witesoxfan

I wouldn't non-tender Humber. I understand why you would if you do, but I think he can be traded, albeit for much less than you would have gotten last year (and you probably wouldn't have gotten a ton last year). But you find some guy around 25-29 who needs a change of scenery and is going to make about the same amount as Humber and you have a potential match. Or you trade him for a guy who A-ball who can throw 97 but doesn't know where it's going. The Sox have had good luck developing pitchers like that, so you have a potential match there too. He's too cheap to just flat out get rid of, even though he won't be back with the Sox next year.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Sep 24, 2012 -> 11:10 PM) I saw it two nights ago. I could see Dunn pounding White Russians like the Dude Mind if I do a jay?

Kyle, that was perfect.

They remind me a lot of the Ravens. You know, mediocre QB, decent offensive pieces, great defense, choke in the playoffs, coached by a Harbaugh. I think they'll end up watching the Super Bowl together again too.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Sep 20, 2012 -> 06:16 PM) They could always get Miami to help us buy back Buehrle with a subsidy and go to five lefties, just to shut Greg up, lol. Then there's the Fathom option, Veal to the rotation. Actually, if Thornton could throw his two pitches consistently, I wouldn't mind giving him a shot as a starter, again, as that's what he wanted to do when we first brought him over for Borchard way back when, in 2006. Axelrod, Rienzo, Castro, Molina and the usual list of suspects will figure in, but you'd have to believe they will either exercise the Floyd option to give them some more flexibility, bring back Liriano (or Peavy), both are 25% possibilities, or go after a second tier FA pitcher like an Anibal Sanchez that Cooper and the scouting staff have identified some positive upside with. I was pulling for them to add Guthrie as another arm, and that would have saved us a ton of losses and given us the division single-handedly, but there's no way the White Sox (or probably the Royals as well) should overpay him now based on 2 months of season, when the Royals were already eliminated. Jesus, I didn't even bother reading anything after that. First of all, he doesn't throw two pitches consistently. He's a high-heat, location lefty. When he's consistently putting pitches in the middle and outer half of the plate, he gets destroyed. When he's throwing well, he's essentially effectively wild, but he's not, because he has good command of the strike zone. Second of all, he's going to be entering his age 36 season next year. You've said goofy s***, but that one might take the cake.

So Ozzie and Mariotti were bros all along. Makes perfect sense.

Also acceptable: nobody cares about your fantasy team

QUOTE (winninguglyin83 @ Sep 14, 2012 -> 10:30 PM) it appears that a plane ticket to Minnesota was not offered to Mr. Morel. if the roster is accurate on whitesox.com, the sox are currently carrying 18 pitchers and 17 position players on the big club. the only guys on the 40-man roster who are not with the team (excluding guys on the DL) are: Anthony Carter Simon Castro Charlie Leesman Nestor Molina and Mr. Morel. Morel put up an OPS of .524 in the minors and was hurt for the better part of the year. There's no need to have him on the roster when he's not even going to be of much use on defense.

Think I'm gonna start a Bills thread. And then maybe a Dolphins, Jaguars, and Texans thread as well. What is this? You mean you guys don't give a s*** about those teams and that I should just post about my manlove for the Bills, my hatred for the Dolphins, and my nihilism for the Jaguars and Texans in the NFL thread? That's fair I guess.

QUOTE (KG#1 @ Sep 18, 2012 -> 09:49 AM) Wow, I only remember ONE Jerry Owens and Andy Gonzalez on the team . . . Where was I? Ha ha We saw enough of them for it to seem like there were 3 or 4 of them.

