Eminor3rd

Why do you all assume that we know more about our players than Major League front offices do? No one is going to be tricked here. They know what Reed is, they know what Crain is. If they believe Crain has changed, they'll want him. If they think it's luck, they won't. All the same applies to Reed. Their scouts will determine how they see our players, the market (how many buyers are interested) will dictate their costs.

I don't think you can send Reed to the Tigers. He's pre-arb. You don't want to give a direct competitor something that's going to hurt you for years down the line. They would have four years of control -- I expect us to be competitive again in 2 or 3. Now, Crain, that's fine. They can hurt us this year all they want, and Crain will a FA or a bad contract by next summer.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 21, 2013 -> 03:40 PM) IMO, there is zero reason to do this. The Sox have a ton of money coming off the books this offseason and a loaded pitching staff even if Peavy is dealt including a legit #1 starter. They need help to get there. They have hard decisions to make, but they can be competitive next year. And really, Trayce is still young, still raw, and I'm going to be furious when they call him up to AAA in a couple weeks. I think the team needs to be patient with him, let him have a full year in AA, then start next year in AAA and either earn a callup or come up if someone gets hurt. If Rios isn't dealt, there will be a need for an OF after 2014. Maybe more than 1, depending on De Aza's arb schedule and if/when they give up on Viciedo. I still think 2015 looks better. There's way more money off the books then, and some of our prospects should be useful. Plus, I think Konerko is done. That's production we've been taking for granted that must be replaced before this team can win, IMO.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 21, 2013 -> 03:18 PM) I think we're at a point where we have to trade some of these guys. Obviously Crain and Thornton must be moved, they're free agents at the end of the year assuming Matt's option isn't picked up, so the Sox can weigh the prospect received for them against "absolutely nothing". IMO, the fact that the Sox are sitting on six starters (successful alliteration) suggests that they should seriously think of selling someone like Peavy as well, as although he's not a FA at the end of this year, if they move any of their starters to the bullpen they will lose some value on that starter, which counts as an additional negative if no move is made. A guy like De Aza, Rios, Ramirez, guys we have no replacement for...those are the guys you need to really take into account the bust rate. You might get a guy back that the whole website really likes and then be screwed because he needs longer than Hosmer/Viciedo to develop, if he ever does. I agree with most of this. However, I think you have to consider window of contention. It doesn't look like there's anyway 2014 will be good for us, so if a guy is going to be gone or less useful by 2015, I'd move him now while his value is high. I think Rios should go. His value won't ever be higher and all of our high-ish upside close-to-the-majors reinforcements are OF. If we're going to win 2015 and later, our homegrown talent will have to develop regardless, and that's where we're positioned to have it develop the most. If all those guys bust, we weren't going to pull it off anyway. Alexei is harder to replace unless you really believe in Sanchez.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 21, 2013 -> 03:08 PM) But what the front office needs to do when making these decisions is evaluate the possible downside risk. That's what drives us crazy, people name prospect after prospect, even people who aren't drafted, and salivate over them like they're Bryce Harper. People want the team to lose coming into seasons so that they can draft people, and the day after the draft they say "boy look how great the system of team Cubs is these days, they're going to be unstoppable". Everything in baseball tells us the exact opposite; we don't ever want to be in the boat of trading people away wholesale for prospects because the bust rate means there's a 3/4 chance we're going to lose that deal, maybe worse. Trading away a guy we don't need to trade away, like Sale, has to take that bust rate into account. Even if you list the 5 great Cardinals prospects, I sit here and think "ok, the odds are that 2 of them won't make the bigs, 2 of them won't develop as promised, and maybe we get 1 really good player out of that". For me, that's unacceptable. This is the reason you don't want to have to rebuild like this. It's terrible. It's the person working for minimum wage at McDonalds blowing their rent money on lottery tickets. We're in a position right now where we have left ourselves no choice because of how crappy the team is playing right now. Fine, I can deal with those moves, but every time people salivate over prospect list x from team y, they do so while pretending Eric Hosmer never happened. I agree with you. When you compare rebuilding to winning, no one wants to rebuild. But that's not the situation we have here. We have to compare rebuilding to losing, because we have a losing team with not nearly enough upside to expect substantial improvement. IMO, if you are arguing against rebuilding this current team, you are arguing that there is a quicker path to contention, meaning that our current players will play substantially better in the future. Do you think this team can win next year if we don't trade anyone? Are we a free agent signing or two away? I just don't see it. It's not fun, but it's the only way.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 21, 2013 -> 02:59 PM) You are missing the obvious thing that even though something is a pretty clear pattern, you may have no idea why. No, I'm not. I said that in a different post, I think. My point is that if you don't know something, you can't use it to make a decision, so it's useless to consider it a factor. Whether it is random or not, it ACTS as randomness. Again, two separate points are being made here: (1) if FO CAN know more about futures but doesn't, FO is incompetent and should be fired, (2) if randomness in the outcome is unavoidable, a decision can only be judged based on the information available at the time. That doesn't mean it isn't the FO's responsibility -- they made a decision that had a chance of going either way. To say they are accountable is different than to say their decision was a bad one. If I lose a bet that I have a 99% chance to win, did I make a bad decision taking the bet? No, it was a good bet, I just got beat on it, and I have to deal with the consequences.