Dick Allen

Chances are he is nothing, but the Rays got nothing, so the worst the Sox could do is break even. That's a good trade.

One reason wins aren't as important when judging starting pitchers today as they were in the past is because bullpens are used way more. It used to be the starting pitcher's game to win or lose almost every start. Still, a guy who constantly wins 12-15 games every year, is going to be a good pitcher. The other advanced numbers while maybe not every year, will overall fall right into place. I think one of the poster boys for wins vs. ERA was Jack Morris, although he had several really good years ERA-wise. But one thing Morris gave you was a ton of innings, so while his ERA was a little higher than some, he was providing a lot of value saving the bullpen, so getting those wins (and losses) while eating innings, provided value.

QUOTE (pittshoganerkoff @ Oct 16, 2013 -> 06:06 AM) I've always thought that ERA and WHIP were better stats to see how a pitcher is doing compared to looking at wins. Look at Chris Sale this season for example. One thing that Steve Stone says a lot that I disagree with (and for the most part he's a smart baseball guy) is that you don't look at the ERA of a closer. You look at their saves to chances. I don't like this because even if a guy has 20 saves out of 22 chances but has an ERA of 6.00, it shows that he has the tendency to give up runs. Which means that there's a higher chance of blowing saves than if his ERA is 3.00. Yes, but if a closer gets lit up once or twice, his ERA isn't going to be pretty. As for WHIP, ironically the guy who led the AL in that category this season, also led the AL in wins.i really think this thread was started to start trouble, but I would think andy sabr guy and Hawk when listing their top 20 pitchers would have a very similar list.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Oct 15, 2013 -> 01:08 PM) See Phil Rogers. Ozzie and Gardenhire (until recent years) always had good results in this category... If Greg775 was managing the team this year, I can't imagine they would have finished much worse. There would have been more fun and frivolity in the post-game quotes....we would have gone from Bill Self to Ozzie drinking beers in Applebee's to the death penalty. I could have been the 1st base coach and thrown in random quotations from Malcolm Gladwell books, lol. Speaking of Phil Rogers, he is no longer with the Tribune. He is with mlb.com.

QUOTE (Brian @ Oct 15, 2013 -> 06:22 PM) Thought it was just my tv Maybe it was just the broadcast. He looks a lot more pale on the mound.

I hope Leyland is OK. He is yellow. He might have jaundice.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 15, 2013 -> 01:16 PM) While this may seem logical, it's simply not how our organization (or really, most of the organizations in Chicago) behave. These guys really hate spending money on 2 coaches at once. When the Sox traded Scott Linebrink to Atlanta, they sent $1.5 million along with him. I would venture to guess, that is about what Robin is making. So whether you want to believe it or not, if the higher ups really thought Robin was the reason the team was horrible, logic indicates he would no longer have the job. If the team is an 85-90 win team without Robin as the manager and close to a 100 loss team with him as the manager, it makes no financial sense to keep him, even if it means having to pay another manager.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 15, 2013 -> 12:51 PM) He waived his hands, healed Hanley, healed Greinke, and called up Puig. And just to note...even if the Sox thought Ventura did everything he could have wrong this year...they don't like eating money on contracts unless they have to. You know that as well as I do. 99 losses because of the manager is a reason to eat what essentially is maybe half what Jeff Keppinger makes a season. If that.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Oct 15, 2013 -> 12:53 PM) Except Mattingly has about a 50% chance of getting fired if they don't make the World Series. Even in the playoffs, the games they've lost, the LA writers have immediately pounced/pounded on Mattingly, almost incessantly. The reason the Dodgers turned their season around was/is Hanley Ramirez and Yasiel Puig and some other veterans like Crawford, Ethier and Uribe showing up and playing well all at the same time. As I have stated, better players can transform someone from an idiot to a genius. I would imagine Mattingly's baseball IQ and the way he went about his business wasn't much different from when they were losing to when they were almost unstoppable. People put too much both good and bad on managers. I have even seen people judge managers on the team's record vs. it's pythagorean record. Did you know if you did that, Joe Maddon wouldn't be so highly thought of. This year was only the 2nd time out of his 8 seasons as a manager the team's actual record was better than it's pythagorean.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Oct 15, 2013 -> 12:18 PM) I have a question for Dick Allen. What would you do if you were Robin Ventura, starting today, to turn around next year's White Sox team....even before Spring Training? And how would you conduct your Spring Training differently? Do you think you would do everything exactly the same? Do you think spring training has ANY bearing on regular season performance? If not, what corrections are realistic in the middle of the season, if any? All you can do is work on the same things. There will be a new hitting coach, so I'm sure there will be something a bit different. What did Mattingly do differently that transformed the Dodgers from a last place team, and about to lose his job,to a team that may win the WS, and a probable extension almost overnight? I really think blaming the 2013 season on spring training is wrong and old. It's already been stated by people who were actually there (Hawk, Stone, Hahn, Robin) that the White Sox actually worked more on fundamentals this past spring than they did in 2012. If it was the country club some here say it was and the Sox lost 99 games, there would be a new manager. Gene Lamont, who won 2 division titles in a row, was fired by the Sox about 30 games into the 1995 season and replaced by Terry Bevington. The reason.......spring training was a country club and they weren't ready to play. JR said as much. Besides, you don't boot grounders in August because they didn't hit you enough fungos in March. This team was bad, but will be better when they get better players.

