harfman77

- QUOTE (Marty34 @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 06:06 PM) Just off the top of your head, how does the Sox system compare to the rest of MLB when it comes to SP prospects. I would say they are in the 8-12 range. They have a lot of big league pitchers, but nothing to speak of as far as elite pitching prospects go. I don't think this draft does much to address that either, because if the Sox land Hoffman or Rodon, they will not be on the farm for very long. I could see either on the Sale plan and finish the season in the bullpen.

QUOTE (Joshua Strong @ Feb 23, 2014 -> 03:54 PM) Its clearly Hawkins in my opinion and I think some people are forgetting that the dude just turned 20 not too long ago. That assignment was ridiculous for him or any 19 year old with only a half season of professional ball on your belt. I think that he is still the best prospect in the system and has the highest ceiling as well. I think that Hawking is going to have a bounce back year, he is going to cut down the strike out rate, he will improve his OBP and his BA considerably. I still think that once he develops that he could be a guy who can hit 25-30 home runs in the major league level while he swipes 20+ bags a year, while maintaining a respectable average. And I think that he needs to be taken out of CF and put in RF, it could help the progress with his bat. The assignment was terrible, but age really has nothing to do with it. Carlos Sanchez was starting at AAA at the same age, and there have been quite a few phenoms in the majors at the same age. Age is not a qualifier, skill progression is, and I agree the Sox made a terrible decision moving him up, but because his skillset wasn't developed enough, not because of his age.

