Jeremy

QUOTE (iamshack @ Aug 1, 2009 -> 09:49 PM) Indeed, he may have. Unfortunately for Josh, he plays a position where others are far superior to him. I don't see how that has any bearing on this conversation. If someone who only played third base took his spot that would make complete sense but Beckham could just as easily play 2B. The platoon option is nice enough but I think it's an overstatement to suggest it dictated making Getz a near regular and removing Fields from the picture. Not to mention, the team could've still spread playing time by playing Getz often against righties but then playing Fields at 3B and Beckham at 2B against lefties. QUOTE (scenario @ Aug 1, 2009 -> 09:51 PM) Compare their splits on a month-to-month basis and decide whether you still have an argument. Are you somehow confused by my argument? The point is that you can really only compare the splits from the first two months of the season, since Fields didn't get regular playing time after that - we don't know if he might have gotten hot after that because he hardly played. You want to examine Getz's splits up until the time Beckham was called up? He hit .340/.396/.404 in 47 April at bats and then a dreadful .200/.263/.256 in 90 May at bats. Is that progression supposed to impress me and convince me it would have seemed crazy to reduce his playing time on June 4? QUOTE (VAfan @ Aug 2, 2009 -> 12:37 AM) It is pretty obviously too late for Fields to make much of an impression on the White Sox. And it's not clear if he will ever get out of his funk. So, at this point, since Getz has improved with more playing time, I would take the present alignment with Getz at 2B and Beckham at 3B over Beckham at 2B and Fields at 3B. Agreed. Don't get me wrong, you can't demote Getz now that he's on fire. I just disagree with using hindsight to argue that giving close to all the time to Getz and none of it to Fields was clearly the right decision at a time when they were producing very similarly. It certainly was not clear that Getz would hit .340 over the course of a month and it's still unclear what improvements, if any, Fields would have made if he'd continued to receive consistent at bats. Getz obviously won't hit this well the rest of the way but at this point the die has been cast.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Aug 1, 2009 -> 09:35 PM) In what, 16 AB's? No, more than that but you guys are missing the point. It's not that Fields proved he belonged as a reserve, it's that if Getz rebounded when given some more time to get it together, then Fields might have also.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Aug 1, 2009 -> 09:32 PM) What about the opportunity he was given BEFORE Beckham was called up? The reason the playing time was taken away from him was because he couldnt hit a 90 MPH fastball. He struggled...just like Getz.

QUOTE (scenario @ Aug 1, 2009 -> 06:43 PM) Getz had himself a very nice July... .324/.373/.441/.815... And did a nice job today of carrying it over into August... 3-5 with a double, two stolen bases, and two runs scored. Funny, I guess we'll never know what Fields would have done had he been given the opportunity to continuing playing every day and make some adjustments. Josh managed to post a ~ .800 OPS with sporadic playing time after Beckham was called up.

QUOTE (BamaDoc @ Jul 27, 2009 -> 08:47 AM) Does anyone have stats on Clayton Richard the first time thru the lineup. That would give some idea of his relief ability. Our pen has been less than stellar of late. Problem is that how well Richard pitches out of the pen is only half the equation. He won't be valuable as a reliever unless Ozzie also uses him in high leverage situations. With the "depth" we have in the pen right now, I'd be surprised if he's used as more than a long reliever, a mop up man, and/or a situational lefty in situations where we don't want to use Thorton. It's hard to have too much valuable in such a minimal role, no matter how well you pitch.

QUOTE (Stan Bahnsen @ Jul 26, 2009 -> 10:51 PM) Thing is, though, Buehrle's performance is less stuff-dependent than almost anyone else. He can have Moyer-like longevity if thats what he wants to do. Most pitchers "lose it" at some point. (witness Smoltz 2009) Buehrle will quite possibly be an exception to that rule. Losing a tick on his fastball here and there is less of a concern for Mark than other pitchers but anyone can injure his shoulder one day and see his career end in the blink of an eye. Just look at the article that Parque, who wasn't a hard thrower himself, wrote: he felt something suddenly snap in his shoulder when he was throwing a pitch in the playoffs and then after that he could never hit 80 again or get the same life on his pitches again.

Wow, this guy makes a strong showing for stupidest sports columnist alive - no small feat - with this article: 1) Go on for an entire article ranting and raving about how a fan came within a foot of ruining a perfect game when he probably never game within four feet of the ball. 2) Lump Sox and Cubs fans together with the Bartman comparison. 3) Express outrage that Buehrle felt dissed that the President only spoke with him for thirty seconds when anyone with half a brain would realize that the comment was made in jest. Unbelievable.

Funny how we sign an over-the-hill veteran as insurance in the off season and then just because he's less than terrible and healthy we're now somehow obligated to throw him out there every five days.

QUOTE (WhiteSoxfan1986 @ Jul 25, 2009 -> 06:49 PM) I love Buehrle, but hes not a hall of famer. He'll never go down as a dominant pitcher of this generation. His career will go down a lot like Andy Petitte or Cone, who aren't Hall of Famers. By far the biggest difference between those two and Glavine is that Glavine started ~ 170 more games in his career, which just again underscores that perhaps the biggest factor will be how long Mark wants to pitch and how well his arm holds up.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 21, 2009 -> 10:09 PM) Maybe. I'm as big of fan of BA than anybody, but BA only has himself to blame for having to enjoy Charlotte at this time. He didn't have to do much to distinguish himself vs. Wise, and he failed to do so. Its on him. What exactly are you referring to? I continue to be perplexed by this line of argument. Did he need to hit 50 points better than Wise instead of 40? Did his OBP need to be 100 points better than Wise instead of just 80? Was there something else he needed to do defensively to distinguish himself from a guy who makes blooper reel plays in CF?

