Jeremy

QUOTE(Chombi and the Fungi @ Oct 15, 2007 -> 10:46 PM) Well, I don't see the Sox wanting a sneak peak at what BA has to say. Obviously, the 06' list reflects 05' results but unless the Sox are so dumb and desperate that they asked for one of the first copies, I'd say you're right. However, judging off experience, past membership, and even this years list, it's easy to notice the date up in the corner that says February 28th. Like most years, when they wait until after Winter ball and what not to release the list. So trade in December, they'd be going off an 05' list and their own assesment of that 05' season, not a BA list that wasn't out yet and that I highly doubt they give a flying **** about. Right. I'm not saying that the BA list itself has any impact on the way that teams evaluate players, only that it's a good proxy for how teams evaluate players. It doesn't matter whether it was released at the time of the trade or not, it's an evaluation by scouts based on the same or similar information that a team's scouts would've used to evaluate Young at the time he was dealt.

QUOTE(Chombi and the Fungi @ Oct 9, 2007 -> 02:46 AM) The deal was made in December of 2005. Before there list comes out I think. Usually Baseball America puts it out at the end of February or early March. So as of the day of the deal, Anderson looks to be their higher ranked prospect. I am open to proof showing otherwise. You'd want to go by the '06 rankings because they reflect the '05 season - which was already completed at the time of the trade - and the '05 rankings don't. QUOTE(witesoxfan @ Oct 11, 2007 -> 12:02 PM) (and BTW, thanks for giving credit to KW for essentially stealing Gio back from Philly, while also taking Gavin Floyd, and $10 mill) Freddy was a pretty valuable asset. I don't see how it's a steal unless you think Kenny knew he was injured in which case it would be a highly unethical trade.

QUOTE(Chombi and the Fungi @ Oct 8, 2007 -> 05:36 PM) All that I read seems to be right on. He wasn't our top rated prospect and going from that standpoint Kenny didn't make the wrong move. At the same time, Young was looked at as a potential 30-30 guy the whole time. Prospects are tough to evaluate when they aren't the blue chip kind. Young in hindsight was a mistake to deal, but hindsight is always 20-20. Actually, according to the links above, Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus both thought Young was our best prospect by a large margin. Also, BP ranked Young as the 8th best prospect in the majors so for those of us who agreed with their line of thinking, he absolutely was a blue chip prospect. I might be forgetting someone but off the top of my head I'd say that Young, Rauch, Reed, BMac, and maybe Corwin Malone are the only players I can remember considering blue chippers since Garland and Kip Wells were prospects.

QUOTE(Vance Law @ Oct 6, 2007 -> 09:55 PM) Eat it Rogers. If Kenny "misevaluated" Young, then so did every other team in baseball since he didn't get drafted till the 16th round. Arizona certainly had it "wrong" if they wanted Anderson over Young. So if you buy Rogers' story, Arizona is just as "dumb" or "bad at evaluating talent" as the Sox, they just got lucky. Every team gets unlucky sometimes. Every team gets lucky sometimes, except the Cubs. Swept. I said people were grasping at straws by calling Rogers a liar without any basis but in all honesty, it was surprising to me that Byrnes wouldn't have targeted Young when you look at the other shrewd moves he's made. Now that there's a report that they preferred Young, I'm more inclined to believe that though I still don't think Rogers is making things up out of thin air. The team might've scouted well when they drafted Young in the 16th round. However, I can't see why you'd think that a trade should be valuated based on the circumstances that existed roughly four years before the deal was made. There's absolutely no evidence that most teams would've traded Young for Vazquez in 2005. QUOTE(SEALgep @ Oct 7, 2007 -> 12:08 AM) It's amazing that pitching was once valued among our fan base, but now it is all over. Who has more value? Vazquez. Right now, on this team, and with the FA market as it is, I'm glad the Sox have Vazquez over that of Young. It would be shocking to me if a successful and highly promising young player on his rookie deal would be more valuable than a good 30 year old starter who makes $11 million a year. Age and economics are huge, huge factors when considering a player's trade value. QUOTE(SEALgep @ Oct 7, 2007 -> 12:25 AM) Above average in pitching simply has a lot of value, especially this upcoming year where there is none available this offseason. It frees the Sox to move Garland for other holes, and to work in some of the younger pitching. Young still needs to develop, especially his OBP. He may improve leaps and bounds next year, or he may regress a little bit. No one knows, but Vazquez gives you stability - 200 innings and 200 K's. That has a lot of value in MLB, more than Young, as there is far more CF available than quality starting pitchers. I agree that pitching is valuable in this market and that Vazquez might outperform Young next season but I don't think that leads to the conclusion that he's worth more than Young. There's a huge premium on cheap young players right now. Even the Yankees stopped trading their top prospects. Just look at the Garcia trade as a reference point. Freddy wasn't tons more valuable than Vazquez when he was traded. Vazquez's most recent season is better but career wise, age wise, and contract wise they're similar. Freddy wasn't enough to fetch a top 50 prospect whereas Young was rated 12 by BA and number one by BP. The fact that his OBP wasn't great in his first season - most everything else was - doesn't negate that. QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Oct 8, 2007 -> 08:27 AM) Baseball America in 2005 had Brian Anderson rated as the Sox #1 prospect, with Ryan Sweeney as #2. Chris Young was rated #6. Throwing this in as a FWIW, they also had Josh Fields as #4. 2006 they had Sweeney #1, and Fields #2, with Anderson taken off of the list because of his time with the big club. They did have Young rated ahead of Sweeney and Fields in the Top 100 though. http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/featu...s/whitesox.html Yeah, the 2006 rankings are the ones with the most bearing here and they had him rated as the 23 best prospect. The analytical community regarded Chris even more highly, as BP rated him the 8th best prospect in baseball at that time. I think that underscores the fact that Kenny traded a very highly regarded player because he thought the return would be worth it and/or because he though Young was overrated. Either way, he was dead wrong. He made a very dangerous and IMO controversial decision that only seems to look worse as time passes.

