witesoxfan

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Jun 5, 2011 -> 01:20 AM) How can this happen?? Is this deal like "If you haven't been picked in the first 10, then we are drafting you #11" type thing? Because that's dangerous for them if something like a Chris Sale type thing happens where a top 3-4 pick drops a bunch of spots, and they can't draft him because they already agreed on someone else. I guess the advantage is to try and get Chris Reed to sign for less, and get him in to the system immediately? That's the exact point.

If there's a guy I am worried about, it's Rios. He has been this bad before, and without many exceptions, he's been a worse hitter in the second half. It didn't look like he'd be able to be worse in the second half in 2009, but he was, and was way worse. Dunn? No. He'll hit eventually.

Almost 6400 plate appearances says he's going to hit. There have been 5-8 instances in his career where he has had similar struggles. No, not at all.

If Adam Dunn hit .280 for the rest of the year and averaged 6 homers a month from here until the end of the season, his line ends up somewhere along the lines of .240/.380/.470/.850 with about 30 homers. His 162 game average is .248/.379/.515/.893 and 39 homers. He hit .288 in the first half of last season - 88 games - and he was at .281 in game 98 of last year, so there is some ability to hit for average there, even if it takes a bit of luck. Also, during the only point in his career where the team he was on was contending whatsoever, 2008 with the Diamondbacks, he put up .243/.417/.472/.889 during part of August and September and was on about a 32 homer pace. He's hit well when his team has been in it before. Again, I am not worried about him at all.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Jun 4, 2011 -> 04:40 AM) I don't think Morel is an every day 3B (he is on this team). His offensive skillset is rather unimpressive. You knew the power wouldn't be great. I thought he would be more of a line drive/doubles guy. 25 of his 32 hits have been singles. His LD% is a well below average 13% and he hits a ton of ground balls. Won't even get into the BB. My expectations are so low with this team when it comes to developing position players that I can't say I'm even disappointed. He can stick at third on this team as long as he keeps flashin' the leather. And his glove has been great of late. Hope that continues. He's a rookie. Settle down shooter. Everything I've ever heard of Brent Morel reminds me of Scott Brosius. I'd be OK with that.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 01:15 PM) Cmon it's June 3. It's more than a slump. The man has been horrific. If he turns it around, great for our team, but I wouldn't assume anything. Jesus Greg, you don't f***ing get it. It's a slump. I'm going to assume that you looking at a sample size that is 3.4% the size of the sample size I'm looking at says you're wrong. The sample size I look at says that Adam Dunn is a good hitter who strikes out a lot, walks a lot, and hits a lot of home runs, making him a big time Three True Outcome player. You even thinking that he's going to be this bad for the rest of the season is a joke in itself. There's a stretch in 2008 from March 31 to May 12 - .209/.352/.400/.752, 36 G (all starts). Only 4 doubles and 6 home runs. Compared to those other stretches which I mentioned earlier, he hit for a bit of power and walked more, and hit for a slightly better average...that's about it. Shortly thereafter, from June 2 to June 30th, Dunn put up this - .155/.336/.393/.729, 26 G, 25 GS. Again, walking and running into a few, and nothing else whatsoever. Seriously...he had 13 hits that month - 3 singles, 5 doubles, 5 homers. That's two 25+ game slumps within the same half of the same season where Dunn wasn't garbage, but was not good at all. The difference between those and the slump he is currently in is that he found a way to make himself useful during those ones. He hasn't done that yet. It was also in the first half for those of you concerned about it being late in the year. He's pressing right now and it's causing him to miss a lot of balls and to be overly aggressive at the plate. I think he'll calm down and he'll figure it out and he'll end up OPSing around .925 in the second half. He'll realize that being a DH really isn't that bad and that you actually get to rest as opposed to beating up your body on a regular basis and it's simply a matter of keeping busy and warm while staying in tune with the game itself. BTW, his OPS in 2008 ended up at .898.

QUOTE (SoxAce @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 06:54 AM) Just when I'm good with him leaving, he just had to come back to my team's division... Considering the shape of the Twins, he could certainly get some run at the MLB level too.

