Eminor3rd

AL CY, I believe, is Felix's to lose. If he gets roughed up for a few starts and Sale stays good, I think Sale has a real shot.

QUOTE (Andy the Clown @ Jul 28, 2014 -> 01:10 AM) "John Danks is bad. He's not worth anything, even if the White Sox pick up almost all of the contract." -Dave Cameron on 7/23/14 I think that was his response to my comment asking about Danks' maximum trade value

So Robin is the worst manager ever because he didn't save Moises Sierra for a pinch hitting situation. Moises Sierra, who has a 47 wRC+ this season, 60 wRC+ against lefties. De Aza is having a really bad year, but in his career vs. lefties he has an 85 wRC+. Was Sierra a better choice? Maybe, but you could argue either way. Regardless, it sounds like the difference between fighting a bear using a spork or a toothpick. Given the relatively even odds of failure with each batter at the plate, is it not at least defensible to at least make sure the runner on second would score on a base hit? At least there's a significant difference between Sierra and Konerko on the basepaths -- I'm not sure there really was one between De Aza and Sierra at the plate. At the end of the day, the team had a runner on third with no outs and couldn't manage to tie the game. A complete failure of the players on the field.

Lol, best record in baseball without Robin. Jesus

Not much to worry about -- the guys we'd trade aren't worth hardly anything anyway.

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2014/07/rays...assignment.html He's been hit around a touch, but looking at his pripherals, his problem is that he's been walking way more dudes than at any other point in his career. I believe that he'll either regress or that Coop can tweak his mechanics to give him his old control back. Why? Because you gotsta believe. He's a pending FA on little money, so I says we tries to fixes him then resigns him.

Contemplating the 4 hour drive each way. All the hotels are booked or I'd drive up tonight. Eh, that's a long time in the car.

I don't think there's much of an argument that Sale is better than Felix at the moment.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jul 26, 2014 -> 12:45 AM) Wasn't a joke. He gets an A-minus? Whoever does that metric thinks Beckham is valuable. Same if it's a B-plus. I believe Beckham is a lousy offensive ballplayer. So it's the metric which says he's good vs. greg who says he is not good. I think most fans would agree with me. Greg.

What we're learning tonight is that Kevin Correa is worse than John Danks.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jul 25, 2014 -> 01:48 PM) hush your large hippo mouth

QUOTE (Feeky Magee @ Jul 25, 2014 -> 05:32 PM) Beckham rates as an A- on the Advanced Stats Grading Scale (ASGS) However, if he keeps on hitting like he is, he's heading straight for a B+ in the minds of the advanced stats gurus I prefer ASGS+, because it's shift-adjusted, factors in pitch framing, and strips away all of a hitter's credit for run production and replaces it with "intended run production" and then redistributes all events randomly, pretending that all players would have acted like average players. And then they review every play with replay and give out the MVP by WAR.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jul 25, 2014 -> 12:58 PM) Those of us advanced stat haters laugh again. If there are advanced stats that say Beckham is anything but a C-minus grade type player then I say, cmon. All you do is have to watch the games and track season after season to know Beckham is lousy. I mean are we all in agreement Beckham is a C or D player? He's no A or B. Your reading comprehension has not been strong today, friend.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/page/frankt...ll-fame-tribute

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 25, 2014 -> 01:21 PM) They don't have to collapse is what I'm saying. If the Sox had one of those 25-5 streaks in them they had in 2010, they probably are in. The 2010 team was like this team except for that streak. They were 6 under without that streak. The problem is, the Sox don't have a roster where you can anticipate a real hot run even for 12-15 games, and really don't have pieces that are worth trading for an upgrade that probably still doesn't get them there. I don't think leapfrogging 6 or 8 teams if there is a 5 game difference right now, that big of a deal. The problem is, at least so far on the field and on paper, the Sox roster is probably worse than the teams it would have to jump over, and upgrading the bullpen is going to be tough, unless they are willing to do something that is probably stupid. We're splitting hairs, and I agree with your point about this team not being built well for a streak of sustained winning -- but the amount of teams they have to "beat" increases the quality of "hot streak" required in order to ensure victory in the absence of 6 "collapses" of the other teams. Sure, a 25-5 streak would put them ahead of the expected performances of all 6 teams, but the 25-5 streak is so astronomically unlikely, that it's a wash. If they only had to get over, say, two teams, then the "hot streak" would maybe "only" have to be something like 20-10 to get in, because we'd already have a better record than so many of the other contenders.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jul 25, 2014 -> 02:31 PM) I see a lot of hating on Dunn, but little about the actual deal. People simply say it made sense at the time. Do you deny this? I'd say a majority of the posts on Danks mention getting "rid of him now" and disdain about the money he makes and wanting to free it up. I don't mind Danks at all. I think he's had a fine season. He's the least of the Sox problems. Sale, Danks and Q are a great 3/5s of a rotation I think. After the performance last night you wonder why Sox aren't winning more with 4/5s of it sometimes doing well. Yes, the Dunn deal DID make sense at the time. He was one of the most consistent players in the entire league who just so happened to possess a skillset that filled a gaping hole in what looked like a team that was about one gaping hole away from being a real contender. Careful analysis of his performance leading up to the deal show a remarkably stable and predictable career arc that saw him one to two years into a gradual decline that would see him as a market-rate value upfront and acceptably overpaid at the end of his contract. There was no way at all to predict the ~1% mental, fall-off-a-cliff, total collapse scenario that ensued, and frankly, if our front office made its decisions based on fear of flukey outcomes like Dunn's, you'd be posting livid every day calling for their heads for never "going for it."

