Dick Allen

If they did trade him, Hahn probably saw him loaf down the line and realized his value wasn't going to go higher.

QUOTE (DirtySox @ Jul 19, 2013 -> 05:49 PM) I really hope that significant money being sent over is in consideration if it sweetens the return to a large degree. The Sox desperately need to strengthen the farm But paying $10 million for an upgrade to a B prospect doesn't make sense. The player probably won't perform as well as the guys you gave up, and you are still out significant money.

I think the Sox should ride him like they have been, then maybe in September give him a break or 2 or shut him down a little early.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jul 19, 2013 -> 03:22 PM) Making more contact =! trying to hit for contact I think he's seeing the ball better and he's hitting the ball better, but I don't think he's trying to hit for a higher average by any stretch of the imagination. Dude, he was hitting around .160. There is no question he was trying to hit for a higher average. He's using LF a ton more than he ever has, at least as a White Sox.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jul 19, 2013 -> 03:10 PM) I don't believe this to be true at all. If Adam Dunn started swinging for more contact, he'd still end up striking out at about a 28-30% clip and he would only hit 20 to 30 homers. If it were as simple as him trying to hit for average to cut back on his strikeouts, he would have done it a long time ago because it would make him a better player. He doesn't have good enough bat control nor speed to be able to fight pitches off like many guys do. He does have enough bat speed and strength to hit the ball 500 feet. I disagree. He has made more contact the last month and a half and everything is better across the board. April/May 195 PA 69 K 19 BB 11 IB 4 2B 12 HR June/July 165 PA 39 K 27 BB 22 1B 5 2B 12 HR The more contact Dunn makes, the more balls he will hit over the wall.

QUOTE (Paulstar @ Jul 19, 2013 -> 02:57 PM) I'm not saying it will happen, but if you look at the Pirates needs and who they are up against in the NL Central, I am confident that they would have a lot of interest in possibly acquiring both Rios and Ramirez. It really doesn't matter what other teams want or value the players as, it is what the Pirates need. And Ramirez and Rios would be light years better than what they have gotten out of RF and SS thus far, most likely. Things could get especially interesting if the Pirates don't start off hot after the break and fall to 4 or 5 behind the Cards a couple days away from the deadline. Huntington might be even more willing to make a deal to since the Pirates did fall off in the second half two years in a row as well. I will believe the Pirates acquire that kind of money with 2 guys who really give you iffy production when it happens. If it were a team like the Dodgers(I know they have no spot for Rios) who are known for not being afraid to take on some cash, IMO it would be more plausible. The amount of money the White Sox would have to pay to acquire a decent prospect seems to make little sense.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jul 19, 2013 -> 02:26 PM) So then we'd see curveballs that break 4 feet. That sounds even better, allow the pitchers to throw even more unhittable pitches. It's at least thinking outside the box, but we'd see guys striking out 300+ again. Too much break doesn't do them any good either. His reasoning was less torque on the arm to get the same break, more like the college ball results in more innings pitched, fewer DL stints, a lot of money saved.

For the out of town White Sox fans who feel the need to be tortured on a daily basis, and the Puigheads everywhere, Extra Innings is free for the next 7 days.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jul 19, 2013 -> 02:38 PM) There are hundreds of parks all over the country with cheap tickets & free parking & $1 hot dogs. It's called minor league baseball. If you are so concerned about the financial aspect, then just root for a minor league team, screw the big leagues. Obnoxiously priced concessions are everywhere. I saw a sign on 7 11 today where 2 24 oz. Buds were $4. At a concert at Northerly Island, it would set you back $26 plus the workers would be looking for a tip.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jul 19, 2013 -> 02:29 PM) #1) The Sox are not desperate to get rid of Rios or Ramirez. They'd be content going into next season with both. #2) The Pirates have gotten absolutely horrible production out of their shortstops and right fielders this year You really let the anti-Sox blinders get to you sometimes. It's OK to look objectively at the Sox players. We have heard from 2 sources there was very little interest in Ramirez and the White Sox were extremely dissappointed in the offers for Rios. The blinders are being worn by the people who actually think the Pittsburgh Pirates would actually acquire both and give up any of their top prospects. I would say this, Alex Rios' production the next 10 days is extremely important. Probably more so than Peavy pitching gems.

