The Ultimate Champion

QUOTE (TitoMB @ Sep 17, 2014 -> 08:12 PM) Safe to say Sale has lost his shot at the Cy Young :-/ I am still confident he will win one in his career, and I really, really hope it's with the Sox. Well I dont' know who else it would be with. We have him for all his prime years. The funny thing about Sale is that there is still room for improvement with him, still the chance that he becomes even more of a Maddux-like mindf***er. He's certainly trying. It seems like most of the damage done has been in big key spots he couldn't get out of, basically coming down to pitch sequence and predicatability and stuff. He might win the Cy next year with a 1.75 ERA for all we know. It's actually funny watching him pitch and looking at his numbers on paper, it's like "What?" It's hard to even believe he's as good as he is. I'm not worried. Stay healthy and Sale is as good of a bet as anyone to win the Cy any single year.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Sep 17, 2014 -> 12:55 PM) I don't buy into that white flag nonsense. These fans aren't coming out anyways. Get a team on the field that wins consistently, and the fans will show up. I understand Sale's value. My argument was premised on the idea of getting something close to full value for him. If that is simply impossible, than it makes no sense to move him. What I'm saying is that I don't believe there are players in baseball that are simply immovable, and Chris should not be considered as such. Ultimately full value for Chris Sale is Chris Sale, i.e. another young ace under contract for a very long time basically paid nothing when his deal is put up against everyone else's. But even if you could trade Chris Sale for Chris Sale, why would you bother to make that trade? What would be the point? Really "full value" for Chris Sale is Chris Sale plus whatever extra is necessary to make it reasonable to do the deal, i.e. make it more than a lateral move. So basically full value for Chris Sale is someone who is as good as Sale and is as cheap as Sale for as long as Sale and then you get another nice player on top of it. Who can make that deal? Good f***ing luck with that! The only thing other teams would trade, even for Sale, are a bunch of unproven prospects most of whom will either bust or drastically underachieve, OR best case you get a team like the Marlins to give you Stanton & Cosart or something, which is a lot of talent but that's a deal they'd only offer because they didn't feel like they could pay Stanton. So in either case you're either trading the best player in the deal with pretty much zero reason to expect a player in return who will ever be as good as Sale is now and/or you're getting someone who is also elite but who you now have to fork over a s***load of money for. And why would that make sense? Just sign a FA. Sale is "untradable" because he's so damn great and cheap and awesome and cornerstoney that the return you'd need would bo so f***ing outrageous that other teams just can not or would not do it. It's like, Sale to the Cubs for their farm system. Why would they do that? And why would we take Kris Bryant and a piece or two for Sale when Bryant isn't a MLB player and doesn't have a proven history of success and isn't signed for a pittance long-term? The Sox would be stupid to not ask for a stupid return and the Cubs would see the requested return as too stupid to pull the trigger on. And they're probably the best trade partner. s*** the last thing we need to do is give up Sale for a couple Gordon Beckhams and Dayan Viceidos. Can you imagine what kind of package we may have been able to land had we thrown Beckham + Tank + Dan Hudson + Poreda + Flowers out there a few years ago? Maybe even a young ace who would light the world on fire. And if we made that deal the other team would have gotten f***ing hosed. s***.... what a year makes re: that "horrible" Shields trade huh? Oh wait I guess Wil Myers really isn't the second coming. Yeah you don't trade Sale because you just lose in the end of you do. Sale = we won, at least in one spot on the 25-man roster. Abreu too. We won it all on 2/25ths of our roster, so let's keep those guys.

