witesoxfan

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Aug 16, 2010 -> 04:13 PM) He's having one of the luckiest years in recent memory. You won't find any disagreement from me there, it's just insane to think about. He does have the highest ground ball rate of his career, but his K rate is down, his walks are slightly up, he's not allowing any hits at all even though opponents are putting the ball in play quite a bit of the time, he's not allowing home runs when he does allow flyballs, and he's leaving an insane amount of people on base. There's going to be some correction to these statistics in the next month and a half, but Hudson has still had a phenomenal season.

They may have followed 2003, 2004, 2006, and 2009 though.

QUOTE (beautox @ Aug 14, 2010 -> 12:13 AM) Dewitt - at his floor he is a league average second basemen with above average defense at 3B that needs some work at the keystone, his upside is what he has produced up this point with the cubs .310/.370/.429 with the ability to possibly tack on some more slugging; he very well could turn into the left handed hitting pedroia. Blake DeWitt has career splits of .264/.343/.381/.723 in 819 PAs and put up a .277/.337/.443/.779 line in 2555 career minor league PAs. Dustin Pedroia put up a .317/.380/.442/.823 line in his first full season, put up .313/.369/.459/.828 in his first two full seasons in the majors, plus almost 100 plate appearances in 2006 and won the MVP award in 2008 (though Quentin gift wrapped it for him when he broke his hand), has a career batting line of .305/.370/.461/.831, and put up a .307/.392/.452/.844 line in 1223 plate appearances in the minors. I don't know how you can say that DeWitt is going to turn into Pedroia. If anything, I think Blake DeWitt is going to be a league average 2B, maybe above average. He has a few things going for him, including the ability to hit for a bit of average and the propensity to walk a little bit, but he has never really shown that he can hit for power at the same level as Dustin Pedroia.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Aug 16, 2010 -> 02:36 PM) Definitely. This has actually been a rather tame year for the AL as far as legitimate Cy Young candidates go. There's a lot of guys having really good years. But there's not one or two guys that jump out at you and say 'he's a lock.' Now in the NL, wow. Johnson, Wainwright, Halladay, Ubaldo. I kinda feel sorry for the voters this year. And you didn't even mention the pitcher who has the 2nd best ERA.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Aug 16, 2010 -> 02:16 PM) My only question about WAR is how the f*** does Cliff Pennington have the 18th highest WAR in the AL & Daric Barton has the 20th highest? Because they don't. Barton is at 22nd and Pennington is at 27th. Beyond that, both have been good defensively this year and both have been solid offensively. Barton may not hit for much power (35 XBHs and 5 HR in 497 PAs), but he gets on base a ton, and getting on base is the biggest part of scoring runs. Cliff Pennington isn't a special player by any means, but he's OK offensively (.334 OBP and he's hit for enough power to keep his OPS over .700), good defensively, and he plays a premium defensive position. On top of that, both have played quite a bit...Pennington has played in 110 and Barton in 113 of the Athletics' 116 games. Barton has only played 3 more games than Pennington, but has 80 more plate appearances, and that difference is largely because he has hit 2nd for most of the year, whereas Pennington has hit 9th for most of the season. This is all pretty much the same exact reasoning as to why Alexei Ramirez has the highest WAR on the White Sox (among offensive players), even though Alex Rios has had a great season and Paul Konerko has quite easily been the Sox best offensive player. Alexei has played phenomenal defense this year, has been a pretty good hitter (though he hasn't gotten on base much of the time), and he's played almost every game (114 of 118), and he's done it playing SS, which is a much more difficult position to find good offensive players. And, because he's played as much as he has and as well as he has defensively, he's been the 3rd best SS in the entire game, even with his relatively mediocre offensive numbers.

