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QUOTE (Carpe Diem @ Oct 20, 2016 -> 01:26 PM) I've seen a lot of discussion about Sale and/or Quintana being dealt as well as the usual suspects like Frazier, Melky, Robertson, Jones, ext but I think the biggest no brainer who should be moved is Jose Abreu. He obviously is a talented hitter and a very good middle of the order bat, but to me I view a potential return of what he would bring as more valuable than him playing out his contract on the South Side AND his value will never be higher. Yes he will be 30 next year, but his contract still runs for another 3 years at a VERY affordable price for any MLB team. I think the team that makes the most sense would be the Nationals. Their window is open for 2 more years until Harper probably leaves and Scherzer ages. Their offense again let them down in the playoffs and they have a major hole at 1B. Why not trade them a package of Abreu and Nate Jones (who also possesses enormous value given his contract) for Giolito and say Victor Robles among others? His value is probably not as high as you think. While he remains a productive hitter, Abreu just ranked 11th among first baseman in wRC+ and just 14th in fWAR. Further, he is about to opt into his first of three arbitration seasons, and his raise will be beginning from a base of about $13m per year. Given that his cumulative RBI and homerun totals (which tend to be the types of numbers that drive arb prices up) overrate his overall production, he's going to be making close to his actual market value very quickly. If he produces like he did this season going forward, in fact, he may even be at market value on opening day of 2017. That doesn't mean we should dump him or anything, but it means that the return may not be worth much (if any) more than what we get by keeping him around. Plus, by all accounts, Abreu seems to be one of the only calm and stabilizing leadership personalities in the clubhouse, so his value to the White Sox may very well be more than it is to another contender.

I still think the most likely path the Sox take is to try to add in the offseason for one last hurrah, and then aggressively dismantle the whole thing at the trade deadline when it fails. I think this because the 2017-18 offseason is the first one where there looks to be absolutely no argument for contention, barring the unforeseeable arrival of new breakout stars.

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Oct 18, 2016 -> 07:01 AM) The problem with wanting both Benintendi AND Moncada is A. Boston wouldn't do that This is really the key piece of information.

QUOTE (Dunt @ Oct 17, 2016 -> 02:33 PM) I think it's a track record thing. He has about 800 ABs over the last 2 seasons now of about an .834 OPS though, so I don't think he's all that overrated. Major downsides of a JBJ trade are control and age. I can get behind the control thing, it just seems like people think he's a bad player. QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Oct 17, 2016 -> 03:00 PM) He fell off offensively this year. We know what we're getting defensively, but his offense is still a question mark. He didn't, though. He went from a .355 wOBA to a .354. His K rate actually dropped significantly while his walk rate stayed essentially the same. His average and OBP rose. If anything, he provided evidence that his strong half season in 2015 wasn't a fluke.

Why does everyone think JBJ is overrated?

Guys. I'm just afraid these threads are setting us all up for disappointment.

QUOTE (ChiSox59 @ Oct 13, 2016 -> 10:16 AM) And I am telling them to go pound sand. Not for that offer above you wouldn't. Moncada AND Benintendi AND Kopech AND more?

QUOTE (OmarComing25 @ Oct 12, 2016 -> 10:33 AM) My concern is that I'd take pretty much all the proposed packages in this thread without thinking twice, which makes me think Boston wouldn't do it. I think it would cap at something like Benintendi/Devers/Kopech/Swihart. I agree, that would be the absolute best-case scenario. Honestly, it's probably even swapping Benintendi for Moncada now that the former has clearly jumped ahead.

QUOTE (JUSTgottaBELIEVE @ Oct 11, 2016 -> 01:45 PM) Question: in a 1 for 1, Sale for Betts, who says no? Hahn or Dombrowski? Dombrowski, unquestionably.

QUOTE (IowaSoxFan @ Oct 11, 2016 -> 01:37 PM) Brady is really only contributing at most 40% of the time, unless he has taken up kicking and started playing safety while he was suspended. A guy like Gronk is lucky to contribute 25% of the time given personnel packages, but when he does, his team benefits greatly. Yeah, I thought it would be a simpler argument if I only included "times when possible to contribute," but that knife cuts both ways. The pitcher, of course, doesn't contribute on offense and also doesn't account for the plays his defenders make. So if Brady goes from 90% to 40%, the ace goes from 25% to 10%.

