Eminor3rd

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.

And now that the Yankees just picked up Capuano for free, they are even less likely to pay Danks.

QUOTE (TheFutureIsNear @ Jul 24, 2014 -> 05:51 PM) What disaster? We lose 90 games instead of 86 and subsequently get a higher pick? Sounds downright horrible. For the players and their development. Too many people pretend like player's aren't affected by a s***ty environment. It's about managing to put together an environment where the players can semble some sort of argument in their heads that they should put in their work every day and try to win. Getting us salary relief that we don't currently need to sign some overpriced player from a weak free agent class to ANOTHER bad contract isn't worth frustrating the guys you are trying to develop into a "core."

QUOTE (TheFutureIsNear @ Jul 24, 2014 -> 01:21 PM) If you're being honest with yourself John Danks is not going to be a factor in whether we can compete for a world series again relatively soon. The shoulder injury turned him into a pretty average pitcher that is replaceable at a much lower cost. If someone is willing to take the contract let them as far as I'm concerned. Free up the money and you never know what could happen, it's not like this franchise has shied away from acquiring high cost players in the past. Who cares who our 4th starter is for the rest of the year when we aren't making the playoffs anyway? I believe that there is value in not having a rotation in shambles. Danks helps stabilize what could very easily be a disaster of a rotation with no obvious candidates to step up.

When it rains

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ Jul 24, 2014 -> 03:46 PM) Cubano is back! I'm on board with any of the Cuban players really. They're just smarter it seems, they know the game better from playing competitively. And some of the athletes over there are just awesome. If Rusney is a legit top end athlete who knows the game and plays it well... f*** the lefty/righty crap, just sign him. Probably will be pretty expensive though. I think it's less about them being "smarter" in general and more about the fact that it's the cream of the crop that leaves to come over here. I have no problem compiling talent regardless of type, but if the price is painful, Hahn's comments make more sense. Sure, we'd add another right-handed CF type and be happy, but he becomes less of a fit if it's money that could be spent on a player-type that we need more.

Mariners acquire Kendry Morales, give up Stephen Pryor: http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2014/07/mari...ys-morales.html Seems to effectively eliminate possibility of Viciedo going to SEA.

Mariners acquire Kendry Morales for Stephen Pryor. Confusing

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jul 24, 2014 -> 07:31 AM) Trick question, the answer is always Lyle Mouton. ALWAYS

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 23, 2014 -> 03:48 PM) Chris Cotillo ‏@ChrisCotillo 24m Source: Sergio Santos accepted outright assignment to AAA Buffalo instead of electing free agency. #BlueJays Another case study for why we shouldn't fret about trading away good-not-great relievers. Whether due to injury or loss of effectiveness, they simply don't usually last long.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 23, 2014 -> 03:13 PM) What is round B? Is that like in between 1st and 2nd or in between 2nd and 3rd or something? Correct, between the 2nd and 3rd rounds.

His extension was such a HUGE move for Hahn.

QUOTE (Soxfest @ Jul 23, 2014 -> 03:05 PM) Hawk saying Trout does not have good plate coverage put the pipe down. lol, seriously.

I hate the Royals, man. Let's show them they suck.

I truly believe that if we move Danks, we're all going to be disappointed with the return. Unless moving his contract will truly open up the door to a big acquisition, I think he's more valuable to us as a relatively stable back-end rotation piece (in a rotation that includes Scott Carroll) than he is to any other team as a rotation plug. Trades are fun, but if I'm being honest with myself, I think we should just keep him.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 23, 2014 -> 11:14 AM) Beckham is bound to rebound at least a little bit. If someone picks him up for nothing and the Sox take on some money, they will get a bargain. Yeah, but "rebounding" to his career rates puts him at .246/.309/.378 (84 wRC+). Anyone can get hot, but Beckham is simply not a good ML baseball player.

I don' think anyone thinks we should GET Barney, I think Chisoxfn was just pointing out that there probably isn't anyone who would give up value for Beckham than just pick up Barney for free. Maybe Beckham is a bit better, but not nearly enough better to justify giving up real value when Barney costs nothing.

Just keep in mind, guys, that we're either going to get (1) tons of salary relief or (2) a couple decent prospects. It won't be both.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 21, 2014 -> 10:01 AM) I think there is a difference between foot speed and baserunning. Yes, he is inherently slow and that means he will clog the bases, however, does that mean he gets bad reads / jumps, etc? No, no necessary correlation there. These stats are pretty much completely worthless and obvious. I disagree strongly. Yes, we didn't need the metric to tell us that Konerko was slow, but we DO need the metric to help us quantify just how much his slowness hurts the team. Even if you don't believe in the context neutral run value, you at least now have a common denominator and can say "player X is substantially worse on the basepaths than player Y." As for being able to break it down to speed vs. reads and jumps: no, you can't separate the two with these metrics, but you also capture both of them combined. If a guy's speed "plays up" due to instincts, this metric will show it.