QUOTE (StRoostifer @ Sep 17, 2014 -> 02:14 PM) Q Nice. No number. Just Q

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Sep 17, 2014 -> 01:43 PM) I'm willing to consdier write-ins If you're going to be walking around NY in front of a bunch of Yankee fans I'd maybe go with "YOUR WHAT HURTS" and then the 62

No name IMO just the 62

There's also the culture change effect too, one that stas people are probably never going to consider. How does one player like Robinson Cano in Seattle or James Shields added to the Royals or a player like AJ added to our team in 2005, etc. manage to have such great effects on the club? All the stats people do is add the individual numbers up and say "oh that team was better because such-and-such players performed better, and so-and-so had a career year." But baseball is very much a mental game, a momentum game, a feel type of thing, etc. Going into the season feeling like you're a very good team, having that veteran leadership, having a new identity or a bit of an edge... etc. it's all a factor even if stats people would say that studies have shown it's not. You also want balance all the time, WAR doesn't account for that either, and that's the worst part of it really, because team composition optimized for greatest effectiveness (i.e. total ballgames won) isn't just his WAR + that guy's WAR and so on. You need to be able to win games in as many ways possible. You want to beat teams with SP, with your bullpen, you want to be able to beat them fundamentally, with defense, by forcing them to make plays that your guys can make but their guys can't (bunt to a s***ty fielding P or 3B, hit the ball the other way to the slow corner guy who takes s*** routes to the ball), etc. Win via slugfest, win via smallball and the solo HR (solo HR's are definitely a part of smallball), etc. Make contact, run, hit for average, hit for power, hit in the clutch, move the runner along, bring the guy in on a sacrifice.... all these things work too if you have a team that isn't going to need to score 5+ runs every single game to win. If you can pitch well enough to keep the opposition low enough in the score total then you can force the game to be more finite, you can make the "little things" matter a lot, and you can beat them at their weakpoints. All WAR says is that if you're down 3 wins in the loss column take out that s***ty fast guy in LF and put another high K slowf*** slugger there. Well sure that may help you win more slugfests but it's probably not going to help you run down the baseball or push across a run in a contact situation, it's not going to help you take the extra base and so on so good luck winning close ballgames.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 17, 2014 -> 12:45 PM) Let's try it this way. The White Sox are currently close to 20 fWAR. This year, every single team over .500 with a shot at the playoffs has >30 fWAR. Therefore, for the White Sox to even have a shot at being competitive next year, they have to come up with 10+ fWAR next year and then have things go right. For the White Sox to nearly guarantee themselves a playoff spot, they need to be figuring out a way to come up with 20 fWAR beyond what they've produced this year. If they just tried to fill these needs paying fair market value for free agents, with nothing else happening, then we're talking about spending well over $50 million next year beyond what we currently have on payroll to make up that difference, and even then we're counting on the team to over perform rather than underperform. If you go into the numbers maybe there's a few guys who can get better. who knows what Abreu can do if he's in his 2nd year and his manager doesn't try to kill him. Getting rid of Konerko helps some. Maybe Semien and Sanchez have really good years. Garcia is back. Noesi in his 2nd season with Coop as a starter the whole time maybe can add 1-2. But then again, Alexei, Flowers, and Gillaspie might not repeat their seasons. If all we think about is adding a starter like James Shields and a couple bullpen pieces, the only way that pushes us into the playoffs is if other guys step up a whole lot to cover the rest of that gap and we actually get lucky with health/outperform