Chicago White Sox

QUOTE (Heads22 @ Feb 22, 2014 -> 10:19 PM) It's 10% of our starting lineup for one game. This is absolutely not anything to get worked up about. And an Adam Dunn HR could be 100% our offense on any given day. Until we're legitimately out of the race, his left-handed bat needs to be in the lineup everyday against RHP. Konerko will get plenty of opportunities against LHP, where he can actually provide some value, he doesn't need a token start on opening day. Honestly, if you want to appease the fans, have an on-field ceremony for him before the game. Just don't let the sentiment affect your decision-making and start him over Dunn. As long as the primary goal is winning games, then lineup decisions should always be about maximizing production.

QUOTE (Heads22 @ Feb 22, 2014 -> 06:46 PM) If we get to a point where one game makes a difference in the season and it's because PK started Opening Day - I don't think anyone will look back at the end of the season and say "if only we hadn't started Paulie" Why does it matter if we the fans isolate that moment as the reason for missing out on the playoffs? The fact would be that we missed out on the playoffs by one game and that any one of the stupid decisions we made along the way could have been the difference. I'm actually shocked that this many people are against optimizing our chances of winning. And before anyone else says "it's just one game, who cares", with the addition of the second wild card, one game is going to make or break a lot more seasons going forward. I'm sure Texas Ranger fans have a long list of items that could have made the difference for them last year.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 22, 2014 -> 09:50 AM) Does Danks have any options left? Yeah, he was never put on the 40 until last year right? If so, he should have two options left.

QUOTE (winninguglyin83 @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 06:43 PM) I just can't imagine a guy who hit .167 during his fourth pro season while getting demoted to AA being in the big leagues. And striking out in more than a third of his at bats. The guy can't hit -- no matter what Buddy Bell says. Totally agree, I think a lot of people are being fooled by his strong AFL performance. He was absolute garbage last year in both AAA & AA. I'm not buying into the hype until see him put up some numbers in Charlotte. Also, if there's going to be a callup needed for CF, it's going to be Danks (if De Aza is the 4th OF) or Thompson. Everything I have read suggests that Trayce is a superior defender to Mitchell, plus he's actually shown some ability with the bat. I don't think Mitchell is really on the radar anymore, IMO the fluff we're hearing about his AFL performance is just trying rebuild some of his lost value. That could change with a strong start to the 2014 season, but I just don't think it's likely at this point.

QUOTE (Reddy @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 09:13 PM) I truly don't get this mindset to be honest. One game makes nearly zero difference when it comes to a 75-80 win team. And do you guys truly think the odds Paulie will produce worse than Dunn on this ONE day are so EXTREMELY high as to warrant him sitting on the bench his last opening day of his career? Psh y'all crazy. This may very well be a 75 to 80 win team but we don't know that yet. You give it everything you got until you know for sure because every single game matters in the end. I actually find it crazy that you'd rather give Paulie an opening day start than throw out the lineup with the best chance of actually winning the game for us.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Feb 21, 2014 -> 04:42 PM) I'm sorry, I couldn't care less that it's Pauly's last opening day, he shouldn't be starting against a righty. And yes it matters, there's always a chance this team ends up competing(yes it's a long shot but not impossible) and I want the best lineup out there until we're done. This 100%. Every game matters and stupid little decisions add up and by the end of the season they can be the difference between making the playoffs. I don't care if our chances of competing are slim, you do everything you can to maximize production from day 1 and that means playing Dunn against RHP as often as possible.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Feb 20, 2014 -> 11:07 AM) Last year, the Yankees received significant playing time from Chris Stewart, Lyle Overybay, Eduardo Nunez, Jayson Nix, Vernon Wells, Ichiro Suzuki, Travis Hafner, David Adams, and Austin Romine. Overbay's OPS was .688 and Hafner's .679, which were the best out of that group. Tell me some more about how Alex Rodriguez's contract didn't affect them. Now, considering it doesn't count against their payroll this year, while shedding a few other contracts, they were able to bring in a few new players while staying under the luxury tax. They won't be under it next year. I'm pretty certain the Yankees won't be under the luxury tax this year.

