caulfield12

Some would argue that it would be better if Birmingham was more of a hitter's park (or at least the Southern League in general, compared with Texas), with Charlotte having much smaller dimensions. One way or the other, though...you need to assess your talent realistically, and that jump from High A to AA has always been THE dividing line between real prospects and suspects. We've witnessed it this season with the struggles of Luis Gonzalez, Basabe and Rutherford. Otoh, you can definitely see the positive progression with Sheets, to the point where he's a legitimate candidate for 1B/DH in the next 18 months. The Dodgers, for example...always had this issue with Albuquerque and San Antonio, but one could argue that the gaudy offensive numbers put up there only padded their prospect status. Over the decades, scouts started to doubt those external ratings, but they've brought up stud after stud after stud beginning around 2010 or 2011. (If we wanted to trade any of our four outfielders, including Adolfo, their value would be 30-50 cents on the dollar.)

Chinese RMB to USD finally breached the mythical 7 mark that everyone in the finance community has been worried about... What does everyone think, we avoid recession next year or not? With the Fed lowering interest rates, and China taking a bite out of the (anticipated) impact from higher tariffs by devaluing their currency, it will be interesting to see what transpires. Personally, I think both sides now are so entrenched that there won't be a solution until well into election year, with the one caveat being that the ONE thing that's predictable is that the president will eventually back off if the stock market falls so far that there's blowback coming in his direction. This time around, in the short term, feel fortunate to have moved 20-25% of portfolio back into cash/CD's.

# Name Batting Base Running Fielding Positional Offense Defense League Replacement RAR WAR Dollars 12 Page size: 45 items in 2 pages 36 Charlie Tilson -8.7 3.1 -0.6 -1.1 -5.6 -1.7 0.6 4.9 -1.8 -0.2 ($1.4) 37 Seby Zavala -2.6 0.1 0.1 0.2 -2.5 0.2 0.0 0.4 -1.8 -0.2 ($1.4) 38 Zack Collins -3.2 -0.2 -0.5 0.0 -3.4 -0.5 0.1 1.0 -2.8 -0.3 ($2.2) 39 Ryan Cordell -8.5 -0.6 -0.5 -1.7 -9.1 -2.3 0.8 6.2 -4.4 -0.4 ($3.4) 40 Nicky Delmonico -4.5 -0.3 -2.1 -0.7 -4.8 -2.8 0.3 2.1 -5.2 -0.5 ($4.0) 41 A.J. Reed -5.7 0.0 -1.3 -5.7 -1.3 0.2 1.5 -5.3 -0.5 ($4.1) 42 Jose Rondon -10.4 -1.2 -0.4 0.1 -11.6 -0.3 0.6 4.9 -6.4 -0.6 ($5.0) 43 Welington Castillo -9.4 -0.8 -6.3 1.3 -10.2 -5.0 0.6 5.0 -9.6 -0.9 ($7.4) 44 Daniel Palka -9.4 0.2 -3.0 -0.8 -9.2 -3.8 0.2 1.6 -11.2 -1.1 ($8.7) 45 Yonder Alonso -14.6 -1.6 -0.3 -5.9 -16.3 -6.2 1.0 7.9 -13.6 -1.3 ($10.6) What's absolutely insane is that Goins has been the FIFTH most valuable player by fWAR, with Leury fourth. Or that Jay and Engel have come closer to earning their money than Jimenez ($6 million including his signing bonus) and Abreu. Alonso and Castillo (essentially chosen over Narvaez) worth -$18 MILLION to the team...almost reversing by 180 degrees the actual money spent on them. At least if Machado came onboard, you could ignore the $36 million total swing in lost value to the organization. Then you have the phenomenon of Jimenez and Abreu being worth very little in advanced terms, despite their traditional HR and RBI numbers. EIGHT players ranked 36th-45th are pretty much an appropriate indictment of our scouting department, and the "supplemental" pieces that were supposed to fill out the roster (other than Collins, who was once expected to be a core piece). 1 Yoan Moncada 18.0 3.5 2.6 1.4 21.5 4.0 1.6 12.9 39.9 3.9 $31.0 2 James McCann 2.9 0.5 -2.6 4.4 3.4 1.8 1.2 10.1 16.5 1.6 $12.8 3 Tim Anderson 5.5 1.0 -4.4 3.3 6.5 -1.1 1.2 9.5 16.1 1.6 $12.5 4 Leury Garcia -5.4 2.9 2.6 0.5 -2.4 3.1 1.7 13.6 16.0 1.6 $12.4 5 Ryan Goins 2.2 0.0 0.5 2.2 0.5 0.2 1.8 4.7 0.5 $3.6 6 Yolmer Sanchez -13.1 1.4 1.4 1.4 -11.8 2.8 1.4 11.2 3.6 0.4 $2.8 7 Jose Abreu -0.5 -3.2 -0.1 -8.9 -3.8 -9.1 1.8 14.5 3.4 0.3 $2.7 8 Eloy Jimenez -1.7 0.9 -2.8 -3.3 -0.9 -6.1 1.1 9.2 3.3 0.3 $2.6 9 Jon Jay 0.8 0.1 -1.2 -1.4 0.9 -2.6 0.4 3.6 2.3 0.2 $1.8 10 Adam Engel -3.6 0.8 0.0 0.4 -2.7 0.4 0.4 3.3 1.3 0.1 $1.0

