caulfield12

Sure it does, it tells us exactly how far that we still have to go to construct a competitive roster for 2020. All one has to do is look at these statistics from playoff teams over the past seasons...and compare them with where we stand. It's not just a matter of aggressiveness in Free Agency, it's also a matter of working harder than our coaching staff has ever worked before to bring out the best in Moncada, Anderson and Jimenez. The organization has to figure out how to keep everyone on the field as well. Real self-reflection and appropriate changes in the coaching staff. Right now, nothing else matters. We could make the best set of moves in Hahn's career and still not be a playoff team unless we fix internal/endemic problems first.

Negative=realistic I would love to believe that Eloy Jimenez is going to have Rusty Kuntz as his personal outfield coach next season, start throwing the ball in on throws from the outfield at about 20+ MPH faster and evolve into a 4+ player, but I haven't seen any evidence of that. Tonight, he loped into the corner for a ball he should have been more aggressive with, wasn't aware of the fact that the runner was one of the fastest in baseball (Jacoby Jones)...we need more focus and concentration out of all our younger core players if they're going to take that next step in 2020 and beyond. You simply can't give up triples on ground balls hit down the LF line. As long as we continue to use fWAR as our MAIN measurement of a team's growth, then Eloy will always be dinged and Tim Anderson will too for his lack of walks and inconsistent/erratic defensive play. I don't know what else can be said. Abreu's a totally different issue, he is what he is, and that's not going to change dramatically at age 31-33.

"Aggressively benign" is a perfectly apropos definition...

This pretty much sums it up... Collective White Sox TEAM fWAR=12.0 Chris Bassitt, Frankie Montas and Marcus Semien=8.8 White Sox MINUS Moncada/Giolito=4.5 Semien just came about another ten feet away from hitting a go-ahead THIRD homer of the game out against new Cubs' bullpen addition David Phelps.

We’ll take the win, but beating a 32-75 team without Castellanos and Greene isn’t much of an accomplishment...in the end, we’re going to pile up a 72-73 win season by beating up DET and KC, especially after Moncada returns.

Not sure why anyone would throw a change to speed up Abreu’s bat...

Leury’s been one of the best hitters in the AL the last month and you take the bat out of his hands for Ryan Goins to drive them in? Ugh!

The problem is that someone younger is probably a placeholder type like a Smoak. Moreland, Adams. That said, it would be more logical for Jose to accept DHing with established veterans playing the position than someone like Collins, Palka, etc. I can just see it now...Renteria claiming Jose’s throwing ability makes up for his other defensive weaknesses.

Add in Ryu as well...possibly Strasburg.

The anti-Ron would say “I love you, Gregster, and will never report you to the board administrators for potential banning because we’re all Sox fans here and certainly don’t ever want to see one of our players to fail.” He would be Elrockin mixed with a dash of Joe Maddon.

I don’t even think he’ll be in Winston-Salem...because they need to assess as quickly as possible whether he’s going to be a contributor at the major league level in the second half or not.

Goins is our fifth most valuable position player/hitter (by fWAR) out of 45 who have appeared (granted, most pitchers just had a few at-bats).

That’s pretty hard to do because 2016 is getting termed a “still competing and retooling on the go draft” and 2017 features a first rounder who might never play again at this rate. Madrigal and Vaughn were pretty obvious choices, like Rodon...same problem there. The question is can we produce enough 1.5-2.5 fWAR supplemental contributors so that half the roster doesn’t have to come from free agency or waiver transactions from other teams...this assuming we’re spot on with our top three remaining minor league position prospects (see above, plus Robert).

Anderson should be at a higher level than 1.6 fWAR, with the biggest cause for concern net negative defensive ratings despite that obvious ability he’s flashed. Hopefully a new defender at 1B along the lines of a Brandon Belt will help. Moncada has to prove he can stay healthy now that he has proven he can produce...same with Eloy on health and on the defensive side, because just 30 homers alone are not going to amount to much without making other contributions. It seems as if every player in the Minnesota lineup can hit 25-35 homers.

It’s all about the Benyamins!

They better play Collins everyday at the MLB level between now and the end of September if they’re NOT planning on going outside the organization to address the DH issue. No excuses now that Reed is gone. DFA Castillo and be done with it, he and Alonso are setting Fangraphs records for negative fWAR in a limited amount of plate appearances.

Sawchik also wrote one on the Pirates three years ago, at that time about defensive shifts, pitch framing and starting pitchers allowing more balls to be out into play by focusing on more low two-seam fastballs paired with Gold Glove level defense on the infield. https://www.amazon.com/Big-Data-Baseball-Miracles-20-Year/dp/1250094259 it would be one thing if we had a proven track record of success...but sacrificing one more year from Moncada and Giolito isn’t likely to end well for Sox fans. Or just ask the Nationals if they would treat Strasburg in the same way if he departs the franchise this offseason without a World Series title on his resume.

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