Eminor3rd

I chose the position player, but it hurt to do it. Bottom line is that Sale is a pitcher and because he is a pitcher he could blow up at literally any minute. That's the only reason to choose Abreu.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Aug 4, 2014 -> 02:07 PM) When should the Sox get the go ahead to build a good bullpen? Maybe as soon as next year. Last year, he rightfully spent the whole offseason upgrading the offense first, and did a goddamn good job of it. If he hadn't, we wouldn't be in pseudo-contention in the first place and this would be a moot point. You guys are taking a season that went WAY better than expected and turning it into a BAD thing somehow. I'm not going to pissed at Hahn because he managed to turn the team around so quickly but fell short of a damn world championship, lol.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Aug 4, 2014 -> 01:55 PM) Hahn knew there was trouble in spring training, when he started claiming waived guys and signing released guys to minor league deals. There has been so much crap in the White Sox bullpen this season we won't remember half of their names in a couple of years. Again, 63-99 doesn't get fixed in one fell swoop. Relief pitchers are notoriously volatile from year to year; it's stupid to build a bullpen that you hope to stay together for several years. This was simply not the year to invest in the bullpen, and it shouldn't have been.

If anyone expected our front office to invest substantial resources in assuring that we had a contender-level bullpen, you haven't been paying much attention to this team over the past 12 months. Sometimes when you take a bunch of shots in the dark, they all miss. This shouldn't be surprising anyone. I don't like it any more than anyone else does, but they FO had a plan that made sense, ownership approved it, and they're following through. You can choose to feel bad about the fact that the offense was better than expected, but I choose to see it as a good thing. This team has stepped up to the point where we may be able to consider ourselves in contention as early as next season. That's fantastic news for a team that went 63-99 just last year.

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ Aug 4, 2014 -> 07:36 AM) Plan on what exactly ? I'm only saying he has the tools to be great like a lot of guys do but so few actually ever realize. I know he has more upside at this point than either De Aza or Tank but isn't getting the same chance . Get the guy some AB's . He's more important to the future of the Sox at this point than is De Aza . I know Robin want's to win games and put what he thinks is the best lineup out there nearly every day but the guy can run, throw, defend, hit and potentially hit for power. That's more potential and tools than either De Aza or Tank has and his AB's should reflect that because I fear when Avi comes back he will be riding the pine even more than he does now. And De Aza will be gone next year, and he'll get his shot. EDIT: Hopefully Viciedo is gone too.

QUOTE (sin city sox fan @ Aug 3, 2014 -> 04:14 PM) This man has got to go. He's absolutely destroyed the confidence of every member of our bullpen. lol what?

I don't think we should plan on it. Regardless, he could be a good 4th OF piece for us for the next couple years, and that's not insignificant.

QUOTE (hi8is @ Jul 31, 2014 -> 10:55 PM) Today, Rodon took a massive poop. Word is that it included white corn kernels. BUST

From the standpoint of roster construction: when you acquire players, you are acquiring probabilities. That is, each player comes with a range of potential outcomes for each appearance and, by extension, each season. A GM has to make an assessment about what the most likely outcome is for each player he has, weigh the chances of a substantially better or worse outcome, and decide whether or not he is comfortable with said probability holding down the role he has in mind. What we're witnessing is close to the worst possible outcome of this bullpen. Just one pitcher is pitching near what was probably projected as an expected performance. The top two pieces were injured for nearly the entire season, two more pieces pitching close to as poorly as they could realistically be expected to pitch, and the rest pitching below expectations to the point that should have been realistically expected. To me, it doesn't look like there were any surefire signs that these guys were to going to pitch worse than normally (injury, decline), so I chalk this up to bad luck from Hahn's point of view. I don't think there's anything wrong with the process, I think it was just a rough year. I'd expect him to approach building next year's bullpen in a similar fashion, and I'd be pretty happy with him doing so. I certainly wouldn't want him to panic and start paying steeply for Proven Closers™ who have shown to be, at best, BARELY more reliable than a random live arm in terms of sustained effectiveness over several years.

