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Personally, I love the KC model because it's essentially about doing all the little things well and limiting mistakes in all aspects of the game, it's smart baseball at its finest. But it's very unrealistic to build the KC model and it's also not sustainable. With the exception of Perez and Gordon, none of their players are top 10 players at their positions. Meaning in an open market, they would often be your 2nd or 3rd choices. Teams with options don't aim to build the KC model. They are for teams who are not popular free agent desintations and are cash strapped. Without having real cornerstones like Sale or Abreu, they will fall back to below .500 if a couple of their positions players or bullpen arms get pay raises.

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Oct 18, 2014 -> 01:14 AM) Ben Zobrist is such an unfathomably weird advanced metric player. He puts up the craziest WAR totals and it never quite seems right. He is like the Javier Vazquez of position players when it comes to advanced metrics. We "should" have to give up the farm for a guy who is 5+ WAR every single season, but for some reason I just don't feel comfortable trading major pieces for Ben Zobrist. It's hard to even come up with a fair trade in my head because everything I'd WANT to give up for him is far less than what his production dictates he SHOULD get from us. He is 33 years old, so that should be noted as well, but....I guess I'll throw this out there..... Carlos Sanchez, Frank Montas, and Chris Beck? I feel like his numbers are worth way more than that, but I just can't bring myself to want to give up more. I think the WAR figures are pretty accurate. You often overlook guys like him because he does so many things well but nothing spectacular. 4 of the past 6 years, he's been a .270, and 20-20 player, with 80-100 walks, and added on to that solid to great defense at every position. You can't find a lot of guys like him in the majors. Think of him as Alexei with supreme plate discipline and playing in a pitcher friendly park. Personally I never get why he's rated as a better defender than Alexei. Given that, I didn't know he was 33 already. But if he were to play LF, I think he would still have 2-3 good years left in him.

It's scary to think Jimmy is the only reliable 2 way wing player we have on the roster. If he goes down, we will have to run the likes of Snell, Hinrich, Dunleavy or Dougie at LeBron or Durant. Jimmy's role with the team this year will be more important than ever.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Oct 16, 2014 -> 10:14 AM) Even then, there's a big difference between Nate Jones/Cleto and Herrera at 97-101. Or Henry Rodriguez, etc. Williams tried those arms like MacDougal, Aardsma, Masset and Sisco, and they all flamed out with the Sox. He tried ever since he ditched Foulke for a burned out shell of his former self in Billy Koch in 2003. Montas will likely be the next flamethrower in the pen. Nobody has his stuff in the organization. Webb's not even close, not the way he threw in 2014. Maybe the 2013 minor league version. One can imagine Petricka or Guerra ending up like a Greg Holland, but that still leaves us short a Cliff Politte and Neal Cotts. Let's not forget how effective guys like Neshek and Uehara with unorthodox motions can be. Darren O'Day's another example. I smiled a little reading this post. You really outdid yourself.

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Oct 14, 2014 -> 01:57 AM) Mother f***ing Frank Gore. All I need was for him to just get HALF of what he was projected to get, and he couldn't do it. And they used Hyde at the end of the game. I actually had a decent week, and I still can't win. 5 straight losses. Thanks Calvin Johnson and Vernon Davis. One of my buddies lost tonight because of that last minute pick 6 by the 49ers. He was up by like 3 pts, but the other guy had the 49ers defense. The only thing that could cause him to lose was a defensive TD, and they got it. He got f***ed too. Had him on my team for a Fanduel survivor tourny. I was glad they took him out because he was rushing for negative yards in the 4th. The top 5,000 entries advance to the next round, I end up being 4,985th. Had he lost another 5 yards, I would have been out.

Wow. One if the worst endings to a promising match I've ever seen

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Oct 12, 2014 -> 06:21 PM) Intercepting passes on 4th down is a pet peeve of mine. Funny thing is he came down and the ball moved a bit in his hands. But it's one of the few times neither team would challenge because it didn't make sense to.

With the amount of check down Jay throws, Forte has a shot have a 1,000/1,000 season. That would actually be incredible.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Oct 10, 2014 -> 08:09 AM) Eddie Royal is not a red zone threat. It's an aberration. He does this to everyone every couple of years in the early part of the season. Just want to point out both Gates and Royal had touchdowns today and Keenan continues to be invisible. BTW that's 13 TD's for Royal in the past 21 games. At some point it's more of reality than aberration.

I've been picking the QB going against the Bears 3 of the last 4 weeks in my Fanduel survivor tournament, so I will be happy regardless of the outcome. Yes, I have Matt Ryan as my QB this week.

Meanwhile Durant after skipping FIBA last month fractures foot and is expected to be out 6-8 weeks.

Yes, the block shots are a bonus, but I'm just very satisfied that both of our PF's will put a hand up and challenge shots. It's a nice thing to have for a change.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Oct 12, 2014 -> 12:30 AM) Rodon, Anderson, Montas, and Danish I am 99% certain is Micah. He did play in the Futures game this year and wow'd many scouts in the process.