a bit. I'm not using it as predictive, I'm trying to instead figure out what guys might do next year and see where that puts us relative to what we need to reach to even plausibly compete for a playoff spot, and that is a really, really big gap to fill. If you go the other way, we're in the low 20s in fWAR and we're in the low 70s in wins. If we added 10, we might expect that pulls us into the low to mid 80s, so we still need to over perform by a good amount to challenge for the wild car. If we added 20, then that pushes us into the low 90s, which is where we'd need to be to compete for the playoffs. This is a great example of how WAR can be misused though. Move Danks to the pen, replace him with Rodon, add James Shields for a rotation of Sale-Shields-Quintana-Noesi-Rodon with Danks the #6 spot starter & long man and Bassitt/Rienzo/garbage/etc. pushed back into the 7th starter plus role. Doing the above adds a great number of innings to the rotation. It also swaps out a lot of bad innings that were thrown already with much better innings. Doing this pushes marginal players further back and more out of the picture. It also minimizes the innings the pen has to cover as a whole, and makes roles in the back of the pen (which are designed specifically to win games and protect leads) actually definable and makes it easier for those few really good relievers to achieve within those roles. We don't need more WAR out of the bullpen necessarily, we need less innings out of the bullpen. Adding James Shields and Rodon for example here - how do you quantify the value of that? Adding Shields behind Sale pushes everyone else back and eases their expectations, and swapping Rodon and Danks makes our #5 a nightmare for a lot of teams instead of a festive/dinner party atmosphere. Then the pen improves (theoretically) by Danks being at least a marginal upgrade there and it greatly improves by not having to cover as many innings. And have more quality innings out of the rotation makes it ilkelier that when we go to the pen we are going to our best guys first, rather than going to our s***tier relievers first and hoping they can get the game to our better ones without blowing it first. What's the WAR value there? Also if you become a much better pitching team you can then prioritize defense at a greater level. Suddenly a backup option like Jordan Danks running down balls in the OF and Leury Garcia covering some weaknesses elsewhere, well, they don't seem quite so useless anymore. Now their skillsets matter more because it actually means something to give up a lead-off double when you're protecting a 1-run lead, but when you're down by 3 in the 8th what's the point of putting JorDanks out there and maximizing the defense? I was heartily pooped upon by a couple here for the Headley buy-low idea but I think he could be a great example of how poor the WAR argument may be when using it alone to try to predict extra wins. Add up Chase Headley and James Shields and you're not going to get enough WAR to make this team a contender. But put Connor and Tank in a platoon role, keep Tank out of the field as much as possible, try to keep JorDanks out there in the 8th and 9th innings when the game is tight but we're ahead (especially if we have a flyball/K type of closer), put Headley out there defensively at 3B over Connor and use Connor as the BU 1B as well, also in LF over Tank, etc. Then you pick up all the bullpen perks too. How do you quantify that? In the end you can't really define it in WAR but you've upgraded your defense at 3B, LF, the entire OF in the late innings, you've got a pen that's easier to work with because it's easier to hide struggling players when less innings need to be eaten and more of those innings are funnelled to better players, etc. You're just a lot better at run prevention and you're going to be a lot better in close games too. And actually, go ahead and add a lefty SU guy to that role. What's the WAR of a good lefty SU guy? IMO Shields + Headley + lefty SU guy isn't going to make you a playoff team in the WAR category but you may have enough benefits to do it in reality ot at least maybe you have enough to make the team a buyer in July, and that would be huge.