I can't believe they didn't fold the tarp in the accordion style. You don't have to run back at all when you do it right.

TBH, it might as well be any of these guys. Hahn will take a flyer on the ones the staff likes the best and hopefully they'll work out better than they did this year.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Aug 2, 2014 -> 02:07 PM) Some of their high-quality former staffers have been pilfered by MLB teams...another reason. I think Callis has also gotten a little bit distracted by all of his TV work, and the majority of his questions are from fans of teams like the Cubs, Red Sox and Yankees...and then, finally, the White Sox system has been down for so long it's taking time for it to be taken seriously again. Until someone like Ravelo ends up producing (similar to a Gillaspie) at the major league level, there's still going to be that natural skepticism about our hitting prospects. Right, but as other have pointed out, there's just not a single argument that Ravelo is below Barnum. It really seems like he just doesn't even know about Ravelo, not that he's skeptical about him. I know it's hard to keep up on these guys, but if you're MLBAM's official "prospect guy," you gotta find a way.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Aug 2, 2014 -> 04:03 PM) Yeah, i have never understood that. If Q and Danks started the first 2 games of a series, do people really believe that give a team a better shot of getting to Sale if he is pitching game 3? These guys have different stuff, different release points. If you have 5 solid starters and the all are lefty or all are righty, you are ahead of most. I can see how it might be theoretically "nice to have," but I can't imagine any legitimate component of the roster that wouldn't be a higher priority.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Aug 2, 2014 -> 01:05 PM) Butler is done. Age hit him and he has no HR power and like you said is very slow. And if he's only 6-8 million, he'll stay in KC for that.

QUOTE (Lillian @ Aug 2, 2014 -> 01:45 PM) Today at 1:31 PM The two biggest needs for the Sox next year are: 1) A middle of the order, left handed power bat, to protect Abreu. Without that protection, opposing teams would simply neutralize Jose's bat, by going around him. 2) A right handed starting pitcher, to balance the rotation, which is dominated by southpaws. It still seems unlikely that the Sox would keep a rotation consisting of the top 4 starters all being left handed. They will need at least a #2, or #3 to balance Sale, Quintana and Rodon. Even if Danks is not gone, a RHP has to be in front of his spot in the rotation. There's absolutely no way that making the rotation less left-handed is the second biggest need for this team.

Mayo is consistently terrible

QUOTE (Feeky Magee @ Aug 1, 2014 -> 04:58 PM) That's just flat-out wrong. I've said earlier that Saladino is cromulent at SS and probably above average elsewhere. He can also pinch-run. The point is that his bat is so much better than Leury that even if you think Leury edges him on defence (probably) and speed (definitely), the bat more than makes up for it. There's just no way to hit with a 20 wRC+ at the majors and provide positive value. Sure there is! You just have to be a pitcher. Hey, wait.... Leury pitched once!

He's definitely worth a claim, IMO.

QUOTE (Jake @ Aug 1, 2014 -> 02:57 PM) Eminor3d, when you say SS is the position our system is most likely to be able to replace...are you intentionally leaving out 2B? Because it's 2B Yeah, you're right. I guess I mean "middle infield." I'd rather replace Beckham than Alexei, but Alexei is the subject because he can actually be traded.