QUOTE (SoxPride18 @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 03:11 PM) Exactly. Turner is off to a fast start this season batting 8/16 (all singles), 4 RBIs, 2 BBs, 0 K's, 5-5 in stolen bases and has a 1000 Fielding % through 4 games. I am not as sold on Turner as a lot are around here. He reminds me too much of Billy Hamilton. He is bunched up in a tier with Jackson, Kolek, Newomb, Beede and Aiken. I call all six and see who will sign for the best value and use the extra money on a guy in the second round who slid, perhaps a Gatewood, Touissant, or Ortiz.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 03:30 PM) If the White Sox are afraid to play Dunn because he will get booed, Marty and TUC are right, they should just release him. He is going to be booed on opening day whether he plays or not. Why is he getting booed on opening day? Sometimes Sox "fans" just make no sense. The guy has been working and working to get back to where he was, and without seeing what he is going to be able to do, Sox fans are going to start berating him before he takes a cut? I understand when it is June and he is hitting .205, but when he is starting off the season, why not support the guy? Hopefully he has a huge first half and the Sox can get something of value for him.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 02:54 PM) No. Why would you not consider your team's construction when making such a decision? Why would you not consider team control and cost? So because the Dodgers have too many OF's, that's why its a bad deal? No, its because Gomez is an OK player and Kershaw is on his way to being an all time great. Control and cost kind of cancel each other out in that scenario as Gomez has $8.5M AAV over the next three seasons. Who expects it to? We re talking about evaluating a player to be added to your team. As constructed with the moves KW made, and the players that were added and retained, the players on the 2007 team had a 2006 WAR of 89.4, but won only 72 games. So you think pitches per at bat is more important than WAR or its components? OBP is captured in wOBA, but is then added proportionately to TB statistics to give you a more complete picture, and then league adjusted into wRC+, which is fed by wRAA. Dozens of studies have shown BABIP to be among the least controllable factors by both hitters and pitchers. Not entirely random, but a poor predictor of itself in all but the most extreme cases. K/BB is less important than OBP. Other than pitches per at bat, all the things you mentioned are captured in WAR components. You don't have use WAR itself unless you're comparing positions, but why on Earth would you not use wRC+, for example? The point that BABIP is uncontrollable tells me how reliable the other stats, like OBP are, if it is artificially inflated, than I know it is likely to regress, also if it is abnormally low, I know that a player is likely to improve. Pitches per at bat tells me what kind of eye that my batters have, how well they can work a count, and helps me to get to a bullpen quicker, where I know it is more likely that my team can score more runs. K/BB indicates the quality of AB's when coupled with P/AB. I can tell if a guy is a flailer or has a legitimately good feel for the strike zone. These are also all environmental independent stats. wOBA and wRC+ are good in concept, though I don't understand how they appropriately weight a performance in the Cell against a performance in Petco to have enough faith in the number to be reliable. A HR in the cell is a fly ball at Petco, but the weighted numbers wont tell me that, it will tell me that the player that hit the ball at the Cell is superior to the one that hit the same ball in San Diego. I have not idea how they could account for that. I understand that they use multipliers and park factors and such, but when you are applying park factor to an out, I would assume that it is then displayed as an out everywhere. Sure your HR at Petco could count as 1.4 HR's in Chicago, but it doesn't work the other way.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 11:42 AM) When you are drafted #3 overall, there is high level of expectations that come with it. Last 5 #3 picks: 2013 - Jonathan Gray 2012 - Mike Zunino 2011 - Trevor Bauer 2010 - Manny Machado 2009 - Donovan Tate So.... Two appear to be busts, one is elite, and the last two are too early to tell though Zunino is moving toward the bust column, but still has a lot of time to recover. After Rodon and Hoffman, there aren't any guys that you can look at and know a guy is a MLB'er. If the Sox miss out on those two, I am all for them saving money in the first to spread out on guys throughout the draft that slide, like they did with Michaleski last year. Of course another guy could have a great year and vault himself into the conversation, but at this point, I dont see that can't miss guy.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 12:51 PM) If you make this claim, you are then also claiming the same of every statistic from a player's past. So if you really mean to say, "If I am evaluating a player to come to me team, numbers are the last thing I would use as a GM," then I can see your argument. Otherwise, I don't think it makes sense. All the "noise" you mentioned is precisely what makes context-dependent statistics LESS dependable for evaluating future performance. Thats crazy, so because WAR is a bad indicator, every stat is bad incator, talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water. There are a ton of numbers to use to indicate and predict performance, WAR is not a strong indicator stat, more of a picture of what happened in a given set of circumstances. The Dodgers should trade Kershaw straight up for Carlos Gomez because they add the same value to the team? Both had an 8.4 WAR, so they should be equally valuable, but that is dumb. If I use WAR as an evaluation tool, I should make that deal, especially given the contracts involved, but common sense says hell no. If you were building the 2007 team and used WAR from 2006 to build the team, they would be expected to win 90 games, except they lost 90 games. WAR gives me no context as to why or where they regressed. If I am evaluating hitters I am looking at P/AB, OBP, BABIP, K/BB as indicators as to how a player has performed and using some common sense to evaluate whether those numbers are sustainable or outliers. Those are factors that a batter can control. Defensive stats are pretty clunky to me, there are defensive stats that say players I can see with my eyes aren't good, are good and vice versa. WAR is OK to talk about when saying Willie Mays is better than Mike Trout as it gives you some semblance of a tool to evaluate players over their career, but as a tool to build a team, it is not useful.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 07:46 AM) Is this true or not? I think it is and it's scary. It really is tough to say at this point, there is some depth, probably 10 or so guys that could end up in a major league rotation at some point. The question on most of them is how good they can be when they get there. Chris Beck is a guy that I really like, was projected as a top 10 pick, then slid to the second round. He has the upside of a #2, and the floor of a #5. Tyler Danish is another guy with a similar profile, his upside could be that of a #1, his floor is probably a high leverage reliever. There are a number of arms in the system that have a chance to be pretty good ML pitchers, but it all depends on how they develop. Andrew Mitchell, Braulio Ortiz, Jefferson Olacio, and Myles Jaye are examples of guys that we will learn a lot about what their future is this year. What the system does lack is the guys like Shelby Miller, Dylan Bundy, Taijuan Walker, elite prospects that have a floor of a mid-rotation guy.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Feb 20, 2014 -> 03:59 PM) I don't know enough about the mechanics of the replacement calculation to argue for or against it, but to me it doesn't matter too much. What's important is that there is an established denominator of SOME kind. The best part of WAR to me is being able to compare players against the same baseline, whatever that baseline happens to be. A big issue I have is that baseball is so situational. Its very rare to have to players experience the exact same at bat. There are runners on base or not, sun, lights, wind, playing in a band box or a canyon, facing a pitcher with first base open, being up or down a run, seeing a pitcher for the first time or getting to see him for a third time. You tripped coming out of the dugout, made a bad play in the OF, made a good play in the OF, drank too many beers last night, the pitcher drank too many beers before the game, . Thats what makes baseball great, is that every at bat has so many factors to calculate in that is impossible to know the outcome. Stats like WAR are a guidepost, I get that, but should not be held as an end all be all of player production. If I am evaluating a player to come to my team, WAR is the last thing I would use as a GM. WAR is more like the preseason top 25 in college football, it is a measuring stick that calculates success in a vacuum but as an evaluation/scouting tool is not very useful.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Feb 20, 2014 -> 09:25 AM) It really depends upon the cost, and with 6-7 or more teams interested in him, I think the cost is going to be prohibitive there. Normally the Sox would be interested, but there are likely going to be better ways to get spend that money moving forward. The Cardinals interest has me scratching my head a little. They just signed Peralta, traded Freese so that they could get Wong in the lineup, and now they are looking at this guy? I think he ends up in the AL East with the Yanks or Jays with the Phillies being a sleeper.

