witesoxfan

QUOTE (StRoostifer @ Sep 17, 2014 -> 10:41 AM) Just to clarify. Initially the question was asked if any of us board members would take a chance on drafting Aiken if he fell to the Sox in the 2015 draft, which is what the discussion has been about. And to that, I respond that I'd have no problem with the Sox drafting him. He's got ace upside and he's fairly polished.

QUOTE (thxfrthmmrs @ Sep 17, 2014 -> 10:39 AM) Highly doubt Cubs would do that. FWIW I think Rizzo has the more team friendly contract as he is signed through 2019 for $35 mil total, with $14.5 team options in 2020 and 2021. They wouldn't trade their 2 best position players for a pitcher when they have the money to go out and buy 1 if not 2 aces if needed. Right, but that's the point. Sale's intrinsic value to the Sox is so high that it would take an incredible overpay (from their perspective) for a team to make it worthwhile for the Sox this offseason.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 17, 2014 -> 10:35 AM) Still, if it is close, the actual numbers with the actual teams should be fairly close as well, and I have never seen an actual WAR standings chart. It would be interesting to see. I do agree, and while I don't think it would match exactly (in a 162 game season, you expect those trends to even out, but there are and have been teams out there who really mash the ball and pitch well and find a way to lose a lot of close games and, conversely, there are teams who lose quite a few blow outs but find a way to win a ton of close ballgames and end up winning a lot), I think it would be fairly accurate but with disparity throughout. WAR doesn't account for luck, and even intangible as it is (which drives sabernuts crazy), it's still a huge part of the game. I'm a little tied down, but if I get some time tonight, I can add up the WARs and compare them to the standings. And, if someone gets time before me to do it, all the better.

QUOTE (Harry Chappas @ Sep 17, 2014 -> 09:21 AM) What a bad trade by Baltimore even considering where they are now it was still a really bad trade. They were going to lose both Arrietta and Strop to DFA/waivers anyways. May as well have gotten something for him instead of outright letting them go.

QUOTE (StRoostifer @ Sep 17, 2014 -> 10:23 AM) No, not everyone would and that's why its being discussed. I think almost every team in the league would be willing to take a chance on him, including the Astros themselves. If you believe the reports, it seemed they re-thought it and re-offered the initial $6.5 million guarantee to Aiken that the two had originally come to, but Close and Aiken were both very upset about how the Astros handled the situation and no longer wanted to deal with them.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 17, 2014 -> 10:12 AM) Not for offensive players, and now ironically, the Wins stat for pitchers is meaningless. Also even the saber community isn't so confident in advanced defensive metrics. And that goes into WAR, correct? I used WAR. I post it often. But I am not naive enough to believe it is some uber accurate number. It is a nice number to put everyone on the same line, but there is a little more that goes into winning games than numbers you can put into a formula. I don't think it's so much that the saber community is unconfident in their numbers but it's more along the lines of if they are over/undervaluing it and if they should include other information. Alex Gordon's UZR this year is off the charts. The controversy there lies in the idea that it's because he's been head and shoulders above his peers to this point, not that his defense has improved substantially from this year to last. Either way, as has been said, if a person says substituting a 6 WAR player for a 2 WAR player adds 4 wins, it's an estimate and they should add 4 wins, but won't necessarily do so. The bottomline is it is an estimate and an average. No one has ever said it's perfectly accurate in that aspect, but that it should be fairly close.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Sep 17, 2014 -> 09:50 AM) Well, I admitted it would be unpopular, and I certainly don't mind getting bashed. As you alluded to, I think it is important to consider things like this, despite their unpopularity. One thing I will say is that the "bashers" don't usually come back and admit they were wrong when the minority opinion was correct. As for Sale, a trade would not necessarily have to be entirely for prospects, per se. Honestly, what if the deal was Sale for Rizzo/Bryant/High ceiling A-ball prospect? Doubtful the Cubs would consider that, but I don't think that is soooo incredibly out of the realm of possibilities if another team were to put together some pieces like that... I think the Sox would want an elite level pitching prospect, but you're right that it doesn't have to necessarily just be prospects and Rizzo is a guy that would be attractive. Frankly, I think Rizzo, Bryant, and Edwards is pretty damn close.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 17, 2014 -> 09:43 AM) Then you should add up what every player's WAR has been and compare them to actual standings and it should be chalk.If you are going to say Trout is 6 WAR better than Viciedo, maybe if they were swapped out it would mean 6 more wins, but there is a greater chance it may be 2 or 4 or 5 or maybe even 10. If it doesn't add up for actual results, thinking it will add up for make believe is make believe. No other stat is named Wins. It is very logical to think trading a 2 WAR player for a 6 WAR player added 4 wins based on the name. But that isn't necessarily true. Therefore, it is my opinion it is a poorly named number. No, it should not be chalk but it should be close, as Balta points out above. WAR is context neutral, while real life is context sensitive. No one has ever said anything else. It's also not called wins, it's called wins above replacement. As has been pointed out ad nauseum, saying what I suggested - Trout would be expected to add 7 wins to this team if he replaced a player with a WAR of 0 - is an estimate. Estimates can be used legitimately. What is sure is that WAR suggests Mike Trout is a significantly better baseball player than Dayan Viciedo and that the White Sox would be significantly better with him in the lineup. Whether that's 2, 4, 7, or 10 wins is based on context. I think your basic gripe is that it stands for "wins above replacement," which is more complaining to complain, but the name of it is frankly meaningless - it could be "widgets abound ratchets" or "zoops above zorps," but what it tells us in regards to comparing baseball players is far more important as long as we understand it.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 17, 2014 -> 09:12 AM) Add up everyone on every teams' WAR, and look at those vs, actual standings. It will prove the number, while maybe a nice tool to determine performance, should really be named something else. The name is fine. It implies that a player will produce however many more amount of wins than that of a replacement player based on how productive their performance is on a baseball field in a context neutral setting. The backing of this studies is the millions of plate appearances, defensive plays, and base running outputs in the past 100 years. Given those, they've figured that, in these situations, a player who does x compared to the y of a replacement player will be worth z amount more wins. If the Sox had Mike Trout instead of Dayan Viciedo all year, do you believe it's unreasonable that they'd have a record of 76-75 right now instead of 69-82? Of course not. Adding context into the situation, they could also be 73-78 or 80-71 too along with the same 76-75 that WAR says Mike Trout would add. WAR admittedly does not account for context, but keeping the statistic context neutral allows us to look at the statline in general and give us some basis as to how valuable a certain player truly is.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Sep 17, 2014 -> 02:40 AM) Matt Kemp has quietly climbed all the way to 23rd overall in MLB OPS. So much for acquiring him super cheaply. Now Ethier and Crawford are different stories. You mean exactly what I was saying last week?