Things I like so far: Taj working the post a lot more and holding off that less than stellar mid range jumpshot. Mirotic has really active hands on defense, leading to a few steals. As I type this, Noah hasn't shown much so far, Larry Sanders just jumped over him for 3 offensive boards.

QUOTE (kev211 @ Oct 11, 2014 -> 07:48 AM) Lol. No we wouldn't. We won the bidding war, why bid more than what you need? The bids were not blind. Unless you can find proof that they were ready to pay more than 6/$68 mil, which still means KW didn't expect this production from him.

QUOTE (LDF @ Oct 10, 2014 -> 08:02 PM) let be honest, the signing of Jose A was a huge surprise and a very pleasant one. no one and I mean no one would have imagine Jose A would be a huge success. now If I remember correctly, KW saw him, liked him and then called JR. now here is the wildcard. why did JR take it upon himself to go and outbid everyone to sign him. also didn't he outbid by 10 mil. the sox got very lucky, plain and simple. This is just not true. While many scouts and people around baseball questioned Abreu's bat speed and athleticism, there are also some who compared him to Pujols and Cabrera. Looking in the predictions thread on this forum, even some folks came close in their Abreu projections. Let's be honest here, KW does not have psychic ability, even he didn't see this coming from Jose. If he did, our bid would be much higher. The contract we are paying him is that of an above average first basemen.

If I would have to bet on one of the three to live up to the close to the value that we are paying for them for the rest of their contract, it would be Danks. Also, a part of me thinks that with Danks performing well in the final 4 starts of the season, they will roll the dice with him being a high potential 5th starter and trade him mid season of next off season.

You can 99% pencil in Noesi and Danks in the rotation next year. At this point, Dank is your 5th starter. Other than his salary, I can live with that. Noesi is also a 5th starter material as well. So if you have 2 weak pitchers at the end of your rotation, you need a couple of solid mid rotation arms. If we trade Q for Puig, we basically need to bring in a pitcher on the high end side if we want to compete, i.e. someone like Shields, which most of the board would hate to bring in. I am not convinced Masterson can be your #2 starter if you are looking to compete.

So it sounds like his delivery and command is hurting his the effectiveness of his fastball. Command is still at 40-45 for other pitches. I do not know what his command was coming into this year, but it doesn't sound like he made much improvement. Losing half of the season to injury definitely hurts. And this is also just 1 start in AFL, hopefully he makes adjustments rest of the way.

QUOTE (Brian @ Oct 9, 2014 -> 09:52 AM) Don't think you can go wrong either way, but Keenan is a must start every week IMO. I'm playing Wayne in flex this week. I will disagree. Keenan has been bad this year. He's had 4 good to great matchups in 5 games , yet only 1 game over 55 yards. On top of that, Gates and Royal will get most of the red zone targets in that system. I am starting Marshall, and Steve Smith with Benjamin over Keenan as my flex this week.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Oct 9, 2014 -> 11:06 AM) No one meaning former AL MVP George Bell or Alvarez/Sosa/Fletcher for Baines? No point of arguing here. Would you say we made amazing acquisitions by picking up the ghosts of Manny Ramirez or Ken Griffey Jr.? Bell's OPS with Sox was in the .650's and was out of baseball in 2 years. Sammy was one of the most feared Juicers for 10+ years. Point still stands.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Oct 8, 2014 -> 08:13 PM) Other than Phillips (who did his damage for Cincy, not CLE)/Sizemore/Lee for Colon and the Rangers/Texeira deal to the Braves, how often have these 2-3 "top" prospects for an established All-Star level or slightly below player worked out well for the team acquiring the prospects? I guess Bonser/Liriano/Joe Nathan for AJ would rank up there as well, especially the first 2-3 years of that trade for Minny. Getting Escobar, Cain, Odorizzi (used as part of the Myers deal to acquire Shields, who's been Greinke-Lite) and J.Jeffress (who was another fireballing reliever they gave up on and sent to the Blue Jays for cash)...that's another example where the team getting prospects back did pretty well. It's usually not the case, but it happens more often than you think. Right on top of my head, the Haren trade, Teixeira to Braves trade, Padres trading Adam Eaton (pitcher) for A Gon and Chris Young. Dating back further. Sox traded Sosa + for no one, and Mariners traded Varitek and Lowe to Red Sox for Slocumb. Even the Peavy trade could work out handsomely for us if Montas can stick as a starter and Rondon could just be a defensive utility guy in the majors.

Probably the enormous paycheck he's going to get. But I would roll the dice just because Stanton will put more people in the seats.

I just realized that there are a lot of white players on the Bulls. Maybe at some point we will see an all white team of Gasol Mirotic Dougie MDJ and Kirk. And Thibs gets suspended for 5 games after.

No thanks. He's old and fragile, and also won't come cheap. If Boston let you beat their offer, that means they also don't trust his health.