caulfield12

Knowing Hahn's propensity for risk aversion, he's going to go for the proven veteran (KW/Ventura preference too), like a Markakis/Bruce/Kemp/CarGo, depending on the financial analysis working out. Yadiel Hernandez would be a nice piece to add, but from everything you read, his upside is somewhere between Leonys Martin and Rusney Castillo. From watching what Stephen Drew and Kendrys Morales went through in 2014, it just seems nearly impossible for him to be impacting the major league roster before August or September, and that's with him signing relatively soon. Remembering back to 2012, the first player we had a shot at was Orlando Hudson, who was dumped by his team at the time. It feels like we're going to look for a similar bounceback candidate where we have little to no financial investment, like an Allen Craig, Pablo Sandoval or Josh Hamilton situation. Carl Crawford would be another example.

Knowing Hahn's propensity for risk aversion, he's going to go for the proven veteran (KW/Ventura preference too), like a Markakis/Bruce/Kemp/CarGo, depending on the financial analysis working out. Yadiel Hernandez would be a nice piece to add, but from everything you read, his upside is somewhere between Leonys Martin and Rusney Castillo. From watching what Stephen Drew and Kendrys Morales went through in 2014, it just seems nearly impossible for him to be impacting the major league roster before August or September, and that's with him signing relatively soon. Remembering back to 2012, the first player we had a shot at was Orlando Hudson, who was dumped by his team at the time. It feels like we're going to look for a similar bounceback candidate where we have little to no financial investment, like an Allen Craig, Pablo Sandoval or Josh Hamilton situation. Carl Crawford would be another example.

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/i...-need-a-big-bat The bench of Saladino/Sands/Sanchez seems extremely thin for the moment...Sands is the obvious one who eventually needs to be replaced, as Saladino has to back-up the entire infield and is fine as a PRer as well as a defensive sub. Avila will replace Sanchez. Then the "big bat" comment for the 1,000,000 time...and the usual suspects in CarGo, Bruce, Kemp, etc. How long can Rollins, Avi, Navarro and Jackson last as nearly everyday players? Then the other obvious issue, poor Mr. Danks. Schoenfield notes that Turner/Johnson probably won't be much better. Didn't realize the 1906 White Sox "Hitless Wonders" put up a .230 BA and only 6 or 7 homers the entire SEASON. Just wow...talk about "dead ball" era. The 2000 or 2006 offense could beat those numbers in one game.

"I think they are legitimate and will be contenders all year." - @JimBowden_ESPN on White Sox pic.twitter.com/QVMQnBYGmG With Brantley back, Cleveland's dangerous again. Now, if they can only figure out what to do with Trevor Bauer...as long as they have Tomlin and Cody Anderson in that rotation, it's suspect on the back end, and Kluber still hasn't quite found that magic touch he had in 2014. And Gomes will take at least one-half season to get back his timing from missing most of last year due to injury.

While that's logical enough for the White Sox, what's the incentive for the Cubs to help the Sox? And there's still the question of what prospects we could package outside of the Top 3 that would attract not only the Cubs but other teams around MLB? http://www.milb.com/player/index.jsp?sid=m...itting/2016/ALL He's essentially a lesser version of Kyle Schwarber, but those minor league numbers are impressive. If I'm the Cubs, I might be tempted to get the most that I can for Schwarber next year (via trade, after proving he's recovered) and then plug Vogelbach into LF instead. Granted, they are going to have to figure out where they want to play Bryant, Baez, Almora, McKinney, Soler...at least three of those players SHOULD be traded to shore up other areas of weakness. I'd agree that your option is much more palatable than Shuck, Fields, Davidson, Ishikawa, etc. http://www.milb.com/player/index.jsp?sid=m...itting/2016/ALL There's also a chance for an unknown like Coats or even Nicky Delmonico in BIRM. He's been on an absolute tear recently.

That guy is huge. Another former Cub blocked by Rizzo. Is a DH/1B worth Adams? He only has one homer this season (so far)...and a .777 OPS for his career. Considering the league change, I don't think the White Sox would be willing to give up Adams unless it's going to be a significant upgrade over Garcia. Of course, Avi's lifetime OPS isn't even over 700 (.693), so one can argue about how valuable an upgrade he would be. With how well the Sox are playing right now, they're unlikely to do anything to change up the roster chemistry on the offensive side unless they start to fall backwards to the .500 mark.

