Kenny Hates Prospects

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jan 12, 2010 -> 11:33 PM) He definitely could hit .290-.300, which would put him at around a .340 OBP if you're semi-optimistic. Pierre hits twice as many grounders than he does fly balls or line drives. I don't think it's really going to matter what kind of conditions we have here. Most of his line drives will be base hits and those 25% of fly balls have a better probability of traveling, which could actually help his XBHs. If you argue that he has no power and that those will get caught, fine, but I'm sure some of them will also travel and drop. A league adjustment can't always be predicted correctly. Quentin and Podsednik adjusted to the AL fine, and it was actually stronger when they got here than it is now. Every year Pierre hit under .300 he has posted OBPs of .332 or below. Pierre's good OBP years plus batting average: 2000: .353, .310 2001: .378, .327 2003: .361, .305 2004: .374, .326 2009: .365, .308 Pierre hitting below .300 isn't going to get him in that OBP range. And yes, Pierre hits a lot of ground balls, but since there's nothing on them most of the time it doesn't matter. If we had a rock-hard IF or something I'd be more optimistic, but we don't. Those flyballs he hits are weak as s***, they aren't traveling anywhere. They actually hurt him because it's pretty hard to hit a little blooper that finds a gap and turns into a double or a triple at the Cell. This guy has no power at all. If you were playing a video game where you could look at the attributes of a hitter, Juan Pierre's power, on a scale of 1-100 would be about a 1. Mark Buehrle has more power than Juan Pierre. All the winds here are going to do is, on occasion, hold up his weakass little bloops long enough for an OF to run underneath them. This guy makes Ray Durham look like Babe Ruth.

QUOTE (BearSox @ Jan 12, 2010 -> 10:50 PM) I would have to agree. However, losing Getz was worth getting Teahan (I still wish we could have pulled some magic and get Gordon though, but that was just a pipe dream). I still think closing the door on Pods so soon and dealing for Pierre was a huge mistake. We bought high on Pierre and lost two quality pitching prospect. If we could have gotten Pods down to even 2 years, 7 million... I think it would have been wiser than getting Pierre. Still, the smartest move would have been to forget about both and go for Damon... but this team isnt that smart. Pods got 1 year, $1.75M. We could have given him $2M and beat out the Royals by quite a bit. And while I wanted something much better than Pods, I'd much rather have Pods at $2M for 1 year than Pierre for 2 years and $8M. It'll be interesting to see what Winn signs for since, given his defense, he's the best of the bunch. Disagree on Teahen. At the time I thought it was a dumb move, and in hindsight it's even worse. We could have signed Feliz for 1 year instead of committing to Teahen for 3. Getz was well worth moving to secure Gordon at 2B for the future, so I have no problems with that. But Teahen? I'm not optimistic about him either. He was a non-tender candidate that we gave up talent for and then extended even though he hasn't shown himself capable of performing to a level that warrants his new contract. Bad deal IMO. My guess is after Tejada signs this deal will look even worse still. Agree on Damon, that would be a nice move but uncharacteristic of the Sox.

QUOTE (jphat007 @ Jan 12, 2010 -> 11:13 PM) If we go into this season with Andruw Jones/Mark Kotsay as our DH because Ozzie doesn't want a 'full-time' DH he better be gone if we don't make the playoffs. And this is from one of his biggest backers. I can't imagine KW would actually listen to him tho. On the one hand I agree, but on the other I think that it should be Kenny held accountable for listening to Ozzie and building an NL team in the American League. But I really don't want either Ozzie or Kenny gone, I just want them to build a balanced baseball team - or at least pick a philosophy, stick with it, and if it doesn't work, try something else and don't go back to the old philosophy again. I can't believe how we've heard about the importance of OBP and yet we get a bunch of players with zero OBP skills. We hear all season about how the middle of the order has to step up, and yet we lose 2 middle of the order cogs over the last several years and we don't even try to replace them. Now we're hearing about this gap hitter nonsense and yet we play in a major home run park. It just doesn't make any sense.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jan 12, 2010 -> 11:04 PM) I can't argue against his 4 straight seasons of mediocre OBP, but you can't treat last season like it didn't exist. He definitely won't put up a .365 again, but I think we can expect .340. If you're going to weigh his previous 3 seasons altogether , with a 50% weight towards the most recent one, you're staring at an OBP around .340-.345. And since he's moving to the AL, we can maybe take 5 points off of that, but the thing is, you don't know. CHONE hates him, but that's pretty much expected. You got that line from CHONE, lol. If CHONE says Pierre is a good bet to put up a .340-.345 OBP then that's just one more reason for me to dislike that system. Pierre's OBP is pretty much all batting average with HBP thrown in to help out his s***ty walk totals. The fact that this guy puts the ball in play SOOOO much and still can't hit anything with authority is troubling as hell to me. If Pierre is going to post an OBP around .340-.345 he's going to be hitting somewhere around .300-.310, and I don't see him doing that here.