QUOTE (SI1020 @ Sep 13, 2012 -> 09:18 AM) I thought about if I should reply, because it's a contentious subject and people will call you an idiot or worse no matter you say, but I'll give it a try. It may be long, so skip this anyone not in the mood. First of all I've loved to study various statistics since my maternal grandmother bought be an Almanac when I was 6 1/2. In my teens a local (Chicago) sociologist Pierre DeVise was in the papers regularly with his continuing demographic research on Chicago and suburban communities. I found his work so fascinating that in the summer of 1966 I visited every Chicago neighborhood but one and started my own little demographic study. By the time the 1970 census came around my estimates and projections turned out to be very accurate. I'm not a scientist, engineer or actuary but do have some experience with detailed statistical research at the graduate level. I've tried to keep up with the new statistical approaches since I first became aware of Bill James a couple of decades ago. When he came out with his Total Baseball I noticed that some players thought to be stars like HOFer Jim Bottomley turned up in the negative. The Total Baseball approach left me totally unsettled and Bill James himself seemed to contradict Total Baseball when he published his all time rankings which showed he valued players like Bottomley more than his Total Baseball rankings ever did. I came away thinking that James was a very knowledgeable baseball historian even if I disagreed with some of his methods. By the way the last time I looked retrosheet.org still used a formula similar to the old Total Baseball method. I continued to follow the whole Sabermetrics thing. CHONES, PECOTA, VORP, Win Shares you name it. Slowly I came to believe that this was an attempt to reinvent the wheel. Many times I've read true believers talent evaluations that to me didn't jibe with real baseball reality. Then there is one thing after another. BA doesn't count it's OBP. Long live Billy Bean and Scott Hatteberg. Strikeouts are king and any pitcher without a high K ratio stinks. His UZR is low, he must be suspect fielder. One stat I did manage to hang my hat one was WAR. Then I noticed little things like before last year Adam Dunn's WAR was higher than Konerko's. In May baseball-reference totally blew up its methods of calculating WAR and many players slid up and down the all time rankings. It reminded me of Winston Smith and his department constantly rewriting history in the novel 1984. As for Peavy I noticed his 2012 WAR was above all the starters in the MLB leading Nationals and once again I thought to myself really? Peavy is better than every one of them this year? So I've probably bored anyone who read this. I could have gone into much greater detail but as for now, count me out. I'll rate players my own way, no matter what Fan Graphs or BP has to say about it. Interesting, and I understand your talking points. It's certainly a point of debate, and though I may have come off as slightly aggressive in my initial "Explain," I certainly didn't mean it and was genuinely interested in seeing why. There will always be a debate between traditional and alternative ("sabermetric") statistics, but ultimately the two have general agreement more often than not, it's just to what degree they agree with each other, and for some reason that has been extremely contentious. You are right, it's a bit silly that Peavy is among the league's best starters, but you also have to consider that he's been extremely effective, effecient, and durable in one of the best hitter's parks in the league. The Washington trio has done that in a weaker league, in a weaker division, in a much better pitching ballpark, and, more durable than those 3, especially Strasburg. It's no surprise to me that he's counted as well as he has. Now, compared to Felix and Verlander...there's a lot of trickiness there...and compared to Sale, there's no question who has been better. Still, I don't think we as Sox fans are quite aware of how well Peavy has pitched this year, which is to say he's pitched very well. Included in that discussion is comparing Alexei Ramirez to Adam Dunn. It's impossible to compare the players, but possible to compare their relative value due to the quanitifcation of some forms of statistics. Whether you agree with those is totally up to you. It's an interesting debate, and if I weren't at work, I'd go more in depth.

QUOTE (La Marr Hoyt HOF @ Sep 17, 2012 -> 10:12 AM) Sox desperately need this one today ... Tigers have 13 games against the Twinkies and Royals to close the season ... Let's go boys!!! Detroit is 14-9 on the season against Minnesota and Kansas City. It's good, but it's not bonkers. On top of that, Minnesota's lineup is healthy again and they can be play pretty tough. Kansas City is also 24-20 in their previous 44. Those games are not a cake walk. The Sox will need to take care of business today, but losing is not the end of the world.

De Aza is simply in a funk. He looks fine physically. .171/.267/.263/.531 in his last 86 PAs He's also 3 for his last 25 with 3 walks and 1 double, which is good for a .374 OPS. This is simply getting the hotter bat in the lineup. Wise has looked pretty good recently.

Thoughts from the games: Sale was incredible, per the usual. I don't know how anybody ever hits that slider, because from our seats, you could just see how far that thing was bending. It was unreal. Most of the team actually looked pretty good at the plate except De Aza. He was in between and struggling to identify pitches all game. The best idea he had was dropping one down the line, and it went just foul. Game 2 was awesome too and was total vindication for that stupid game two years ago. You sort of knew Liriano was going to lose it, you just hoped it wasn't going to be something big...atleast it wasn't too big. When Reed came out, I yelled "Get 3 Addison." He obviously thought I meant get the first 3 on, because I was experiencing total deja vu. Thankfully Thornton, who obviously sucks, came in and was incredible. It really is a cool feeling going from one side of the emotional spectrum to the other, and having 30,000 people do the exact opposite of you. The LF bleachers literally went from everybody standing up going crazy and me sitting on my ass to them sitting and me acting like a psychotic freak in a matter of 4.2 seconds. At this point in time, the Sox need to go with Myers closing, because Reed simply can't handle it right now. I still view him as the closer of the future, but he needs to do something mechanically to change up his style. I also think he might be tipping his pitches too. Oh, and that ball AJ hit...I knew the second I saw Revere running around out in CF that it was being caught.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Sep 16, 2012 -> 01:42 AM) He should get 3 more starts right? If he can hit 20 wins and the Sox win the division while the Rays don't, it could give him an edge over Price. Also: Damn, Gio. I know wite broke this down in the greatest way possible, but if there was a mythical future where all moves don't create a domino effect and we could still have Gio, along with Sale, goddamn. That's a future without the feathered serpent, and that's a future I don't want.