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ Apr 27, 2016 -> 09:27 PM) Q's velocity is as good as it's ever been and he's walking even less guys than last year when he dramatically cut his walk rate. This guy is basically a top 10 SP in MLB over the past three years nobody knows about it other than sox fans and some saber nerds. Thank you Yankees for having such a 40 man roster crunch and being cheap as f*** for letting him go. It's amazing how good he looks when he has a defense behind him that can actually make plays. That's the crazy thing about scouting. Guys like Quintana, Eaton (and Hector Santiago, for that matter), Abreu....now Latos. Have to be in the right place at the right time (see availability of Carlos Rodon) as well. Despite everything almost everything going wrong in 2014 and 2015, the White Sox are/were still just one hitter (Puig) or pitcher (Kenta Maeda) away from being one of the best teams in baseball. Damn Dodgers! We hit the jackpot with Ramirez/Abreu/Contreras and were lucky enough to not end up overbidding on Soler, Rusney Castillo and Y. Tomas.

Michael Brantley's back with the Indians... Michael Fulmer called up by the Tigers. Also, with the way Justin Upton's struggling with the Tigers, we just MIGHT want to find a DH who has a successful track record hitting in the AL. Jose Berrios got hit pretty hard by the Indians in his debut. But Byung Ho Park very quietly with 5 homers for the Twins (yet another DH candidate we had a shot at).

The really encouraging thing with Quintana is that he's pitching a lot more like the 2012 version when he first came up. More fearless, more confident in his fastball (sneaky fast because of that delivery) and he's worked on that curveball enough where it's keeping hitters off his combination of higher velocity pitches that are all within a 5-7 MPH velocity range. Before, he had a harder time putting hitters away when he got to two strikes...and it ALWAYS seemed that he struggled to close out innings with 2 outs AND/OR other line-ups would catch up to him in the middle innings (of course, that's typical of all but the very best pitchers, who get stronger as the game goes on). We know that Latos is eventually going to return to earth...the BA with RISP will pick up as well as the BABIP. Hopefully the K's will come back too, as he's at half his 2010-2014 K average per 9 but roughly around the same walk rate (2.7). That said, despite the offensive issues...the team's playing with so much confidence defensively and in their bullpen that it's having a positive influence on nearly every aspect of the game.

Also, as many writers have started to pick up on...."pitch framing" can quickly be turned from an advantage to a disadvantage in the sense that umpires (who are very sensitive about being "tricked" by catchers into calling strikes that should have been balls on pitch trax) have started to really notice and study these numbers, and so many of the more famous ones (it started with Russell Martin, then Cervelli in PITT) are actually getting hosed in an effort to correct or over-correct for this particular statistic. It's all balancing out and no longer the "difference maker" it might have been considered 2-3 years ago because EVERYONE is aware by now, especially the umps.

QUOTE (Lillian @ Apr 27, 2016 -> 04:27 PM) Isn't the shoulder problem, for which Eaton had the surgery, the reason he didn't have the same arm last year? It was his left shoulder, October last year...he and Aaron Hicks might have futures pitching, especially Hicks.

Nobody's running away with that AL West. Houston isn't going to deal Rasmus, because he's one of the main reasons they're not further buried and he's on a one-year deal so they will wait until the last minute possible in July. They're not going to dump Gomez unless they're 100% convinced he's done, and that's not a risk the White Sox can afford to take with some of his character issues (when things aren't going well for him). Plus, they already traded a pretty nice looking prospect in Domingo Santana to the Brewers...although there will be the typical interest circling around Tucker and Marisnick to a lesser extent if things don't right themselves in the month of May.

Unless the Braves are going to eat $12-15 million, the White Sox aren't going to be interested in Markakis...not with three years remaining on that contract. Freeman's a non-starter financially, from the standpoint of making him or Abreu the full-time DH and also that Atlanta needs SOME continuity going into their new stadium...plus, the return wouldn't be what they wanted, it would be another salary dump, so they will hold onto him and hope his numbers will rebound (see Matt Kemp/Ethier/CarGo, etc.) This probably is going to be another year where the contracts added are unusual situations (Middlebrooks forcing Youkilis out in Boston, Liriano wearing out his welcome in MN, Myers in Hou, Orlando Hudson in 2012) where their teams are willing or forced in the Youk situation to make personnel moves and the White Sox are willing to take on salary (more than giving up premier prospects). Or the more dubious Manny Ramirez acquisition in 2010. Luckily, there's the LaRoche cleared money to cushion the blow there. Wil Myers is an interesting name, depending on the price. Of course, the Padres would prefer to move Kemp's contract.

