caulfield12

Goins came to the big leagues as a "pure/defense first" SS, so not a huge surprise there. And Sano's hardly Usain Bolt. But yeah, great not to just let the runner score there and have another runner in scoring position, likely to score on a 2 out hit and tie the game. White Sox have nothing to lose...playing to win at this point in the season.

Maybe...he's been on my stupid fantasy team all season long and I haven't "felt" him make an impact like, say, Yelich...but it's that selective memory thing, of the 10% of the time I'm actively watching or paying attention, the other 90% gets blocked out. Cognitive dissonance.

Except how do you explain Castillo hitting after Abreu?

Miley's a really interesting case. He has been SO good, and unexpectedly so, I can't imagine the Astros letting him go so easily as they did with Morton, especially with Whitley's troubles this year. They do have McCullers coming back, supposedly, but who knows how well that takes with his history.

Then how do you explain Josh Donaldson sustaining his success later than age 26/27, or Arenado...just a couple of examples. Matt Carpenter, until this season, was a very effective player as well.

What are you basing a 5.4 fWAR player (average from 2015-2018) at age 26/27 falling off by that much? The AL East arguably was better overall pitching than the NL, once you get past the Dodgers and DBacks (especially without Greinke now.) PetCo factor, alone? Harper is the one who's mostly been at the lower numbers except for his one 9.3 fWAR season four years ago, and has graded out inconsistently on defense. It feels like a big chunk of his numbers have been coming from OBP/walks. This year, before that Cubs' game, it seems like he failed in almost every clutch situation this season where he had an opportunity to drive in runs.

Well, maybe we can hire someone from the Rangers who identified Lance Lynn and especially Minor for this season...because that's EXACTLY what the White Sox need again, someone who can sort out those guys and find the one diamond in a rough out of 10 or 20 guys. Ryu makes me uneasy because 1) his health, 2) success mostly confined to NL, 3) he's going to get overpaid by quite a bit based on his numbers this season vs. the entire breadth of his career. He has been a really good pitcher, when healthy, but you just have a feeling guys like him or Rich Hill wouldn't work nearly so well with other organizations.

And Leury Garcia/Tim Anderson had similar fWAR's a month or so ago, which means exactly nothing without looking at context...this whole obsession with attacking Manny Machado is just weird.

Odorizzi probably belongs there as well, although he had one terrible start in his recent stretch. The Wood love is fading just a bit, but pitchers coming back from injury deserve more time to make assessments. I think most of us much prefer a Wood/Wacha type of player who does present some tangible upside compared to Nova yet again.

Except was it a lasting change? For some reason, RFer's (thinking guys here like Eaton, Garcia and Hunter Renfroe) really get a huge boost when they pile up double digit assist numbers from that position. Eaton got that huge bump when he moved from CF (where he struggled both defensively and staying healthy) to RF, which led directly to his one big fWAR season and the Gio/Lopez/Dunning deal. Of course, eventually it normalizes when opposing teams stop challenging them...I'm sure there's some obscure stat about the number of runners going from first to third or second to home on balls hit to them. I remember Podsednik was actually improved the second time around with the team, fwiw.

But the perception was that they invested 80-85% of their time into the Machado pursuit and were "leading the field" with offers at least twice and asking for a commitment. There were at least two days/nights during the hunt that the Machado to Sox story was the headline at ESPN, for example. Did we ever have a better offer on the table to Harper than he signed with the Phillies?

Then why was he available for just Chris Carter? If it’s so easy to find future MVP candidates, why have the White Sox had such a difficult time either filling corner outfield spots or 1B/DH? Those SHOULD be easy, right? Eaton, fwiw, was also highly regarded as a prospect but couldn’t stay on the field. So it you’re not going to consider either of those two as “finds” from other organizations...you have to go back to Alexei Ramirez and Quintana on the pitching side and that’s basically it...because everyone already knew about Abreu. DeAza would be third...but I suppose Taylor St. was claiming him from the Marlins the day he was put on the waiver wire.

So basically we have no example of a White Sox coach turning an outfielder into anything resembling a solid defender when they started out well below average...

What is the ChiSox coaching staff going to do to work on his arm strength/coaching? This seems more like a specialization of Rusty Kuntz working with Alex Gordon (who already possessed a true 3B's arm)...than anything we've ever seen in a puff piece about Daryll Boston's coaching acumen. In fact, I don't ever recall a puff piece from Merkin about Boston.

LOL. Oh boy. Stone, Farmer and DJ need their own seminar at SoxFest where they get pummeled and pillories with "sabes" questions, that would be almost as good as Bill Walton Friday night.

And yet their biggest "finds" from the last decade plus have been the likes of Eaton, DeAza and Quentin, all coming from National League backgrounds.

https://www.opportunityatlas.org/ You can zero in on any neighborhood/street in the country and get a predictive score for future "mean" salary earnings... https://medium.com/the-atlantic/the-economist-who-would-fix-the-american-dream-b2f88bece15c The 25-30 minutes of reading that go along with it, fascinating stuff. This guy's apparently on the fast track for a Nobel Prize in Economics/Sociology at age 40.

Machado and Cano were at totally different points in their careers... An opinion piece from the NY Daily News is not going to be able to quantify the benefit of Bryce Harper "hustling" around the bases on a grand slam.

They have the big names in Trout, Ohtani and Pujols, but their overall roster sucks after the first 5-6 players.

Well, obviously you have UNC, Duke and NC State...but, as an individual state, Kentucky is all about thoroughbred horses and basketball (Louisville/UK).

Dan Wright's 14-12 season in 2002 says hello...

Sure, but every team in baseball in "win now" mode is probably thinking the same thing about Grandal...especially with his second half slide, it makes him theoretically affordable to any team on a single year basis, like the Brewers are doing with him and Moustakas. You'd have to blow away the rest of baseball by 10-15% and offer longer years than anyone, exposing you to the downside risk at the back end of the contract when he's nearing his mid 30's in the very middle of your supposed contention window. No easy answers at the catching position, certainly. (It all just depends on what they ACTUALLY think about Collins' long-term potential.)

Rutherford is far from a sure thing after this season...most of those projecting his stats would peg him as a 4th/5th outfielder type along the lines of a Ryan Sweeney that a regular everyday player. The fact that he doesn't put up huge power numbers and he's not an elite defender doesn't help his cause. In fact, Walker and Adolfo are both likely viewed (at least internally) as the more likely solutions, although both are far from can't miss prospects at this point.

Except he was a basketball coach for 10-15 years in the only state that cares more deeply about basketball than Kansas...Indiana (well, KS is probably third after Kentucky.)

Doesn't that also make the fact that we DIDN'T go after Harper look somewhat dumb/er in retrospect? If Hahn/front office had so much confidence in Moncada (and Anderson at SS), then why invest so much time and effort/energy, 2-3 months' worth, when Harper should/would have been the logical target the whole time?