QUOTE (JUSTgottaBELIEVE @ Oct 11, 2016 -> 02:09 PM) Strongly disagree. Hitting ahead of or behind other great hitters absolutely has an impact on one's performance. If JBJ is surrounded by a bunch of guys like JB Shuck (obv. extreme to make the point), you think he sees as many good pitches to hit as when he's surrounded by the Red Sox offense? Also, there are guys that just don't perform leading off or hitting at the top of the order and excel while batting in the lower part of the order. This is a similar effect to some relievers that are awesome at mid relief/setup but can't close. The mental aspect of baseball is a thing and devalued more and more in this new age of statistical analysis. Can't say much about the idea of the "mental aspect," but it's been proven time and time again that hitters aren't pitched significantly differently with or without "lineup protection." The only statistically significant difference is found for 8th hitters that hit before pitchers.

QUOTE (Harry Chappas @ Oct 11, 2016 -> 10:26 AM) In baseball you can lose playoff games in football you cannot. I think the comparison would be Brady playing the first three quarters of the super bowl or playoff game. It's not though -- that's what makes it non-intuitive, but it's important. You have to think about it as the percentage of time that the player is contributing. Brady contributes to the Patriots 80-90% of the time the team is on the field, and the rest is most garbage time. An ace contributes 20-25% of the time in the season, and maybe 30% during the season.

QUOTE (Reddy @ Oct 10, 2016 -> 12:29 AM) I mean, a low BABIP is indicative of bad luck, but I'll take your anecdotal evidence into consideration. The point he's making is that luck is only one factor of BABIP.

QUOTE (Lillian @ Oct 11, 2016 -> 05:40 AM) In further researching this question, I can't seem to find the answer. WAR is calculated over an entire season. If a pitcher only appears in approximately 20% of the games, yet is able to produce the same wins over replacement as a position player, that would seem to indicate that he is much more valuable, in any given single game. That is consistent with everything else, which we know about the game, i.e.; "pitching is 80% of the game" and "Good pitching will always stop good hitting". Therefore, as I said in my previous post; A starter like Sale is much more valuable and critical, in a single post season game, than a player like Jackie Bradley Jr., even though they have approximately the same WAR. Could someone please clarify this for me? You're correct that a starter (typically) has more impact than a position player in a single game, but that's not what they were arguing about. One guy said "Sale is worth way more than JBJ," and another guy said "actually their value is closer than you think," which (at least in 2016) is a true statement.

QUOTE (SouthSideSale @ Oct 11, 2016 -> 08:48 AM) A great pitcher can completely dominate a game like a great QB can dominate a game. They both can carry their teams. s*** just look at that Royals Giants World Series with MadBum. Yes, and MadBum pitched in 2.5 of the 7 games. He pitched 21 of the 63 innings. Despite a historic performance and atypical overuse due to desperation, Bumgarner was only involved in one-third of the innings in that series. That would be like if Tom Brady could on play in the first quarter and a half of the Super Bowl. And when you think about the rest of the year, it's even less. Bumgarner made 33 starts in 2014, which is 20% of the teams 162 games. What if Tom Brady only played in 3.25 games every season? It just doesn't add up. It's no knock on MadBum or Chris Sale, it's just a fact that we fans have to accept. As sexy as an ace is, one player simply cannot dominate in baseball the way a QB or NBA star can, and that informs the prices that teams are going to pay.

QUOTE (SouthSideSale @ Oct 10, 2016 -> 08:48 PM) Tell that to Madison Bumgarner in the playoffs Now if only he could play every day, you might have a argument.

QUOTE (SouthSideSale @ Oct 10, 2016 -> 03:20 PM) Chris Sale's value due to his contract is the equivalent to a franchise QB on a cheap deal in the NFL. This is not true. Even Trout isn't worth a franchise QB. Baseball players simply do not have the same degree of impact individually.