Adam Dunn is currently at .180/.329/.326/.654. That is an OBP higher than a slugging percentage. That is a damn near statistical anomaly in itself. He has played in 50 games, which is just less than 1/3 of a full major league season. All hope is lost for him doing anything for the next 2/3. Though, of course, it's not. With a player who has the "consistency" of Adam Dunn (only month in his career with an OPS below .872 is September/October, when he's at .771, but I blame that mostly on him having no motivation considering he's played on a losing team for so long), he has slumped like this before. Dating back to his first full year in the league... 2002 - Aug 2 to Sept 29 - 54 G, 49 GS - .171/.302/.283/.585 2003 - Jul 9 to Aug 15 - 33 G, 32 GS - .214/.350/.321/.672 2004 - Aug 17 to Sept 24 - 35 G, 34 GS - .198/.336/.421/.757 2006 - Aug 2 to Oct 1 - 55 G, 54 GS - .174/.308/.332/.639 2009 - Aug 24 to Oct 4 - 36 G, 35 GS - .198/.318/.341/.659 There was also a stretch, in either 2007 or 2008, where he put up a line of something like .200/.350/.450 over a 50-60 game stretch where he hit 15 homers, but I figured people would get on my case because he ran into 10 more balls instead of missing them. His BABIP was still garbage. Yeah, nitpick if you want to - HE'S ONLY DONE THIS ONCE IN THE LAST 5 YEARS AND 3 OF THOSE ARE FEWER THAN 40 GAMES - they are still month long sustained slumps and, believe it or not, Adam Dunn worked his way out of those. Not gonna do anything without some sabermetric help either. Adam Dunn, throughout his career, has a career BABIP of .295 and a HR/FB of 21.9%. Considering he's put those up over a period of almost 6300 PAs, I'd say those are sustainable rates. Currently, he's at .265 and 9.6%. The BABIP may not come up - there's history to indicate that he can stay below that - but that HR/FB is going to come up. So he [probably] won't hit 40 homers. No biggie. The worst OPS he put up, other than that crappy 2003 (where he ended up with an .819 OPS, shoot me in the face that's so bad) were .854 in 2002 and .855 in 2006. Otherwise, he's been at or above .890. The premise of the post is that Adam Dunn is going to turn it around. Anybody who is seriously worried about him is fooling themselves. All Ozzie can do is keep doing what he's doing.

Ouch, that's no good.

Well it's not only how Konerko compares to other 1B in the majors, but also 1B outside of the majors. 1B is the easiest position to find a replacement for, so to be a better than replacement level player, you have to be a pretty good hitter...Paul Konerko is a good to great hitter, so he's generally about a 2-4 WAR 1B, depending on if we are getting GOOD PAULIE or BAD PAULIE. I only capitalized them because every other Chicago franchise uses those as well, so it only makes sense to use it with the White Sox too. They've had 2 players for over a decade now that have typified that pretty well.

QUOTE (JPN366 @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 12:34 AM) I traded in my beautiful baby blue 2007 Ford Mustang, it had the pony package, a white racing stripe along the side and black leather interior. Having a kid makes a two door sports car kinda useless. Whenever we go somewhere with the boy, we had to take my wife's leased 2011 Honda Civic. I had to do it. The silver lining? My new, gently used, silver 2010 Dodge Charger SXT with a spoiler, black interior and a black racing stripe down the side. Now I can actually put a car seat for my son in my car. I do miss my Mustang. I've been driving Mustangs for 13 years. (sigh) I'm gonna go look and see if it's listed on the Carmax website yet. The moral to this story...if you like your sports car, don't have kids. I feel that there's a deeper meaning to this.

Fort Peck, further up the river from Garrison Dam, was 14 feet higher in April this year than it was in April 2010 according to this article from the Billings Gazette. Two interesting little blurbs from the piece... which affects Pierre/Ft. Pierre. They could have released more starting in March, as Pierre can handle anywhere between 30-45 relatively comfortably. The note which is more interesting to me is this... So in March and April, they were releasing water at 15,000 cfs. From about mid-June until probably August, they will be running at 10 times that. During the flood scare from 2 years ago when they had water on the road, the biggest problem was an ice jam down the river which created a mini-dam which then created a mini-reservoir behind it. We didn't have those jams this year, partly, I'm sure, because the flows were so slow, but it seems to me if you know that you can break those jams up, then you should do so if they present themselves and you should prepare yourself for this scenario. It seems to me that there was going to be some flooding no matter what, especially with the record rainfalls in eastern Montana. It also seems to me that the Corps of Engineers really screwed the pooch in doing everything they could to prevent as much flooding as possible. They can't just run water at 60,000 cfs at their own desire because that obviously affects flows downstream, but getting in coordination with everyone and running it around 35-40K cfs seems like it may have at least been a possibility and would have created some extra room within the reserves so they could be running water at 70-80K cfs right now as opposed to the 110-120K cfs they are.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 2, 2011 -> 11:49 AM) Apparently they're now opening the Garrison dam for the first time in its 57 year history The one thought that's been bouncing around the back of my mind for a few days now is wondering if there are going to be any complications with the dams holding at full capacity for as long as they have. I'm going to assume that they won't simply just give and that we get about 6 hours to head for the hills, but that can't be good for them. I also didn't realize how big the Garrison Dam was. I know that the Oahe Dam was the 2nd largest earthen dam in the world (next to the Aswan in Egypt), but I had no idea that the Garrison was the 4th largest. The river has officially gone above flood stage - 16.66 ft as of 30 minutes ago and that's going to continue to rise for a while. Have to hope that the levees hold up, that they can pump rain water out as fast as they say they can (they are saying they can pump out 5 inches of water an hour), and that there's not too much groundwater infiltration. Oh, and for fun's sake, here's the link to the water elevation. http://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph....&gage=biwn8 It should update continuously as they take the levels.