After all, the cumulative pitching fWAR is higher than the position player side, somehow...

And he’s going to get six from SOMEONE. Probably multiple teams.

Well...that’s obvious, they traded Kip Wells, Fogg and Lowe away and Ritchie couldn’t stay healthy. Didn't add Kenny Rogers in 2003, saved money but had no fifth. Wright, Parque, Baldwin, Rauch, Ginter, West, Malone, Honel, Barcelo, Stumm, Beirne, Myette, Biddle all broke down or were traded/underperformed. Which is why it’s completely laughable when people say adding a #1/2 and #4 is crazy/insane/idiotic.

Colome or Castillo...possibly Herrera. Ironically, Cruz is also Dominican, a former teammate of Machado’s, and a borderline HoF career statistically.

This is one way to get a Top 5 pick... White Sox 2018 W/L: 62-100 Position Players: 8.3 WAR Pitchers: 8.9 WAR White Sox 2019 W/L: 69-93 (proj.) Position Players: 4.3 WAR Pitchers: 7.3 WAR And Moncada represents +4.0

Or assessing Alonso vs. Nelson Cruz, who has outproduced him (Yonder’s entire season) in just two games over the course of last ten days. How do the Twins get almost all of their offseason moves right and we only got McCann and Colome as useful pieces out of $30 million in additions?

Well, that’s the only rap on the Dodgers...or the most obvious one, 14 consecutive Braves’ postseasons with only 1 WS win. In terms of the Astros, just look at the immediate turnaround in Aaron Sanchez, who quite a few of us pointed out as a great bounce back candidate.

The exact opposite of the Don Cooper school...being high and low in the strike zone with 1 o’clock to 7 o’clock hard breaking sliders and then four seamers above the zone rather than sinkers below.

Ironic that... 1) He’s the first one who pointed out that Giolito needed to go with more high, riding fastballs (the Rays, when Farquhar was there, their pitching staff collectively figured out how effective Lucas could be when analyzing video/data) because of their extreme carry and the lack of effectiveness on his two seam sinking fastball. But they were still able to figure it out when Giolito’s fastball was only at 92 then, compared to 94-97. (fwiw, Marco Estrada’s was the best in MLB) 2) Farquhar had to approach Hahn for the job... 3) Giolito’s high school coach (Harvard Westlake in LA) got a big league job, just not in Chicago The Rays arguably have the most advanced analytics group in baseball...guess we can’t afford to follow suit. https://theathletic.com/246514/2018/02/20/danny-farquhars-data-centric-approach-paying-dividends-for-lucas-giolito/ “So basically how it works, they both come out at the same slot, the fastball and the changeup,” Farquhar explained. “The fastball stays up and then the changeup goes down. You’re playing more on up and down, which is also as a hitter, you know most hitters can distinguish in and out. They know if a ball is half an inch on the plate, or half an inch off the plate. But up and down, the strike zone changes so much depending on the umpire and the hitters kinda really don’t know where that top line is in the strike zone. The bottom line they know a little bit more, but they say up and down is harder to distinguish than in and out.” Simple enough of a concept to explain, but coming from the Rays, the approach was backed by hard data, displayed to their pitching entire staff with plot graphs of every pitch in their arsenal. Some big leaguers would blanch at being flooded with so much statistical analysis — and then there’s Danny Farquhar. Like any pitcher, Farquhar, now on his sixth major league organization, has had countless pitching coaches stressing the importance of keeping the ball low in the zone and out of harm’s way. But the Rays told him his fastball dropped less than others, and stayed up a bit longer as it neared to the plate, causing hitters to swing through it when he elevated and challenged them with it, whereas it flattened out lower in the zone. Relatedly, Farquhar’s four-seamer was in the top 25 percent of the league for whiffs per swing among pitchers who threw more than 200 fastballs last year. “The fastball has a thing called carry,” Farquhar said. “My fastball has an average of 10 or 11 inches of carry — and this is what the Rays told me — the average big league fastball is nine inches of carry, so it’s a couple inches above that. Then you have the kill zone which is the one that gets murdered most of the time by the hitters, and that’s eight inches of carry. That’s the one where you don’t want to be no matter what the pitch is. That’s not to say that every pitch with that carry level is going to be hit over the fence, but a majority of them get hit for extra-base hits. And then you have the changeup, I think mine sits between three and four, so it comes out the same but there’s separation in the pitch.” Being above or below the kill zone, where sinkers and offspeed pitches drop at a quicker rate than expected, is thus where effectiveness lies. Lucas Giolito’s four-seam fastball averaged around 10 inches of carry in his brief time in the majors last season, which by the Rays’ model, made it destined for success once he decided to elevate it, even though it only sat at 92 mph.”