QUOTE (bucket-of-suck @ Jan 12, 2010 -> 09:55 PM) As a .301 career hitter, Pierre will BENEFIT by hitting in the AL by not having a pitcher giving away at bats 3 times a game in front of him. I'm projecting a line of .290/.340/380/.700 with 50 bags and quality defense in LF. I don't see the logic behind this. Are you making the protection argument? Because the protection argument (and there are those that say this never applies anyway) only gets made when you're talking about really good hitters (RBI guys). The AL is going to be tougher because it's a tougher league with better pitching. AL pitchers aren't going to f*** around with Juan Pierre at all. They're going to go right after him the way pitchers go after weak slap hitters with no power and no real ability to draw a walk. Whether there are men on base or not, Pierre's game is to put the ball in play and run, so the opposition is just going to do that and get him to ground out. The IF here isn't all that fast so I don't expect a whole lot to get through, and the OF here is pretty small and straight-forward in dimension and lay-out which makes it easy to cover ground, so since his XBH ability is pretty much all due to his legs, I don't see him getting many XBH either. That is huge because when you look at the years he has had good OBP numbers you find he has hit well over .300 all those years. I don't see that happening here. Of all the parks where Juan Pierre might be successful, the Cell has got to be one of the least likely of them all. I don't see any reason to be optimistic about this guy. And I don't care about projections and all that SABR stuff either, but it's hard to argue with those guys about Pierre. They pretty much call it like it is in that regard, and the consensus is he's really not that good.

^I'll also predict right now that next year Chris Getz hits for close to the same average as Pierre, gets on base at a higher rate than Pierre, and also steals with a better percentage than Pierre, basically being a better lead-off hitter than Pierre at a savings of about $7.2M over the next two years.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jan 12, 2010 -> 09:18 PM) How is he our worst hitter? Sure, he doesn't hit for power, but when it comes to getting on base, he does it at an okay clip. I'm pretty sure he can put up a .340-.350 OBP, which is around what Podesdnik gave you last year. I like sabermetrics just as much as the next guy, but the SABR community's constant bashing of Pierre is getting annoying. Pierre only got on at a .365 clip last year because he hit .308 in the NL and got hit by a pitch 8 times. Pierre's career OBP: 2000: .353 2001: .378 2002: .332 2003: .361 2004: .374 2005: .326 2006: .330 2007: .331 2008: .327 2009: .365 He'll be playing in the AL for the first time in his career and he will also be playing in a small ballpark. I'd expect something more like .280/.325/.360/.685 out of him next year, but with a ton of SB and CS and a lot of hot air from the Hawkaroo.

Johnny Damon is a hell of a lot better than what we have penciled into the DH slot, so if there's any way to bring him on I'd be favor of that. Edit: Although I don't think Johnny Damon is the kind of player JR is talking about here.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 12, 2010 -> 06:10 PM) Yeah, their batting averages were only 90 points apart, that is much closer So would you say then that 16 extra singles over the course of a season from a bench player is worth an extra $975K then? Because that's the difference between Lillibridge's MLB career and Vizquel in 2009 which is almost a dead-even comparison in sample size. I don't know if you're missing the point or just ignoring it, but Omar Vizquel is not a very good offensive baseball player anymore. In fact, he's so bad that if Ozzie gives him the AB that it sounds like Ozzie wants to give him, then Ozzie needs to be fired. You can slice it any way you like, but Omar Vizquel is nothing but a defensive backup who, while better than Lillibridge in the infield, is also less versatile. And if you think Lillibridge is so bad offensively that he's not even worthy of backing up the defense occasionally, then I have no idea at all why you're defending Vizquel, and especially the money we gave him, because he is absolutely terrible in his own right. There comes a point where a player is so godawful offensively that arguing over 90 points in batting average really is like splitting hairs. Neither player deserves any good amount of playing time. If you run either player out there on a regular basis you're still going to be hurt by it, because neither player will come anywhere close to fulfilling the offensive standards of a fulltime MLB starter, even at a position like SS. Omar Vizquel is *not* insurance for anyone we have. It's not like we can just plug in Omar if one of our starters go down. If one of our starters go down for any length of time we need to either acquire or call up a much better player because Omar the hitter sucks too hard to even bat 9th in the AL.