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jul 25, 2014 -> 02:32 PM) Why? In football they celebrate the mega deals, but the minute the player sucks they can cut him loose the following season. Also, the teams all pretty much have a shot at the playoffs if they are not complete buffoons in the front office. Baseball there's all this wasted money floating out there. Yeah, it's awesome how the NFL takes young people, pays them to run into each other headfirst at full speed for like three years, and then then kicks them to the curb after they start showing symptoms of permanent disability, leaving them to fend for themselves without any career skills as they deal with worsening symptoms of chronic brain damage.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jul 25, 2014 -> 01:55 PM) Just another guy teams sign and ultimately want to get rid of to save the money. Here's a helpful hint: DONT SIGN THEM TO THESE TYPE CONTRACTS IN THE FIRST PLACE! Damn, I wish baseball had the same system as football. Most baseball players would be out on their butts two years after signing their mega deals. Teams almost always regret the deals shortly after the player signs them. How the hell did the NFL pull that off with its players union? Wow. The MLB Player's Association is one of the strongest labor unions in the country. The NFL union has buckled to strikes twice in the past 30 years and lost a ton of leverage as a result.

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Jul 25, 2014 -> 01:24 PM) May be Danks' final start with us I doubt it

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 25, 2014 -> 01:02 PM) Not with this bullpen, but only 4 teams in baseball have done better than 6-4 their last 10 games. If you go on a streak, you can leapfrog several teams quickly. I don't think the Sox have the horses for a big streak, but maybe beating the crap out of the Twins 4 times can start something. Right but what are the chances that they all continue to choke? For us to get in, an entire series of very specific events must occur, all of them individually plausible but not particularly likely: Sox go on winning streak Team 1 collapses Team 2 collapses Team 3 collapses Team 4 collapses Team 5 collapses Team 6 collapses If even one of those things doesn't happen, we're not in. Even if you give each one 50/50 odds, the chance that all occur is 1.5%. That's super rough math, of course, but I use it just to illustrate how important the number of teams ahead are. Each team ahead of us essentially halves our chances another time over. The actual projections you can find online take ROS season projections into account to be more accurate, and paint us around 3% or so, also accounting for the nonzero chance we'll win the division.

The play-in game might as well be 50/50. Jumping 6-8 teams to get there? Nope.

Ryan Howard is terrible. He is worse than Dunn, and we already have Konerko. To take the "fat chick" analogy further: You have to be specifically IN to fat chicks to even look at Ryan Howard.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Jul 25, 2014 -> 09:53 AM) Ignore salaries for a minute. Who is most likely to be the most productive hitter between now and the end of the 2016 season: Ryan Howard Adam Dunn Andy Wilkins Dunn, easily.

QUOTE (chisoxfan310 @ Jul 24, 2014 -> 09:26 PM) Yankees are talking to Padres and Rockies about Kennedy and de La Rosa. Hope talks can heat up with us. Both those guys are substantially more desirable options. Danks would be the emergency consolation prize

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jul 24, 2014 -> 06:23 PM) Who is more likely to do that in a development season? Players playing out the string and waiting for next year or retirement, like a Peavy/Rios/Dunn/Konerko....or guys with the fire to play like Eaton, Garcia or maybe even an Andy Wilkins who has a ton of skeptics to prove wrong. Obviously, Beckham/DeAza/Ramirez/Flowers...and even Viciedo at this stage...are what they are. How does continuing to run them out there everyday not contribute to that same s***ty environment? If the major argument is trying to maximize their trade value, fine. But that's not exactly leading to a healthy environment for a team. either. This was never going to be a year of stability/consistency/cohesiveness (especially the bullpen). Going into 2014, it looked like we had 5-6 positions that would be changing before 2015. The only thing that's changed about that scenario is Conor is sticking so far at 3B, and Viciedo's on the way out (with major questions now about Davidson, E. Johnson and Semien). A.Garcia got hurt and Abreu/Eaton (arguably) have proven themselves. Then you have Alexei. Everything else is in flux, other than Sale/Quintana at the top of the rotation. Yeah, if we could simply choose to have all good players instead of bad players, we would do that and not be having this discussion at all. But giving Danks' starts to Matt Zaleski or whatever is going to significantly worsen the team's ability to take itself seriously. And there's just so little we're going to get in return. We're not going to get decent prospects for a 4 ERA soft tosser with bad peripherals who is owed $38m over 2 and a half seasons. We're just not.