The problem with Marty's idea is we simply don't need another mid-rotation starter. If you're putting together a championship caliber rotation, Sale as a #1, Quintana as a #3, & Johnson as a #4 works IMO. All three are young, cheap, & cost-controlled for the foreseeable future. That right there is your core. On top of that, we have an expensive Danks who has a reasonable chance of rebounding this year and becoming a strong #3 starter again. Throw Chris Beck into the mix, who should be ready by opening day 2015 IMO, and we should have 4 legitimate starters to cover the back-end of the rotation (and this assumes that Rienzo, Surkamp, & Paulino aren't factors). What we really need is another top-of-the-rotation starter, not at Sale's level, but one that can solidfy that #2 spot, especially come playoff time. Tanaka made a ton of sense for us because he could fill that void and do so long-term. Wasting money on Jimenez or Santana doesn't help us achieve that goal, and quite frankly, signing one of them to hopefully spin Quintana down the road seems counter-productive and incredibly risky. I get the logic in doing so, but those simply aren't the right guys to gamble on.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Feb 16, 2014 -> 01:11 AM) I like TUC, but this has to be up for POTY consideration.

I still don't get the point of dealing assets for a 2B when we'll have two legit prospects in AAA and another in AA. Makes no sense whatsoever IMO.

QUOTE (lasttriptotulsa @ Feb 12, 2014 -> 06:46 AM) Exactly. He also was our best offensive player last year, but don't bother trying to convince TUC of that. He's proving to be almost as big of a troll as Marty lately. While I'm all for keeping Dunn, people seem to overlook he was a negative WAR player last year. Part of the problem is that he sucked offensively when DHing and sucked defensively when playing 1B. I think last year may be a bit of an outlier, but even in 2012 he was clearly better hitter when playing 1B. There really isn't a great solution here as Abreu should be playing 1B most of the time. Honestly, the only reason I want to keep him is I think platooning him will increase his overall value and make him a positive value player in 2014.

QUOTE (Iwritecode @ Feb 10, 2014 -> 03:29 PM) DA and SS2K, I think you two are arguing past each other. I think both of your points are true. It’s not an either/or situation. Yeah, clearly there were multiple items contributing towards our draft struggles (prior to recent years). First, refusing to go overslot and passing on all Boras clients. We passed on a lot of talent over the years because Reinsdorf refused to break the "rules" or work with the agent that f***ed him over on Bobby Seay & Jeff Weaver . Second, a sustained run of solid success prevented us from getting any top 10 picks for a long ass time (18 years to be exact). Those top picks have a much higher probability of working out (relatively speaking), which put us at a major disadvantage to begin with. Not going overslot only worsened the problem. Third, our talent evaluation was incredibly poor an extended period. People can try to blame this on the lack of money, but here is the list of 1st round picks between Alex Fernandez (1990) and Chris Sale (2010), which represents a 19 year span: 2009 Jared Mitchell OF LSU 23 2008 Gordon Beckham SS Univ. of Georgia 8 2007 Aaron Poreda LHP San Francisco 25 2006 Kyle McCulloch RHP Texas 29 2005 Lance Broadway RHP TCU 15 2004 Josh Fields 3B Oklahoma State 18 2003 Brian Anderson OF U. of Arizona 15 2002 Roger Ring LHP San Diego State 18 2001 Kris Honel RHP Providence HS, New Lenox, 16 2000 Joe Borchard OF Camarillo, CA 12 1999 Jason Stumm RHP Centralia, WA 15 1999 Matt Ginter RHP Mississippi State U. 22 1998 Robert Wells RHP Baylor U. 16 1997 Jason Dellaero SS U of South Florida 15 1996 Bobby Seay LHP Sarasota, FL 12 1995 Jeff Liefer 3B Long Beach State U 25 1994 Mark Johnson C Warner Robbins, GA 26 1993 Scott Christman LHP Oregon State U 17 1992 Eddie Pearson 3B Bishop St JC 24 1991 Scott Ruffcorn RHP Baylor U 25 That list is absolutely pathetic. Doesn't matter how bad your player development is, you're bound to hit on a couple of your 1st round picks. I mean for f***'s sake, Kip Wells & Gordan Beckham were the best pitcher and position player we drafted in the 1st round during a 19 year period. That's almost impossible to believe. This leads me to the final reason for our struggles which is poor draft philosophy. For a period of time under Duane Schafer, we were wasting high picks on "safe" college arms like Ring, Broadway, & McCulloch with the intention of possibly flipping them quickly to help the major league club. That was a terrible idea from the get-go, as these players offered limited upside and eventually all sucked and brought back very little in return. Then after this period of time, the Sox switched to targeting raw, toolsy guys like Jared Mitchell, Trayce Thompson, & Keenyn Walker that had impact player potential but extremely low floors. While this was somewhat of a step in the right direction, the White Sox front office failed to have a development staff in place that could actually turn these raw prospects into major leaguers. Not understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the organization or simply overlooking them contributed to this poor draft philosophy.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 4, 2014 -> 05:18 PM) Offensively, he might be a better offensive "prospect" than Davidson but I can't come to any reasonable argument by which he's a more fully developed offensive player. I'm similarly not sure he's a better offensive player in the big leagues than Alexei right now. His numbers in AAA were worse than Davidson's in a cup of coffee there, his numbers in the big leagues were worse than Davidson's when they both were up in September. Davidson's had a full year at AAA already. Semien's had most of a year at AA. Semien might well keep tearing it up this year and by midseason tell everyone "I'm going to destroy the big leagues", but he's not there yet. Semien had a wRC+ of 123 in AAA, Davidson a 117. I would argue Semien was the better offensive player, especially given that Semien was still adjusting to the league at the time. Obviously the major league stats lean heavily in Davidson's favor, although I think Semien might have simply been worn down by that point from a long season. Honestly, I think both guys could probably use a month or two of seasoning at AAA to start next year.