At this point Hahns best move is to stand pat and go forward with what he has. Let rosters shake out and see what players are jettisoned from 40 man rosters after the spring, wait for the injuries to start hitting teams, let teams find their deficiencies, and then deal players when teams start getting desperate to plug holes. The only thing that could derail that strategy is if the Sox find themselves in contention, and that would be fine too. This is going to be a tough year for the team as a long of young guys get acclimated to playing in the majors, and I am sure we will see the threads on how our young guys suck, but this year is really about growth and learning to make adjustments.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 09:09 AM) Isn't Nolasco a righty? Unless he switched hands in the off-season.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Feb 20, 2014 -> 04:50 PM) Per Jerry's instructions. That is what I am thinking.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 20, 2014 -> 04:53 PM) I'd be fine with Konerko being the starting DH. How about Abreu at DH and Paulie at 1B?

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Feb 20, 2014 -> 02:23 PM) How far is JR Murphy from the majors? With a good performance he can be ready mid-summer, a similar timeline to Phegley last year. The Yanks moved him up out of desperation last season and it was a catastrophe.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Feb 20, 2014 -> 02:17 PM) (as a forward, these are awesome questions and should trigger good amounts of debate) There is a standard calculation for a replacement level player, but to think broadly of it, consider any player that is removed from the 25 man roster over the course of the year, given a $400,000 cost (meaning to consider, say, Jeff Keppinger, you are to assume he is making $400,000, not $4,000,000). Then imagine that you DFA that player and he has to go through the waiver process. If he clears that, meaning nobody wants to take him even though he is making merely the league minimum, then he is a replacement level player. Dylan Axelrod is a perfect example of a replacement level player. Here is a link that goes into further detail regarding that which explains it a bit better: http://www.fangraphs.com/library/misc/war/replacement-level/ As indicated at the bottom of that article, a team full of replacement level players would be expected to win about 48 games. Depending on luck or how much better or worse these players considered to be replacement level actually are compared to the replacement level, that team could win as few was 42 games or as many as 70. In the past 10 years, the Mariners and Astros have each had pretty bad teams overall win anywhere between 85 and 88 games, and I'm sure there are other examples of that as well. However, it's best to think of a replacement player as so bad that no team wants him at any cost. All of these numbers are context neutral, meaning they factor in everything, though I do not believe they would factor how often you are facing someone really good (as far as I'm aware, 0 for 4 against Justin Verlander appears the same in WAR as 0 for 4 against Dylan Axelrod). Negative WAR implies that you are worse than the calculated replacement level over whatever length of time. It doesn't necessarily mean that you are a bad or a good player, just that you have played poorly. Consider Dunn's 2011 - you can reasonably say that almost any player in AAA would be able to play better defense than him at 1B while also hitting better too. But, given using Andy Wilkins or Adam Dunn on your roster, you are going to take Dunn every time (except for one poster on here in particular). Adam Dunn is not a replacement level player because his expected contributions are positive, but he did have a very, very bad year in 2011. From that article, I agree that their level of replacement players is too high, because there are not players that perform on the level that they indicate readily available. It would be nice to see a sample of what a roster of replacement players would statistically look like, understanding the difficulty as some players defense pushes their bat and vice versa, but a median range of performance of what a replacement level player would be expected to produce would help to analyze actual players against it. I understand they have offensive and defensive WAR, but it is inadequate to me if I can not tell in what areas the player is either offensively proficient or deficient. I for one am not a big fan of WAR, and it really comes from my belief that there is no such thing as a replacement level player. I would rather see a +/- of league median statistics.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Feb 20, 2014 -> 02:17 PM) Yasmani Grandal from the Padres when Austin Hedges is ready. JR Murphy or Gary Sanchez from Yankees because they signed McCann. Jason Castro from Astros when Max Stassi is ready Just a few names. Nono of those guys are going to be ready in the next month.

