with their gut in short series. He was good enough to have just played 119 games for the World Champions, and he brings the kind of on-base skills we severely need. He is much better in this regard than AJ ever was. His career caught stealing percentage is similar to AJ. But this isn't the most important fielding stat, especially for our pitching staff. It has been discussed frequently in various recent articles that pitchers actions have much more to do with preventing stolen bases than catchers' actions. Any ardent fan of Hawk, or frequent listener to Hawk's telecasts knows this. Left handed pitchers, historically, are much, much better at preventing stolen bases than right handed pitchers, and our starting staff, with one caveat, is no exception. Danks, Quintana, and Santiago are all excellent in regards to very lower SB/inning and high CS%. Sale, because of a longish delivery time, is not, but overall we figure to be very good in this area, regardless of who is behind the dish. And we need Lexi to field catchers' throws closer to the bag, but I digress. There was a statistic displayed a few years ago about AJ's CS% in his years with the Sox. No lie, it was something like 55% when MB56 was on the mound, and slightly below 20% for everybody else combined. That should tell a Buehrle fan what he should know already. Since AJ has likely caught more innings of Mark than any other pitcher, subtracting out those numbers would probably give Salty the slight nod. But that would be unfair - AJ also caught Gavin in '08 when he was the worst runner-holder in the game, so there's that More important to our defensive needs at catcher, imo, is limiting the total of PB's and WP's - balls that get past the catcher. In this area, Salty is historically a bit better than AJ, with the anomaly of 2011, when I believe Salty was catching Wakefield. He's also slightly better than Flowers, and a lot better than Phegley, who is simply horrid in this area. How are his on base skills better than AJ's ever was, yet AJ has a higher career OBP? Am I missing something?

QUOTE (Stan Bahnsen @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 03:04 PM) I hope it stays that way. It all depends on the price. It never hurts to have something more to look at during spring training. You need a lot of catchers then. I don't think if the Sox acquired him they would be insulting fans' intelligence and gushing about his upside. It's a minor acquistion.

Salty to Miami. The catcher market broke the dam today.

One thing that really concerns me is TB seems to know what they are doing. If this guy is a decent platoon guy or more, why did they spend so much money (if you consider the extension and assumming Bell's money plus paying Molina some cash)to get away from this guy? Maddon is the platoon king.

QUOTE (lasttriptotulsa @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 02:41 PM) FYI Greg, last year Lobaton had a 1.4 bWAR in just 100 games. The almighty Pierzynski that you were dying for the Sox to re-sign had a 1.6 bWAR in 134 games. I really think it's ridiculous that people say a guy has a 2.0 bWAR so if he replaced a 0.0 bWAR the team would have won 2 more games. If the number is so accurate, the final standings would perfectly reflect every team's collective bWARs, correct? I think they should just cancel the playoffs, forget about standings and just hand out a bWAR trophy at the end of the year. Sabermetrics is a big part of baseball, but to think these numbers are the end all is ridiculous. People like to mention xFIP for pitchers. Did you know Gavin Floyd had a better career xFIP than Mark Buehrle? Who would you rather have on the mound?

QUOTE (IlliniKrush @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 01:01 PM) Answer below. This exactly. Ron Zook was an awful coach, and then recruiting fell off on top of it. Zero value. I don't think with Zook Illinois is a consistent middle of the pack team. But yes, he needed to go after 2009. As for your last point, I think it's pretty interesting and telling that no one wants him to do just that. Why would a guy getting paid to sit at home want to be a recruiting coordinator and chase around high school guys? There are plenty of schools that would love to have Zook recruiting for them. There is no question he is a good recruiter. His classes did drop off when his job security became an issue, but Illinois has more players in the NFL than most Big 10 teams even though their record would indicate they should not.

Nathan to Detroit. Sort of explains the Fister deal. The more free agents off the board before the Winter Meetings, the more exciting they will be.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 10:26 AM) But in those years he had the same problem Beckman has right now - how do you convince 18 year olds to come play for you when all they hear is that you won't be around when they get on campus? It's basically an impossible task for a losing program. Once you hit lame duck status, it's hard to get rid of it. The only way would be for ILL to give him a long extension, and the losing makes that impossible.

