Eminor3rd

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Aug 30, 2014 -> 02:50 PM) If Victor Martinez gets a Qualifying Offer he will not be a White Sox. QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 30, 2014 -> 02:52 PM) Barring injury, the Tigers would be nuts to not give him a QO. Right, he DEFINITELY will. He's the perfect 1 year deal.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Aug 30, 2014 -> 11:58 AM) The other thing is Detroit will eventually become a cesspool of bad contracts to broken down players. The White Sox will hopefully be on an upswing. It may be next year. Unless Texas keeps bailing them out

I do not support this idea. He will not come for 2/20.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 29, 2014 -> 05:44 PM) isn't his beer terrible? It doesn't stand up to craft beers, but it's a notch above the typical sports-beer stuff like Bud Light. As long as he markets it to sports fans, I think he'll be alright. Especially if he gets a strong early push riding his HOF wave.

Personally, I'd love to move Alexei this offseason because I think there will be a good market for him. With Beckham out of the picture, I give Semien the inside track to the 2B job, Micah time to get back to health in AAA, and let Leury and Sanchez duke it out for the full-time job at SS. Both of those guys deserve a long look, IMO, and in the worst case scenario that neither of them hit at all, we at least know that Leury can hold it down defensively for 2015. Unfortunately for Saladino, he's got to play his way into a spot in Spring Training or hope that some injuries/ineffectiveness combine to give him a shot during the season. Ideally, he's full-time SS in Charlotte with Sanchez up at the big league level, giving Micah plenty of reps at 2B. If Davidson continues to struggle, Gillaspie regresses, and Micah performs, Semien can shift to 3B and when Micah is ready to take a stab at 2B. I'm not worried about Rondon at the moment -- he has plenty of learning to do on the offensive side.

Great content, as usual.

QUOTE (LDF @ Aug 29, 2014 -> 03:19 PM) a great post, hard to argue with, however I will go for my piece of mind. Ramirez and Gillaspie switch. Ramirez is and may be the better hitter with power being the value point. with that, that is my only point. I can argue with the right left and your opinion. Yeah, for sure, makes sense. I am personally just really, really into alternating handedness because of how good specialist relievers are these days. But that's just my opinion and I don't have a ton of evidence to suggest it's as important as I feel it is. Also, if we had a righty leadoff guy, I'd totally be on board with Gillaspie at #2.

QUOTE (LDF @ Aug 29, 2014 -> 03:01 PM) I am with Balta on his assessment. Conor does not have power and he can work the count, hence the perfect #2 hitter. Alexia should be a 4 or 5 hitter. question for you stat guys, does his "slash line" say so. if slash line is the right stat to use. There's evidence that the #5 hole is a great place for a high contact hitter with some propensity for doubles. I think that Alexei, at his best, is a great candidate for #5. From #4 though, I want more dingers. Most studies point to #4 being an even more important position for an all-around offensive threat than people think -- most people's idea of a perfect #3 hitter is usually a better #4 hitter. IMO, this lineup is best with Abreu at #4 and a lefty at #3. Assuming Eaton (L) at leadoff, that works out perfectly as Adam Dunn, with Conor at #5, thus sandwiching Abreu with Lefties and use Connor's "high contact and doubles" really well. In this scenario, I like Ramirez at #2 because of his right handed bat, though ideally we'd like a guy that gets on base more. L Eaton R Ramirez L Dunn R Abreu L Gillaspie ? ? ? ?

QUOTE (LDF @ Aug 29, 2014 -> 03:45 PM) If today what draft day and all being equal, who would be the first player taken, Matuella or Aiken? I think maybe Bickford, honestly.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 29, 2014 -> 02:54 PM) Nice write-up, and all good points. But I do think it is important to seperate the two concepts - ceiling and polish. They are a matrix. One can be high or low on either scale. If you don't allow for that, you box yourself in. For sure, let me clarify: I meant that "polish" and "low ceiling" tend to go hand in hand with prospects, not necessarily Major Leaguers. When high ceiling guys gain polish, they are ML stars, but when prospects get drafted already having polish, they tend to have lower ceilings.