QUOTE (Vance Law @ Jan 12, 2010 -> 07:57 PM) Anybody who thinks this means Flowers is going to be traded is a crazy person. I don't know who thought he would be on the team sitting there on the bench all year. Has he proven that he's a great defensive catcher? Could he use more seasoning at the position? Has he not only played 30 games at AAA? Is AJ still here for this year? Is he the left handed power hitter that we need at DH? Everything always pointed to him playing at AAA this year. And people, please, come on. Mark Kotsay, a nice utility piece and pinch hitter, will not be the strong side of a DH platoon for us. It certainly looks like a very strong possibility. Current 25-man roster locks: Bullpen: Jenks, Putz, Thornton, Linebrink, Williams, Pena (6 pitchers) Rotation: Peavy, Buehrle, Floyd, Danks, Freddy (5 pitchers) Starting position players: AJ, Paulie, Beckham, Alexei, Teahen, Pierre, Rios, Quentin (8 position players) Bench: Castro - C, Vizquel - MIF, Kotsay - OF/1B, Jones OF (4 position players) In total that's 23 spots already taken. One of those is going to go to a secondary backup IF, so really there's just one spot left. We either take 12 pitchers or we add a DH, and it shouldn't surprise anyone if we go with 7 pitchers in the bullpen. We're certaintly thinking very hard about that at the very least with the claim on Dolsi and the adding of Santos to the 40-man.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 12, 2010 -> 05:29 PM) In both his 2008 and 2009 stints in the big leagues, Lillibridge put up UZR numbers between 0 and -1, while in the last 4 years, Vizquel has put up UZR numbers of 5.2, 20.2, 4.9, and 5.3. Even at his age, Vizquel also appears to be a better defender than Lillibridge. I agree that Vizquel is the better IF defender and have said as much. My point is that there's not an enormous difference in ability between the two especially when you factor in Lillibridge's ability to play CF and pinch run. The difference between the two is definitely not worth $975K when you can't afford to give Matsui $6.5M or Johnson $5.75M. Kenny has made a series of these moves this offseason, overpaying for veteran bench players who aren't a whole lot better than what we could have gotten at the minimum, and by doing that he has priced himself out of the bidding for players he actually needed. A Kroeger/various AAAA players battle for 4th OF/1B could have saved another $1.1M that went to Kotsay; Armstrong/various AAAA player battle for backup C could have saved another $600K that went to Castro, etc. Add this stuff up, then bring in a guy like Winn instead of Pierre or trade for someone like Gardner, and now we've got enough to pay Matsui. Kenny blew it this year.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 12, 2010 -> 05:15 PM) So 150 points of OPS is virtually the same. Yeah, that totally reinforces my point. Uh, did you read the post? 197 PA vs. 195 PA. And I don't think that's much of a difference when you're talking about a .660 OPS vs. a .509 OPS. BTW, in 2008 Vizquel posted a .550 OPS in the NL in 300 PA. It should be more than obvious that both players are only valuable as defensive subs, and in the case of Lillibridge, as a pinch runner. Edit: Also, instead of using OPS you should have talked about batting average. Over the span I gave, they both have the smae number of XBH and Lillibridge has more walks. Vizquel has a few more hits, probably because he makes a lot more contact and played in a fast infield. That's really the only major difference between the 2 offensively.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 12, 2010 -> 04:52 PM) [/b] If you really believe this, there is no point in continuing on. Here's a quick example: Brent Lillibridge vs. Omar Vizquel Lillibridge's MLB career: 197 PA, 175 AB, .177/.258/.251/.509 Vizquel in 2009: 195 PA, 175 AB, .266/.316/.345/.660 Vizquel has 16 more hits total, which is an average of an extra 2.7H per month. Both only have 10 XBH. Lillibridge actually has 4 more walks. Vizquel can play 2B, SS, and 3B better than Lilli can, but Lillibridge is pretty good himself, and Lillibridge can also play CF and pinch run. Vizquel's bunting ability is an advantage as well as experience, however Lillibridge is 26 next year while Vizquel is 43. Vizquel is a little bit better overall, but in the year 2010 only, there is no huge gap in ability between the two. In terms of pay however, Vizquel will make about $975K more than Lillibridge would have, which is a lot when you consider how little players like Matsui and Johnson signed for. Neither Vizquel nor Lillibridge belong on the field regularly at all. They are *supposed* to be there only to spell the regulars and act as insurance options. Now, if Ozzie is planning on giving Vizquel a good 350-400 PA then obviously Vizquel becomes a whole lot better, *BUT* if that were the case then it shouldn't make Vizquel look like a smart use of money, it should instead make people call for Ozzie's firing.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 12, 2010 -> 04:38 PM) Unless that one decent player gets hurt, which has been the history of many of the guys who have been advocated for here ad naseum, such as Vlad, Thome, Johnson, etc. Then we are stuck with a bad player our line up and a horrible bench. Common sense tells you that the way Ozzie likes to use his bench, you probably should have guys who fit that. Having a bench that belongs at Charlotte doesn't achieve that. That's a terrible argument though. You could say that about anyone on our team. What if Peavy gets hurt, how badly does that hurt us? Sure, players like Vlad, Thome, and Johnson may not be the greatest bets to play a full season without issues, but neither is Paul Konerko, neither is Carlos Quentin. And let's say one of Paulie/Q go down, who would you rather have, a bunch of decent bench players and some scrub like Andruw Jones to fill in, or a bunch of bad (but good defensive) bench players with another big bat already there? Also, every current member of our bench belongs in Charlotte anyway if he wants everyday playing time. The guys we have brought in may be a level above what we had in-house, but league average, full-time MLB players are still at least a level or two above each guy on our bench. There isn't this vast seas worth of ability separating the 2009 versions Andruw Jones, Mark Kotsay, and Omar Vizquel from the 2009 versions of Josh Kroeger, Alejandro DeAza, and Brent Lillibridge/Jayson Nix.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 12, 2010 -> 04:17 PM) So instead we would have entered the season with one decent player, and five minor leaguers. Sounds like the end of 2007 to me. Over the course of a season, the contributions of one very good everyday hitter is going to dwarf the combined improvements of a bunch of past-their-primes veteran backups over what we could have fit in for the league minimum, either in-house or via ST invitees on MiLB contracts. The other thing is, bench players are always for sale during the season and cost basically nothing. We got Kotsay and Castro midseason both at the pro-rated minimum IIRC for the [sarcasm]steep price[/sarcasm] of Brian Anderson and Lance Broadway. I guarantee the price is going to be a lot steeper for a big bat during the season. This aversion to running cheap minor leaguers out there as bench players is kind of surprising since we've benefited from that quite a bit in the past, bringing in guys like Widger, Ozuna, Uribe, etc. But it seems like almost every time we spend on a bench, and go after the Sandy Alomars, and the Toby Halls, and the Alex Cintrons and Rob Mackowiaks, we end up getting burned by wasting money that could have gone to other, more important areas. BTW, the players we've put in place on the bench do make us better - marginally better, but still better. Individually I would have no problem with these moves *if* we could afford them, but we can't. Kenny knew at least since the organizational meetings how broke we were, and how little we had left to spend, and yet he *still* put the bench ahead of the need for offensive firepower. Maybe if we all close our eyes and tap our heels together three times we'll end up in the magical world of the NL West where none of this matters at all...