QUOTE (whitesoxfan99 @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 10:22 AM) That is just it though, there is nothing in Zook's 2010 and 2011 recruiting classes that suggests this would have been a middle of the pack big ten team going forward. Zook was also coming off a 3-9 season in 2009 where the team wasn't even competitive in most games despite having a number of NFL players. There was literally nothing to suggest he was going to build Illinois into a consistently middle of the pack big ten team after that season. Zook would be a great assistant. Just put him in the coach's booth on gameday, mute his headset, and let him hit the road recruiting.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 08:58 AM) More interesting, perhaps, is that Beane was one of, if not the first, to really correct the overvaluing of closers several years back by trading his away. Perhaps he believes the pendulum has now swung back too far in the other direction... I agree. It definitely appears to be an anti-Moneyball move.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 09:28 AM) Some of the battles you fight are classic. Are you really going to argue that A.J. isn't one of the most hated players in all of baseball? Come on man, we all know A.J. is one of your favorite players, but that doesn't mean you can't be objective when discussing him. By all accounts he a douchebag and a s***ty teammate. What did Guillen famously say, "When he's on your team you hate him less". I think that sums of A.J. pretty nicely. Considering Ozzie and AJ talk all the time and still occassionally go out with each other for dinner, you again are the one who can't be objective. From mlbtraderumors: •The notion that A.J. Pierzynski is bad for a team is way off-base, according to one longtime teammate who said, “He may rub people the wrong way on other teams, but if he’s your teammate, he’s great. He’s tough, loyal, can call a game, and he can hit. I wish we had him back.”

QUOTE (IowaSoxFan @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 09:23 AM) AJ is not the type that would be OK riding the pine while you were experimenting with options to be the long term solution. It is better to bring in a solid backup and give the guys in house a larger sample size to determine if they can be long term solutions. If they both fail you can go outside of the organization and find another guy to try. AJ coming in would have prevented you from being able to do that or would have caused some major locker room issues if you sign him and don't play him enough. How much do you have to see to determine if a guy is a "long-term" solution? Does anyone really think Flowers or Phegley are legitimately full time catchers in the major leagues?

It is incredible how many Rule 5 and non-tender guys are popular around here. There usually is a reason these guys fall into that category.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 09:12 AM) By making sure that when we go into next offseason we have exactly the same problem as we have now, Phegley and Flowers who are too good for AAA but who haven't produced in long stints in the big leagues. Except Flowers is a year more expensive. I don't understand. Signing a guy like AJ shows the White Sox realize neither Phegley or Flowers are cut out to be regular catchers. At least their regular catchers. They probably realize this already. Signing Flowers was a formality. It is low cost, and they can waive him in spring training and pay him pennies to go away, or trade him for someone else's hot garbage if he hasn't shown improvement. He has proven in the past to be a capable back up. Chances are the Sox long-term catching question isn't going to be solved this offseason, and probably next offseason or the off season after that. Sometimes you just have to buy yourself some time.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 08:43 AM) The point is that you are looking for a long term solution. You are discussing semantics, which, ok, I guess. You would bring in AJ Pierzynski only to deal him at the deadline. For what he gave this franchise, I think that's a huge slap in the face. It would also take quite a time convincing him to come in using that pitch. More likely is that AJ never had any interest in re-signing with the Sox, regardless of their interest level (which was still probably nil) The point is, unless you already have him, you aren't going to acquire a guy who is going to be your catcher for 5 to 10 years. Playing guys that don't belong in the major leagues because they are in their 20s and theoretically can still be in the major leagues in 10 years just based on age is crazy. How many teams have had the same primary catcher the last 5 years? Stopgaps are used by just about everyone.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 08:15 AM) This is great news. No idea why you guys wanted to settle for a one year stopgap before the Winter Meetings even start. To me, that is the much "weirder" part of the fanbase. Weird is starting a thread about Lou Marson

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 08:19 AM) Yes. He was a fan favorite, but bringing him back would have been a move looking backwards. The Sox need to find a catcher that they can play for the next 5-10 years. Bringing back Pierzynski gives them, at the very most, 2 years, and you end up doing it 1 year at a time. It's just not smart business. I love AJ and have a deep appreciation for what he brought to the franchise for 8 years, but he was just not a viable solution looking forward. Not a lot of teams have a guy they can say with any confidence will be their catcher the next 5-10 years. You are lucky if you get a guy for 3 or 4.