Two reasons: 1. Your team sucks and you cannot create talent out of thin air. You need to trade assets to get assets back. 2. There is no other position on the team where we have a better chance of someone working in our system as soon as next year So are you going to pretend that guys don't tend to get worse as they approach their mid-30's? What are you even talking about here? I said the team isn't good enough to make the playoffs with him now, meaning they need to think about the future.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Aug 1, 2014 -> 12:58 PM) Go back to your posts 2 years ago and last year. There is no way you thought he would be anywhere near as valuable this year. He doesn't have to go. There aren't a ton of guys the White Sox have ready to try the position. Face it, if the Sox thought Semien was a SS, he'd be playing SS everyday. If they thought Sanchez was a SS, he wouldn't have been playing 2B the past few years. Odds are very long either is an everyday calibur major league SS. The White Sox have basically conceded that. I mean I'm not going to go try to find posts from two years ago, but I know how I've always felt about him, and if I was advocating moving him, it was for the same reason as now, which is (1) guys that are 32 tend to begin getting worse and (2) our team is not good enough to get to the playoffs even with his contribution now. It's very simple, and really hardly personal to Alexei at all.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Aug 1, 2014 -> 02:13 PM) Yes, but I'm not suggesting calling guys up because they are hot. I am suggesting when you have the luxury of not having to call someone up who you are going to be calling up to carefully pick the time to call them up. When they aren't going well is not the best time to call them up. I mentioned Viciedo previously. He had already been with the White Sox and was obviously going to be back at some point. The Sox needed offense and he was on a crazy streak in Charlotte. They let him play it out. Eventually they called him up when he was struggling, and he struggled. He might have struggled anyway, but we all know when Tank is hot, he is hot. When you have the luxury to decide when, and often times you do not, do so when it makes sense. Maybe they have been hot for 4 days and that was how long it was going to last anyway, but so what, it's better than thinking they haven't hit in a week but they are due so bring them up to the next level. Seems to me if you are a candidate to be called up, there really is nothing major the organization is waiting for. It's a game of failure. It's hard enough to hit just getting called up. Semien also has to see his average up on scoreboards from what he did earlier. He's probably going to be pressing. I think he would be far better off coming up and using the "I've been hot and deserve this" vs. "they want to see what I can do". Especially when his first AB back he won't be able to avoid .218 posted everywhere in the stadium. I can get down with this

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Aug 1, 2014 -> 01:58 PM) A hot hand suggests you have figured things out. When you are slumping, there are problems. That's what I don't understand. That's where the disconnect is. I define "hot hand" and "figuring things out" as different things. Like, I'm a bad basketball player, but I play anyway because it's fun. Even though I'm bad, sometimes everything just clicks and I can bury shots from the perimeter for a while. It isn't just luck; I can feel my body in sync and it seems so simple to just put the ball in the basket. But it doesn't last -- that's what happens when I'm at my absolute best, but my physique hasn't improved, my mechanics haven't improved. I'm jsut "on." Everyone that plays long enough will be "on" from time to time. It's one of the beautiful and unpredictable things about sports. Conversely, I had a huge breakthrough when I was about fifteen and playing in a Fall Instructional Baseball league. I was in the cage with my coach and trying to get myself out of a slump wondering why I was barrelling everything up in practice but I couldn't make solid contact in the game. Then it hit me: the difference was that I was EXPECTING to hit every pitch in the cage, but I was wasting time evaluating the pitch before deciding to swing in the game. A conundrum. In my head then, I just switched it around: when seeing a pitch rather than deciding if it was good enough to swing at, I started deciding if it was good enough to TAKE. When the pitcher released the ball, I was expecting to hit that ball until I noticed something that proved otherwise. This let me get my mechanics in line quickly and allowed me to react to location much faster. It was a breakthrough and I immediately began to hit way better. That, to me, was an example of "figuring it out." I changed something that allowed my average performance level to rise. I could stiil get "hot" or "cold," but the mean of those performances changed because my skill level changed.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Aug 1, 2014 -> 01:53 PM) If all this information that none of us are privy to is needed for a call up, why are you just arguing with my view and not the others who want him called up? The White Sox haven't called him up. Wouldn't that suggest this information we cannot possibly have is saying don't call him up? I picked your post because I wanted to argue the point of using a hot or cold hand to decide. I have no opinion on whether or not he's ready.

QUOTE (JUSTgottaBELIEVE @ Aug 1, 2014 -> 01:49 PM) We'll agree to disagree because while you might not be able to predict the length of hot streaks, I do think there is a greater probability of a minor league callup experiencing immediate success at the major league level if he is coming in hot and confidence is high compared to struggling and confidence low. I'm with you on the confidence component, but as I explained in the post above, the success that comes before a promotion needs to borne of real change, NOT a hot hand. Success and confidence will accompany both real change and a hot hand, but only the former is a good recipe for continued success after a promotion.