QUOTE (The Ginger Kid @ Sep 16, 2014 -> 10:39 PM) Andy Wilkins belongs on a MLB roster, said no one ever Yeah he's completely overmatched in absolutely every respect. The talent level is not there at all. Having never seen him I was hoping maybe he'd bet a Gload type... hell no. That said, it's a nice message the org is sending to the other players in the minors, kind of a much smaller version of what the Twins did with Colabello (sp?) making the team out of ST and playing everyday for them. He'll be taken off the 40 after the season so the spot doesn't really matter, but the message is definitely cool. Oh but that said I bet Buddy Bell thinks that one day he's going to be really awesome.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Sep 16, 2014 -> 07:13 PM) http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/splits/_/id/...ing3/john-danks You're not going to like it, from 2011 to 2013, his OPS against LHB and RHB is exactly the same, 775, which is WAY too high. The only really good LR we had relatively recently that I can think of is DJ Carrasco. We haven't had much out there in that role. Right now the options are Bassitt, Rienzo, Carroll it looks like. And the last time we had two quality lefties in the same pen was....? I'm really not sure actually. Probably Hector Santiago and Matt Thornton, when Hector was more of a reliever in a permanent role in his first full season. But even Hector really had problems serving up gopherballs on that "screwball" then, and then going back further to a point of 2 solid lefties, maybe we have to go back to Thornton and Boone in the pen at the same time, but back then Boone would go through periods where he couldn't throw a strike to save his life. Basically the second lefty has been a bunch of crap, like Will Ohman and so on. Right now the options are Surkamp and Snodgress, that De Los Santos guy, yeah not much. Asking Danks to be almost as good as DJ Carrasco was and better than Will Ohman/heap of dogs*** we've generally run out there... is that *really* asking too much? In a perfect world some team will come around and offer to take on $10-12M or so of that deal & we'll just move on (yeah right, like the Sox would ever do that). But if we're going to be stuck with him at least try the pen, rather than put him back in the rotation. To what end? BTW Danks did pitch a lot better the first couple months of the season. Maybe a lighter workload and being able to pick spots a bit with him would allow him to be more effective? It doesn't sound crazy to me at all. Also, those numbers you posted caulfied..... compare his lines on number of pitches: 245 .287 .388 .675 on pitches 1-15 .297 .341 .538 .879 on pitches 16-30 .262 .304 .431 .735 on pitches 31-45 .276 .342 .404 .746 on pitches 46-60 .351 .405 .610 1.015 on pitches 61-75 To me that looks like a guy who starts out well, fades as the inning deepens, then starts out well on the new inning, and just fades/gets worse until finally 2nd/3rd time through he's toast. A move to the pen seems like it wouldn't be a bad idea. Also, there is this: Hitters are hitting .307 .309 .534 .843 against him on the first pitch and are averaging a HR every 19.6 AB. After 0-1 they are hitting .242 .276 .409 .685 with a HR every 25.2 AB. After 1-0 they are hitting .310 .389 .485 .874 with a HR every 33 AB. So it seems like he is getting burned in the strikezone a lot. When he falls behind on the first pitch he actually has a much better HR rate than when he throws the first pitch over the plate, although he ends up walking more guys of course. He'll never be safe in the strikezone but at least if he is in the pen maybe he'll be a little fresher, and he'll only be seeing hitters once and at most twice if he has to be a long man during his appearance. So at least then maybe he doesn't have to worry as much about changing sequences to the hitter. The point is he's owed $28.5M and that's not going to disappear, nor is his fastball magically going to reappear. Time for damage control IMO, and hey, maybe he could even be an asset in the pen. Again, can he be *almost* as good as DJ Carrasco was for us and also significantly (perhaps) better than the likes of Scott Downs, Will Ohman, and all the rest of the trash we've trotted out there? I think so. JMO though.

