Chicago White Sox

Is the HD version of the Wire on ComCast OnDemand?

QUOTE (GreenSox @ Dec 26, 2014 -> 08:19 PM) (beside the fact that most are woefully overrating what Longoria did in the past). Dude, what the f*** are you talking about. Longoria is 2nd in total WAR from 2008 to 2014. What could we possibly be overrating? He's been without question one of the best players in Major League Baseball over the course of his career. You're love for prospects is actually skewing your ability to reason.

I'm not a Robin Ventura fan by any means (manager-wise), but who gives a s*** about his personality. His job is to win baseball games, not to entertain our fan-base during post game interviews. It's amazing in this day and age that someone would actually want to see a head coach/manager fired simply because they're "boring".

QUOTE (oldsox @ Dec 25, 2014 -> 06:40 AM) Are we talking $50 large Up Front? Or spread out over a few yrs? The money will be paid up-front since it's a signing bonus, but how the Sox account for the expense is unknown. Most businesses would consider this type of move a long-term investment and would allocate the cost over the life of the asset (or contract in this case). Baseball is obviously a different animal so who really knows. Either way, I think the sacrifice of future Latin American signings of any significance is the bigger reason why they won't sign Moncada.

QUOTE (Jerksticks @ Dec 24, 2014 -> 07:10 PM) The Conor platoon talk is getting out of control. Apparently most of Soxtalk hit their primes career-wise at 24 years old and never wanted to get better at anything...or you all got fired after a year. Buncha spoiled jagoffs- merry Christmas Dude, he had a 52 wRC+ (.565 OPS) against lefties last year, which is way better than his career numbers. Conor has showed no signs of being an effective hitter against lefties and it would be foolish to give those 100+ at-bats next year if we're serious about competing. Maybe a Christmas miracle happens and he finally figures out how to hit lefties at some point in his career, but we've done our due diligence and should accept him for what he is currently, which is the strong half of a 3B platoon.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Dec 24, 2014 -> 01:31 PM) I wonder if Danny Valencia could be had from Toronto. I think he'd be a great fit. I wouldn't mind signing Chris Denorfia for his defense and taking him out of the hitters' hells he's been in. C - Brantly/Kottaras 1B/3B - Valencia INF - Saladino/Garcia/Sanchez OF - Denorfia Denorfia makes a ton of sense for us. Strong defensive OF who's been very good against LHP in his career (obviously not last year). When we face lefties, we could play him in RF, shifting Avi to DH and taking LaRoche's bat out of the lineup. How is his CF defense though? Not sure I love the idea of him being our only extra OF given how often Eaton gets banged up.

Where does this idea that Longoria will be cheap come from? He had a down year in 2014 (still very solid), but has been without question one of the best players in the game for a good half decade. Given his relatively affordable contract, he'd cost a f***ton. Last year won't change the price nor should it.

QUOTE (flavum @ Dec 22, 2014 -> 01:47 PM) I'm all for optimism when it comes to prospects, but can we cool it a little? Sale, Samardzija, Quintana, Danks, and Noesi....that's a rotation good enough to win 90 games if they make their starts and the rest of the team is healthy. Rodon is 22 and could use a couple months in the minors. At the very least, play the first 54 games without him and then evaluate. While I love all the improvements the Sox have made this offseason, we're still on the outside looking in as far as contenders go. Part of that is the back-end of our rotation. Even as a rookie, Rodon could be a big upgrade over Danks and/or Noesi. Given our expected margin for error, I really don't think we can afford to wait two months or more if an upgrade is presently available. Also, what does 54 games get us? No super 2 status? I'm all for the extra year of team control, but avoiding super 2 status isn't worth the cost if you feel that Rodon is better than Danks or Noesi.

I may be in the minority here, but I want him with the big league club ASAP while getting that extra year of team control. Not sure if that's mid April or early May, but I truly believe he's a better starting option than both Danks & Noesei and I don't think we can afford to wait 3+ months for him to replace one of those guys in the rotation if we're serious about competing. Also, I don't think spending a full season with Cooper as a starter in the majors is going to be any worse for his development than dominating minor league hitters for most of the year. Rodon is a special talent and IMO he should be pushed along more aggressively.

