cabiness42

OK, I went to the game Saturday and I'm just now feeling up to posting again. A Sox loss hasn't hurt me this bad since the 1993 ALCS. Danks was so awesome and to have it all fall apart like that in the 9th inning with all those Yankees fans there really, really stung. I don't even know if I can watch on TV anytime Belisario is in the game from now on.

As much as I'd hate to see Dunn go, his trade value is skyrocketing right now, and even if the Sox keep Dunn and sneak into a WC spot, I don't see the starting pitching there to make a serious postseason run. Some teams are going to be very desperate for a power bat come July.

Vidal Nuno ( L ), 1-1, 5.82 vs John Danks ( L ), 3-4, 5.64 SECTION 113, ROW 8, I CAN'T WAIT!! Alternate GT title: If Vidal doesn't look good, the Yankees don't look good.

Why does anybody have to go? Is there somebody waiting to bump one of the starting pitchers?

Congratulations to Matt Besler, first ND alum to make the men's WC team.

Perhaps the laws of physics cease to exist on your stove.

Donald Sterling is going to tell his girlfriend not to post pictures of herself with Adam Dunn?

Hiroki Kuroda ( R ), 3-3, 4.61 vs. Hector Noesi ( R ), 0-4, 7.31 Lineups later.

I'm betting on the team with the DH that has an OPS under .650 and should have retired last year.

Lineups: NYY: Ellsbury 8, Jeter DH, Teixeira 3, Soriano 9, Solarte 5, Roberts 4, Murphy 2, Ryan 6, Almonte 7; Phelps 1 SOX: Eaton 8, Beckham 4, Gillaspie 5, Viciedo 9, Dunn 3, Ramirez 6, Konerko DH, De Aza 7, Flowers 2; Sale 1

Well, enough people thought there was a difference between being honored in front of a larger group than a smaller group that they complained about the long-standing tradition. Also, kids aren't really mature enough to learn for the sake of learning. Awards provide motivation to kids to do things that they won't appreciate until later in life. I couldn't get enough math and science in high school, but couldn't give a flying f*** about writing or literature, except that college admission and the potential for class honors and scholarships depended on it. Now I'm very glad that I gave effort in those classes just for the sake of the knowledge.

With the salary difference I imagine it would be hard not to want to be on the ML team, regardless of playing time. That won't be a consideration in the team's decision, though.

I think you're drastically overestimating the value of his time.

I wouldn't be unwilling to part with Semien, but I doubt there is a good trade match out there. The teams most likely to want Semien are rebuilding teams looking to dump an expiring contract, which is certainly not what the Sox are interested in. If there is a team out there with an excess of starting pitching prospects and a serious shortage of middle infield prospects, that's the only thing that would make sense.

Who are the three infielders most likely to become major league starters? Those are the three guys who need to be starting at 2B/SS/3B for Charlotte. The rest can either DH at Charlotte or start at Birmingham.

Well, people misuse advanced metrics just like people misuse traditional stats. The biggest misuse of advanced metrics is accepting them as an absolute, as in saying somebody with a 7.0 WAR in a season was clearly better than somebody with a 6.7 WAR. While the advanced metrics are much better, they still don't have a perfectly linear correlation to wins (or even runs). They are still approximations of value, albeit much better ones. As for projection systems, they all are based on normal distributions which expect 2/3 of the results to vary by as much as a full standard deviation. If you get way beyond a full standard deviation, then yes, it is justified to suggest luck might be involved. It also helps to look at what is driving the variance. An extremely high BABIP is more likely signaling luck (Flowers), whereas an increased walk rate is more likely to suggest genuine improvement from the player (Viciedo). Also, I don't think anybody is putting a lot of stock in advanced metrics when it comes to scouting. You are scouting college and high school players and there is no accepted way to translate their stats the way we can translate major league, and to a lesser extent minor league stats. Now, scouts who have a foundation in advanced metrics will be looking for different things when scouting than "traditional" scouts, and as such will likely have a higher success rate, but there is still a very large error rate in scouting. Regardless of your evaluation method you are never going to hit on every draft pick.

I may actually get fired for laughing so hard at the thought of trading Rienzo for Santiago. Might as well throw in Sale and Abreu to even that trade out a bit.

You are out of options if either one of the following applies: 1) You have been assigned to the minors in three previous seasons while on the 40-man roster 2) You have at least 5.0 years of MLB service time I don't know where to find exactly when a player got added to the 40, but it was most likely in 2011, and if they didn't add him until they called him up to KC, this might only be his first option year, but it's at most his second.

Maybe Semien will go down when Abreu gets back.

Right, but unless you are sacrificing a runner from 2nd to 3rd with 0 outs or you have a pitcher or an equally bad hitter at the plate, sacrificing almost always reduces your run expectancy.

I take it you don't subscribe to YES?

Relief pitcher in general? No. Closer? Yes if he's within a year of hitting arbitration because closers not named Mariano Rivera are grossly overpaid compared to their value. That is probably the one position where trading a guy pre-arb is OK, if the guy is at least within a year of hitting arb.

If I had to answer right now I say that Gillaspie is the starting 3B in April 2015 based on Davidson having a .623 OPS so far at Charlotte. However, Davidson could put things together and earn his way up to the Sox by the end of the year. IF that happens, then the Sox can evaluate options with Gillaspie. They can consider having him play some at 1B with occasional starts at 3B, or see what kind of trade value he has. Only after you are certain that he doesn't have a starting job do you look at getting value from him in a trade. Right now, you don't trade a pre-arb guy when you don't have an obvious replacement for him.

I just checked and only 8 of the Mets' 18 Sac Bunts were from pitchers, as opposed to 19 of Miami's 25 Sac Bunts coming from pitchers.

Every trade depends on what is being offered, but Gillaspie is the kind of guy who is more valuable to the Sox than potential suitors, so there aren't likely any offers to be made that are going to make sense for the Sox. I will repeat what I first said: there just aren't many times when it makes sense for a rebuilding team to trade a pre-arb player.