caulfield12

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ Jan 25, 2014 -> 11:00 PM) In economics and business decision-making, a sunk cost is a retrospective (past) cost that has already been incurred and cannot be recovered. Sunk costs should not affect the rational decision-maker's best choice. Evidence from behavioral economics suggests this theory fails to predict real-world behavior. Sunk costs do, in fact, influence actors' decisions because humans are prone to loss aversion and framing effects. In light of such cognitive quirks, it is unsurprising that people frequently fail to behave in ways that economists deem "rational". From wikipedia but absolutely true & people here can't seem to get it, neither do the Sox. Adam Dunn is a dog. He's a sunk cost. He's done. He's not part or any future event that matters and his "value" is hilariously overstated given his track record over the past several years and how limited he is both as a player and an athlete. Whoever said that line of blah blah blah im going to los it if someone (me) suggests a dump of Dunn again, well guess what? We already ate his f***ing contract, it's already over and one with, it happened a long time ago. His presence on a rebuilding team should have nothing to do with his salary, that's completely ridiculous. So go crazy. Paulstar here made a great point. Who bought the f***in Soxfest tickets? The fans. They buy the tickets, they get to react however they see fit, and unless a remark is racist or something like that which has nothing to do with on-field performance it shouldn't be a condemnable offense. For f***s sake all mighty. The Sox shouldn't need to have their fan base tell them they are making an irrational and completely stupid decision, but just as the fans booed the crap KW trotted out in CF for years, they have every right to boo Dunn & it is the organization responsible for running that crap out there anyway. Let em hear it. BOOOOOOOOO where's the pooper scooper get thios guy outta here already. All of this would be TRUE if the White Sox had better DH options or anyone being blocked. In fact, Hahn and Reinsdorf decided to bring back Konerko when they could have given those at-bats to DeAza, for example, or Keppinger/Gillaspie (had they actually forced Paulie into retirement and dumped Dunn). Are you really going to argue that Jared Mitchell or Trayce Thompson should be getting those DH at-bats against a RHP? Keppinger? Gillaspie? Leury Garcia? Jordan Danks? Couldn't we also make the same argument about Jeff Keppinger (being booed/abysmal)? And, after all, Dunn put up one of the best OPS numbers on the team last year, it's not like he has been 2011 bad. I'm guessing that Hahn and Co. still believe that they can get something back for Dunn at the deadline...if he has a putrid 2 or 3 months, at that point he'll be waived, but no sooner. We still owe Keppinger $8.5 million for 2014 and 2015 and Dunn $15 million. There's a pretty good chance we can save $3-5 million on Dunn, if not $6 million and a marginal prospect. The fact of the matter is that Dunn gives us a better chance to compete the first 2-3 months of the season hitting exclusively against RHP, better than DeAza does. Now whether Hahn can get value back on Dunn, Keppinger, John Danks, DeAza, Gillaspie and Alexei Ramirez, we'll just have to wait and see. Obviously we had things go south with Floyd and Crain last year, but he still did a solid job maximizing the return on available assets over the last 9 months, all things considered. FWIW, Adam Dunn will have made almost $113 million in his career by the of 2014.

QUOTE (Paulstar @ Jan 25, 2014 -> 08:52 PM) My question is why not there? People are paying hundreds of dollars to attend and naturally most people wear their emotions on their sleeve. I could understand if this was a free event but the sox are making a killing off of this. Maybe I just don't feel sympathy for players and coaches getting paid a whole lot of money for what most of us would do for free. And being a public figure leads you open to criticism. Just curious. Do you also boo/jeer politicians you don't like or disagree with? What about celebrities? If Kim Kardashian or Lindsay Lohan or Miley Cyrus walked by, would you also boo them? (After all, we pay for their concert tickets, singles/albums and the tv shows they're on are supported by audience ratings and the ad rates which drive the profits). Once again, there's not categorically "right" or wrong answer. You're telling me people can't control their emotions months and months after the season in a venue completely different than a ballpark? If you saw Robin Ventura on the street just days after the 2012 season fell apart at the end of September, would you have booed him? Or are boos reserved just for players we categorize as "goats" or "underachievers"? If Jerry Dybzynski was at SoxFest, would you consider it appropriate to boo him, too, for something that happened in 1983? What about Jaime Navarro? David Wells? Wil Cordero? Would you boo Magglio or Carlos Lee?