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Feb 4, 2014 -> 12:08 AM) Anything other than a high draft pick or a playoff contender is a bad result for a season. Mediocrity is a franchise killer. No offense, but this is completely ridiculous. Teams rarely jump from bottom 3 to playoff contender in one season, as success is usually built over multiple seasons, especially for a team with a young core. Also, if we were to get another high draft pick next year, that likely means a lot of our young players failed to make progress in 2014. Not sure how that would ever be a "good" result.

Marty, if we were to dump Dunn, what exactly would you do at DH next year?

QUOTE (IowaSoxFan @ Jan 30, 2014 -> 05:10 PM) I am hoping that the Sox make him a QO at the end of the year and he declines. The Sox get a solid prospect for him and dont have a power vaccum from the LH side of the plate this year. I understand that the scenario is unlikely, but its probably not impossible that Dunn will be looking for multiple years instead of one. I could see a team give him a 3/$16-18M next winter. The Twins for instance are going to be starved for power, have a hole at DH and their 1st pick will (most likely) be protected. Anyway, that is what I hope. There is about a 0.1% chance we offer Dunn a QO next year and a 99.9% chance he'd accept it if we did. Come on man, you throw out a 3 year, $16/$18M deal when a QO would practically be worth that much alone.

QUOTE (IowaSoxFan @ Jan 30, 2014 -> 04:03 PM) He only played 60 games last year in the majors, mostly due to injuries. When he did play he was more of a fourth OF splitting time between LF and CF backing up Kubel and Pollock. His slash line was .252/.314/.360, so he wasn't really humming along either. If they can't trade De Aza before the season, I don't see any negative to starting Eaton with Davidson, Semien, and Sanchez in AAA until you can deal off guys and open places for them to play. These deals were not made to win a WS this season, but to contend for the next 5 years after this season. I agree sticking him down just to keep service time down would be bush league, but if it is the long term interest to further his development and build value in Viciedo or De Aza for a deal, keeping his time down is a happy consequence not a reason for making the move. Eaton posted a 163 wRC+ and a .995 OPS in AAA in 2012. I think he's shown he can handle AAA pitching. To best further his development, he needs regular at-bats against major league pitching. Starting him at Charlotte would be a huge mistake.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Jan 30, 2014 -> 12:51 AM) De Aza has been unquestionably better than Viciedo the past two years, and it isn't even remotely close. I have never said otherwise. However, that doesn't mean he will be the better player going forward.