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Jul 21, 2009 -> 01:57 PM) Was this supposed to be in green? Soxtalk is home to the BA fanboy club. I didn't claim that everyone behaved that way only that some people did. Do the arguments I cited sound as though they were made by members of "the BA fanboy club" to you?

His bat would play better as a middle infielder.

QUOTE (Controlled Chaos @ Jul 21, 2009 -> 09:43 AM) Can I hold you to that? Later in the year pitchers are tired...balls get left up...Defense becomes paramount. Just makes no sense to keep a pinch runner over a high caliber defensive replacement and that's really what was done here. Agreed. Strikes me as unlikely that we're going to go the rest of the season without having some important defensive plays in the OF late in close games.

The point that BA shouldn't be starting over Pods is well taken - I'm not even sure that anyone has argued otherwise - but why is it so hard for some people to be reasonable and objective when discussing Anderson? His OBP is .320 so it's completely and demonstrably false that he gets on base zero times in a game (.000 OBP) or that he needs three starts to get on base two times (~ .166 OBP). The circular arguments that he's doesn't deserve the spot because he didn't "beat out" Wise and we know that he's bad because he didn't "beat out" Wise are equally bad. People are coming across like they have a huge ax to grind with BA or that they'll simply support any move made by Ozzie/management.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 20, 2009 -> 04:36 PM) Frankly, I've just run out of energy lobbying for Anderson. He's going to get treated this way until he learns how to hit, whether it's the best move for the team or not. Really? You think you have to expend a lot of energy lobbying for Anderson to take issue with this move? I don't think you have to waste much breath praising him to come to the conclusion that he can help this team win ball games more than a guy with a career .252 OBP who can be a human blooper reel in center field.

The idea that people have no right to be upset about this move because Brian Anderson is involved is ludicrous. Seems to me that people are just disappointed or frustrated with Anderson and therefore think he must be punished. I don't know how else you can justify continuing to give at bats to a career minor leaguer who can't play defense and has hit .211/.252/.373 in his career and .196/.243/.320 this season with horrible arguments that involve arbitrarily tossing out the months where Anderson was successful or insisting that there's some good reason for this and we just aren't aware of it. C'mon, playing Wise no matter how poorly he performs is incredibly stupid and harmful to the team and it's been going on ever since midway through last season. Defending the unreasonable favoritism they've shown him is bad form.

Leveraging plenty of good innings out of starters without risking their health is definitely one of Ozzie's strong points. That said, thankfully, the league as a whole has drastically curtailed the stress pitchers are subjected to compared to a decade ago, so even the guys towards the top of that list aren't at risk too much.

A few thoughts: - No one should be surprised to see Kenny deal for a late-20s reliever with good stuff and uninspiring results. It's a move that's worked for the organization before with Marte and Thorton (it also failed in deals for MacDougal and Horacio Ramirez). - It probably also shouldn't be a surprise that Kenny overpaid. We dealt Matt Guerrier, who was rated something like the third best prospect in the organization at the time, to get Marte. Maybe some would claim that deal suggests that this one will also be successful but even if you knew Guerrier wouldn't amount to much, you have to figure we could've acquired Marte for less and acquired someone else valuable for Guerrier; the same logic applies here. - All fans probably overrate their team's prospects some but it's not as though the notion that Allen is a legit prospect was created entirely by a message board; well educated members of the media also play a role. Kevin Goldstein, for one, has talked about Allen plenty the past couple seasons and included him in his Top 100 Prospects list this past off season. - How is acquiring a reliever who figures to pitch the sixth inning for us this year "going for it" this season? I'd say this move was made with with future seasons in mind much more so than this year.

Wise is hitting .133/.170/.133, which is a .304 OPS. Think about that for a minute; it's unbelievably miserable. Now, MLB features plenty of legitimate players or promising prospects who deserve the benefit of the doubt despite a 45 at bat stretch that terrible. Wise is unquestionably not one of those players: he's only earned just over 500 major league at bats through his 31st birthday and he's hit an ugly .207/.246/.363 in those at bats. I doubt any player in the league is less deserving of a roster spot and we have at least half a dozen better outfield options just on our major and minor league rosters (Fields, Restovich, Danks, Shelby, etc.), not to mention via trade or free agency. The fact that Kenny and Ozzie are giving him substantial playing time when we're allegedly in the midst of a playoff race is disgraceful. Personally, I don't boo Sox players but I think that when a team perpetrates this sort of atrocity, extreme responses are justified, even if they're a little bit misguided.

So what's the lesson here - that he does better with inconsistent playing time?

If he really wanted to make his point, he should've shown up to Sox Spring Training that year and then acted shocked when the team told him.

Funny how we were shedding outfield prospects a couple years back because we thought we had an overabundance.

QUOTE (WCSox @ Apr 6, 2009 -> 04:45 PM) Why are you comparing stats from a player who played in the early 1900s to those from a guy who played 60 years later? You're right, you have to adjust for the era by using a stat like OPS+. Collins topped 150 for the Sox once (165). Frank top 165 in each of his first eight seasons including a staggering 211 in '94. That's a massive amount of ground for Collins to make up with his defense.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 3, 2009 -> 10:58 AM) It's the lack of walks. 60 walks in 130 games isn't too shabby IMO.

I think that in that quote Kenny comes across as smug and self-righteous; he frequently comes across that way and it's a big part of the reason I don't care for the man.