I think it's "okay" to boo at the stadium, but the environment at SoxFest is a different one. It's more for families and children to meet their idols...it's almost like a magical or fantasy experience for many, especially the younger generation who are excited just to get an autograph. Booing the players in a hotel/conference center isn't going to change a thing in the world, anymore than a jilted lover murdering his wife and the man she's cheating with is going to repair or fix his life. Sure, you paid of the tickets or the hotel room...but does booing or acting like that really make you feel better? Maybe in a "Joe the Plumber," he's got his comeuppance kind of way? In the end, managers and GM's are the ones that you should direct your anger at, because they are the ones who take those jobs knowing the heat/scrutiny that comes with it. For example, KW used to love SoxFest and look forward to those confrontations with the "know it all" Sox fans until near the end of his regime. It was one of the main reasons fans bought tickets, I'd argue. For his, "Detroit just put themselves in a better position to compete with us" bravado moments. Hahn has a much different personality, but I'm sure he would love to be the one to take all the abuse if it spared Ventura and players. That's ONE area where Ozzie was exceptional at the beginning of his career....taking the focus of the media away from the team and putting it on himself. It grew old eventually, but at least it was a public relations strategy, of course fed by Guillen's ego and hubris. It's one of the reasons the KW/Ozzie soap opera was so intriguing, because of the egos involved.

QUOTE (lasttriptotulsa @ Jan 25, 2014 -> 06:56 PM) I dont get why everyone is taking last season out on Dunn. He was probably our best offensive player. He is not the reason the Sox lost 99 games. And he next time i hear somebody use the we pay his salary argument im going to lose it. Any consumer of any product is in a sense paying the salary of said companies employees. That doesnt mean i can walk into wal mart and treat a cashier like s*** just because i feel theyre underperforming. Or if you own stock in the aforementioned company, like 100-200-300 shares.

QUOTE (hi8is @ Jan 25, 2014 -> 01:25 PM) Naw, let's just clone me 25 times and have the entire roster be made up of me's. I wouldn't mind taking home about 100M per season. Sounds like a bad nixed subplot from Gattaca, Surrogates or Source Code.

Yeah yeah, intents and purposes. When are the Cubs going to actually get some starting pitching? Do they need to trade away Castro, Samardzija and Rizzo to accomplish that? There's always next year...

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit was actually a really fun/entertaining little film. Really liked The Wolf of Wall Street, but I'm left with the same feeling I had after American Hustle. That it was perhaps 20-30 minutes too long, and I would have preferred watching Margot Robbie another 20+ minutes over Jonah Hill or another drug abuse scene. If you watch The Great Gatsby together with this one, he's almost playing the same exact character, just from a different era. Or Matthew McConaughey "mentoring" him more in the beginning, that would have a better addition, as well.

Wait, let's do whatever is popular in the moment. Let's add Pujols, Greinke and Hamilton. Ooops, wait, let's develop our farm system. Oops, let's sign Tanaka and compete this season. Oops, let's sign Jimenez/Santana and trade Sale or Quintana so we can compete at some point in the future (or trade them), except our minor league system sucks still so we should give up our 2nd round pick even though our last six have all been pretty decent selections and won't cost the franchise $40-50 million, which will impede our ability to sign future Tanakas/Abreu's. Let's trade for BJ Upton while we're at it.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Jan 25, 2014 -> 08:44 AM) Draft picks aren't the only way, or I'd argue the best way to build, at least not for the Sox. It's going to take a long time to build that farm system up Sox fans aren't going to sit through that. Look what has happened with the Astros getting beat in the ratings by a WNBA game. The Sox aren't going to the Astros extent in rebuilding, but they do have the Cubs to compete with. The Cubs farm system is stacked which is one reason why I believe the Sox chose ML-ready prospects in trades. The Sox can't afford to fall behind them in terms of Major League talent which could very well happen once the Cubs prospects start making it to the majors. For that reason, the focus for the Sox has to be on the big league level right now. You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet. That 2nd round fee it would cost for Jimenez, along with the big spenders not being interested, will keep his price down and you can recoup the value of the pick by dealing from rotation depth next offseason. Elite collegiate pitching usually takes less than 2 years to arrive, or even in the same season. Look at Sale and Wacha. It's not like developing a Latin American hitter from age 16. And, falling behind the Cubs doesn't mean anything because they have a lot more pressure on them to satisfy their fans in Year 4 of a rebuild than the White Sox do in Year 2. Even if Baez, Almora, Soler and Bryant are All-Stars, they still don't have the pitching. And we know the odds are that only one of those four guys will make an All-Star team at some point in their careers. Even if the White Sox are terrible this season, are the Cubs going to pick up in attendance? No way. That's a loser's mentality.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Jan 25, 2014 -> 08:04 AM) Barring injury, Homer Bailey will be out of their price range. They're not going to outspend the usual suspects when it comes to the top of the free agent market. They managed to come up with the money for Abreu. Why are we fixated on Homer Bailey now? Can you guarantee that Paulino won't end up having a better season in 2014? They've never attempted to outspend the usual suspects for pitching because they've never had to...plus, we've always been able to find pitching through waiver claims (Humber, Jenks, Santos, Quintana, Loaiza), through trades (Peavy, Danks, Contreras, Garland, Garcia, Javy, etc.) or through developing them internally (Buehrle, Sale, McCarthy, Hudson, Richard, Harrell, Santiago, Erik Johnson, Beck, etc.) Not to mention that we now have the #3 pick in the draft and probably a #5-10 pick in 2014. Both of those can go to collegiate pitchers without giving up a $150 million million dollar contract or a single, solitary draft pick.