There was a really good article on John Farrell (can't find the link now) and how he needs an analytics/game-management bench coach, and how these "second managers" often don't necessarily have the requisite set of skills to be the head guy, but are often actually utilized for "managers in waiting/training" like Lovullo in Boston. With the White Sox, you'd have to at least partially attribute the return to 2012 style of play (defensively) to Rich Renteria. To me, the biggest one is Jackson/Eaton and then Melky at least being passable, which is 10X better than Avi last year (minus robbing a home run in July against the Yankees and a number of good throws). The most pleasantly surprising thing has been his arm strength and accuracy, which we rarely saw in CF for some reason. Frazier's clearly better, Rollins/Saladino a slight upgrade over Alexei last year, Lawrie's been better than expected (although still perhaps a notch below Sanchez, still much better than Micah, who pulled down overall positional numbers), Abreu's been mostly a non-issue (Sands has gotten more attention)....then we can argue pitch framing and Flowers vs. the veterans we have now, but at least both those guys tend to be stronger leaders, which is what we've been lacking in that clubhouse (of course, it's harder to be a leader if you're not playing well or hurt).

Schoenfield came out and predicted Sale for the Cy Young already. Jinx? Said he would have won it two years ago (vs. Kluber) if not for those missed starts.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/features/cyyoung Sale and Latos 1/2 Just wanted to capture this moment (like when Tyler Flowers was leading the AL in hitting) for posterity's sake. Bet a lot of teams out there are wishing they took a chance on Cishek or Ryan Madson (seems Beane miraculously finds closers out of thin air nearly every season).

Attendance first 9 games 2008 228,065 (finish 16th in MLB, this despite a disastrous 2007) 2009 252,230 (finish 16th in MLB, bounce from 2008 playoffs, albeit disappointment due to CQ injury) 2010 206,879 (17th in MLB, team does well and is in first place until fading down stretch against MN) DIVIDING LINE 1 2011 207,900 (21st, slight uptick again due to relatively successful 2010 season offset by Dunn disaster) 2012 188,177 (24th, fallout of the Dunn disappointment, team is in 1st for most of year but finishes 4-11 and 3 gb) 2013 181,696 (24th, surprising performance of 2012 season stops bleeding but no playoffs) DIVIDING LINE 2 2014 152,141 (28th, bottom completely drops out and the wheels come off the wagon, Abreu/Sale/Eaton the only reasons to watch) 2015 183,308 (26th, White Sox spend nearly $200 million in offseason spree on Cabrera, Robertson, LaRoche, Duke, etc.) 2016 170,939 (27th, currently down -6.7% from 2015 start) The Red Sox series will be another interesting "tell" next week...unfortunately, those games are midweek and not a weekend series because the Twins have been playing like crap. Do they still have the "dynamic pricing" in effect? Realistically, the White Sox, should they continue to play competitively (not necessarily first place but within 2-3 games of it) could jump up to around to 22nd-24th in attendance but unless they're way out in front like 2005 and running away with the division, the 2012 "skepticism" will stay with them until they actually win it and fans jump back on the bandwagon (and/or get tired of the Cubs' Love Fest). For what it's worth, I might have been hasty saying the season ticket loss was 2000-3000 per game, it now looks like it might be roughly 1/2 of that...we'll find out more in the coming weeks. The positive here is that we're up 12.4% on 2014 already, which should continue to grow in the next 4-5 weeks before the real "summer" attendance and weather arrives.

Yeah, and they also compared Alexei Ramirez to Ramon Santiago. Nobody really knows...but to assume OBP numbers from Cuba are going to stand up is a bit far-fetched. Or that he could contribute as early as this season for the White Sox. The odds are that he's more of a fourth outfielder than a star in the making. That said, scouts have been wrong before, as in the Alexei Ramirez case as previously mentioned. Kang with the Pirates last year was a shocker. This year, Minnesota's Korean DH has already hit some massive shots as well, although he looks like he's going to strike out a ton. OTOH, the Korean the Orioles signed has been a pretty big disappointment. Time will tell. If you look at the money thrown at Yasmany Tomas, Rusney Castillo, Jorge Soler, Alex Guerrero, Hector Olivera...none of those contracts have come close to being justified as of yet. At any rate, if there's ANY Cuban we target, it should be Gourriel because next year's going to be make or break for the Sox and they need someone who can step in right away and make an impact wherever they put him.

