caulfield12

https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=3b&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2021&month=0&season1=2021&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&startdate=2021-01-01&enddate=2021-12-31&sort=21,d Glad you asked. #1 defensive fWAR in the game today at 3B. TA is 11th at SS. Luis Robert 10th for his position. Nick Madrigal 21st out of 27 qualified. Overall, 10th overall in MLB when looking at all positions. 10/165. Gold Glover Gallo dead last.

Yoan Moncada is the 24th ranked player by fWAR. https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2021&month=0&season1=2021&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&startdate=2021-01-01&enddate=2021-12-31&sort=22,d Nick Madrigal is currently on pace for 1.2-1.5 fWAR. Moncada, 5-6. But clearly Moncada is the bigger issue. Maybe Burger can be shifted to second if Max Muncy can pull it off. Even Andrew Vaughn is heading towards 3.5 (besting a healthy but defensively challenged Jimenez), and Grandal and Eaton 2.5ish. Heck, Collins has the same fWAR as Madrigal. And when Madrigal hustles his ass off, he’s still 10-15 meters behind Moncada in a 100 meter race. Engel, Hamilton, Robert and even TA are close to lapping him on the curve if it’s 220 m.

There are guys with flat out sprint speed, quickness and fast acceleration. Moncada is just not a natural or instinctive base-stealer. Never has been...and I wouldn’t be shocked if nobody in the front office is all that concerned. Maybe they just know the likelihood of injury is not worth the extra bag unless it’s an absolutely critical scoring situation. Just like guys such as Dunn, Morneau and Thome never started learning push bunts up the 3B line...against the shift.

Sounds like an unintentional Red Bull promo...or PED’s, lol. TLR getting that caffeine injection from his early afternoon coffee?

I have to cheer for Midwest kids. Hot take: he will be the next Jeremy Reed Real take: Great fortune that the Mariners suddenly have four of the most interesting OFers while Haniger is still rostered...good newsfor the playoff-less franchise fans to have hope again (compared to, say, Detroit.) M’s fans are or were some of the best in the game.

Rogers, lol. First time I read, it was the Jolly Roger or Jolly Ranchers. That’s what you get waking up at 500 a.m.

Let’s not forget he was naturally a SS. Then a failed 2B. Then 3B, three positional changes. Screams laziness and lack of will to win. Did he ever complain? Remember, he was the top prospect in the sport 2016/17. Naturally, anyone would find it east to get to their head a little. Then he had one season he was so bad from the RH side many wanted him to give up switch hitting. Then he was too patient early in the count, took too many pitches, etc. Then he had that year of getting screwed over on something like 30-40 strike three’s. No it’s that he has 30/30 or 40/40 talent but not a natural basestealer or gets banged up too much running and especially diving or sliding into bsses.

Madrigal can only dream of having the arm strength, ability to come in on balls and throw across his body...and generally dominate a game from a defensive standpoint. He’s not as flashy as TA, but he’s smooth and steady. But Nick is the darling grinder/“dirt dog” along with Eaton.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-houston-astros-a-case-study-of-the-transformative-power-of-analytics-1532102127 Remember, this was a decade ago with the Astros...we’re still miles behind on the curve. The Indians with Antonetti run loops around us. How else can a team with the lowest payroll in the sport compete? https://www.cleveland.com/tribe/2014/08/cleveland_indians_analytics_de.html Once again, seven years ago, they were already quite well-established. Same with the Brewers under Stearns. The Rays, the A’s, the Red Sox, etc. https://www.soxmachine.com/2021/02/03/the-new-names-jobs-of-the-2021-white-sox-player-development-staff/ 2020 vs. 2021 roles. By the way, none too happy to see the names Kenny Williams, Jr., and Louie Silverio on these staff pages. Silverio was one of the players involved in Dave Wilder’s kickbacks/embezzlement/fraud scandal. But gotta love the JR loyalty. Kenny Williams tipped the addition of his son to the White Sox system in a Bob Nightengale story from December. In seeing another offseason go by without a Black person ascending into a main front office role, Williams said: Quality Control Zach Jones Nate Pearson Devin Pickett n/a Coordinator, Baseball Information n/a Devin Pickett Analyst, Player Development n/a Zach Jones