QUOTE (iamshack @ Sep 16, 2014 -> 10:24 PM) All I can say is I have a very large fear that we are throwing away a key asset's most productive years because the rest of the team isn't ready to compete, under a coaching staff that seems very lax on fundamentals. I know it's unpopular, but I just can't help thinking we should trade him to more adequately capitalize on his value now, if at all possible. You are getting bahsed pretty hard for this, but it's a situation even an outsider like myself can tell you the organization is well aware of. However, with multiple years of control, they will cross that bridge when they get there. If, in the next 3-4 years, Sale suffers a career altering injury, it was still the correct risk assessment of the situation and you are stuck. If not, and the team is not competing by 2018 or 2019, then you can still deal Sale for a premium, premium price to a contending team either in the offseason or prior to the trade deadline. Frankly, to fully capitalize on Sale's value right now getting a prospect in return, I think they'd need 2-3 premium, top 50 type prospects plus another 3-4 good to very good prospects getting a total of 5-7 very quality prospects. There will be better-cost alternatives out there for other teams to pursue. For example, from the Cubs, I'd need at least Soler/Bryant, Baez, Alcantara, Edwards, and then 1-3 other decent prospects on top of that. It's not a price teams will be willing to pay.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Sep 16, 2014 -> 05:10 PM) So very true. Context does matter and it's completely ignored by some people because it's difficult to measure. And before someone says, "no one is calculating win totals using WAR", I see certain posters repeatedly take our current record and then add the WAR of potential additions and say "that only gets us to ## wins next year". Hell, Balta does this in about 50% of his posts regarding offseason moves. I do it from time to time too but with the unwritten caveat that it should all be taken with a giant grain of salt. Like, if the Sox added Giancarlo Stanton to replace Viciedo (we'll say a 0 WAR player to a 5 WAR player) and the Sox are a 73 win team this year, it's not a stretch to say that, given the Sox exact same team and the exact same set of circumstances, they would have only won 78 games instead. It's also not a stretch to assume they improve upon that by 6 or 8 or 10 games. It's also not a stretch to assume that they don't by improve by quite that much. At the end of the day, the Sox still need to get better. They've had really bad luck overall with the bullpen both with quality overall and closing out games, but the rotation beyond Sale and Quintana has also been bad too, which can also be improved upon. There are also several areas around the field where they can improve too. Even teams with bad bullpens can win because the starter prevents runs and the offense scores enough and you don't notice those blown leads because they were big enough to prevent it in the first place.