So strange to see no information about the length of the contract. Is it just through 2015 or beyond that? Weird. Now, from reading the articles, it says "multiyear" so that has to mean at least through 2016? www.chicagotribune.com/sports Ventura declined an extension before the 2013 season, but he said Friday the decision wasn't a sign he was uncertain he wanted to manage the Sox. Instead, he said, he wanted Hahn to have another season to judge his performance and their fit together. "A lot had been made of not accepting the extension the year before," Ventura said. "That was just wanting Rick to have a full year. The way I got my job in the first place was different from the way most people get them. "I felt it was fair to him to come into the job and have a full year of being the GM and running it the way he wants. And if he likes the way I do it and we work together and he wanted me to continue, then we would have that discussion." The extension wasn't a big surprise. Ventura had said at the end of 2013 that he wanted to manage beyond his contract and that he still enjoyed his job despite the team's struggles. His participation in a rebuilding phase that includes the additions of young players such as outfielders Avisail Garcia and Adam Eaton and first baseman Jose Abreu has made him feel even more invested, he said. "You're getting younger guys, talented guys, but your guys," Ventura said. "The job doesn't necessarily change as far as enthusiasm, but you're looking at it maybe a little bit differently than if you had guys that were older and a little more veteran. I'm just as excited going into this year as I was the first year." Ventura's even-keeled demeanor drew criticism in 2013 from some observers who wanted to see more fire during his team's poor play. But he and the players frequently said he showed that side privately when needed, and Sox captain Paul Konerko praised Ventura's approach Friday.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Jan 24, 2014 -> 07:10 PM) The depth of talent in this organization remains paper thin. The truth is Abreau, Eaton, and Davidson are question marks to one degree or another and beyond those three there's no position players arriving anytime soon. If Johnson and Beck bust there's no depth to deal to fill holes that arise. That's not even true. We have Keppinger and Gillaspie that can make a legit platoon ahead of Davidson if he's not ready. We have Semien, Carlos Sanchez and even Elmore for middle infield depth. DeAza as the 4th outfielder. We have Paulino/Surkamp/Rienzo as our 5th starter right now, with Beck perhaps the closest behind them. We also have a #3 pick in the draft (not to mention a high 2nd), which will undoubtedly be used on a collegiate impact player, in all likelihood a pitcher, and in all probability another #5-10 draft pick in 2015. The thing we don't have certainty about is whether Viciedo, Eaton, Avisail Garcia, Davidson, Semien, Beckham and Abreu will all hit like they're capable of. In fact, there's a good chance that at least two or three of those guys won't make it or won't be on our Opening Day roster in 2014. That said, the major and lone glaring weakness is the catching position, where we have the luxury of packaging some combination of Alexei Ramirez, Viciedo/DeAza, Keppinger, Gillaspie and extra pitching (Lindstrom, Downs, Belisario, etc.) along with someone like Rienzo/Paulino/Surkamp. If those 11 players combined can't get you a starting catcher, then we're in a world of hurt. Even then, we're going to have a boatload of money to work with... Nick Hundley (team option), Russell Martin and Jeff Mathis are the youngest catchers there (in terms of the next FA class), so chances are we're going to have to acquire our catcher by trade OR Kevan Smith/Nieto making huge strides this season. http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2013/02/2015...ree-agents.html There's a HUGE list of pitchers. Not all of them will be available, but you don't have to trade Quintana or spend $10-15 million over four seasons to acquire all of those guys, and not all of them are already in their 30's, either.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Jan 24, 2014 -> 01:49 PM) So can a trade of Chris Sale if that's the goal. Dick Allen used the Peavy/A. Garcia example. Why don't we look at all the veteran pitchers who have signed contracts for 4+ years and 40+ million dollars in their 30's? How many of them were "wins" for their front offices in the end when they were traded? How many of them were impediments and salary albatrosses on their payrolls or became diminishing assets that weren't able to be traded? Peavy also doesn't fit as a great example because 1) he stayed with us because he thought we had a chance to win in 2013, 2) he was very familiar with our training, strength and conditioning staff and the medical staff that worked on his lat surgery in Chicago, 3) Cooper, 4) it was a make-good in a way on his previous contract with missing so much time, 5) he loved Chicago in particular, 6) the entire organization was already familiar with his work ethic and competitiveness. Santana had a good season in a contract year in a stadium that tends to play big and turn July/August USCF homers into deep fly outs. Jimenez hasn't been close to consistent at all since his breakout season with the Rockies. (He's the one I would pick of the three, simply based on ability and faith in Cooper to straighten him out, although his raw stuff still isn't what it was before. That and subtracting him from a playoff team from your division and adding him has a certain symmetry.) Garza has medical issues.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jan 24, 2014 -> 11:38 AM) Really? You are telling me no one is going to trade for Daniel Webb or Chris Sale or Jose Quintana or Matt Davidson or Jose Abreu or Avisail Garcia or Adam Eaton or Dayan Viciedo or Alejandro De Aza or Jake Petricka or Erik Johnson? I could continue but I figured 11 was a good start. Or simpler yet, Alexei Ramirez to the Yankees for a young catching prospect. They're already looking at Stephen Drew. Why is he clearly better than Alexei? Don't think he is. Or we can return to the example of trading Quintana for Castro. We lose our second most valuable current asset (arguably) and we're getting a catcher who is becoming more and more expensive with each year. Talent-wise, you can argue the trade, but it's a complete and utter disaster if Santana/Jimenez/Garza go south, Danks doesn't ever return to form and continues to bloat the payroll and none of the young pitchers take that next step (E. Johnson, Beck, Rienzo, etc.) or go backwards in 2014. Then you've blown a huge hole in the #2 spot in your rotation, you're stuck with two bad contracts for starters that you can't dump even and you're then 3 starters away from having a good rotation again but in "win now" mode suddenly with Castro on the roster in his prime years but with the window closing because of the lack of pitching (assuming the hitting makeover comes around). Trading Santiago (even though I didn't like it) for Eaton was a lot more logical, because we had excess pitching talent.