QUOTE (SCCWS @ Oct 15, 2013 -> 11:43 AM) The Tigers have less speed than any team in baseball and they are successful. Next slowest team after the Tigers---St Louis. Pitching and power still and always will, win.

How did De Aza rank in 2012? He didn't seem nearly as dumb on the bases and in the field.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Oct 15, 2013 -> 10:17 AM) And I want to acknowledge that, using qualitative data, it has been agreed that Alejandro De Aza is a bad base runner. Using quanitative data, it is being disputed whether Alejandro De Aza is valuable on the bases. This is the argument I don't understand. You can be a "bad" base runner and still provide positive value. Adam Dunn is a "bad" hitter that a lot of people want the Sox to get rid of, but he still produces surplus value when hitting. Both can improve at the areas being disputed here. You were the one arguing you can't call him a bad baserunner. You can call him a dumb baserunner.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Oct 15, 2013 -> 12:44 AM) Let it go, dude. 2k5 subscribes to twtw. Advanced stats are the best thing to ever happen to sports. I've never enjoyed baseball/basketball/football more than I have the last 5 years due to advanced statistical analysis. I don't think that is his point at all. DeAza was awful running the bases this year. If you want to say his speed made up for some of the awfulness and then compare him to Konerko, fine. Anyone would rather have DeAza running than Konerko. It doesn't take some advanced formula to see that.The fact is Konerko's baserunning is maximized. DeAza's is not. To me, dumb baserunner = bad baserunner. I understand more speed provides more value, but there is no reason DeAza should be as clueless as he is when he gets on base.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 06:54 PM) Nobody knows if they're trying to get rid of De Aza or not. Steve Stone sure sounded like he knew.