Millions? C’mon. We barely have paid our managers that before LaRussa. Dan Fabian from Notre Dame is and has been director of analytics for quite awhile now. https://theathletic.com/1845734/2020/06/02/meet-mike-mcneive-the-one-constant-tasked-with-gathering-intel-for-hawks/ So I’m going to ask one of my two best friends from grad school in Sports Admin who is well above Dan Fabian’s position with the Atlanta Hawks (basically, the basketball equivalent of scouting/advanced analytics) to provide some of his insights and see what he can infer about a rough budget and comps with what other MLB teams typically budget. By the way, your posting the Sox organizational chart is hardly demonstrable proof of even a multi-million dollar commitment to analytics on a yearly basis. Although I’m quite elated we have two now assigned to video so KW doesn’t have to assess Tadahito Iguchi with worn out JPL tapes!!!...but they already messed up working with LaRussa on what should have been a replay challenge earlier in the season. And we also lost Gellinger who was invaluable in this area. https://www.linkedin.com/in/brettphillips/ He’s a software engineer in Baseball Ops. He doesn’t run Ops. That’s Daniel Zien. That’s also quite misleading. You just copy and pasted the bottom of the front office listings, a total of seven people, to be exact. You also should have had Matt Koenig included there, since’s he is ostensibly #2 to Fabian. https://www.linkedin.com/in/wataru-ando/ I sincerely doubt someone from Lafayette College and not a quant from Cal Tech or MIT like the Cardinals and Astros hired (in addition to NASA) is making hundreds of thousands. https://www.linkedin.com/in/emily-blady-364570a2/ Barnard, now we’re getting a bit closer...in preferred backgrounds. Assistant General Manager Jeremy Haber Senior Director of Baseball Operations Dan Fabian Director of Baseball Analytics Matt Koenig Director of Baseball Operations Daniel Zien Director of Team Travel Ed Cassin Assistant Director of Baseball Operations Jeff Lachman Special Assistant to the Chairman Dennis Gilbert Special Assistants to the Senior VP/GM Nick Hostetler, Marco Paddy, Bill Scherrer, Jim Thome Special Assistant to the Executive Vice President Todd Steverson Special Assignment, Baseball Operations Ken Williams Jr. Posted November 1, 2018 On 11/1/2018 at 8:47 AM, Chicago White Sox said: https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/instagraphs/job-posting-white-sox-baseball-operations/ I wanted to post this for two reasons. 1) There are a lot of smart, data driven people on this site and maybe one of you guys meet the qualifications for one of the two roles. If so, I wanted to make sure you’re aware of these job postings. 2) I think it’s a great sign we’re adding to our analytics team. From the sound of it, we have one of the smallest analytics departments in all of baseball (but one of the largest scouting departments). I feel like we’re a little bit behind the times in terms of modern baseball, but it does appear we’re making efforts to change that. This is one of the reasons I’m willing to give Hahn a little bit more rope than his track record warrants. I truly believe he’s more forward thinking than KW & Jerry and this another example of the progress he is making in that regard. Are you kidding me this is a total embarrassment, they are worth over 1 billion dollars, I would rather not know about this, what do we have as Sox fans to be proud of, nothing.

That last part is most assuredly not true. Evidence? At best, 3-4 guys paid....and an army of interns.

Nobody questions his commitment to be a great player...but I have seen a number arguing his body is not ideally suited for preventing injuries because of his football player frame and lack of fat somehow contributing to his getting hurt more frequently. An interesting theory, but pretty dubious.

Luis Robert? Because he is in even better shape, arguably...

Hawaii and Texas....not exactly a perfectly overlaid Venn diagram there, haha.

3B is so loaded. Jose Ramirez, Devers, Matt Chapman, Urshela, Bregman, etc. That’s just the AL.

Roberto Clemente was arguably the most misunderstood Latin player of all time. This stuff about Moncada is par for the course, have seen this in the sport ever since I can remember. He played through countless injuries because he always worried there was a kid and his family that had travelled to Pittsburgh and might see only one game in person that season...so that he had a responsibility to give his all and not disappoint any of his young fans. As if a strange language and a new culture were not challenges enough, Clemente also met racism and discrimination in their crudest forms. He quickly became an active defender of his rights and the rights of others. In one of his first games as a professional, he protested angrily when fans yelled racial insults at one of his teammates. He became a union leader in the incipient Major League Baseball Players Association and defended players’ rights to demand better working conditions and benefits. Clemente’s relationship with the press was marked by racial tension. Some members of the press were rude or scornful simply because he was black and Latino. Some made fun of his heavy Latin accent, quoting him with phonetic spelling rather than merely reporting what Clemente said. "The farther away you writers stay, the better I like it. You know why? Because you’re trying to create a bad image of me… you do it because I’m black and Puerto Rican, but I’m proud to be Puerto Rican." —Roberto Clemente, 1969 "He was just learning to handle the language, and writers who couldn’t speak three words of Spanish tried to make him look silly." —Bill Mazeroski Pirates teammate (1956-72) and Hall of Fame second baseman http://www.robertoclemente.si.edu/english/virtual_story_growing_05.htm

Stone is just jealous his Nationwide is On Your Side will never in a million years top a reggaeton video...and he can’t get away with wearing that many gold chains. Or effortlessly flick balls out of the stadium to LCF.

Then he would have ended up like Rusney Castillo, Yasmani Tomas, Puig, Cespedes, Hector Mendoza, etc. Byron Buxton didn’t have the drive when he was underperforming for much of the last five years? What about Josh Hamilton, another “top prospect in all of baseball” at one point that took years and years to figure it out? Or Matt Bush? There are so many factors at play here beyond talent.

Not everyone can emote like Hendriks, Hamilton, Yermin and TA out there...Ozzie and Juan Uribe, etc. This was a rap on Carlos Rodon too, about not being as emotional or into games, Jon Garland too. But we have really seen Carlos come out his shell this season. He was misunderstood by a lot of his detractors. And there have been a lot of times Abreu dogged it down to first or made lackadaisical plays on defense.

Now we are talking Filipino/Tagalog, lol...

Somehow I have a feeling nobody will say the same thing about Kelenic or Lucas Giolito if they sign extensions. Each Latin American player is different. Sal Perez was given a second extension because he was outperforming the first, something like $7 million for five years...which he signed simply to guarantee a better future for his family. He got yet another one recently and is having one of his best all-around seasons so far in his career. Not every Cuban is Puig or Yoenis Cespedes, for example. If you remove the Covid-19 year...let’s assume he ends up somewhere between 750-825 OPS, maybe 850, he’s one of the 25-30 most valuable players in the sport due to his defense. Was Abreu coasting after the first couple of seasons of his first deal? His 2014-15 numbers seemed almost like outliers or anomalies until 2020.

Uncharted and unchartered waters...

Insight from a former Piranha.

https://www.mlb.com/video/michael-kopech-s-five-strikeouts

Sure would be nice to have the 34 year old baseball mind back...