QUOTE(CWSGuy406 @ Oct 7, 2007 -> 10:25 AM) And money has to be taken into consideration when comparing value. With Young you get a player who's going to be dirt cheap for the next five years to go along with all the money that isn't tied up in a post-ARB player, versus Vazquez who you have for the next two (three?) years at $10 million per. The math in this thread isn't really accurate. If we sign a CF for ~$10 million a season then that means we'd have that money plus the $11 million a season we're playing Vazquez to fill Vazquez's spot in the rotation if need be. If we stick with Owens then I think that Chris and Gio, Egbert, Paul Byrd, Randy Wolf, Lohse, or another similar FA. The best option would probably be to go with Gio or Egbert because we'd suddenly have over $20 million to enter the ARod derby with. I think this is all a flawed mode of thinking though because we forget we're talking about a 72 win team here. Vazquez is only signed for three more seasons and we don't know how good he'll be as his age progresses. If his contributions are to a sub .500 team they won't be particularly valuable. Young on the other hand, not only figures to improve but will also be around for five more seasons meaning that he'd had a much better chance of contributing to a competitive White Sox team. Expensive veterans aren't worth much if your team isn't contending, you want young building blocks like Young instead.

No offense but the defenders of this trade are really grasping for straws in this thread. Calling Phil Rogers an outright liar for no discernible reason? Insinuating that Young, a 24 year old rookie who posted a .358 OBP in the minors, isn't and won't be very valuable because of his OBP this season? I don't think you can credit Kenny with knowing which prospects to trade most of the time because his philosophy has basically been just to trade all of them. Crede and Fields are the only two homegrown players on the big league club that he's kept around.

QUOTE(Markbilliards @ Oct 5, 2007 -> 01:26 AM) For those who don't want or don't think Jerry Owens is a good candidate for starting CF explain why? I'm not saying I personally think he should get the spot, I'm just curious why many don't like him, the idea of him starting seems like a common fear for some on soxtalk. A .324 OBP is not good, but considering it's his rookie year and he has had some decent minor league seasons, I'm confused why so many oppose the idea of him starting. Explain your reasoning. I could tolerate Owens in CF next season, particularly because I'm not very excited about throwing boatloads of cash at Rowand or Hunter. I think referring to him as a rookie is a bit misleading though since he'll be 27 next season. Odds are he won't get much better than this and his SLG% isn't pretty.