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ Aug 29, 2014 -> 12:02 PM) Cameron was pretty down on another 2B named Robbie Cano and he turned out OK. Cameron famously said that Cano would be a "270/300/380 type with a butcher's glove at 2B". To be fair, almost no one thought Cano would be good.

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Aug 29, 2014 -> 11:56 AM) Listened to a Fangraphs Audio podcast, and Carson Cistulli brought up Marcus Semien as being "one of his guys", and Dave Cameron immediately shot him down saying he's terrible. Just thought I'd leave that here. Cistulli has been on Semien almost as soon as we all were. He always digs for guys with good plate discipline and tries to blow him up. I posted a bunch of Cistulli's stuff in Semien's AAP last year.

QUOTE (IlliniKrush @ Aug 29, 2014 -> 10:05 AM) That's the point. It's not that people didn't like Hawk before, but the time has come to move forward.

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ Aug 29, 2014 -> 12:40 PM) Cost of doing business these days. It's not like they can't just dump De Aza if Semien is raking or they bring in someone better. I don't think it should be plan A (plan A would be getting another stud young OF similar in upside to Avi) but as a backup plan it's not bad. Why don't you want Semien at 2B? If one of them has to move, Micah profiles much better in the OF because of his superior speed and inferior glovework.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 29, 2014 -> 06:52 AM) If DJ Stewart is that much more polished, that isn't a bad thing, it is a good thing. It only becomes a bad thing if his ceiling is notably lower than others they could draft. The issue is that "polish" and "low ceiling" tend to go hand-in-hand. Pray, indulge the following generalization: Player P and Player R have similar numbers, but they produce them in different ways. P has an advanced, polished approach to the game -- he works counts, he plays fundamental defense, etc. R, on the other hand, is extremely raw -- he's a free swinger who makes flashy plays but botches the routine from time to time. P succeeds through optimization, R succeeds through raw talent. Though they've been successful so far, they both hit a wall at AA and begin to struggle. Both being similarly humble, they each turn to their coaches for answers. R, now forced to learn the skills that were never necessary before, finds success after figuring out how to be more selective at the plate and committing himself to a healthy amount of extra reps on defense. P, however, has little left to learn. His coaches desperately try to tweak his swing mechanics and send him to a sports psychologist to teach him to meditate before games, but the only result is frustration and streakiness. Because there's simply nothing left for P to improve, he has reached his peak; P has risen as far as his talent can take him. Typically, "ceiling" is what happens if a player is able to put it all together; to become a master at all the skills required to play baseball. The trouble, of course, is that mastering those skills is far from automatic, hence high bust rates on intriguing athletes that are "risky." While the "safe" ones have little to figure out, they are also risky in the sense that it is incredibly difficult to predict how far their talent can take them. Since they have less to learn, they have a much smaller margin for error. Unless they are drafted as near ML ready, they necessarily have a lower ceiling. I think that the only guys that are both "safe" and have similar ceilings as the "risky" guys are the really obvious, really rare generational talent guys. Those are ones that have the game figured out but have tons of room to mature physically.

QUOTE (shysocks @ Aug 29, 2014 -> 08:45 AM) while Trout is having your run-of-the-mill great year. Wouldn't it be sad for Trout if people ended up thinking this way, and he never even ended up winning an MVP? Like he spent his breakout years being "OMG RBI'd" by Miguel Cabrera, and now that his competitor has faded, we're already used to his MVP-level greatness that we never gave him and MVP for, so he bores us too much to get one now.

QUOTE (oldsox @ Aug 29, 2014 -> 07:18 AM) Dunn's final acts of futility just add to the legacy of KW. Rios and Dunn. Terrible signings. Rios was fine, lol. Paid ~$46.2m for 9.6 fWAR, which works out to $4.8m/WAR, which is below market rate by any estimate. This board kills anyone who has a bad year.

