Eminor3rd

It has, indeed, been ugly. Fortunately, regression works both ways. If they can manage to not sink themselves while they're all simultaneously slumping, then they've got a shot to get back in it when the pendulum swings the other way.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ May 10, 2015 -> 03:23 PM) Beckham making contact against Chapman....never saw that coming. No joke. Before that pitch, I literally said out loud to myself, "Welp, just throw that 101mph fastball chest high and he's done." I know nothing.

QUOTE (Feeky Magee @ May 10, 2015 -> 07:55 PM) 6/75? Might as well spit in his face. OP is Beckham-hating scum. Srsly. If you really want him, you can't insult him with your opening bid. Look what the Red Sox did to Lester -- and he;s worth maybe half what Beckham would command on the open market right now.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 10, 2015 -> 03:44 PM) LaRoche has an OBP about .355. And a SLG of .341, good for a below league average wRC+ overall. OBP overrates base-clogging singles hitters. Study came out about a year ago that identified the misperceived value of walks/singles for slow dudes.

This makes no sense at all. Abreu would be terrible over there and LaRoche isn't hitting anyway.

Adam Eaton BABIPs low for a month and everyone wants freaking Hector Santiago back, Jesus.

QUOTE (StRoostifer @ May 8, 2015 -> 10:46 AM) Marquis vs Noesi on a warm humid night has high scoring game written all over it. Hope the Sox can out slug Cinci tonight. Came in to say the same thing -- this should be a night for homers.

QUOTE (LDF @ May 8, 2015 -> 09:07 AM) i am as superstitious as you can imagine. but it is not me, its is one of those situations. no team is going to win every single game. things happen. it is aggravating when a team looses b/c of lack of attention, or coaching, or effort. that is what i saw last week and before. the monkey is off their back, build on the good things, but not all things will be good. Exactly

QUOTE (greg775 @ May 8, 2015 -> 12:37 AM) I hate to say it and won't just yet, but soon I may be saying, "Eaton blows." Man he is off to a horrific start. Dumb to wear the unis 3 days in a row. Dumb. More symptoms of Team Dysfunction. Like the unis had anything to do with the wins. Wear em two days and the other ones the third. Show some confidence. There's never sense of urgency. Thanx for that s*** at bat, Lexi. This should be on a poster for "damned if you do, damned if you don't." You know damn well that if they swapped the uniforms out, everyone here would be spouting some BS about how changing the uni during a winning streak was stupid, players are superstitious, etc. If they don't matter, how could it be dumb to keep wearing them? And Alexei drilled one right down the line, if he had struck out in a full count, you know damn well you'd be complaining about how often the team strikes out and how you'd love to see some players get aggressive.

His K and BB rates are basically identical to his ML career -- the difference is that his BABIP is .243, and, as a result, his ISO is down. He needs for some balls to start finding holes. There's no better option at leadoff, we need to let him work out of it.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 7, 2015 -> 11:35 AM) South Side Sox ‏@SouthSideSox 39m39 minutes ago Tyler Flowers has been one of the best pitch framers in baseball so far this year, and he showed it Wednesday. http://www.southsidesox.com/2015/5/7/85642...d-what-he-could … Fixed the above. I hope it continues, but I don't think we should brand him with this skill quite yet. But hopefully we'll be able to do so soon -- he talks about how much he works on this stuff a ton in his interviews, so it stands to reason that we should see some improvement.

QUOTE (Swingandalongonetoleft @ May 7, 2015 -> 08:38 AM) Lobstein (2-2, 3.91 ERA) at Quintana (1-2, 5.28 ERA) 1:10, WGN v. You are gamethread maker of the year so far, easily.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 7, 2015 -> 09:51 AM) MLB Daily Dish ‏@mlbdailydish 1h1 hour ago Jarrod Saltalamacchia expected to sign with D-Backs http://sbnation.com/e/8329134?utm_campaign..._source=twitter … QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Apr 27, 2015 -> 05:21 PM) I'll be shocked if he lands anywhere other than Arizona, honestly. Yeah, this made way too much sense. No one was worse off then them at C.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 6, 2015 -> 01:46 PM) And that can be easily solved by firing the manager, and hiring a guy whose teams lost 99,96,96,92 games from 2011-2014 becoming the first Twins manager to be fired since the same season Hawk fired Tony LaRussa. I think that's exactly the point I was trying to make -- we had a hitting coach who said ridiculous things like "I want guys to expand their zone with runners on base," to a guy who came from the A's and says things like, "I need our hitters to be patient so that they force the pitcher to give them a good pitch to hit," and we've seen no real change in the results.

Have things really changed? The org is still a black hole when it comes to OBP.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 5, 2015 -> 01:43 PM) If Rick Hahn found another GM as high on Carlos Sanchez as a few here, he would be insane not to trade him. I've been #TeamSanchez since the start, not because I think he's amazing, but just because I think that a contending team should value floor over ceiling with its role players. Carlos Sanchez's bat isn't going to win us many games, but Micah Johnson's defense sure might lose a bunch. No question Johnson is the better prospect, but that doesn't mean he's the best fit for the 2015 team. But again, this isn't about the role players, it's about the stars. I can't get worked up for Johnson right now because, while it's true that he's sucking, I can't make an argument that it's losing games. The studs have to produce before it gets to the point where Micah Johnson's failure becomes relevant.