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 21, 2013 -> 02:49 PM) The problem here is the type of trade we're talking about. When Colon was traded to Montreal, he was a few months from free agency. He was a guy the Indians had to choose between keeping and trying to compete or losing at the end of the year. They were 10 games under .500 or so and were looking at losing the guy soon. That's comparable to a guy like Crain, Thornton, maybe Peavy on this roster...guys who are close to free agency. In that case, the bust rate compares to the virtual certainty of losing those guys for nothing. If you trade crain for a guy who never makes the big leagues, that's a scouting fail, but at least you got something for him. When we talk about Chris Sale on the other hand, he's a guy locked up for the next half a decade. There is nothing forcing us to trade Chris Sale, the only reason we should trade Chris Sale is if there's a high probability it would make the team better in the long run. If you trade Sale for 4 prospects, 2 of whom become average major leaguers and 2 of whom bust, you've cost the team an ace for a couple average major leaguers. In that case, the bust rate needs to be compared with the benefit of having a guy who can be the ace of the staff for the next 5 1/2 seasons. Certainly. I don't advocate trading Chris Sale at all. I just wanted to point out that it's useless to expect FO to use information from the future to evaluate the present.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jun 21, 2013 -> 02:47 PM) There is a reason why certain teams have more success with prospects than others. It's not blind luck that so many young Royals suck at baseball, while St. Louis can call up anybody from the minors and he seems to produce immediately. QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jun 21, 2013 -> 02:48 PM) Then how can you hold the FO responsble? If it's random luck that he sucked, it's not their fault. Three times now I've said that if you can learn something to help your talent evaluation, hindsight makes sense. If you believe that the White Sox are bad at evaluating talent or bad at developing talent, we're having a separate discussion. That IS a factor. However, randomness is certainly also a big factor, evidenced by how often players bust for every team. People in this thread have NOT been saying we shouldn't trade for prospects because the Sox suck at prospects, they've been saying we shouldn't trade for prospects because they seem to bust too often. These are very different things.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jun 21, 2013 -> 02:39 PM) By your logic, you can't evaluate draft picks in hindsight either. You draft a guy on probability, if he doesn't flourish in your system, it happens sometimes, oh well. No. Please read everything I've said. If you can use hindsight to find reliable predictors of future events, you are finding something worthwhile. But if you can deduce nothing, you have no choice but to consider the events to have occurred randomly or by something undetectable. Example: If no one can tell you why Adam Dunn sucks, it's not fair to fault someone for not predicting that Adam Dunn sucks when he didn't suck before. Same thing with prospects. Why has Hosmer busted? If you can find a good reason, you should go work for a baseball team. Otherwise, you can't say you wouldn't have loved him too because EVERYONE thought he was exhibiting the signs of a stud.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jun 21, 2013 -> 02:34 PM) Looking back it would be a haul of garbage. If you traded for Hosmer in 2010 thinking you had the 1B of the baseman of the future, you set that position back several years because he sucks. No one will care that he was highly rated at the time, a bust is a bust. That's surface-level, factual information, but it's useless for any type of decision-making. If you could tell me WHY he was a bust and how you could have known, then it's useful. Otherwise, it's random happenstance. You make a deal for prospects that have a good chance to succeed and a good chance to fail because you HAVE to. It's the only way to acquire affordable talent. You take a risk. Just because Hosmer busted doesn't mean it was LIKELY he'd bust. People thought he was among the safest prospects around. Even if you have an 80% chance to win, you're going to lose 20% of the time. You can cherry-pick busts all you want, but for every horrible trade there's a great one too. The Indians traded Bartolo Colon for Cliff Lee, Brandon Phillips, and Grady Sizemore. They all had a chance to bust or hit, and it turned out that they all hit. You don't evaluate their decision to trade an aging star player for three lottery tickets based on whether or not the lottery tickets hit. If I buy a f***ing scratch off ticket today and win $50,000, that doesn't make me a financial genius. Judge me on the fact I decided to spend a dollar on a 1 in a million chance to win more.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 21, 2013 -> 02:25 PM) Actually that is how they should be evaluated. It doesn't matter one bit what the trade looked like when you made it, it matters what the players turned into. It would be like saying that Adam Dunn was a great signing for the Sox in 2011, no matter what happened after that, because the move made sense at the time. I disagree strongly. Hindsight is only valuable if you can identify factors that will apply to future decisions. If there was something about Adam Dunn that would have been a reliable red flag that the Sox overlooked, that's their fault. If his descent was truly unpredictable, however, it's a waste of time to blame people for it. There was ALWAYS a chance that he turned into a pumpkin and always chance he turned into a HOF player -- neither were likely outcomes. The White Sox FO is responsible for taking the calculated risk that they did. In Dunn's case, it was much more likely he would be good than bad (from the information WE have as fans, anyway. It is reasonable to expect the team to have a better set of data, but not reasonable to expect them to have a crystal ball). Since that is all the information that was available at the time, that's all the information that can be used to evaluate the decision. Hindsight is now valuable if it can provide better information for the future, which it sometimes cannot. The White Sox FO is responsible for the consequences because they made the call to roll the dice. But they didn't do something stupid, they made a gamble that looked safe at the time. If you want to evaluate the deal, evaluate the probabilities that were on the table at the time.