Who will be the opening day starter at 1B? Do the Sox send Paulie out there symbolically as a tribute or defer to the rookie?

How is a replacement player calculated? This is the biggest mystery to me in the whole WAR discussion. Assuming a replacement player is a AAAA guy, what is the baseline used to determine what that buys statistical profile should be? If you have a team full of replacement level players, are you predicted to be a .500 or middle of the road team? Is the replacement level figure adjusted daily, weekly, monthly, annually? Does WAR take into account you are facing Justin Verlander or Joe Saunders when it determines how you fair in comparison to other players? Does it take environmental or park factors into account? How about strength of league or strength of schedule? If a Cubs player has a 2.2 WAR at SS, does that mean he is viewed as an equal player to a White Sox with 2.2 WAR? If the same two players had identical stat lines, would their WAR be the same? Negative WAR is weird concept to me too, you are basically saying that Adam Dunn is worse than Ross Gload, because Gload is theoretically a replacement level player, but that just isn't true.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 20, 2014 -> 12:08 PM) We have an entire HS/college season to go before the draft. These things will sort themselves out. Yes, it just demonstrates the volatility of HS talent. And even at draft time, there are guys that are projected as 2-3 round talent taken in the first round because some teams scouts like a guy more than the media guys that do the mocks. College guys less so, Rodon will be a top 3 pick, Hoffman will be in the top 5, and Turner will go top 10.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 20, 2014 -> 11:33 AM) I don't know why players are supposedly done when they hit 30. I think Carlton Fisk was 33 or 34 when he came to the White Sox. Mike Trout is going to get paid into his 30s with his next contract. If he were a White Sox, I guess you would want them to trade him instead of being stuck with an "albotross". A $50 million contract isn't an albatross to the White Sox. They still made moves when they had Adam Dunn signed to one. Konerko came back. AJ came back. They spent $68 million for Abreu and he will be past 30 when it expires. They were going to spend almost double that for Tanaka. Buy their line they are right at their breaking point. But remember when you do, you are ignoring their actions the past several years. In the steroid testing era, players are regressing much earlier in their 30's than they did even 5 years ago, so a lot of those contracts are going to keep looking worse and worse as time progresses. Teams are going to stop building through FA and build internally and supplement via FA. Thats part of the reason the Yankees are talking about throwing out $20M in the international amateur market this season, because they cannot sustain success by signing players that are exiting their prime seasons.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 20, 2014 -> 11:31 AM) Unless there is someone pushing Mitchell, there really isn't a big hurry to push him off of the roster. No, no hurry, but if the Sox need to make another Surkamp type move, Mitchell is probably second or third on the list of guys that get removed from the 40 man roster. That is unless he carries over his success from the AFL, than someone else moves ahead of him on that list.

QUOTE (SoxAce @ Feb 20, 2014 -> 08:59 AM) I'll gladly take Toussaint if he's still there. I might be insanely high on him and bias, and he can easily flame out I.E. Nevin Griffith, but those are the type of upside talents you have to take and hope they pan out. Hes another guy like Gatewood, some have him as a top 10 guy, others as a back end of the round guy.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Feb 20, 2014 -> 08:53 AM) Well, you are either grabbing a very underslot player in the 1st or not spendnig anything on about picks 3-6, so yeah, underslot at 3. I could see some team doing this that already has a pretty good minor league system in place. Maybe the Blue Jays, Royals, Rays, Red Sox, even the Astros or the Marlins. I can't see the Sox doing this. They need to build the depth of the system. I would honestly respect the decision if they were to do that, but I just don't expect it to happen even if the possibility exists. It really depends on what the Sox evaluations of the top players are. If they have two in the top tier and eight in the second, you find the guy in that second tier that makes the most economical sense. If you have three guys in the top tier, you take the top tier guy and take a slot level guy in the second round.

I think Mitchell has one more shot thanks to the AFL, but is a candidate to be DFA'ed this summer if things dont click. I think Buddy Bell may have ruined Hawkins. He should start in Kanny this season and build his confidence back up and move up to WS in the summer. If he performs well there he could make it to Birmingham for the last month or playoffs, but really no need to push him. Let him regain some confidence and swagger.