QUOTE (BaconOnAStick @ Aug 28, 2014 -> 10:13 PM) Trout just doesn't have the bat. I went Felix. lol, this is actually hilarious. .291/.376/.561, 30 HR (166 wRC+)

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Aug 28, 2014 -> 10:01 PM) Someone please explain to me without using WAR why Trout supposedly has a huge lead over Abreu. Yes, he is a good baserunner and he fields well, but hitting is the biggest factor in MVP voting, and Abreu has more HR, RBI, and a much better AVG. You just explained it to yourself right there.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Aug 28, 2014 -> 03:20 PM) Weren't Montas and Rondon supposedly just toss in PTBNL types? (I know they weren't PTBNLs, but they were viewed as those "have one tool, let's take a look" guys) They were non-centerpiece prospects, but they weren't anonymous PTBNLs

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Aug 28, 2014 -> 02:17 PM) We're long past the time of dealing Viciedo. If you'd written this thread in 2012 and challenged everyone that a 23 year old coming of a 25 home run season as a rookie (and fielding better than average) was going to regress completely, and also based on how guys like Cespedes and then Puig were having such huge impacts, it wouldn't have seemed possible that Dayan would be the one huge swing and a miss of all the Cuban hitters signed so far, but he clearly has been. As well as they scouted Alexei and Abreu, they missed something this time around that's hard to pick up on in Serie Nacional video or controlled batting practices and "showcases" for scouts. The other thing that everyone really fell in love with Viciedo was his arm strength. If not for that and his ability to drive the ball to the opposite field without much effort, we'd never have heard of him. Those are two tantalizing aspects that don't overcompensate for the lack of walks, the overswinging, the missing of way too many hittable pitches in the zone, the double play balls and numerous defensive lapses, the difficult hitting RHP and just in general hitting pitchers with great stuff (above 93 MPH) up in the zone. As with Crain and Floyd last year, almost every single player that was on the borderline this year has fallen off to the point where they have zero or negligible trade value, except for Alexei Ramirez, who we can't trade if we actually want to compete before 2017. I suppose they could use their magic 8 ball to know Gillaspie, Noesi and Putnam will regress next year, but all three of those "success stories" are likely to be back in Chicago next season for different reasons. Viciedo's failure was not hard so see during that 25 homer season -- the 25 HR number was literally the only positive hitting data point he had. It's a hell of a feat to hit 25 homers and still have a below average offensive season, but he did. It absolutely screamed fluke, and when you dug into his plate discipline peripherals, it looked even worse.

I agree on Dayan. I think he's always going be tantalizing crappy. I have felt this way for years and will continue to stand by it. I don't if it's approach, pitch recognition, immaturity, folding under pressure, etc., but the fact is the dude can rip but he can't hit. He's not a hitter, and he has shown zero evidence of being able to get better. No adjustments at all, just hot streaks and much more common cold ones. Semien's issue, to me, is that he isn't good enough (yet) to hit with two strikes at the ML level. His ML K rate is super high and his ML BB rate is super low, but both with O-swing (how much he swings at bad pitches) and his contact rate are really high -- above ML average. Marrying that data with what I saw from him, it looked like he's taken an advanced approach to the big leagues but he is simply overmatched on those two-strike put away pitches. He's too good for minor league scrubs, but those big league sliders and changeups are just too much. In time, I think Semien will get better at both shortening his stroke in order to make contact with that nasty stuff and laying off those pitches entirely. His body needs to reset it's expectation of what it's capable of doing. The higher contact approach will see him hit fewer HRs than he did on the minors, but I think his walk rate can be carried over.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 28, 2014 -> 11:33 AM) Lyle Mouton.

If Dunn moves, it's "cash considerations or PTBNL." So I caution, if you want Dunn to move, be prepared to accept that the best thing that will happen is someone else gets PT.

lol