QUOTE (bbilek1 @ Jun 21, 2013 -> 02:19 PM) @JonHeymanCBS: potential #chisox sale could potentially include best SP (peavy), pen arm (crain) & OF (rios) http://cbsprt.co/107sQ2x 11:10 AM - 21 Jun 2013 That's a good point. Double wild card has reduced supply and increased demand. If the Phillies really do refuse to trade Lee, even fresh-off-the-DL Peavy might be too good an option to pass up for someone.

Catch-all thread pl... wait. Nevermind.

It's absolutely fallacy to act like prospect trades can be evaluated in hindsight. You're trading for probabilities. You're trading for guys who do NOT have the skills to be successful and hoping that they develop those skills. It's the FO job to pick guys that they have reason to believe will flourish in its own system, but sometimes guys just bust for no good reason. If a FO gets them wrong too much, the FO gets fired. If you traded Sale for all those guys at the time it would have been a haul, and looking back it would still be a haul. Eric Hosmer in 2010 is NOT the same thing as Eric Hosmer in 2013.

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2013/06/whit...n-veterans.html

QUOTE (kitekrazy @ Jun 20, 2013 -> 06:19 PM) You still have to show up. He's damaged goods. You will not get much for him right now. Absolutely, he is currently injured. But you said, "the only thing Peavy has excelled at is going on the DL," and that is wrong.

If you trade Axelrod, all you're gonna get back are a couple guys who have a shot at becoming the next Dylan Axelrods.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Jun 20, 2013 -> 05:40 PM) I brought it back because I asked why nobody was ragging on Konerko. Then I realized that strikeouts are worse then every other out because they look worse. Then I stopped posting about it. No one's ragging on Konerko because he's a had a fantastic and fairly consistent career of like 15 years and he just sucks now because he's 37, always injured, and generally cooked. His career is ending, that's all. Dunn is like 31 and signed a huge deal with us only to immediately suck. Way different.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jun 20, 2013 -> 03:39 PM) http://sports.yahoo.com/news/jim-leyland-w...-181600768.html If the Tigers are realistically looking at Joba Chamberlain, we might as well trade them Reed/Crain/Lindstrom, etc. Crain and Lindstrom, yes, but I don't want to give them someone who is going to beat us for the next 3-4 years in Reed.

I typically think the manager doesn't mean as much as most people do, but I do blame Robin for the poor defense. I really thought he did a great job drilling the team on it last year -- they made such a huge point to mention how the Sox were the only team taking infield before every game -- that I really don't think there's any excuse for them to be so bad this year. More practice. If you play like Bush leaguers, you gotta work to get better.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Jun 20, 2013 -> 01:54 PM) Notable things: Konerko hit a homerun, Viciedo gunned Doumit out at home and Dunn just homered to make it back-to-back. Also, Danks has given up four homeruns today.

Notable things: Konerko hit a homerun, Viciedo gunned Doumit out at home

Dunn, Keppinger, and maybe De Aza, I think.

QUOTE (kitekrazy @ Jun 20, 2013 -> 11:06 AM) A wise GM would give little to nothing for Peavy and make you pay part of his salary. They only thing Peavy has excelled at is going on the DL. You are wrong. Since coming off the DL in 2011, Peavy has produced 8.9 WAR over 407.2 IP at career-low walk rates. His 2013 performance has seen a substantially higher K rate when compared to last year's 3.37 ERA, 4.5 WAR performance despite identical walk totals.

Yeah I officially don't care if we win. I don't want us to get hot for a week and get just close enough to make no moves and be a 78 win team.