I may be in the minority here, but I want him with the big league club ASAP while getting that extra year of team control. Not sure if that's mid April or early May, but I truly believe he's a better starting option than both Danks & Noesei and I don't think we can afford to wait 3+ months for him to replace one of those guys in the rotation if we're serious about competing. Also, I don't think spending a full season with Cooper as a starter in the majors is going to be any worse for his development than dominating minor league hitters for most of the year. Rodon is a special talent and IMO he should be pushed along more aggressively.

QUOTE (GreenSox @ Dec 21, 2014 -> 05:25 PM) could be done. Hopefully, they don't. Of course Preller didn't trade his top prospects either. He protected most of his top prospects. The only 1 he traded was for Myers. This board would have all in on trading 3 top prospects for Myers. He traded the elite Grandal for Matt Kemp. It also helps when you have a strong farm system. Not a thin one like the Sox have. Hold on a second, you wouldn't trade any three prospects in our systems (excluding Rodon & Anderson) plus Gillaspie for Evan Longoria? Please tell me I'm misinterpreting something here, because Evan Longoria is easily one of the best players in baseball and signed to a relatively affordable deal. If that really is the case, then you definitely care more about prospects than winning World Series.

QUOTE (thxfrthmmrs @ Dec 20, 2014 -> 08:23 PM) We tried to and still are trying to move Viciedo to fit Melky under our payroll. One way or the other, Viciedo's contract won't be on our books come opening day. Now if we want to sign more free agents, we'd need to move John Danks, and good luck finding any takers for him. I definitely think we'll move Viciedo, but it has nothing to do with Melky's salary. Hahn made it pretty clear that Reinsdorf agreed to increase payroll in order to sign Melky. Any savings by moving Viciedo will likely go towards adding bench pieces that are better fits than Tank. I really don't think we have to clear salary at this point.

This Freddy was a rental talk is absurd, the Sox knew they'd be able to extend him when they made the deal. GreenSox, it seems you care more about winning trades than winning World Series.

QUOTE (thxfrthmmrs @ Dec 20, 2014 -> 07:27 PM) There are no rumors of him to the Sox. I can't wait to see the board go sour on him when it's revealed to be the Cubs. EDIT: After Melky signing, Rock hinted that we done with signings and need to move contracts to just fit Melky in the cap. This guy could cost anywhere from $15-50 mil, so don't get your hopes to high He's looking for $5M to $6M a year per his agent. If that's the case, we could free a big chunk of that by moving Viciedo. And we definitely don't have to move contracts for Melky. Reinsdorf gave the ok to increase payroll before signing him.

Not that it matters, but I think his name is spelled Jung not Jeong if a mod wants to change.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Dec 20, 2014 -> 06:53 PM) Texas is out: Max Wildstein @MaxWildstein · 23m 23 minutes ago #Rangers did NOT place the winning bid of $5MM on Jung-ho Kang, sources tell @StevensonFWST. #MLB At this point it has to be the White Sox, what other teams are left that make sense?

QUOTE (Jerksticks @ Dec 20, 2014 -> 04:00 PM) Yea I get that, but I just don't understand the rush on here. It's kinda creepy because he hasn't even pitched an inning here. Just leaves this uneasy feeling in my stomach listening to this extension talk before any of us know what we have. Makes me kind of want to puke out of embarrassment for our organization if they are actually trying to extend him now. Hopefully that talk is just to appease the Chicago media idiots who think this situation is somehow related to the cubs trying to extend him. No similarities whatsoever. Let's not be the creepy and desperate organization. Let's be pro and make him prove himself first. Mercy of the heavens! I've got to be honest, I 100% disagree with you here. Every day Shark goes unextended is a day closer to free agency for him and ultimately some ridiculous offer from another team that we'll be unable or unwilling to match. You waiting for him to "prove it" for whatever reason just makes it more unlikely we'll keep him long-term.

Has there even been any speculation of us being interested? He could make some sense for us dependng on the price.

QUOTE (Jake @ Dec 18, 2014 -> 06:05 PM) What I thought about while reading was - okay, so we know actual WAR is very predictive of actual wins and that projected WAR is fairly predictive of actual wins. What would be nice is a comparison to other things. Maybe compare against analysts' predictions and against some other statistics, like bWAR or WARP or non-sabermetric statistics. I think you're reaching a bit here. I won't deny that actual WAR is fairly predictive of actual wins, but projected WAR doesn't seem to be very predictive of actual wins. I mean, we're only talking about a .43 r2 between projected and actual WAR. And again, actual WAR is fairly predictive of actual wins, but it's far from perfect (BTW, not suggesting it should be). So saying projected WAR is "fairly predictive" of actual wins doesn't seem entirely accurate to me. I would say that projected WAR is directionally right more often than not, but it will still have its fair share of misses, some of which are quite sizable. I'm not arguing that these projection systems don't provide value, because they do, but I would never use them more than a frame of reference when setting my own expectations. Without more human input, the accuracy of these protection systems will always be limited.