QUOTE (LDF @ Sep 16, 2014 -> 05:44 PM) this is totally unrelated to what was being discuss but I wanted to post this. I was reading cbs sports and they have the top list of players since the all star game. I am not a stat guy so I will let them explain this. http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/playerrankings Whoa, Chris Carter is White now! Man I knew he's been through some changes lately but damn....

I'd be interested in shopping Webb around a bit too. He has a very nice arm but he just can't throw good strikes, still. It's not generally a good idea for rebuilding teams to trade prospects for relievers, but it's probably not all that dangerous to upgrade over a guy like Webb. Byt the same token I think it might be worth it to shop Javy Guerra around a bit too, although given his past history of success he seems more like a solid bet as a MR than Webb does. What kind of sucks about Webb is that he can't reliably be a righty specialist or a long man because he can't make enough good pitches, nor does he seem to do very well under pressure. So it's kind of hard to "hide" him in the pen, especially in a bad pen. Maybe Webb + could get us a quality lefty out of someone else's pen. Maybe if there's a team around with an extra one we could use as a SU man we could offer Webb + Rienzo or something (still think Andre has a legit shot as a 5th starter somewhere).

First we need a rotation that 1-5 is capable of 6+ IP every time out while keeping us in the game. Get the number of innings the pen needs to eat down. Then we need a quality long man that will further eat into those innings. Allow the setup guys and specialists to be setup guys and specialists. Then we need at least one lefty SU guy, a closer, ideally a second lefty, also we'd like to have a go-to option as a righty specialist to use on a per-batter basis. That's a lot of needs. Again I'll reiterate the Danks to the pen idea as a potential solution here. Balta says the numbers don't work, Danks isn't good enough vs. LHH but I'll take my chances on the numbers evening out. Platoon splits can vary year to year but the general rule is that same-side batters don't see the ball as long and so the pitcher is most often at a slight advantage at least. There are exceptions to every rule but I think he'd do fine there. If he's the long man and the 2nd lefty while out of the rotation I think that helps in a lot of ways. Hahn's got several holes to fill but I really hope he doesn't sign more than 2 guys for the pen to larger guaranteed deals, and if he does get a couple relievers I hope one of them is a closer candidate buy-low reclamation type that offers potential upside as a trade candidate.

I thought the author's argument was pretty weak & I think he pretty much just made the case why Felix should get the award. First, the innings disparity is huge, it isn't negligible at all. If Sale pitched for Seattle and Felix pitched for us we'd probably feel it would be pretty ridiculous to try to marginalize such a great disparity in IP. Secondly you can't just "throw in" a bunch of extra IP (even at poor results) and declare that he'd still rank as one of the best pitchers in the league. That argument holds no water. SP are SP because they are supposed to be durable enough to start a lot of games and pitch deep into those games regularly. Sale missed time because he was shut down for elbow soreness. You can't just throw a guy out there when he's sore in pursuit of some meaningless award (from the team perspective anyway) and if you did you couldn't assume the result would be anything other than injury, meaning that the insane run he went on coming off the DL and all the sick numbers he put up during it wouldn't be there, and you wouldn't be making a case for him at all. I think it is perfectly reasonable to think Sale is the best pitcher in the American League on any given day he makes a start. But stats won't really help you prove that, they could only show how much it is a matter of opinion. If you are a manager, and it is Game 7 of the World Series, and you have both Felix Hernandez and Chris Sale sitting there available to pitch, and both are perfectly healthy and well rested, and the lineup you are facing is equally dangerous from the RH side and the LH side, then I could see why that manager might choose Sale over Felix to start that game. Maybe he's just trickier, more of an mindf*** pitcher, whatever. It would be perfectly reasonable think that Sale is the best pitcher in the American League on any given day he starts, but that's not really how the Cy Young works. The Cy Young is a season long award that is given to the pitcher with the best full season, and the difference between Sale in innings is the difference between a full year of a busy reliever or 3 weeks worth of starts etc. it's just huge. And Felix's numbers are comparable enough to where the innings disparity can't be overlooked. I think that if you are a voter and you're not operating under any really defined rules & are just trying to enact a common sense approach to determining who the Cy Young winner should be, there are basically one of a few ways you could do it: 1) Who is the best for the longest OR who is the best most often OR if you define what a great outing is arbitrarily via individual performance statistics, which pitcher hit those benchmarks most over the course of a season? This stuff all would affect IP & Felix probably wins out most often here due to that. 2) Who is the best inning for inning? Now you also have to factor in closers and other reliever or else it is not fair, because the whole point of starting is to pitch effectively enough to minimize high leverage situations as much as possible, and starters are given leeway that relievers generally aren't. Factor in all pitchers and someone is going to put Sale further back in the discussion. 3) Who is the best on a start-for-start basis only? You are choosing to ignore relievers and focus only on starters. Sale would have a better shot here, but it would unfair to Felix to take the cumulative numbers and divide them all by number of starts, because again you're ignoring a large body of work. Maybe a ratio would work where you defined what a great start is and compared that to quality starts, and had a second ratio of quality + great starts compared to s***ty starts. Or something like that. 4) You could do something like the scenario I mentioned above, just basically take a wild guess/go with a gut feeling, like if it's the msot important game of your life, and either Felix or Sale could start it, who would you choose? But then you're probably going to ask for numbers to back up your choice if it is Sale, since baseball is such a statistically dominated game. In short I think it's Felix's award and you really have to stretch it to say Sale should get it over Felix. The only realistic way I could see Sale getting it is if he finishes by throwing more starts like his last one while Felix at the same time hits a rough patch as he's trying to guide his team into the playoffs. A late swoon by Felix with the spotlight on him coupled with more Sale dominance might do it. But as it stands it's Felix's award and there's really no way to marginalize the innings gap given how great Felix has been in the innings he has thrown. You can talk about park factors and stuff too, but on the flip side when has Sale had to pitch under pressure? Felix is pitching for the chance to play meaningful baseball for the first time in his career really. There's definitely a lot more pressure on him and that counts for something.