The ligament itself is replaced. If all of his ligaments and tendons are that small, you'd have a problem, but until you know that for sure, you have to assume surgery would be successful. I don't know that there's any actual risk involved immediately either.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Sep 16, 2014 -> 11:39 AM) And been nearly as good. It would be one thing if Sale was sub 2.00 ERA and the next closest guy was 75 points away with not so great periphs, however, King Felix has been pretty damn good too. He's been phenomenal. I'm in agreement with the general consensus that Chris Sale is the best pitcher in the AL, but he simply hasn't pitched enough this year to earn it. There's always next year!

QUOTE (lasttriptotulsa @ Sep 16, 2014 -> 11:31 AM) No, but by the end of the season Abreu will have played 60% more games than Tulowitzki and Hernandez will have only started 25% more games than Sale so it's not really comparable. Now if Tulo had only missed a month like Sale and not nearly half a season, he probably would have won it (if we ignore Colorado's horrible season). With that being said, I still feel that Hernandez will and should win the Cy Young. Right, but you come to the same deduction for the same reason - playing time. Sale's playing time would account for 74.4% of Felix's playing time. Felix is more deserving of the Cy Young because he's been on the field for a much more significant amount of time.

Assume that both Troy Tulowitzki and Jose Abreu were both in the AL and that every other player in the league sucked. Is there anyone here who would vote for Tulowitzki over Abreu for the MVP, given the disparity in playing time?

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Sep 16, 2014 -> 10:04 AM) I think in the situation of most of these guys, given the amount of smoke, none of them should be playing. The teams should not let those players represent their franchise. Pay them there salary while the process is looked into and the legal system does its thing, but they should be inactive. In terms of domestic abuse, both spousal and child, I agree completely.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Sep 16, 2014 -> 10:01 AM) What he could do to Moss in his prime was what no corner in the league could do. He truly is one of the best ever and I think its unfortunate at times that he was part of such a good defense as he was overshadowed a bit by Urlacher but he was a truly exceptional cornerback who had a long run in this league. The one thing is, corners have been able to have longer careers. Maybe he is able to make his way back. If he was, as far as I'm concerned, there is always a roster spot in Chicago for him. Easily the best Bears cornerback during my lifetime. Yeah, I agree, I don't see why it has to be the end for Peanut.

QUOTE (Jerksticks @ Sep 16, 2014 -> 09:05 AM) I don't think you read my post. I'm defending WAR, just pointing out its not a supremely useful stat to tell you who the best hitters are; that's what BA & SLG are for. When I'm having a discussion of who the best hitters in the game are, I don't need Andrelton Simmons or Lucroy or Donaldson in the way of talking about Trout, Abreu, Cabrera, VMart etc. Most valuable all around player? Sign me up for WAR. I like this, but again, I think the numbers you're looking for are wOBA and wRC+

HOW DOES NO ONE ELSE THINK THAT LOOKS LIKE RANDY JOHNSON

If you want to look at who the most productive hitters in the game are, and solely who the most productive hitters in the game are (without considering base running or position or anything like that), we should use wOBA (weighted on-base average) and wRC+ (weighted runs created plus). It's doing essentially what JerkSticks wanted, but it's combining it into one statistic and weighting everything else appropriately as well. wOBA will take all of those fancy numbers and combine them and spit them out into a number that will appear similar to batting average or on-base percentage so that we have some frame of reference for measurement in our mind. wRC will use the information we receive from wOBA and create a context neutral amount of runs that this player would produce; once we come to this number, we then create wRC+ which compares it to the league average while controlling for park effects. That last point is an important one. So, without further adieu: wOBA: 1. Jose Abreu - .420 2. everybody else (Victor Martinez .408) wRC+ 1. Jose Abreu - 170 2. everybody else (Mike Trout, 169) Suffice to say, we can safely conclude that Jose Abreu has been the best hitter in the major leagues this year. That's pretty awesome. Now remember that this was his first year in the big leagues and it's not entirely unreasonable to assume that he could improve next year.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 15, 2014 -> 07:37 PM) I didn't think you could ignore an admin? And I still don't like Frank Wycheck. IT WAS A FORWARD PASS

Just an article from deadspin with cool pics. I just wanted to post this because how how eerily similar Sale looks in this photo to Randy Johnson. http://deadspin.com/chris-sale-does-not-ha...phys-1634834496

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Sep 15, 2014 -> 03:47 PM) im not so concerned about him replacing Tillman as much as i am concerned about whomever replaces Fuller at nickel. With him, Jennings and Tillman on the field at the same time, no pass is safe. That's when the oldest running back in the league comes out and knocks that whippersnapper Conte on his ass.