QUOTE (Joshua Strong @ Dec 16, 2014 -> 03:40 PM) Wouldn't be surprised if Micker is knocking on the ML Team's door in 2017. Is he he even going to play full season ball this year?

QUOTE (Joshua Strong @ Dec 16, 2014 -> 08:36 PM) I'll take the pick, and better chance for sustained success. A 3rd round pick offers a better chance of success than Melky Cabrera?

QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Dec 16, 2014 -> 04:39 PM) General rule of thumb is to stay away from work relationships, right? Don't think my son agrees with that rule. I would just take things slow.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Dec 16, 2014 -> 06:59 PM) 4 games. He started as a leadoff hitter 4 times. Joe the genius Maddon had Desmond Jennings leading off most of the year. .301 OBP as a leadoff man. Are you suggesting it was a smart decision then? And Desmond Jennings had a wRC+ of 105 last year, Leury Garcia had a wRC+ of 2 (worst in baseball). Not exactly a great comparison.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Dec 16, 2014 -> 01:39 PM) Yes, you CAN quantify it. The average cost of an out is -0.299 runs across all base/out states. Given Leury's .268 OBP and Alexei's All-Star™ .305 OBP, Alexei could have been expected to avoid that cost four percent more often. FanGraphs game logs (http://www.fangraphs.com/statsd.aspx?playerid=5913&position=2B) show us that Leury had exactly 30 PA as a leadoff hitter last year. If Robin had magically known what Leury's OBP was, he could be expected to reach base 8.04 times out of the 30. Alexei, on the other hand, could have been expected to reach 9.15(!) times over those same 30 plate appearances. If luck was on his side, Alexei could have prevented that 0.299 run loss once! Holy crap, batting Alexei instead of Leury at leadoff could have given us an almost 30% chance to score ONE more run last year! What if that one run could have been the difference between winning 73 and 74 games? It's reeling. Except it's WAY less than that because Leury would have had to have batted somewhere else in the lineup. Oh, and many of those PA came as a pinch hitter, making the math even more ridiculous. Also, that run value for an out is from the steroid era, so it's actually too high. So no, it didn't and doesn't matter. At all. I am a batting order nazi, and even I can admit that the difference in batting Leury first instead of some other slightly less bad leadoff option for like 4 games over the course of an entire season is not even REMOTELY close to being beneficial enough to shake up a lineup, even if you BARELY believe in there being a negative effect to shaking up a lineup. You're grasping at straws here. I love you measure context by citing linear weights. Not all outs are created equal, which is you're completely ignoring. An out right in front of Jose Abreu is much more costly than an out by #7 hitter all else being equal. But hey, all outs = -.299 runs. Regardless, Leury Garcia posted a .067 OBP in the leadoff spot last year. Alexei's career average in the leadoff spot is .339. So in just those 30 at-bats, Alexei could have reached base 8 more times. I'm not going to argue the significance of that, but that's a better estimate of the opportunity cost than the one you provided. You can't put the worst hitter in baseball in a high pressure spot and expect the same exact outcome. My main point all along was that Robin makes numerous decisions that go against all available information. I cited a specific example that I find particularly mind-boggling and you basically said it's ok because "it doesn't matter". I'm not even sure why I'm wasting my time arguing this. Whether you think that particular decision was material or not, there's no denying it was a stupid decision. Managers should be evaluated by their decision-making process and somehow Robin Ventura thought the worst hitter in baseball was the best alternative for the leadoff spot on multiple occasions.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Dec 16, 2014 -> 01:14 PM) Leury batted leadoff three times all season. Robin made a lot more questionable decisions than those three widely spread out chances to lead off aside from three times that he batted second, he never batted above 8th Unless I'm looking at something wrong, I see seven games he started in the leadoff spot and three in the two hole. 10 starts batting first or second. And I totally misread the #9 spot numbers, he did get the bulk of his starts at the bottom of the lineup like he should have. Regardless, 10 starts at the top of the lineup is poor decision-making. Any option would have been better than Leury Garcia, that's the point I'm making.