Only the Mariners and Padres have longer playoff droughts...

I’m assuming someone is in the wrong game thread...easy mistake. Otherwise, micromanaging Stiever’s outing would be weird.

Milwakee’s success is 50% Marlins’ stupidity and 50% Stearns is really adept at judging position players...but yeah, it’s easy to come up with 7-8 small market teams that can still operate successfully in this environment, and yet we’ve somehow failed to come up with any unique (and sustainable) approaches to roster construction other than Cubans and trying to create a superpen out of collegiate pitchers, which has so far backfired pretty spectacularly, overall.

That’s where you need someone who specializes in extracting value from second/third tier free agents and young players blocked on other rosters. Someone whose mindset is every single penny counts...from Tampa, Cleveland or the A’s, etc.

Epstein said it was a classic seller’s market after the Stroman trade went down...that teams were holding out for extreme packages and most deals weren’t consummated because everything was rushed the last 2-3 hours on deadline day and a lot of teams couldn’t decide what to do so they just held serve.

Trading a top 3 pick in Vaughn at this point for maybe a #2 doesn’t make much sense...when your #1 form of resources is financial flexibility, why create more holes in the everyday lineup when you don’t have to?

Need someone like Ozuna with positional versatility who can also hit.

At this rate, more likely to be part of a random mass shooting...so good luck.

Whether it’s the Pirates, Reds, Royals, Brewers, Twins...it seems like those midmarket teams only have 3 year windows. The 5 exceptions would be Tigers due to Ilitch, A’s, Indians, Cardinals and Rays. Oakland has made the playoffs nine times since 2000...and will be right there with A’s and Indians this year. Indians, likely 12 times in the last 25 years. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Tampa_Bay_Rays_seasons Best case scenario for the Sox is the Rays, their first decade they averaged 64.5 and 97.5 per year. Last 12 seasons, only two years below 80 wins. Four playoff appearances, two more seasons missing the playoffs with 90 wins...this year, looking like they’ll be right at the cut line again despite three major starting pitching injuries (Glasnow, Snell and one of their top minor league prospects in Honeywell.) 86.5 and 75.5 average record...in the worst stadium in baseball for attendance and bottom 5 t.v. market.

Ron, I sincerely doubt threatening half the board is going to end up with the result you want...or that admins/moderators have the time and energy to sort it all out on a weekend. Besides, If half the board was actually suspended, wouldn’t the whole point of the board...which is interacting with other Sox fans...be null and void? It’s like bullying in middle or high school...if victims don’t care of it themselves and go to their parents or principal, it just brings further wrath down upon themselves, which is only exacerbated by this social media echo chamber age we live in.

It was weird, they were acting like they wanted to walk the weak hitting back up catcher (Knaack or whatever his name is) to get to the pitcher's spot...were calling for an intentional walk, and forgot that Realmuto was on the bench and would be hitting with the bases loaded. So then after deciding NOT to walk him, they still accidentally walked him anyway. Fry has to have been pissed that their signals got crossed.

Yep, Mize and another top 2 next year. We had Rodon at 3 (bad luck), Madrigal at 4...I guess we can pretend that Robert, Moncada, Giolito, Jimenez, Kopech and Cease are all high first round draft picks. In the end, it shouldn't matter where the talent originated, and Detroit still has a few years before they can get out of the Cabrera contract.

If this was the 1917 World Series, Renteria would be blacklisted for trying to throw the game to the gamblers...