QUOTE(Dick Allen @ Sep 30, 2007 -> 12:29 PM) Isn't it a very real possibility Wasserman is another Shingo, and gets lit up early and often next year? The guy has done a decent job, but when your delivery is really the biggest thing you bring to the table, you have to figure major league hitters will figure it out. I'm very worried KW is going with the attitude that all the players are going to bounce back and thinking all his young players will blossom next year. If thats the case, at least I won't have to have playoff money in by September. Yes, especially when you consider that we're looking at a small sample size (just 23 innings) if we focus solely on his performance in the majors. I don't think it's an issue of him being figured out as much as it is that he just may not be as good as his brief major league success would indicate.

Hall only had 112 at bats and I give him a little bit of a break because he was injured. There are a handful of backup catchers who weren't much better. Contreras has a bit of an excuse too in that he's old. I blame Kenny more than anyone there. MacDougal on the other hand was expected to play a crucial role on the team and ranked 349 out of 360 in ERA among pitchers to throw at least 40 innings. That probably doesn't even begin to explain how badly he pitched when you consider inherited runners. He's 358 out of 365 in BP's expected runs statistic for pitchers with 40 innings. I guess what I'm saying is that I'd much rather have the worst backup catcher in baseball than the worst set up man.

Mark Buehrle: A- Javier Vazquez: A- Jose Contreras: D Jon Garland: B Jon Danks: C+ Gavin Floyd: C Bobby Jenks: A- Mike MacDougal: F David Aardsma: D+ Boone Logan: C- Ehren Wasserman: B- Mike Myers: F Matt Thornton: C Ryan Bukvich: C- AJP: C+ Paul Konerko: B Jim Thome: A- Iguchi: C+ Richar: C Juan Uribe: D Josh Fields: B+ Scott Pods: C- Erstad: D+ Jermaine Dye: C+ Jerry Owens: C+ Toby Hall: D- Andy Gonzalez: D+ Alex Cintron: D- Ozzie Guillen: C+ Kenny Williams: C-

It's strange that people want to avoid hindsight bias when evaluating Kenny's performance this season but not his performance during the championship season. In reality, he probably gets a lot more credit that he deserves for the '05 season and a bit more criticism than he deserves for this season. Personally, when I say I'm not a fan of his, I'm looking at a lot more than just those two seasons.

Hits are weighted extra in the EqA formula for good reason. OBP is considered (four times) more valuable than SLG. Think of it this way: four singles are four total bases and a solo home run is also four total bases. Getting four consecutive singles (or even walks) will score you a lot more runs than a solo home run.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Sep 18, 2007 -> 03:34 PM) And in terms of walks...we are right around the MLB "Average" level. And that's still with a guy like Erstad and a guy like Uribe getting a bunch of at bats. And Gonzalez. And Cintron. Even if all we do is replace some of that grindy garbage...that alone could improve those #'s. Wow. We're actually 10th in walks which is much higher than I expected considering that we're 29th in OBP. I guess a lot of the problem has just been our batting average. That gives me some rare optimism for next season since batting average fluctuates more from season to season than walk rate. Still, as you suggested, we still have a lot of room to improve our walk rate since we have a number of players that never walk. Also, in all honesty, I think increasing the number of walks a team gets is more beneficial than decreasing a team's strikeouts so I'd probably always favor adding players who walk over players who don't strikeout, even for a team that was first in the league in walks and dead last in strikeouts.

QUOTE(29andPoplar @ Sep 18, 2007 -> 01:50 PM) Interesting numbers, thank you for posting that. I think what it tells me and apparantly Guillen and hopefully Williams is, the White Sox strike out a lot and that's not good. Hopefully they can re-do the lineup so there are less strikeouts and more guys on base, and more guys who make opposing pitchers throw lots of pitches. It's important to remember though that walks and strikeouts don't have that close of a connection. For instance, Thome's strikeouts the most and walks the most of anyone on the team. If I had to choose between the two, I'd place more of an emphasis on walks right now.

QUOTE(Steve9347 @ Sep 18, 2007 -> 10:21 AM) To be honest, I think this team can max at like 83 wins and a 2nd or 3rd place finish in the division in 2008. Just my ramblings... a lot of my projections could change based on an ok return for Garland (willy tavares/rafael furcal would help the top of the lineup.) I pretty much agree. If you get the '05 Crede and the '07 Hunter, you might inch up towards 85 wins. I could also see that lineup winning around 77 games though. Contreras (I don't think he can be dealt) probably posts an ERA over 5 and there's a good chance whoever takes the 5th spot has growing pains like Danks and posts an ERA around 5. The OBP is improved but probably still not good.