QUOTE (MattZakrowski @ Aug 16, 2010 -> 01:25 PM) 4 GB against a team that has proven that they're better than us? This is a must win series. The reason you can get away with winning only one is simply the difference between 4 games out and 6 games out. 4 games in a little over 6 weeks of baseball can be made up, though it is difficult. 6 games back over the same time span with only 3 left against Minnesota and an arguably harder schedule is damn near impossible. Obviously, winning 2 or 3 is preferred, but the Sox simply can't be swept.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Aug 15, 2010 -> 05:29 PM) Is it me, or does Mike Stanton have more raw power than any player in baseball? He's built like he's from some state-of-the-art baseball laboratory. A whopping 30 of his 56 hits have gone for extra bases. And these are ropes, missiles and bombs he's tattooing. No cheapies with this guy. He's slugging .569 with an ISO around .300. And the dude is 20! He's going to K. No doubt about that. But 40-45 HRs next year seem a foregone conclusion to me. I'm drawing a total blank right now. Has anyone ever done that at age 21? McGwire and Canseco are pretty close. McGwire hit 49 at 23. Canseco hit 33 at 21, 31 at 22, and 42 at 23.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Aug 14, 2010 -> 01:58 AM) 2-4 seems like a much safer prediction against the Twins, 3-3 might be hoping a bit too much. What a crock of s***. The Twins are the Sox biggest competitors this year and it's to the point where it is almost a yearly occurance. The fact that they can't beat them or that the fans expectations are to split is outrageous. I guarantee you that neither Red Sox nor Yankees fans ever go into that series and think that going 9-9 "is hoping for too much." This is a major league baseball team and they should have the ability to beat the living hell out of the Twins. Maybe I'm just a crazy optimist, but I expect the Sox to win the next two series. The Sox will have their best 3 pitchers going against the Twins next week, and if you can't win 2 out of 3 with your best 3 going against the team in direct competition with you, then you probably don't deserve to be in the postseason anyways.

QUOTE (Jerksticks @ Aug 13, 2010 -> 11:50 PM) You know what dude I like this; we just can't beat em, for whatever reason. So why don't we assume the next 6 against the Twins are all head-to-head losses. If we lose 6 games in the standings vs. them, then what would each team's respective records have to be in the other games for us to make the playoffs? It's time to find another way to the playoffs, ya know? If the Twins went .500 against the rest of their competition from here on out, but we exclude the 6 games played between the Sox and Twins (which leaves 40 games), the Sox would have to go 27-13 to tie them for the division crown. They are going to have to beat the Twins and every one else if they want to make it to the postseason.

It's pretty much impossible to make prospect judgments based on guys in rookie leagues. All those are really there for are to see how players handle the adjustment from aluminum bats to wooden bats. Brian Anderson only played 13 games for Great Falls in 2003, but he hit .388 in his time there. For guys who have succeeded at the Division I level, it's usually a breeze.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Aug 13, 2010 -> 11:14 PM) Props to Teahen for proving haters like me wrong tonight. His home run was smashed. It reminded me of that bomb Roberts hit off Putz the other night. He got all of it. One of those special bombs. Hope he keeps it up. It would be nice to see him simply take Kotsay's at bats but we know that ain't gonna happen. I really wouldn't be all that surprised if it does, in fact, happen. We make fun of Ozzie because he has always had an infatuation with a pretty terrible hitter or player in general in the role into which they are thrust, but I think one of the biggest reasons Ozzie was playing Kotsay was because he hit left handed. There was talk that Kotsay was just having bad luck on his balls in play and whatever else, but Ozzie isn't stupid and even he realizes that Kotsay sucked. He didn't feel as though he had a choice. There were other lineups that people wanted to put out there, and I had no problem with trying certain things out, but what it really comes down to is that Ozzie felt that, against RHP, Kotsay was a better option than Lillibridge, Jones, and Viciedo (because he was never going to DH Castro). Is that reasonable? Because I'd say it is. This isn't to say that Kotsay is going to totally be phased out of the lineup, but I can most certainly see Teahen taking quite a few ABs away from him. I believe Ozzie at the beginning of the whole rotating DH idea suggested that he was going to use it to, first and foremost, keep bats in the lineup while giving them a break on the field, but he was also going to ride out the hot hand. Teahen looks pretty hot right now, and you aren't going to keep Quentin out of the lineup for Mark Kotsay. This also isn't to say that Teahen won't see time at 3B or in LF either. Teahen is the Sox backup 3Bman for the next two and a half weeks, for better or worse, because Omar Vizquel isn't going to play every single day for the remainder of the season.