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jan 11, 2010 -> 07:36 PM) well then it is decided, you dont want Nick Johnson! IMO, 4 months of Nick Johnson helps a lot more than 6 months of Juan Pierre.

QUOTE (Thunderbolt @ Jan 12, 2010 -> 03:45 PM) Projections have us at 87 Wins with the lineup we have going. That's pretty damn good as is. I agree that another move is needed, but woe is not the White Sox. These projections are absolutely worthless. We'll be lucky if we have 4 guys in our lineup with OBPs above .340.

QUOTE (jphat007 @ Jan 12, 2010 -> 04:04 PM) f*** YES. .184 .262 .382 in 76 ABS!! Let's see how awful we can make this offense KW!!! WOOOOO!!!! People will say, "it's only $1M," but if you start adding some of this s*** up (i.e. $600K more for Castro than Armstrong/various other AAA/AAAA options on MiLB contracts), it's scary to think how much better we could be had our GM actually entered this offseason with a plan.

QUOTE (SoxFan562004 @ Jan 12, 2010 -> 02:47 PM) http://www.mmaweekly.com/absolutenm/templa...8&zoneid=14 Hope this rumor is true (and mmaweekly.com is usually good about fight cards) because it has Goran Reljic coming back to fight. That guy has a ton of potential but had to take a long time off because of a serious injury, hopefully he comes back 100%. Not confirmed on ufc.com, but they don't finalize the undercards to real close to the actual card. Goran was pretty impressive, and I agree, lots of potential there. I believe he also saved someone from drowning while out with injuries.