Sale's contract only increases his value. 25 next opening day, $3.5 million next year, $6 million in 2015 $9,150,000 in 2016, $12 million in 2017, $12.5 million in 2018, and $13.5 million in 2019. Not only that, but each of those last 2 seasons has a $1 million buyout, so even if he did get severely injured, it wouldn't be that expensive. You would have this guy for $57 million over 6 prime years. I can't think of anyone with his success and that little of guarantee over that long of time(considering today's pay) being traded, but the package would have to be unprecedented IMO.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 02:18 PM) I've changed my mind on this, the Sox should listen to offers for Sale. Combined with the money they have to spend and the #3 pick, the package they could get in return for him could definitely jump start the rebuild. You stated a couple months ago the "heavy lifting" on a rebuild was done. Now you are mentioning a jump start.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 12:02 PM) I agree with everything you said, but the point is that our ideas of valuation are off-base. ADA made 10ish dumb baserunning mistakes, which is a handful more than he would be expected to make on average. This hurt his value, but his overall contribution remained positive. I understand that those mistakes may have FELT like disasters that outweigh the positives of what he did, but our emotional reaction doesn't affect the actual value. That's why we want to use statistics to quantify this value, so that our biases can't affect it and make us make a mistake. So if you (the collective you, not specifically you) think that a statistic is off, then be all means argue that the statistic is off. But make that argument based on your understanding of the stat and why it won't add up. It's sole purpose is to be there to inform you better than your human brain, which is notoriously flawed for this type of exercise, so that fact that it may have felt like ADA's errors were more costly than his contributions is nothing like evidence against the numbers. But this is another thing I don't understand. Why are baserunning and offensive metrics never "off", but defensive metrics always can be wrong? What makes offensive numbers foolproof, weighted perfectly, but defense you need a sample size of 3 years.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 11:46 AM) If you're going to call an objective measurement of something garbage, you should tell us why it's garbage and how your intuition and selective human memory are more accurate. I think it was pretty obvious Alejandro De Aza was a stupid baserunner in 2013. Speed was the only thing that made him acceptable by advanced metric standards. If he had average speed, everyone would say he is a bad baserunner. Again this is semantics. BTW, Stone was on Kaplan's show a few weeks ago and stated the White Sox would be looking for someone who understood the game of baseball better than De Aza to play CF next year. Maybe that means De Aza will play LF and/or DH, maybe it means he gone. I do agree about not giving him away, but he was pretty dissappointing running the bases and out in the OF in 2013.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 09:45 AM) I can think of two off the top of my head: Dayan Viciedo and Avisail Garcia. The point isn't that De Aza is awesome, it's the the whole team sucks, and most of the team sucks worse. Those of us who want this team to turn around quickly cannot also be advocating we replace De Aza before we replace Beckham, Flowers, Phegley, Viciedo, and Gillaspie, at least. I was actually referring to picking it up off the ground. He fumbled and kicked more balls this season than I have ever seen anyone do. Guys would get extra bases because if it bounced off a wall, De Aza very rarely would come up with it clean. What I don't understand is he wasn't like this previously, at least to the extent he was bad this year, and despite what Balta will say, it has nothing to do with spring training. I also think stupid baserunning mistakes which take you out of innings demoralize a team. Paulie can't be a better baserunner. If De Aza wouldn't be so dumb on the basepaths, he could improve his worth a decent amount.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 09:07 AM) Between the bad reads and horrible and regular baserunning mistakes, I feel pretty good about those statements, especially the baserunning. He killed more innings that I can remember seeing a Sox player do ever. I'm a De Aza fan, but I agree with this. The guys who insist the advance metrics showing he wasn't as bad as you think will use the fact he did steal 20 bases and used his speed for extra bases more often than the average runner, which may be true, but it doesn't offset the fact that his baserunning and fielding, I have never seen an OF have a tougher time picking up a ball, were horrible. And I agree, he killed several innings with basepath blunders you don't see from 12 year olds. As for Granderson, it appears the Yankees are going to give him a qualifying offer, which IMO, would probably end any chance he plays for the White Sox.

That was impressive. Ethier had no chance.

Puig with a golden sombrero. Somebody do a wellness check on Caulfield.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Oct 12, 2013 -> 02:54 PM) Rose not playing tonight, left knee soreness. "Precautionary" but uh oh. He might be only 109%.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Oct 12, 2013 -> 03:09 PM) I don't want to turn this into a discussion about religion, but AP is easily one of the most outspoken Christians in the NFL (probably the second most next to Tim Tebow). If he was a man of god, like he claims to be so much, he would have at least met the child once by now. My bad. I guess he didn't even know about the child until recently, and then offered to be responsible. So apologies AP.