QUOTE (Vance Law @ Jan 29, 2014 -> 09:49 PM) You are right, Viciedo had a slightly higher ISO, though De Aza hit more home runs. I also thought Viciedo had more PAs than he did. My point still stands, that it shouldn't even be close when it is the only thing Viciedo can (theoretically) do better than an average player. It's why De Aza has accrued 4.9 WAR over the past 2 seasons compared to Viciedo's 0.2 WAR. No doubt Viciedo has been a huge disappointment, but I still believe in the talent. Also, I feel that working with Steverson will help Dayan as much as anyone. Selective aggressiveness is Steverson's big philosophy and the lack of it is what's preventing Viciedo from becoming an impact hitter. Don't get me wrong, Dayan will always be a bit of a free-swinger, but even a small improvement in his selectiveness would make him way more dangerous at the plate.

QUOTE (Vance Law @ Jan 29, 2014 -> 03:38 PM) For one, Viciedo has not yet managed to be a better player than him. Last year he was not even a better power hitter (his only plus tool?). You keep saying this for some reason, probably because De Aza was able to hit 3 more HRs than Viciedo in 43% more plate appearances. Fact is Viciedo's ISO was .161 and De Aza's was .142. Viciedo was the better power hitter...end of story.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 28, 2014 -> 03:24 PM) I like what Stoltz adds to the internet, but he does get a little obsessive on certain guys he sees. Comparing Ravelo and Davidson is pretty silly. They are vastly different hitters in almost every way, for good and bad. Ravelo is also not a 3B. And of course they are at very different ages and levels of development. I like Ravelo, I have him as a 20-25 guy in this system, and I think he's only about a dozen fly balls/doubles going an extra 30 feet in a season away from being a serious 1B prospect. But he is nowhere near the prospect Davidson is at this point. Agree with all of this. Ravelo is my sleeper position playing prospect for 2014, but he's got to show a lot more power to make our top 10, let alone a top 100 list. Also, if he could stick at 3B, the Sox would have played him there last year.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Jan 26, 2014 -> 01:08 PM) What's funny is that Dunn isn't even the worst player on the Sox but people hate him. People just hate strikeouts. Anyone that would have booed 19 year old Courtney Hawkins should have been blown up immediately though. He may not be the worst player on the team, but that doesn't mean he hasn't been the biggest dissapoinment. This is a guy who was regularly posting wRC+'s in the 130 to 140 range prior to signing with us. Last year he was paid $14M to post a wRC+ of 105 and provide negative value on defense. While some people may dislike him just for the strikeouts, I think most people hate him because he's a one-dimensional player who is no longer very good at that one dimension while making a f***ton of money. On top of that, Dunn is a guy who publically acknowledges he does almost no offseason work and doesn't appear to be in good physical condition come Opening Day. That's fine when you are producing on the field, but once age starts catching up with you and your physical abilities start to decline, maybe said player should start putting some work in the offseason and actually try to earn his paycheck. And while I will never condone fans for attacking him at a fan convention, as that's some cowardly s***, I don't think he deserves any sympathy from us if he gets booed during games. I'm sure in the minority on that, but I don't think he's a guy who's given his all with us. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's honestly the way I see things.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Jan 25, 2014 -> 11:09 AM) You can't blame fans for being unhappy about Dunn still being here. Dunn is frustrating as hell to watch, but given our lack of offense and left-handed bats, he definitely has value to us against RHP regardless of what the common Sox fan may think. That said, I don't want to see him in a White Sox uniform after 2014 under any circumstance.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Jan 25, 2014 -> 09:51 AM) How is Kolten Wong at #58 overall and Marcus Semien isn't even in the top 100? Semien may actually be a better player than Wong is. Doesn't make any sense. 100% agree. I don't see how Wong can be considered a significantly better prospect than Semien. I'm guessing people look at Wong's AAA line and forget he played in the PCL.

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. The problem is Jimenez is incredibly inconsistent. Again, if we could get him for 2/$26M and he didn't cost a draft pick, I'd all be for him. We can afford to take short-term risks that only cost us money. Unfortunately, he's going to get 4 or 5 years and cost us a draft pick on top of it. He makes no sense for us. The risk is far greater than the reward here.