QUOTE (J.Reedfan8 @ Aug 13, 2010 -> 10:44 PM) Valencia is gonna be nice little player. Got the 3B position locked up for the Twins in the future. His 4 game stretch against Baltimore and Kansas City has kept his OPS at .759. Seriously. First 25 games - .310/.372/.352/.724 (78 PAs) 4 game stretch - .737/.750/1.105/1.855 (20 PAs) Since that time - .167/.220/.204/.424 (59 PAs) He's been adequate. I hope the Twins make him the 3Bman of the future, because he's really not that good. Probably a utility player.

Why can't they do this against Minnesota? A win's a win, I guess. Good performance from the offense.

Honestly, I'm just happy Kotsay's not hitting 5th or 6th.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Aug 13, 2010 -> 02:30 PM) Bad is still much better than Mark Kotsay. Guillen - .246/.304/.362/.666 in his last 258 plate appearances Kotsay - .253/.327/.412/.738 in his last 245 plate appearances

In a sick sort of way, atleast the Sox know what they did wrong if they lose this division by 1-2 games. There won't be a myriad of reasons as there were in 2006 - it will be because Mark Kotsay was the DH for the White Sox and Jim Thome was playing for the Twins.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Aug 13, 2010 -> 12:24 PM) Seeing Linebrink mentioned here made me think. Is his contract one of the worst ever given to a reliever? BJ Ryan's was probably worse. 5 years, $47 mill before the 2006 season. He pitched fantastically in 2006, had TJ in 2007, was solid in 2008, and was garbage and out of the game in 2009. They owed him $10 mill this year (though it was undoubtedly covered by insurance).

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Aug 12, 2010 -> 04:34 PM) When is his random test? I don't think steroids are in question here. Hitting home runs is obviously an organizational philosophy of the Blue Jays (179 team home runs, with Boston being the next closest at 155), and whether it's because Bautista has actually become a good hitter or it's a statistical outlier (I would say it's a combination of both) doesn't matter. These kinds of things have happened in the past. Everyone likes to point out Brady Anderson's 1996 season, but there have been people who have questioned him about steroids, but his manager that year, Davey Johnson, is probably the best example of it. Johnson hit 43 homers in 1973 as a 30 year old in his first year in the NL with the Braves. Before that year, he'd only hit more than 10 homers in a season once (18 in 1971). The next year he hit 15, and after that, he was done being a regular player. It's entirely possible that it just took Bautista a while longer for him to figure out how to be a good hitter. I don't see you asking for Luke Scott's random test, but he didn't get to the big leagues until he was 27 and he wasn't an every day player in the big leagues until he was 29, but he's having a similarly good season to Bautista, except that he hasn't hit 36 homers, he's just hit for power at a much better rate than he has at any point in his career.

QUOTE (Chet Kincaid @ Aug 13, 2010 -> 09:39 AM) Well the Giants just got Jose Guillen. The pickins' are getting slim... The have been slim for a while and Jose Guillen being off the market doesn't change that. Guillen is a bad player at this point and has been for much of the year.

A NTC can block a waiver claim too. Either the Sox are going to have to claim Manny, or he'll have to clear, and from the sounds of it, even with right around $5-6 mill left on his contract, he is probably not going to clear.

And in that game, Bautista hit his 36th. Jesus, what a season.

QUOTE (MattZakrowski @ Aug 12, 2010 -> 03:08 PM) League average 1B under team control beats mediocre RP 8 days a week IMO. Agreed. I don't mind the thought process behind the trade (trading an average prospect for an above average reliever), but Tony Pena has been anything but above average. He's really helped the Sox out in a few situations this year, but I think KW would probably like a do-over on that one.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Aug 12, 2010 -> 03:17 PM) Not by that much (.45 point difference in OPS). That's pretty significant for a team. .803 team OPS vs RHP, .755 team OPS vs LHP. In comparison, the Sox are at .748 vs both RHP and LHP.

Catchers don't age well. It's not surprising to see that AJ has regressed as much as he has. The only potential plus out of this is that, because of his struggles this season, he may sign a cheap, 1 year contract with the Sox, and that would allow both him and Flowers to split time at the MLB level next year as the Sox bring Flowers along slowly.

I don't buy that either. Just looking at numbers, I think Allen projects to be about a league average 1Bman. Probably a good hitter against RHP, mediocre to bad against LHP.