Nolan Ryan wanted to go to a 4 man rotation when he took over in Texas, but because all your talent isn't homegrown, it's going to be hard for a team to have 4 major league quality guys physically trained for that unless a lot of other teams jump on board. Hawk had an idea where they should make the seams higher and larger so pitchers wouldn't have to put as much stress on their arms throwing breaking pitches.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Jul 19, 2013 -> 01:28 PM) Your hypothesis makes a lot of sense, and it is one held by many. However, when they went and actually looked at the expected runs from all of the base/out states and factored in how often each occurs, the difference (again, on average) was very small. So, bringing us back to the purpose of these stats, it makes perfect sense NOT to consider context when comparing two players that did not receive the same opportunities. League average BABIP tends to be around .300, though power hitters tend to have lower BABIPs because they hit a lot of fly balls. Ground balls have higher BABIPs than fly balls, liners have the highest. Dunn's BABIP this year is .233. That's because HR are taken out of the equation in babip. I used the babip to mention if one makes more contact, they will get more hits. Chopping 40 or 50 ks off your total usually won't lead to the same amount of outs. Also, improving contact could lead to fouling pitches you would have missed off, making the pitcher work harder and lead to other things like walks and wild pitches or passed balls.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jul 19, 2013 -> 12:02 PM) Bruce needs to use his words then. I didn't know we were talking about healthiest pitcher or currently active pitcher or most readily available pitcher. I thought we were talking about the best pitcher. This is like saying that after Nate Schierholtz, Alex Rios is the best RF on the market. Garza is a rental. For just this year, considering the roll he has been on, I could see where he would be considered the best. If it were for anything longer than 2 or 3 months, I think Peavy gets a big edge. Although you have to think there will be some regression when a team gets him.

The main thing is a strikeout is an out 99.9% of the time. If you hit the ball, what is the average BABIP? Chances are if someone cuts down their K rate significantly, their batting average and all that goes with that will go up, unless they are deemed unlucky. Which is something that really surprised be about the total saber guys who said a strikeout is an out like any other out. They are aware that not striking out is either getting HBP, walked or putting the ball in play, which ultimately results in less outs, and they are aware that outs do occassional advance runners. I think the extra hits gained, plus the occassional advancement of runners, the occassional errors, far outweigh the DP. You can't just compare a strikeout to a regular out, because you don't make outs everytime you don't strikeout.

I bet there is less than a 1 in 1000 chance the Pirates trade for Rios AND Ramirez.

Obviously, the Pirates aren't going to take on a lot of money, so the Sox would be eating a significant portion of these contracts, so if it's for second tier prospects, I don't see how it helps the Sox get better now or in the future.

Of the 45 MLB contracts $100 million and over, in at least 38 or 39 cases, the team handing out the contract most likely regrets it. I don't know why Greg is getting ripped. He happens to be right.

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ Jul 18, 2013 -> 01:05 PM) Just by following this conversation , I'd venture to guess most of the Sox WAR is on the pitching side whereas Clevelands is evenly distributed, so any value the Sox have in pitching WAR is negated by lack of hitting WAR . So teams can have even WAR's but a team where it is more evenly distributed between offense and pitching probably has a better record. Is this assumption correct and a better way to explain it than trying to explain how Wins Above Replacement does not translate to actual wins and losses to the layman ? If WAR isn't created equally, it is a deceiving and incorrect stat. I don't think there is any question 5 years from now, unless it is totally tweaked, statheads will be calling anyone who brings up WAR a fossil. If one run created = one run saved, if the stat was accurate, 2 teams 14 games apart in less than 100 games, shouldn't have the same cummulative WAR. It simply doesn't add up.

QUOTE (Jake @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 08:07 PM) Read those articles (including the one linked that talks about the White Sox). WAR and like-minded statistics assume a luck-less environment. The easy way to think about this is if you win every third game 10-0 but lose the other two 5-4, your team will look like a damn good team statistically because it outscores its opponents by so much. Unfortunately, your results will be bad. Fortunately, baseball runs are not scored in such a non-normal distribution. When metrics like these vary from the records, there is usually one of two things at play: 1. Luck has been on a team's side. A team with a negative run differential but good record, for instance, usually is just lucky. If they are lucky, a given team's fall is likely to begin on any given day. Their fall isn't necessarily going to be as UNlucky as their lucky run is, but it would be most likely to occur in a way commensurate with how the advanced metrics thought they would play. So if Cleveland has been lucky and is in truth the 20th best team in MLB, the most likely result of their season is not the 20th best overall record. The good luck already happened and in real life, bad luck doesn't automatically catch up immediately. What is likely is that they will have the 20th best record from now till the end of the season, provided they make no changes to the team. Adding or subtracting players can change that calculus. 2. The other possibility is things like coaching. A good manager (and this is the hardest thing to measure empirically) can influence how timely the runs a team scores are. Advanced metrics basically assume that you'll score clutch runs at an average rate and un-clutch runs at an average rate. A good coach may be able to motivate or otherwise influence his team to perform better at clutch time than other times. Statistically, this would basically mean that the team's runs are being used more efficiently than average. It is easy to confuse this with luck! The White Sox article suggests that our over-performance of projections has to do with more than luck -- in large part, it can be chalked up to tremendous health. We have begun to believe that this tremendous health is a product of the White Sox and not just the players. Some combination of Kenny Williams, Rick Hahn, Don Cooper, and Herm Schneider have led to our players (and pitchers especially) to be far healthier than what could otherwise be predicted. On its face, this would make the White Sox look lucky when in fact they've had a relatively unpredictable factor contributing to their success. This is particularly true when a player outperforms his previous health when he comes here, since projection systems can only guess about player health based on that player's own track record of health. But these aren't projections, this is actual WAR accumulated this season. Cleveland is 14 games ahead of the White Sox, yet their total WAR is identical.To suggest they are even in performance but that much better based on managing or luck doesn't make sense. Just like all stats, basic and most advanced, it is flawed. Perhaps very flawed. I take it to mean not all exactly equal WAR players are exactly equal. Some must be far better than others.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 07:30 PM) Again -- it comes down to using a stat to answer the question it was meant to answer. All linear weights-based metrics, including WAR, are designed to make a descriptive, context-neutral evaluation of performance so as to be able to compare such performances across different situations (players, leagues, eras, strategies, etc.) It is essentially using math to find an ultimate common denominator. What WAR does is tell you how many wins would be created by a performance in an entirely average chain of events. This never actually occurs, but it's useful because now we can make comparisons. Projections seek to do the same thing -- describe the average outcome. What those standings say is this: "Here is what actually happened and here is what the player's performances should have produced on average . It essentially is what happened versus what the teams "earned." Then, they take it one step further and say "if the players continue to play as they have, their results should regress toward what their performance 'earns,' and they should end up closer to this " If you think these projections are claiming to be a crystal ball, you are mistaken, and you should read these articles (one of them involving the White Sox even!) by old Dave Cameron: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/of-projecti...nd-predictions/ http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-differe...nd-projections/ Anyone who has watched or played sports knows that the winner is often not the most deserving or most talented -- that is, I believe, at the very core of what makes sports interesting -- and these types of standings strive to give us a deeper look at team performance by not just showing us the winners, but also showing us who has "played the best." It's interesting information for fans like all of us, who tend to spend a ton of time picking apart every aspect of our team and its plight. No but if you say X performance is worth 5 wins above a replacement, and Y performance is worth 5 wins above a replacement, their perforances should be similar. I know the most deserving team doesn't always win, but over a course of the current 95 or so to 162, it does tend to even out. You win some you should lose, you lose some you should win. WAR is obviously flawed. WAR suggests 8 teams have played worse than the White Sox so far this year. And Cleveland, a team that is way in front of the Sox has an identical team WAR. If Chris Sale has a deservingly high WAR because he gets no runs support, the fact that no runs are being scored, should lower the other WARS accordingly. It is a fun nimber, and I will continue to look at it,but it's actual accuracy has to be questioned. WAR suggests an absolute. A 2 War player should get you 1 more win than a 1 war player. It should be reasonably reflected in the standings.