QUOTE (kjshoe04 @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 12:15 AM) Of course Fangraphs WAR also has Marlon Byrd over Konerko. Because he plays CF instead of 1B. There is a much bigger penalty for 1B because damn near anybody can do it.

That Javy Vazquez trade looks better and better. This new power hitter Lillibridge is really showing something.

QUOTE (Maxwell @ Jun 1, 2011 -> 02:38 AM) Sometimes, pitchers figure it out late. Look at colby lewis. He didn't figure it out until last year. Colby Lewis went to Japan and totally changed the way he pitched. Colby Lewis is an apple, Phil Humber is an orange. QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Jun 1, 2011 -> 02:44 AM) http://www.fangraphs.com/pitchfx.aspx?play...&position=P His velos have stayed the same basically. His cutter has gained a few MPH, but everything else is pretty much the same. However, this year he is throwing his fastball 6% less than career avg, his cutter slightly less, his changeup 9% more than any other year, and his slider almost 5x as much. AJ must call a better game than he ex-battery mates. FGs page is confusing. They are talking about curveballs and changeups on his PitchFX page, but his main page shows fastball at just above 40, slider and change both at 16, and curveball at 22. And his slider and changeup have the same velocity. He's not an easy guy to hit right now. --- I'm getting a weird flashback to 2008 Gavin Floyd. Floyd was amazing ERA wise in the first half of that season, but all of the peripherals said he'd come back to earth. Then in the second half, those peripherals improved quite a bit, but due to mere regression, he was getting "unlucky." I think something similar will happen to Humber as well. You absolutely have to keep him in the rotation. I really didn't like the guy nor did I think he had a shot in hell at keeping this job, but at this point, you have to stick with him. And you can't go to a 6 man rotation permanently, otherwise the pitchers' bodies will adjust to that schedule and they won't be able to convert back to pitching on 4 days rest. That creates a monstrosity of a problem. Either Jackson goes for a minor package or Danks goes for a major one. That's something that actually sorta does have to happen relatively soon.

I love me some dark meat

SEE, I TOLD YOU PEOPLE WOULD SEE THE SOX GO 4-6 AND THINK THEY ARE DOING FINE /understands that it's a 10 game road trip playing 3 of the better or more underrated in Toronto's defense in the AL

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ May 31, 2011 -> 02:56 PM) epically bad division + good young talent + hot streak A lot of that is the same good young talent they've had for 5 years. It's not as young anymore. They have a pitching staff this year. That's one of the main reasons.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ May 31, 2011 -> 01:30 AM) Asians or Mexicans? Whom do you prefer, Soxtalk? 1) Blacks 2) Latino 3) White 4) Asian both black and white have other groups mixed within them, but for the most part, I go by this.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ May 28, 2011 -> 11:55 PM) Oh goodness. Well I can automatically dismiss him. Slap hitters that don't walk? No. Never again after this year, hopefully. 16 extra base hits this year. That's like a 40-50 XBH pace. That's a hell of a lot better than Pierre. And he supposedly plays gold glove caliber defense, so if that's true, then it more than makes up for the nausea at the plate.

QUOTE (maggsmaggs @ May 30, 2011 -> 03:24 PM) Oh I agree with Flowers, it's actually pretty hard to be as bad as AJ. He pretty much the worst starting catcher in the Majors. No, no, not at all. He's not good, and he's the worst qualified starter among catchers, but there are like 9 guys who qualify as catchers. Most catching situations are platoons at this point. There are a lot of really really bad catchers in the league.

Escobar is proving to be OK with the stick, which is all you can ask of and more. Another homer and a double, leaving him with an OPS over .700 and 16 XBH's.

QUOTE (whitesoxfan101 @ May 30, 2011 -> 10:11 AM) The officials are such a joke. The league really needs to just get rid of them and start over, because as long as the current batch is there, the aura of fix, cheating, and ineptitude will always be there. Although, I really think that'll be the case until David Stern is gone as commish too. He's the one that oversees these refs, and the fixed draft lotteries. I enjoyed watching the NBA for a while this year and it was fun to get back into it. Then this Bulls/Heat series happened and ruined it all over again. It's just amazing how many calls star players get while lesser players do lesser things and get called far more often. I recall seeing a play where like James and Wade went to double Rose on an outside shot and they hit his arm or something and there was no call. That's a foul 10 times out of 10 if the player isn't one of those 2. If the NBA was called even relatively fair, this series would have been a lot closer and these star players would be getting T'ed up way more often simply because they'd actually end up having calls go against them.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 30, 2011 -> 09:42 PM) Are there control dams on that river? Otherwise, the early melts saturated the aquifers, so that this years la Nina rains had no where to go. Both the Garrison and Oahe Dams are supposed to be monitoring flood control as well as electrical output. I don't know if that's the answer you're looking for, but that's what I got.