QUOTE (TheFutureIsNear @ Jan 24, 2014 -> 11:22 AM) What hitters are added? I can't predict if the lineup will be capable of hitting well enough to win. But I do think Sale, Q, and Santana is more than enough pitching to win a world series. Without adding another #2 or #3 I don't think the pitching staff is good enough to be a serious contender though. And while I don't think 2014 is going to be any better than a 80 win season, but 2015 playoffs are more than within reach and that should be the goal. Maybe. But some of the posters advocating signing Santana and Jimenez are the same ones saying that we should be considering trading a cost-controlled Quintana for more prospects while picking up another future Edwin Jackson who will strangle our payroll like Dunn/Danks/Keppinger.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 24, 2014 -> 03:43 AM) Last year if you knew the Sox would lose 99 games, the consensus would have been signing Jake Peavy was dumb. Wait until you are ready to win. But signing Peavy ultimately got you Garcia. I think the plan would be the same. Sign a guy to help you win, if you don't, it increases the pitching stock and someone could be traded near the deadline for prospects. It could all blow up in your face, But if you have some money, it is worth a consideration. But we were just coming off a season where we'd barely missed the playoffs, so those circumstances don't apply to bringing someone in from outside. Schneider was familiar with his (Peavy's) work ethic and competitiveness. Plus, Santana and Jimenez were duds for much of the last 3 years before coming on in 2013. They looked like 3/4 guys at best for most of that time. Peavy signing was a bit of a make-good, too, since he was injured for least half of his Sox career. Trying to get someone like that isn't exactly the equivalent of the Royals and Gil Meche, but we need to be at least one of the middle ten teams in baseball before we go after another FA pitcher not named Tanaka.

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Jan 23, 2014 -> 11:24 PM) I can't remember which FA pitchers require a draft pick comp, but I don't want ANY of those guys. The guy I want the most is Jimenez, unless he costs a draft pick. I'd also take a flier on Roy Oswalt on either a minor league deal if he'd take one, or like a $2-3M major league deal. Oswalt five years too late. Santana and Jimenez, 2nd round draft picks, Garza nothing because he was traded in mid-season (and now has a looming PR disaster with the mysterious physical results, just like Balfour).