Going to Minnnesota tomorrow to see the Sox play Friday and Saturday. So, uh, 2 games up would be nice. As for me tonight...I'm going to get drunk and shoot pool.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 01:39 PM) From a prospect chat... I'm just going to declare plagiarism right now

Having cooled down a little, I don't even give a s*** about bunting in that spot. You just don't do it with Youkilis. You wouldn't bunt with Paul Konerko there either, and, though Paul Konerko has been a more accomplished hitter, it is literally the exact same argument. As has been said, if their heart was set on bunting, you bring in Hudson or Olmedo or Danks and have them lay one down. You don't have Youkilis.

QUOTE (SI1020 @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 02:53 PM) Sorry but in big games Jake Peavy does not remind me of Bob Gibson. I appreciate how hard he has worked to become competitive again, but I still wish he could back up his bravado when it really counts. As for WAR, it's a dreadfully flawed stat, and baseball-reference greatly changed how it was calculated this May. Explain. Beyond that, bWAR and fWAR have never been calculated the same anyways. Using both is a pretty good idea.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Sep 11, 2012 -> 11:36 PM) The Phillies & Brewers are both only 4.5 games out of a wild card spot Either one would be just ridiculous.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Sep 11, 2012 -> 10:31 PM) Poor crowd. Who cares. Had the offense scored 5 runs in the first 6, you would have never, ever, ever, ever said this. This is all true and essentially meaningless. Fister is a good pitcher (there you go fathom) who generally locates well and is a guy you have to be aggressive but smart against. You can't be patient because he'll eat you up if you are, but you can't be overly aggressive either. It's always a matter of getting the best pitch you can hit against him and hitting it. No idea why he used Liriano out of the pen. Liriano has never been good out of the bullpen. He's a guy who sets his own tempo from the start of the game and works the opposition from there. You throw him out of the pen and he no longer pitches based upon his own tempo. Nailed it. That is the worst managerial decision I have seen in 10+ years of watching baseball. Nevermind my already very large bias against the sacrifice bunt, you don't take the bat out of the hands of a guy who has a good eye at the plate, hits fastballs like crazy (the two pitches he's hit best in his career are fastballs and cut-fastballs) which Benoit featured quite a bit tonight, and, forgetting that he has NEVER had a sacrifice bunt (at least a successful one...I'm guessing he's now 0 for 1), the dude is ALWAYS GETTING ON BASE in those situations - even this year. Seriously. RISP? Piss poor .227 average, but a .371 OBP. Men on in general? .271/.379. Late and close? .259/f***ing.423. Within 2 runs? .253/.370. High leverage? May as well include the full splits because it's a glorious .300/.392/.700/1.092 (74 PAs). Hell, I'll even include his .380 OBP in the 8th inning for kicks and giggles. The worst part is that the bunt there accomplishes NOTHING. As much as I like Wise as a player, he is not a guy who is going to instill fear into Benoit, and he obviously didn't since Benoit was not looking to get him to GIDP but instead to get him out so he could go and get Konerko next, and 1 run doesn't do a jack bit of f***ing horses*** for the Sox there. You f***ing let Kevin Youkilis swing away there and if he grounds into a double play, then f***ing guess what, s*** happens. Nevermind the fact that, because he's a good hitter, Kevin Youkilis is twice as likely to hit a go ahead home run in that spot than he is to GIDP (and far likelier than even that to draw a walk, get a hit, or simply make a f***ing out that isn't absolutely given away like Ventura did). Just the stupidest baseball decision I have ever seen in my entire life. I'd rather see Ken Williams sign Darin Erstad 10 times to 1 year contracts for the next 10 years than I would see Ventura do that again.

You're not an ace. Oh, and I have no problem with Peavy tonight. He gave up 3 f***ing runs and struck out 9 guys among those 17 outs. The only person who deserves blame tonight is Robin Ventura.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 11, 2012 -> 03:10 PM) 19-43 to finish. Ouch. 1999 Cubs still have that beat cherry picking stats. From June 9th through September 12th, the Cubs went 24-64. That's a .273 winning percentage for more than half the season. Had they accomplished that over a full season, they would have gone 44-118. Thankfully that team had steroids because it's very possible that they would have gone 44-118 that year without them.

I would say Donnie Veal has earned a spot in the bullpen next year.

QUOTE (justBLAZE @ Sep 10, 2012 -> 07:31 PM) Swing the bat Paul. Shouldn't have to when the balls out of the strike zone