Vance Law

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Dec 18, 2014 -> 10:28 AM) Then I think you are one of the few people on this board who would have rather started Jordan Danks or JB Shuck in LF over a guy in Dayan Viciedo who clearly shows talent and has a bat that can carry and offense if or when he figures it out. If for some reason it was government mandated that either Viciedo or Danks start, I would rather start Danks. Viciedo has to be one of the league's best hitters in order to be worthwhile if he is also butchering flyballs in the outfield. His floor is incredibly low (see last year) and he manages to keep lowering it. The point is moot. The situation never would never have happened.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Dec 17, 2014 -> 07:51 PM) Avisail Garcia has never had any stint in the MLB where he had an above league average bat. Well, he's barely had a stint. And not a full season. Or a half season. My point was that in his cobbled together clumps of playing time with the Sox he has a 98 OPS+

QUOTE (raBBit @ Dec 17, 2014 -> 03:44 PM) Scary part is that this team needs to him to breakout baaaaad. I think everyone can agree on the fact that he is the biggest wild card of the offense and it's not even close. If Avi goes .270/.330/.440 were in a lot better shape moving forward. Oh, and if his defense doesn't suck again. Since joining the White Sox he has hit .273/.316/.429 .745 OPS, 12 HR in 358 PAs. It is not crazy to think he can better that by getting consistent playing time next year. It would be weird if he did his best work in a September callup, 8 games in April, and 40 games after screwing and rehabbing his shoulder. He has already hit pretty much league average for a corner outfielder. The hope is that he can improve on his Viciedoian defense, and with his speed and athleticism there's reason to think he can.

QUOTE (bmags @ Dec 15, 2014 -> 03:46 PM) I've been thinking a lot recently about this now that we have basically bought 2 years of competitiveness without sending out much in terms of our key prospects. For 2007-2011, the sox "retooled" instead of rebuild and bought years like this, and we hoped it would bide time for a wave of talent to come in. Unfortunately at that time they had only begun the steps of building a real scout system and emphasis on the draft. But Hahn spent the 2013 offseason sending out our established talent for MLB ready young talent. It's here where I'm worried that we still have a high margin of error and that we are not making up in volume. Below I'm identifying the prospects who in 2015 we can ill afford to fail, and which would provide the biggest benefit if they can turn it around. Here is our 2017 ceteris paribus make-up. Note, I'm pretty much exclusively talking about position players for reasons I get to later. Left blank if no C- 1B - 2B - Micah Johnson SS - Tim Anderson 3B - Matt Davidson RF - Avasail Garcia CF - Adam Eaton LF - Courtney Hawkins Of the acquired talent, we have 1 player in Eaton who we are fairly certain is at least a future starter. We have one other, in Tim Anderson, who is seen as a can't miss prospect with All-Star potential. Then we have the rest. Avisail, to this point, is young and talented. However, he's shown to be a bad defensive outfielder, which puts tremendous pressure on him to be an offensive force. I'm nervous. We have a full season's worth of ABs from him, and they are ... pretty average. He is essentially the next closest thing we have to a close to sure thing for a starter. The next level - Micah Johnson had an unspectacular 2014 but has huge support in our system. A disasterous 2015 from him really hurts the sox ability to provide cost-controlled talent in position players to afford latter year Sale contracts. Courtney Hawkins has bee terrible and then improved but still not good after a great 2013. He will have an age caveat for a few more seasons, however, I can think of no other positional prospect who would provide greater relief if they succeed than him. For me, I'm assuming he continues to flail but am continuing to hold out hope. Matt Davidson - Davidson at this point is pretty much written off. His resurgence would again provide Sox with huge slack for the years after our vets are gone. 3rd baseman are just too hard to find. I remain scared though, that even if his bat arrives, we learn he can't hang at 3b. We have a next level of prospects in May/Rondon/Thompson/Saladino that could explode this year, but have their flaws and are less likely to hit. Behind them are your Adolfo's, Trey's, Fish, etc that are far enough off that we would expect them closer to 2018/2019 and may be such sure thing's at that point these worries will be put to bed. But to me this seems like the crucial year. We thought our young talent would hit in 2016. That's a year away. This is crunch time here, this is where the talent either asserts itself or fizzles away. This year is going to be a ton of fun as sox fans to follow the majors and minors to see where this franchise can go. Jose Abreu doesn't make the cut?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 17, 2014 -> 06:05 PM) Unlike most, I have very low expectations of those 3. Second base is a pretty low bar. League average seems to be around a 80 wRC+, a .670ish OPS. Sanchez probably comes in short of that but with above average defense. A healthy Micah, maybe with a little more seasoning in AAA might be able to best that, be a plus base runner, and a ? on defense. My expectations aren't too high for those 3, or most of the other second basemen in baseball.

