caulfield12

Well, running out a spring training line-up out there and expecting to win more than half our games....just not realistic. No matter how good our starting pitching is.

This sucks. C'mon Ramirez. Not helping our BA with RISP there. Ugly.

Squared up that fastball right over the plate. Dunn looking better, at least fouling off pitches now. Missed a hanger but got another pitch to hit. Tigers dismantling the Braves. Why's Heyward out?

I doubt that Rios could have come close to catching that ball even if he read it correctly right off the bat. It was just a bullet. Doesn't matter....now. Peavy getting a little extra pop on his fastball, was at 93-94 there near the end of the inning.

QUOTE (fathom @ Apr 26, 2013 -> 06:22 PM) Anibal Sanchez with great stuff tonight. He had a string of 7 K's in 8 outs going there. Martinez's bat has come alive, at least tonight. Sanchez and Fister don't get all the pub, but they're the two key starters who seem to consistently pitch well. Scherzer's actually had a bit of a rough start. Last year in the 2nd half, he was probably a Top 5 starter in the AL, maybe second to only Verlander.

Well, that was uneventful. Going to the 2nd, no offense yet for either team. That ball was killt. Narrowly missing a homer on a center-cut FB....Loney showing some pop.

Good first inning. Hung a couple of sliders and got away with it, but started to get the feel for the better downward plane breaking slider.

DeAza, Konerko and Dunn with the best numbers against Fausto/Roberto career-wise. Not losing anything with Greene defensively....let's see if he can keep up the hot hitting. Pretty hilarious that Ventura doesn't see any better options for the 2 spot, but guess we'll just have to roll with that line-up.

That's two singles for Hawkins in the last 2 games. A bit encouraging...almost would prefer to see singles/doubles/triples for a week or two, get that batting average back up to .200. 1/2 so far, 1 K, 40th strikeout of the season. .180 average.

Yet Harrelson will defend Dunn to the end and argue his "Will To Win" is higher than almost everyone on the team but Konerko, lol. Never mind that Adam's teams don't have a great history of being playoff bound.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 26, 2013 -> 09:52 AM) Apparently Loria is now setting the Marlins rotation. \ http://sports.yahoo.com/news/sources--marl...-150755500.html The funny thing here is the starting temperature for the game that Fernandez actually pitched was colder. You would think he would have done a little research on the weather, instead of just assuming the day game would be appreciably better for Fernandez to pitch in. Way to alienate your entire team and make no manager ever want to work there again.

http://www.milb.com/scoreboard/index.jsp?s...mp;ymd=20130426 Andre Rienzo's given up 3 runs already in the first inning, ERA near 9.

Interesting series with the Braves and Tigers matching up. Austin Jackson has cooled off, thank god, but Hunter/Cabrera/Fielder still raking. BJ Upton still at .150. Victor Martinez seems to be a bit rusty, too. At .189, knew it would take a couple of months or even half a season to turn things around and get his timing back after the long layoff. (Check that, listening to the game and the Tigers' radio guys are claiming that Victor is really starting to come around recently.)

QUOTE (chw42 @ Apr 26, 2013 -> 02:24 PM) They need to make TWTW the team slogan for next year. Brooks Boyer would be stupid not to use it. Unless there's more "rebuilding/restructuring." Then it's going to lead to more embarrassment for the organization. They win the division and somehow beat the Tigers, or the Tigers partially beat themselves....it's a great slogan for next year.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Apr 26, 2013 -> 02:13 PM) Or in certain cases, some players use advanced stats to evaluate their performance and find out what they can do better. Examples: Zack Greinke and Glen Perkins. Advanced pitching stats like FIP can help a lot of pitchers keep their confidence and not get down on themselves too much. The idea that a stat can show you're doing something right when things aren't going well and has proven that eventually, things will probably get better can be a nice confidence boost to a pitcher with confidence issues (Greinke for instance). Of course, this has never worked so well for the likes of Gavin or Javy, for example.

The real battle right now is over the various defensive metrics and their weaknesses.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Apr 26, 2013 -> 12:10 PM) The fact is a good performance is a good performance. Hawk is IMO wrong for totally dismissing sabermetrics, but really he and Brian Kenny, who seems to be at the exact opposite end probably would rank players very similarly. In reality, although both sides would probably like to tell you it is, this isn't democrats vs. republicans. OPS said that Trout and Cabrera were the two dominant hitters in the AL last year. Just watching all the games and never looking at their stats once, you would have eventually reached the same conclusion.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Apr 26, 2013 -> 11:54 AM) Obviously the thought it over the course of time, going with the data will produce better results than going with your instinct. However, both will occasionally get you in trouble and neither are always right. Another example is all the quantitative driven trading programs in the stock market. They're supposed to protect the market from great falls and upswings. They do the exact opposite. Computers can't "read" human psychology or panic. It's the reason that $200 billion was erased momentarily in a matter of 6-7 minutes the other day because of the fake Obama/White House bombing/attack. Statistics will tell you that just holding the S&P stocks at weighted averages will beat "human fund managers" 85% of the time. But the results of those humans beating the market 15% of the time are so extraordinary and unpredictable that no trading program can ever beat the best human minds. Same thing with DePodesta vs. Grady Fuson. The Moneyball philosophy will unearth XXX amount of Nick Swishers, and Grady Fuson will find XXX amount of Courtney Hawkins types and bet that over time, the potential superstars will hit often enough to beat the "solid/above average" Swisher types. Moneyball will provide more consistent results within certain parameters, but "human scouting" will still build World Series winners. Over time, the rest of the league will adjust and catch up to any "market inefficiencies," like high OBP, trading higher priced closers, the value of pre-arbitration players, the relatively cheaper cost of building a solid bullpen compared with a starting rotation (Royals before 2013)....but usually these advantages aren't enough to push a team over the top, they might give a 5-10% advantage in one area....since it has been brought up recently, the Astros' philosophy is that you find 50 areas of advantage over other organizations, that will in turn end up producing the consistent winning team. We'll see.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Apr 26, 2013 -> 11:53 AM) This is what I think. How many times does it occur the non saber guys think a guy is great and the saber guys say he sucks and vice versa? SABR guys hate Viciedo and Ramirez. Harrelson will tell you the ball just jumps or explodes off his bat....that's he got power to all fields, bat speed, blah blah blah. (What he won't explain is why that bat speed ends up only turning around fastballs or pitches between 75-90 MPH normally). Heck, most guys who don't walk very much aren't in favor with that crowd. They've programmed themselves to look more at OPS, RC/RC27, OBP or WAR. It can be overdone, to the point where anyone striking out less than 6 hitters per 9 IP in the minor leagues isn't given a second thought...for example.