I love Jeff Shamuljaja and his boundless ERA.

QUOTE (shysocks @ May 5, 2015 -> 08:41 AM) It all burned down when we played the Orioles... hire Ozzie and a hooker. Did I get that right? I think it's just "Fire Robin; Hire Ozzie"

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ May 4, 2015 -> 09:33 PM) Because believing the players are all terrible (getting worse) or than Hahn made a slew of mistakes (other than Robertson) is just too terrible to contemplate. It's psychology 101. We want to believe that a new manager could come in (just like 2012) and instantly make this team competitive again. Otherwise, we're talking about another half decade of struggles/irrelevance, new GM, etc. The most likely scenario is simply that the players have been playing like s***, because history tells us that players often, for no good reason, play like s***. The good news is that those players will probably stop playing like s*** at some point soonish, but the bad news is that we still have all these losses in the bank. But yeah, you're right -- the manager seems like the scapegoat that's the easiest to remove, and since we don't really have any idea how to tell what type of impact the manager is having, we can find hope in the fact that no one can prove that it ISN'T him. Therefore, RV is an easy target.

QUOTE (LDF @ May 4, 2015 -> 03:41 PM) nice.... very nice. one question, re the bold, wouldn't that be the managers of the team's job?? Possibly. But we don't know, really. It could be a result of poor team prep on the manager's side, or it could just be that those guys are sucking. That's why I've always stayed off the "FIRE RV" bandwagon -- I don't like to draw conclusions without evidence to believe them. Just because it's plausible doesn't mean it's any more likely than any other outcome. I prefer to blame the players, because I KNOW that they can affect their own performance and preparation.

QUOTE (fathom @ May 4, 2015 -> 02:57 PM) Better question is what has Hahn put on the field to not show that he sucks at his job? I absolutely don't think he sucks, but so far, the results under his tenure have been terrible with very little progress being shown in multiple areas. Right but the on-field product sucks because Sale/Abreu/etc. have sucked. If you're going to blame Hahn for this 8-14 start or whatever it is, you have to blame him for relying on those guys. I don't think ANY of us are ready to say that Hahn shouldn't have relied on Sale/Abreu/Eaton/Samardzija to put up good numbers. If those guys would have had an April like we all expected and we were STILL 8-14, then you'd HAVE to blame Hahn for not putting enough depth on the field and letting the scrubs drag everyone down. Right now, you HAVE to blame the players. Or you can blame the coaching staff if you believe that they didn't do enough to prepare the players, but I always hate to make an assumption like that based on no evidence.

I know I said this once before already (and ss2k5 is saying it, too), but I think it needs to be reiterated: This team's abject failure (so far) is NOT due to poor roster construction/spending on the bullpen/Melky Cabrera, it's due to ALL the players playing poorly. The issue isn't whether or not we could handle carrying Micah Johnson and Connor Gillaspie, it's that we could NOT handle disappointing/mediocre/bad versions of Abreu, Sale, Samardzija, Quintana, Eaton, etc. The whole thing was only ever going to work out if we assumed those guys' star performances were in the bank. I don't blame Rick Hahn for those guys being bad. And since those guys HAVE been bad, I can't form an intelligent opinion on whether or not carrying Tyler Flowers was a significant transgression in the end.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 4, 2015 -> 12:25 PM) Then why isn't he saying the AL West race is over. The 2001 White Sox, after losing Frank Thomas and David Wells, finished the season 83-79 with Jerry Manuel at the helm. On May 5th, they were 8-19 11.5 games out. Granted they didn't win, if they playoffs were set up then like they are now, they missed by 2 games, but too much is made out of this doom and gloom. I'm guessing because the team that's ahead is universally considered to have much less talent than the teams behind. The opposite is true for us against KC/DET. Also it was a article on the White Sox, I'm sure he'll get around to the West. As for the rest of the year: yeah, it's possible. They could come back. But again, it isn't likely, and I don't think it's ridiculous to suggest that the Sox may want to be early sellers. Now, "early sellers" still isn't until mid-June, realistically, so maybe it's pointless to talk about now, sure.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 4, 2015 -> 11:51 AM) Considering Cameron pretty much runs fangraphs which likes to mention sample size from time to time, I find it odd he can come to total conclusions based on 24 games of role player performance. I don't think his point is that the team is this bad, but rather that the team has dug themselves into a hole that requires an exceptional performance to get out of, and that he doesn't think the team is capable of such a performance. That's a reasonable claim, I think. I mean obviously all of us are going to hold out for a magic run because, as you said, it's not reasonable to expect ALL of our players to blow this hard, but his larger game theory point is an interesting one: if you think you're out of it, do you take advantage of the small market and sell early?

The thing about this year isn't that the team had holes like the projections said, it's that even the GOOD players have sucked. Aside from health, this season almost could not have gone worse than it has. It's just a frustrating pile of crap and Cameron's probably right that it's already too big a hole to dig out from, considering that we just happen to be in a division with the two top teams in the AL so far.