QUOTE (soxfan2014 @ Dec 17, 2014 -> 04:11 PM) Sign Bonifacio instead and to be on the bench. Sanchez or Johnson can start, but if we are in the middle of a division race and one is struggling, play Bonifacio. .252/.307/.333 .639 OPS over the last 3 years. That's what Bonifacio has done. It's similar but worse than what Beckham did over 3 years, and most people were calling for his head the whole time. I'd think Sanchez and or Micah and or Saladino can do that. If not, I'd hope the Sox could find a bigger upgrade at the deadline.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Dec 17, 2014 -> 12:12 PM) With regards to Noesi, my guess is that it's looking at his AAA and MLB career prior to arriving with the White Sox and putting a lot of stock in that. It's legitimately possible that Noesi is a 1 WAR pitcher, but that would assume his talent has changed and comparing all of his numbers across the board, there doesn't appear to be any significant talent change. If there has been, we will see it this year and projection systems will reflect it more next year. With Danks, it sees an aging pitcher losing velocity with mediocre to poor strikeout numbers whose command worsened, implying that he's going to allow a lot of baserunners and he's going to be completely dependent upon his defense to get out of those situations and will allow more home runs moving forward. Again, unless there is a shift in talent somehow, it's safe to assume John Danks is going to be bad. But a projection system isn't smart enough to know about such developments as !New Danks! http://www.southsidesox.com/2014/9/23/6832...h-seasons-again

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Dec 15, 2014 -> 04:21 PM) So why would Quintana not be projected for improvement? He's not on the Red Sox. For real though, good question. I don't know. His peripherals were better than his results last year.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 15, 2014 -> 03:59 PM) It shouldn't be "every single guy will perform worse than he did last year" as shown here. It would seem a projection system like this will only project for improvements for a player if they have multiple years of success or continual improvement, or if they're a highly regarded prospect who has so far sucked (see Boston Red Sox). If there is X% percent likelihood that Abreu has the same All-Star year he did in his only year in MLB, or even improves, and then there is X% chance he regresses, slumps, gets injured the overall projection is some combination of those. The projection thus has to assume he is worse than last year. That's why the usefulness of these projections is limited, especially for players like Abreu and Eaton.

QUOTE (Jake @ Dec 15, 2014 -> 01:36 PM) To assume that Johnson will be starting at 2B - unless the Sox just don't give a s*** about his measurable readiness - and Rodon will put up 2 WAR is ludicrously optimistic. This isn't about "what could be," this is about what is the most likely outcome if weighting every possibility based on its individual likelihood. I think the assumption that Micah may well start at 2B is based on all of the word/innuendo that we seem to hear coming from the Sox. It could be wrong. He could have a terrible spring. But this projection system didn't give him any playing time while in reality he probably has at least a 50/50 shot at being the starter while Leury is probably 4th on the depth chart behind Saladino. Probably all 4 of Micah, Sanchez, Saladino, and Leury get some playing time throughout the year with circumstances/performances dictating playing time.

