Eminor3rd

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.

I didn't even consider watching this game. It feels so much worse even than the record.

QUOTE (Jake @ Jun 19, 2013 -> 06:12 PM) Why are you convinced his bat doesn't play at first? He had a 1.000 OPS in AA last season. He certainly isn't likely to do that in the big leagues, but if you get him you're hoping he looks like the guy that was on a 50 HR pace last year. So far in the Majors he's been .152/.250./.182. That's only 40 PA, but I've listened and read some commentary on BP and BA about his ultimate ceiling, and they say it isn't super high -- his value comes from being an advanced bat that is close to the majors and is a complete player at third base.

QUOTE (Dunt @ Jun 19, 2013 -> 04:24 PM) Sox should just trade Alexei, Crain, and cash to the Tigers for Nick Castellanos. I can;t see any way the Tigers would trade us Castellanos unless the package included Reed.

I like the idea of Olt. I think he has been substantially overrated and I think the Rangers know that, so I think he might actually be attainable. A ton of his value comes from his solid defense at third, which would be great for us but is useless to the Rangers as long as Beltre is around. The bat doesn't play at first.

QUOTE (elrockinMT @ Jun 19, 2013 -> 01:33 PM) So what you are telling me is that when they do good we dump them? When they are good and our team is bad, yes, that's what we should do. Especially when they are too old to be useful when the team might be good again.

You really want to sign Crain? What is he, 34? Guys... You know what make us different than the Astros, Marlins, and Cubs? Lack of long-term dead money committed. All three of those disastrous, long-term rebuild projects had to begin by sacrificing every shred of Major League talent for the sake of clearing dead money off the books. Drastic measures were required to clean it up and THAT's why they all have so far to go now to climb back up. THe White Sox do NOT have that problem. Nearly all of our dead money is off the books after next season in Dunn, Konerko, Thornton, and Floyd. Even Rios' contract turns to an option then. The only albatross we have at that point is Danks, who makes $15m. Alexei will be market rate. This is a massive advantage and this is why a rebuild is okay because it can begin and move quickly. The faster you get the core in place, the faster you can begin to complement it and get a winning team on the field. All the young talent we have can be a part of it, and we don;t have to wait forever for Alfonso Soriano or Carlos Lee to get off the books. The quickest way to lose that advantage is to sign more 34 year old veteran role players to market rate contracts to help our s*** team win 3 more games. Move those guys to get more potential core talent! Let's get this show on the road! No more lipstick on a pig -- we don't have to resign ourselves to a 6 year plan like the others because KW didn't screw us over like that.