QUOTE (Jake @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 06:57 PM) Current WAR totals by team More details, such as projected rest of season/end of season records based on sabermetrics So the Sox team WAR is the same as Cleveland's. the Angels team WAR is ome of the best in baseball. There is reason to doubt WAR as a useful, accurate tool. I like to use it, but ii really is not consistent with the standings, and I know nothing is going to be perfect, but it is significantly off in many cases.

QUOTE (Jake @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 06:11 PM) Except "eyes" don't always agree. Adam Dunn is the perfect example. Some people will just never admit that a hitter that strike out 25-30% of the time can be good no matter what else he does. Advanced stats allow us to have a more empirical way to say that Dunn is, in fact, a good hitter. I can hold whatever position I'd like if all of our eyes are acceptable as measurement. Since people don't like arguing over eyes, we have numbers. And when we have numbers, the best numbers are better. Batting average says Dunn sucks. OBP sometimes suggests that Dunn sucks. Yet, he does not suck. We didn't need advanced stats to see that Miguel Cabrera and Mike Trout were great, but WAR told us that Trout was more valuable by quite a measure last year. It also tells us that Miggy is more valuable this year, despite being an absolutely atrocious defender. Has anyone ever added up all the teams players WAR and posted standings based on those? It would be interesting to see the difference between WAR standings and actual standings.

QUOTE (scs787 @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 02:40 PM) Mark Reynolds is a fair comparison, and he signed a 1 year 6 mill contract in the offseason...Dunn has been the more productive player both this and last year, so I think the 7-9m range is about right. Once again, if the Sox plan to compete next year I'd just keep him, if not I'd chip in half his contract and trade him. That was getting Reynolds without getting anything back. I don't see where it does the Sox any good to pay Dunn $6-8 million or more to play for another team next year. Money shouldn't be an object with many large contracts off the books, and it's not like they have a couple of guys raring to go in the minors. They are better off keeping him.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 02:21 PM) I don't buy that today's advanced stats have settled anything. I'd bet money in five or ten years, there will be another generation of new stats to replace the current crop and fix all of the biases and bugs in the one's today. At the end of the day, all of the numbers are going to have some level of bias built in, if for no other reason, than what does the person who created them feel is important. In baseball, there is no one right answer for that question. All of these numbers tell a story. I don't buy it either. How many players have a bad avg. bad obp bad OPS but are good with the advanced and vice versa? Every number will have flaws, and the goal really isn't to value what they did in the past but to put a value on what they will do in the future, and as hard as they try, no one has that formula locked down yet. What should it matter if Adam Dunn was worth 1.8 wins in 2012 or 1.4? What matters is his next AB.

So if you look at his advanced numbers, and his outdated OPS numbers, even with all his strikeouts, and all his home runs, Adam Dunn in each circumstance comes out at about an average to slightly better than average DH. Teams don't pay those guys $15 million a year if they have a choice, let alone give you something of value for the opportunity.