Don't know if it's already been mentioned here, but if they do end up keeping Viciedo, Seth Smith might be a good option. After getting Kemp, Padres are reportedly trying to get Upton.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Dec 12, 2014 -> 12:08 AM) Anyone have any interest in Marlon Byrd? Can Michael Morse play LF? Really reaching here guys. Morse is potentially a worse defender than Viciedo.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Dec 11, 2014 -> 11:38 PM) As it stands now, we might need to give Viciedo one more year. I wish he'd turn into at least an average defender, though. It's possible he'll start to emerge as a star now that we on paper have a contending team. I think he has a better chance of being valuable by accidentally hitting a ton of home runs than he does of being a good defender.

With Kemp to the Padres, three words: T.C.Q.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Dec 11, 2014 -> 07:33 PM) Tendering Viciedo a contract is going to be the one mistake Rick's made this offseason from my perspective. Mark Reynolds keeps getting jobs. There is not a lot of power out there. There's not a lot of right handed power. Delmon Young keeps getting jobs. You could say that you'd rather not be giving him $4.4 million, but to find a trade for him either in the offseason or during the season, if you had to eat some of the $$ there's not a lot there. It's relatively low risk for one of the 57 players who hit 20 home runs last year. It was only a few years ago when 90 plus players were doing that.

QUOTE (SoxPride18 @ Dec 11, 2014 -> 08:41 PM) Jon Morosi ‏@jonmorosi 5m5 minutes ago If #WhiteSox trade Dayan Viciedo, they will end up looking for another RH outfielder to replace him. Otherwise, their OF would be too LH. Who would that even be? Who's worthwhile righty who can play some defense? edit: for real the best free agent option is Al Rios

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Dec 11, 2014 -> 03:40 AM) WHAT NEXT? Kershaw/Greinke/Hamels/Shields OR Scherzer/Ryu??? That would be unreal. Don't think it will happen. But who's left to pay Scherzer and Shields? Red Sox? Yankees? Giants? Tigers? Mariners? You left out McCarthy who they just signed.

QUOTE (StRoostifer @ Dec 11, 2014 -> 01:21 AM) No, the Dodgers are flipping Heaney to the Angels so the Dodgers can trade for Danks. I gotta say that despite their ages, Rollins and Kendrick as the middle infielders is pretty damn good both defensively and offensively. Apparently, Dodgers are about to sign McCarthy. What is their payroll gonna be when all of this is said and done? They're paying Haren and Dee Gordon to play for Miami, just added Howie Kendrick's 9.5 million and are signing McCarthy. Still haven't moved any of those outfielders and the stumbling block seems to be that the other teams are expecting them to thrown in more money. I wonder what it would cost to get Ethier, cash only, no players. edit: plus Rollins $11 million

QUOTE (shysocks @ Dec 9, 2014 -> 12:43 PM) He'd get 1/$5 without a doubt. He is not "worthless" as some have said. Just bad. Especially pitching at the Cell. He'd look a lot better in the NL West or Pittsburgh or Seattle. Which is why Pittsburgh could find him to be another nice fixer-upper if a lot of his contract was eaten. edit: moot point with Pirates signing Liriano

QUOTE (IowaSoxFan @ Dec 9, 2014 -> 04:13 PM) If this team is where they should be in July, it is going to be very difficult to sell Danks if has improved. Good problem to have

There was an article recently saying Saladino was trying to be rehabbed for Spring Training. If that were the case, he'd seem to be the favorite. If he's considered the best shortstop out of Semien, Sanchez, and himself, he shouldn't have trouble with 3rd base.

I put the payroll at about $100 million now

QUOTE (ChiSox59 @ Dec 9, 2014 -> 12:35 AM) More like 65. 80 is right, including Tank and the other arb players with estimates

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Dec 8, 2014 -> 11:54 PM) You and about 1000 New York women. Nice work

Shark for Tank. Get it done. Save Semien!