It's the backup QB syndrome with Saladino again. Let's not forget last year that despite his stellar defense, when the position was presented to him on a silver platter after Gillaspie and Beckham struggled that he couldn't handle it offensively. He pretty much disappeared the second half of the season, and, despite all the offseason hype, if they were really sure about playing him at SS this season, they 1) would have had him playing nearly everyday for Alexei in September (Ramirez could have been DH, 2B, CF, etc., to demonstrate his versatility if they cared THAT much about his free agency with another team,) 2) wouldn't have acquired Jimmy Rollins at least three years too late.

That would make sense if one of Danks' starts wasn't the home opener and the other on the road. Statistically, there's very little correlation with attendance upticks even in Chris Sale starts. It's looking at the same number of games (six) as last year, so the rainout probably ends up as a neutral because had they tried to play under those conditions the walk-up would have been less than 500 and their overall attendance would be even lower than its current 18,000+ average. At any rate, more evidence forthcoming this weekend against the Rangers, an "average" or slightly below draw one would imagine.

11,525 vs. 11,418 yesterday. Right now, we're currently in 28th place in attendance, ahead of only TB and Cleveland. At this point last year, after six games...we had drawn 125,423 for an average of 20,904. After Thursday's games, we passed the 100,000 mark, at 109,213 for an average of 18,202. The net difference is -2,702 tickets sold per game, a decline of roughly 13%. That's probably a pretty fair estimate of the decrease in season tickets sold from 2015, a loss of somewhere between 2,500-3,000 season tickets. The only difference was that first Sunday game against CLE was wiped out, but the weekday opponent (Angels/Trout & Pujols) was or should have been a better draw than the Cleveland Indians. On the plus side, last year we were 7-9 (and headed to 8-14) vs. 10-6 this year, a three game improvement (and a pace for 101 wins). If you consider the "Fan Cost Index" number of $26.05 for the 2015 White Sox, over a full season, that projects to a loss of ONLY $5.7 million in revenue, or less than 1/2 of Adam LaRoche's 2016 contract.

If the White Sox were 6-10, then it MIGHT be something to take a look at. Suppose it's a harmless diversion from criticizing Avi Garcia, Danks and Duke (lesser extent)...or Sands. Everyone was so spoiled by his rookie year, especially the first half when his PA's were "must see tv" that maybe he's now a little bit the victim of unfair expectations or assumptions he'll always produce homers like in 2014 when 2015 might be closer to the norm.

Speaking of Latin American prospects, there's a really interesting documentary about that agent/trainer/buscone system in the Dominican Republic (the year was 2009, the actual film came out in 2012) titled "Ballplayer: Pelotero" which follows Miguel Angel Sano as a 16 year old (his battle to establish that he's really not 18-20 as many claimed) and the family fight to be cleared. Another SS prospect who is lying about his age and who goes from expecting $1.4-1.8 million from the Astros to "only" receiving $200,000 (Jean Carlos Batista) when it turns out he's actually a year older. (During the course of filming, he turned down $450,000, which has almost never happened in the Dominican that a bonus like that was snubbed...then the age allegations/birth record alteration came out.) Cool to see Sano wearing a White Sox hat. Michael Inoa/Ynoa also has a bit role, having signed the previous high bonus with the A's that Sano's agent was targeting.

I think it was a bit of a stretch to expect "historical norms" from Jackson, the catchers and Rollins based on their performances the last two seasons. Then you had the obvious uncertainty about Garcia coming into this season, even though he was "only" replacing LaRoche's terrible numbers. Right there, you've got four issues out of 9. Lawrie, it was/is probably not too irrational to expect some improvement at USCF...simply because one of these busted prospects has to break out every 5-10 years for the Sox. That leaves Frazier, Abreu, Eaton and Cabrera that we were just hoping for their norms of the last two seasons offensively. They can get by with five hitters, but there's no way over a full season it's going to be enough to compete with KC and Detroit if you just compare. Right now, the only thing that's really going right is the bullpen, defense is improved (especially with Jackson and Eaton in RF looking better than anyone would have envisioned) and then you have Latos and Sale basically carrying the team with Quintana consistent and Rodon still a bit unpredictable. Danks, also, isn't a surprise. The observation of the Angels' radio crew was that "he's one of those guys who everyone in the stands feels they could go up to the plate and have a chance of making contact against."