Flowers blows. Navarro/Avila didn't work out, but if we were trying to compete, it was worth rolling the dice.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 4, 2016 -> 03:28 PM) My job of course now is to note is how flawed this approach is at building a contender even when you have an example of a player where it worked. It's great for a rebuilding team. You have 5-6 slots on your team that are open and staffed by players who aren't big league quality. You try to bring in 5-6 guys hoping that a few of them will work out - most of the time you will get unlucky. Most of the times you try to sign someone they will underperform - Avila, Jackson, Navarro, Latos. One of the 5-6 signings winds up working out and you're stuck in August complaining about how many slots on your team are taken up by guys who don't belong in the big leagues. When you need to fill 1-2 spots, you have some probability of getting lucky overall. You go out and sign Desmond and he puts up a 3 WAR season (note - this is solid, but still not like stealing an MVP for nothing). You hold onto Fowler and he puts up a dominant season. But in both of those cases these were basically the last guy on that team - the Cubs were, last offseason, in a position where if Fowler put up a 2 WAR season they were still solid on paper because Heyward in RF and Schwarber in LF were going to put up strong numbers, and if they didn't they had enough depth to make up for that. They got lucky on Fowler but they were able to do that because they didn't have to gamble on filling 5-6 positions this way. Finding these guys is a great rebuilding strategy. You sign 5-6 guys off the scrap heap and if 1-2 of them have great seasons then you have an asset you can get a draft pick for, or an asset you can trade at the deadline, or even hold onto if they have multiple years of control remaining. But when you are trying to build 40% of your competitive lineup/rotation with those guys, you better know how you're going to win if 33% of your starting lineup is gone by the end of may. Ahh, should have read this before my last post.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 4, 2016 -> 03:15 PM) It is funny that Rollins/Latos/Jackson gets brought out, but Miguel Gonzalez is never included in that, despite the fact he was the exact same sort of signing. The difference is that he worked out so it doesn't fit. Well, that's kind of the point: 1 in 4 worked out. And that's totally fine with reclamation projects -- you throw a bunch at the wall and when one works, it justifies the cost of the most that didn't. But that's a building strategy, not an immediate contention strategy. My issue isn't with either strategy, it's that Hahn seemed to have gone half one way and half the other, which is a recipe for doing neither particularly well.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 3, 2016 -> 07:21 PM) "One big name player is the difference between winning 76 and 89 games". The Rick Hahn era summed up right there. One big name player may not be worth 13 wins, but it certainly could have been worth 5 wins. Most of the rest, unfortunately, could have been made up if player's did what they were expected to do. We expected two more wins each out of Frazier and Abreu, for example, and probably 1.5 out of the catching tandem. Maybe another win out of Lawrie. The fact that guys disappointed shouldn't shock anyone -- it happens all the time. Our guys simply didn't get it done. There's always a winner and a loser, and you can end up losing even if your team had the talent to win. The center of the evaluation of the FO, IMO, should be on whether or not the team even had enough talent to win in the first place. I think Hahn DID come into spring training one or two good players short, and I think many of us agree that was obvious even without the benefit of hindsight. TO me, that's just Hahn admitting that he f***ed up settling for Rollins/Jackson instead of Desmond/Cespedes. And I think he's right. It may still not have been enough given down years from a few guys, but it probably would have been a team that legitimately had a shot.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Oct 3, 2016 -> 06:24 PM) Honestly, I hated the Shields mess, but other than that, these signings people are complaining about really had very little impact on the course of the season. Rollins/Latos...they were not players who made a significant impact either way. The catching solution was pretty rotten, but most people on here seemed to think it was a great idea. Flowers was not a loss that anyone mourned. So we should have signed Desmond...but honestly, how was anyone to know he would have the best first half of his career? Our issues are a lack of position player development and a failure to establish a winning culture at the mlb level. I don't fault the FO as much as I do the coaching staff and Mr. Bell. The issue was that they made some high profile investments in talent to the end of creating an immediate winner, but left some gaping holes on the roster despite the fact that there were affordable (in a relative sense) solutions readily available to fill those exact holes. Desmond was an obvious one, but the three elite OFers (and arguably Dexter Fowler) were another. Yes, the prices that the Sox would have had to pay would have been greater than what teams ultimately got them for, but aside from Upton, all of them were signed for substantially less than market norms would have suggested. So, if you're going to dump real talent for 2 years of Frazier and 2 years of Lawrie, if you're going to replace your internally popular catcher with a aging, short-term platoon (which, theoretically, should have been a substantial short-term improvement), why not also take low-hanging fruit and finish the job? Alone, Rollins/Latos/Jackson were not bad signings -- they were shots in the dark to try to find bouncebacks, and good teams find tremendous value out of those types of diamonds in the rough every season. The issue was that they were signed to be relied upon, when there were CLEARLY better and more reliable options available. And while those options were substantially more expensive, they were available for great deals in terms of recent market history.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Oct 4, 2016 -> 07:24 AM) There are a handful of posters who think Robin is the primary reason for our recent failures, but they are few and far between.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Oct 3, 2016 -> 05:23 PM) Just as irrational as believing he had no impact on our team's results. Which is something I've never claimed. But even if I had, it would be much closer to truth than the way he was treated on here.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Oct 3, 2016 -> 10:21 AM) Speaking of Desmond, he basically was Jimmy Rollins in the second half. He would have helped the first half, but his second half collapse would most assuredly not led the Sox to the playoffs, and Robin would be blamed for a choke. That may be true, but it wouldn't change the fact that it still would have been a good, defensible gamble, and one that would have fit into the strategy laid out in the first half of the offseason.