Alfredo Amezaga would make a lot of sense as the last signing. He would essentially replace Nix/Lillibridge as the 2nd backup IF and also give the Sox a backup CF so Pierre never has to trot out there. I wish we had a real DH though, but in order to fit one in we'd have to either go with 6 relievers or dump an extra OF (Jones) since we need a backup C and 2 backup MIF.

QUOTE (zenryan @ Jan 11, 2010 -> 10:18 PM) Maynard doesnt deserve a fight with BJ after that performance. It was funny hearing Goldie say Maynard improved a lot on his boxing after getting tooled by a "pure boxer." Well, I guess he's still getting tooled then. Gray can be a human boring machine but whatever. I hope he gets the shot because if BJ vacates the LW belt after the fight it could mean a potential Frankie Edgar-Kenny Florian/Gomi fight for the vacant belt, which would be pretty damn interesting IMO. Sucky night of fights for the UFC tonight except for Escudero-Dunham, which was very entertaining. WEC > UFC at least as far as free events go. Also, neither Tom Lawlor nor Aaron Simpson are "beasts" despite what the broadcasters said.

Florian is rumored to be getting Gomi and the UFC has already said Gomi isn't getting a title shot right away. Gray is a legitimate top contender and any LW in the world, including Aoki, is a walk in the park for BJ at this point, so it really doesn't matter. BTW, the American UFC fans probably know a hell of a lot more about Gray than Gomi anyway, and if Gomi gets taken out by Florian then there's not even a chance he sniffs a title shot in the UFC anytime soon. Also, there's talk that Anderson-Belfort will headline that card. It looks like the UFC is planning on stacking that one.

QUOTE (MHizzle85 @ Jan 11, 2010 -> 07:15 PM) I'm excited to see 2 of my favorite fighters at 155 go at it tonight. I think it should be a fun card. I'm taking Maynard though to set up Penn/Maynard. BJ wants to fight on the Abu Dhabi card so that would make sense if Maynard wins. Maynard is a tough opponent, but I can't see him beating BJ either. IMO, BJ defends once more against either Maynard or Edgar and then goes back to 170. I find it a bit nipple-erecting to speculate on how BJ would match up against a bigass 170'er like Anthony Johnson or Thiago Alves since Dana has said Penn will have to win a couple fights before getting GSP again. Of course, I could also see Hughes beating Renzo to set up BJ-Hughes 3 at 170. With BJ possibly going to 170 again and GSP possibly taking off for the Olympics, it is within the realm of possibility that 2 dominant champions may vacate titles and open up each weight class.

If all it took for Gonzalez was Hudson, Flowers, and D2 then that should have been done on Day 1 of the offseason. I don't buy that though, at all. That's paying dimes on the dollar and Hoyer is going to want a make a splash with an Adrian deal.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 11, 2010 -> 02:31 PM) Hm. I disagree with some of this, but I see where you are coming from on the committed money. However, I really don't think all three of those guys end up disappointing. Just seems unlikely to me. More likely, its a mixed bag. The problem is that I don't think Kenny shopped for all these bargains like the fans are giving him credit for. Pedro Feliz signed for 1 year, $4.5M. Teahen gets about $2.75M from us this year plus another $4.75M in 2011 and $5.5M in 2012. I'd rather have Feliz if we wanted to move Beckham to 2B. If we wanted to keep Beckham at 3B, Polanco signed for $17.5M through 2012 including his buyout, and that was also seen as a bad contract by some, but at least Polanco is seriously clutch. After the Royals' payments, we're paying Teahen $12M over the same span. And even better yet, Hudson is still out there and could sign for a whole lot less guaranteed than Polanco did on a 1-year deal. Then as far as Pierre goes, Winn is going to sign for less. Pods signed for a lot less. Gardner and Melky Cabrera were both still on the market making little. We didn't HAVE to give Juan Pierre all that money, but we did. Makes no sense to me at all. The defensive value his brings is hurt by his arm, and I just can't see him drawing walks at the rate he did in the NL last year, or getting as many hits as his NL career would suggest in a smaller park. I think we basically could have gotten better players for less money without committing to them for 2011 at all, and we probably could have worked in a team option for a cheap price too. Meanwhile Matsui signed a 1-year deal for $6.5M and the Yankees got Nick Johnson for 1 year, $5.75M, both lefty DH's that we could very much use. We apparently weren't players on either since we had spent 4 dimes of our 50 cents on a bunch of marginal role players plus JJ Putz. Kenny wasted his money. I hope I'm wrong, though.