There seems to be some pretty extreme pessimism and optimism in this thread. QUOTE(Kalapse @ Sep 17, 2007 -> 11:54 PM) Jeff Abbott put up similar power numbers as a rooking in '98, though Jeff actually had a higher SLG. Also, Jeff Liefer: 18 HR in 254 ABs in 2001. QUOTE(kapkomet @ Sep 18, 2007 -> 08:03 AM) Josh Fields = Joe Borchard? (let the rumblings begin... ) First of all, slugging percentage includes singles so if you really want to look at how much power a guy is hitting for you have to look at his ISO (isolated slugging percentage, SLG - AVG). In that case, Fields .223 bests Abbott's rookie year .213 and anything Borchard has ever done in the majors. More importantly though, you have to look at Fields' performance in context. First of all, he's having this relative major league success at a younger age than Borchard (never), Liefer (26), and Abbott (25) ever did. He's also been a more highly regarded prospect (peaked at 45 on Baseball America's top 100 list) than Abbott (80) and Liefer (never made the list). He also performed better (.894 OPS) than Abbott (.871 OPS) or Borchard (.847 OPS) ever did in AAA. Most importantly of all, he plays a defensive position so he doesn't have to hit as well as those players did to be good major leaguers. He's not a lock to be a great player but he's quite a bit ahead of where any of those players were at this stage in their career.

QUOTE(Gene Honda Civic @ Sep 14, 2007 -> 08:54 PM) Kenny was promoted in November of 2000, when DePo would have had all of 1-year of Asst GMing under his belt. Alright, well I still think the link that I posted pretty soundly refutes the notion that Depo was "a nobody" and was not on teams' radars as a potential GM candidate at the time Kenny was hired.

I wouldn't have hired Kenny either and I don't think that's a bold claim. He didn't have a huge resume. He was young and hence not terribly experienced; his highest position was head of player development so he didn't have a lot of experience with major league players. We had at least one person with more experience (Evans) in the organization, not to mention the many candidates from outside the organization. Basically, Reinsdorf loved Kenny and the farm system was very successful at the time so he hired him. I doubt he would've been one of the top 15 candidates for most other teams at that point in time. QUOTE(Gene Honda Civic @ Sep 12, 2007 -> 10:43 PM) C'mon greg. We know one of the two books you've read is Moneyball. Podesta was a nobody until that book came out, years after KW was hired. /Sidenote: My favorite Pratt Posts are the ones after he's "done" with a thread. Maybe the average fan didn't know who he was but BP, Rob Neyer, and the like would reference him before the book came out so some people certainly knew who he was. Apparently he hit BA's top 10 GM candidates rankings the same season Kenny was hired, so he was certainly on peoples' radar then. QUOTE(Gene Honda Civic @ Sep 14, 2007 -> 04:45 PM) Logan White I think the success Depo ("the stats guy") and White ("the scouting guy") had together reflects well on Depo's willingness to defer to others and refutes the claim that he didn't communicate well with people.

I disagree. He can't have much value at this point and I think the organization has too much of a soft spot for him to trade him for scraps. I don't see him going anywhere until he runs out of options or becomes a minor league free agent. In a couple years if he hasn't put it together we should use him as a fourth or fifth outfielder. QUOTE(witesoxfan @ Sep 12, 2007 -> 10:14 AM) Joe Crede atleast showed some potential in AAA, putting up a .930 OPS his second year in AAA. Past rookie ball, Ryan Sweeney has cracked an .800 OPS one time, and that was last year at Charlotte. Even the infamous Brian Anderson even put up a .830 OPS at AAA before proving he absolutely blew chunks. There's no need to denigrate Anderson's full season in Charlotte just because he's struggled ever since. Every indication was that he would be a fixture in CF at that point in time.

QUOTE(Gene Honda Civic @ Sep 12, 2007 -> 12:39 AM) He had like a 1.8 at the break, and about a 5 after it... Overall, his RA was about a run more than his ERA thanks to all the PB, WP and such that happens with knuckler. Not to split hairs, but halves of 1.8 and 5 would be an ERA around 3.4 not 3.07 on the season if the pitcher threw a similar number of innings pitched in each half. Since there are normally more games before the break than after and pitchers generally throw fewer innings if they're struggling, I'm thinking it had to be more like 4.5 or 4 in the second half if it was under 2 in the first half.