What about TW2TW? The Will to Tweet? Does Harrelson know how to do that? I know he can keep hyping his I-PAD because it was sponsored and they want to create the perception that he's an adopter to the newer technologies of baseball, but I'll believe it when Harrelson starts a FB page of his own or has his own Twitter account. Even then, I'll be more likely to believe it was a creation of the marketing team, rather than Hawk himself.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Apr 26, 2013 -> 11:41 AM) Tell that to the residents of Torotno? I mean in terms of the "national radar" of baseball players in MLB, Alex Rios won't register in the Top 200 or record a positive Q number except for those who follow his ups and downs statistically (roto league owners) or appreciate his all-around ability as a player from watching him on a daily basis. Heck, outside of Chicago, it's amazing how so few know Konerko and Sale.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Apr 26, 2013 -> 11:35 AM) I don't think anyone has said that you can, nor does that do anything to say that Hawk knows more than 99% of people. In Hawk's world, teams wouldn't analyze advanced metrics to determine the best defensive positioning against a given hitter for a given pitcher, they wouldn't back up or dig into things scouts see. They'd keep playing baseball like it was 1970 and they'd get blown out of the water by less-physically talented teams who bothered with the technical side Hawk proudly remains ignorant of. And, of course, there's no reason you can't embrace and use both. And yet Hawk is always complimentary towards guys like Epstein, Daniels, Joe Maddon, Mike Scioscia, etc. I'm sure he is well aware of the cerebral side of the game. What most "old school" or "old guard" types resent is the DePodesta types who have risen to top leadership positions in baseball organizations without much experience of the game itself. If DePodesta had put in 8-10 years working in the minors leagues or grinding it out as a scout, then he could accept it. But not the "young guns" bypassing the men of his generation....and then seeing "his guys" being put out to pasture. This was the entire premise of the movie "The Trouble With the Curve." Without giving the entire movie away, all the quant/SABR scouts in the world can't analyze a fundamental weakness which will be exposed as a high draft pick has to adjust to tougher competition...or be able to scout and sign that "diamond in the rough" that's staring them in the face.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Apr 26, 2013 -> 11:33 AM) I was going to bring up Ozzie actually. Without him and to a lesser extent Buehrle, we have no one to make headlines, especially nationally. Hawk is just trying to pick up the slack. Thankfully though, he isn't doing it with bigoted comments and any decisions he makes does not actually affect the team. No AJ, no Buehrle, no Guillens, no Cowley, no Mariotti. That adds up to a publicity/identity problem for the White Sox. Sale and Konerko and Rios are about as anti-controversial as they come. Maybe we do need a dash of Bryce Harper...or Albert Belle. When you have too many "vanilla" personalities on a team, that can lead to a certain amount of apathy and malaise. With Ventura last year, that blandness and general sense of calm and poise was viewed as a strength, but over time, it can also lead to its own set of problems (see Manuel, Jerry). It is kind of amusing that the most media savvy member of the organization is probably Hawkins, who's projected to be the one player with superstar ability in our system....and yet everyone seems more concerned that his twitter usage and touting his homers is distracting away from bigger issues like learning how to hit, not strike out 60-65% of the time or just basic baseball skills.

Is there ANY connection to be made between the announcing teams for the Rays (including Dave Wills, former Sox pre/post-game guy or Maddon/Martinez/Scioscia tree of managing), Angels, Brewers (Roenicke, Scioscia tree), Padres (Bud Black, Scioscia tree), A's (Beane), Astros (Luhnow), Giants, Cubs (Epstein) Red Sox (Bill James), Rangers (Daniels), etc., and their team or front office philosophies? I think it's pretty crazy to leap to the conclusion that somehow it would affect the fans or turn off fans or draw more young/quantitative minds to the Sox if Hawk did a 180 and spent the entire broadcast throwing out SABR stats. For example, would it really help to sell the new Astros' philosophy if they hired a NASA rocket scientist to go along with their MIT/CAL Tech-trained play by play guy and let's say JP Ricciardi or DePodesta as their analyst? Although I do agree that SABR analysis is easier to fit into a t.v. broadcast, with all the time in-between pitches and batters, with on screen graphics and the power of modern technology behind you, HDTV, etc.....you just don't have as much time on radio to throw all those numbers into game without overwhelming the listener (although Farmer and DJ drive me crazy not even mentioning the score for 20-30 minutes at a time). If nothing else, looking at "hot zones" for pitchers and "cold zones" for hitters ads something to the broadcast....to the strategy of how to attack a hitter, and that's also much harder to get across via radio. Unfortunately, Harrelson's more likely to use pitch-trax to argue about balls and strikes than he is to look at the analytical side of getting hitters out like Stone Pony does.

Howie Long's son, btw. Former Oakland Raider, t.v./movie star and NFL announcer for NBC. BTW, what the heck happened with Rizzo?