If we were all in this year, we wouldn't have gaping holes at catcher and we wouldn't have traded Reed for Davidson. We're one year away from being in position to compete and make another big signing. You could even argue that if EVERYTHING broke well in the first half that we'd be in an excellent position to make a run at it in the 2nd half of the season. In the meantime, we have to figure out exactly what Danks, Johnson, Paulino and possibly Rienzo and Surkamp are going to give us. No reason not to run with them now and let the chips fall where they may. And even then, it's tricky to know when to trade a pitcher. We held onto Humber too long when we might have been able to trade him and get value in return. Same with Gavin Floyd and Jesse Crain. Jenks, Crede....lots of examples exist. The dream scenario is of course the one where you trade a fixer upper like Loiaza for a Jose Contreras. We've spent the last two or three years now waiting to get out from under the Dunn and Danks deals. We have taken on a pretty decent sized risk in Abreu. Let's see what we have on July 15th.

QUOTE (Stan Bahnsen @ Jan 23, 2014 -> 04:26 PM) We really don't know what the market will command. Garza might be relatively cheap because GM's finally came to their senses. They ALL might be relatively cheap, this year and next, due to the escalating perceived value of the draft pick. I look back at our last three 2nd rounders, EJohnson, Beck and Danish, and I wouldn't want to part with any of them - this year's 2nd round pick will be higher than any of those, in a supposedly deeper draft. And there's far from any guarantee that Grimm or Olt will do anything with the Cubs. Grabbing guys with the primary purpose of turning around and trading them doesn't work as well when the financial risk is in Edwin Jackson territory. If you look at Santana's results over the last 3-4 years, you're more likely to get Edwin Jackson 2013 than a repeat of Erwin Santana 2013. In fact, Bryant's more than likely to be their 3B of the future unless they diminish his value by sticking him out in LF.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Jan 23, 2014 -> 04:14 PM) Problem is the Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, Rangers, and Cubs will be looking for starters too. It will be a Tanaka situation all over again for the Sox. Why spend $16M or more next year for a pitcher you can get for $12M or less this year. And one of the reasons the Cubs couldn't blow everyone away was the ill-advised Edwin Jackson contract, just like we have Dunn/Danks/Keppinger on the books. We would be much better off addressing catcher and some of the line-up holes (that are clear at the end of 2014) than throwing money at another veteran starter when we just did so with Paulino. There's no guarantee our bullpen won't pitch like the 2007 version did, we just traded away our closer, after all, and there's no patently obvious candidate to replace him. Let's say the catching situation is a disaster and so is the bullpen in 2014. Wouldn't you rather have $16 million to spend on a catcher (pretty much in line with the Salty contract) and another veteran arm or two in the bullpen who could evolve into another version of Jason Grilli?

QUOTE (Vance Law @ Jan 22, 2014 -> 05:48 PM) How is it worse than last year? Axelrod started 20 games last year and now he's like 8th on the depth chart. Because somehow last season's team with Zach Greinke added would have been a playoff contender. It's even more surprising that so many were willing to gamble on Tanaka, a completely unproven commodity. Those huge deals for pitchers almost never work out, we've seen it time and time again. For Japanese pitchers, Darvish and Kuroda are the only ones who have come close to earning their money. And Iwakuma with the Mariners, but give the league one year to make some adjustments. I can only imagine if Tanaka is a flop how many years there would be crying and complaining that the team was financially hamstrung...the same refrain from the last couple of seasons with Dunn, Danks, Keppinger, etc. In the end, the White Sox were at least one full season away from being confident that adding Tanaka was the correct move vis a vis their ability to compete and the number of holes in the starting line-up.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Jan 22, 2014 -> 04:30 PM) Save money buy buying a pitcher in this year's market. The big spenders are likely out. Not really. There's still a number of teams all circling around Garza, Santana and Jimenez. None of those guys are going to get "bargain" contracts. For the amount of money the Indians spent on Jimenez, how much talent they gave up from their minor league system....they finally got one decent season out of him in 2013 (although nothing like in his Rockies heydey). Was it really worth it for one post-season game? Unless the White Sox signed Tanaka, which would have been a HUGE gamble and could easily have backfired, signing another starter didn't make sense. We didn't need any more more middle of the rotation guys to increase our total wins from 74-80 to the lower 80's range. It's not going to make any difference, and the odds are they could find a better pitcher in the 2015 draft at a higher slot than the value of winning 78 games instead of 75 (and the related effect that would have on overall revenues.)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/rosen...,0,95224.column Rosenbloom continuing to rip on Cubs/Epstein/Ricketts. Yeah, 99% sure that's Hawking.

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article/cws/former...p;vkey=news_cws Our new CFer? Late bloomer, haha?

Because Sanchez, Mitchell and Trayce Thompson are already on the 40 man roster... So is LHP Frank De Los Santos (from the Rays), no connection to Faustino who we traded to the A's or with Frank Francisco, haha.