QUOTE(hitlesswonder @ Sep 12, 2007 -> 12:42 AM) Clearly, Haeger will move to Red Sox organization. It's destiny, not just because of Wakefield but because of the decided tilt of the analytical baseball community (Haeger's main champions) towards Massachusetts. Anyway, if that does happen, it will be hard for me to blame the White Sox. You can't keep Haeger in the majors based solely on the faith that one day he will be effective there. It's a shame he didn't get more time this season instead of, say, Bukvich. If I were calling the shots I would 1) be patient and make sure Charlie's last option is used wisely (though I don't know how much longer it is until he becomes a minor league free agent) and 2) give him a long (80+ IP) tryout before letting him go. One of my criticisms of the organization is that they sometimes call up players and then have a knee jerk reaction and send them back down after a week or two if they struggle. That's not a good way to evaluate talent because you're dealing with a very small sample size and adjusting to the big leagues can be very difficult. I'm not as high on Floyd as some in the organization apparently are but I applaud the number of chances he's been given this year and the team has been rewarded some for their patience. If Charlie's fate in this organization is determined largely by his 29.2 major league innings, it will be a travesty. QUOTE(hitlesswonder @ Sep 12, 2007 -> 12:42 AM) As for Broadway's age, brought up by Jeremy, I'm not really sure I care about a pitcher's age that much. Certainly not as much as I would with a position prospect. It's clear, given Broadway's age and mediocre AAA performance that he's not headed to the HOF. But a lot of major league pitchers had poor starts and became effective in the bigs later. Halladay and Carpenter are obvious ones. Rich Hill made the bigs at a relatively advanced age. Broadway has yet to fail repeatedly in AAA so I won't write him off completely yet. I'm not his biggest fan, but at least the Sox and he are working on something specific to make him a better pitcher. Maybe it will work for him. Yeah, I'm not sure I'd compare Carpenter and Halladay since they reached the big leagues early as top prospects and then struggled for some time. Hill is also a little bit different since he put up so pretty dominant levels at every stop but high A ball. My concern about Broadway is much more about his performance than his age. His AA numbers are a lot better than I remembered so maybe he can turn things around with a second run through AAA but without a big improvement, he'll be a 25 year old who can't figure out AAA ball and that's rough.

QUOTE(Gene Honda Civic @ Sep 11, 2007 -> 11:47 PM) That's funny, because Broadway has 3 options remaining while I believe Haeger only has one. Haeger's the one with limited time to establish himself, at least with the Sox anyways. That may be the unfortunate reality but yeah, I meant as a player. I think Charlie will be a pretty good pitcher in the big leagues but I'm not entirely convinced that it will be with the White Sox which is a shame because I'm tired of following players from our system on other teams.

QUOTE(Gene Honda Civic @ Sep 11, 2007 -> 11:38 PM) His peripherals were much better in the second half of the season, but he had an ERA well over six since July... Actually, that's exactly how Haeger's season went last year too; Dominant first half, bad second half, surprising September. (though I'd hardly call Broadway dominating in the first half) I don't have any recollection of Charlie's second half last season but he had a 3 ERA on the season, how bad could it have been?

QUOTE(Gene Honda Civic @ Sep 11, 2007 -> 11:04 PM) Broadway was second in AAA in walks allowed this year, and tied for 9th in all the minors. That's not good. Last season, Charlie Haeger posted similarly poor walk totals in AAA, came up to have an improbably good September with the White Sox and carried that through to a... another year in AAA. 4 innings of work with the White Sox isn't enough to convince me that he's anything other than his performance at AAA indicated. Peripherals (and rate of progression) are a completely different game for knuckleball pitchers. Haeger's walk rate actually improved this season; he struggled not because his walk rate finally caught up to him but because he gave up way more home runs than he ever had before. Charlie is still a baby for a knuckleballer so he still has a very bright future ahead of him. Broadway is running out of time to establish himself as someone who has a future in the majors as more than a long reliever/mop up man.

If Kenny trades Garland (or any starter other than Contreras) for veteran relievers I'm going to hurl.