QUOTE (StRoostifer @ Sep 15, 2014 -> 03:46 PM) Good grief TUC. It took all that to say you disagree and would take Aiken? I thought it was fairly concise. Besides I like to think of the people who read my posts as "victims." Seriously though how awesome would it be to get that caliber of pitching prospect 1 year after Rodon? "The best college lefty since Price" followed by "the best high-school lefty in a decade" or whatever it was they said about Aiken. And we could thank the Houston Astros for both. I think if this happens & we get Aiken + Rodon in consecutive years we should all send personalized Christmas cards to the Astros FO. We can also send some of our old/worn out WS Championship memorabilia as a token of our thanks, you know since they didn't get to enjoy any of that themselves cuz we beat them.

The idea of Rodon falling to us in 2014 & Aiken falling to us in 2015 is so sloppy and pornographic that it almost too obscene for this board. I mean really?? Mr. Donald James Cooper, let me remind you guys, went on record before the draft saying that if all the tops arms were available when the Sox made their pick, and if Cooper was the one who got to make the pick, he'd have taken Aiken. He'd have taken Aiken over Rodon, Kolek, Nola, everyone. I don't think that can be emphasized enough. When Don Cooper is dead there will be teams of short bald men wandering about every continent on the Earth, dressed in black and white robes leading black and white-dyed camels in search of his latest reincarnation. He is the f***ing Dalai Llama of pitching. And he would have taken Aiken over everyone else. Small UCL, whatever, who gives a f***. Are we looking at a 15-20 year solution here? Where we would be drafting, at most we're talking about a few million dollars, which basically is the cost of one year of a highly paid UT type or the price of one year of an average or better setup guy. And in exchange for that you are getting (4) MiLB option years and (6) years MLB team control over a guy that could be a left-handed ace. Really, ANYONE wouldn't take that? Let's not be stupid. The Astros are complete and total dumbf***s that pissed away an entire draft year, and hey, that's not even nearly the end of it for them. They've had a s*** year on multiple fronts, leaking out trade info, Cosart and JD Martinez could both come back on them, etc. They're just morons over there. They f***ed up, and when it comes time for us to make decisions we shouldn't think about anything the Astros are thinking about because those guys are idiots anyway. Yeah I'd take Aiken, in a heartbeat. Even 2 MLB years out of him is in all likelihood more production than you're going to get of most of the players taken in the entire draft, and 5-6 years of Aiken at the MLB level? s*** we're talking about that Tomas guy in the other thread, other players out of Asia etc. and Aiken is going to cost a song more or less. Yeah, take him, don't worry about the UCL. If it holds up even a little you've probably already gotten a tremendous value. He's a lefthanded pitcher with very good stuff. The game of baseball was MADE for lefthanded pitchers with very good stuff.

So wait there's actually a real prospect out there who is ambidexerhoweveryouspellit? That's cool. Is he legit or is all Axelroddy?

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Sep 15, 2014 -> 12:14 AM) I wonder if guys like this, or Pat Venditte, or others who are ambidextrous pitchers can actually go something like 140 pitches a start, if you think his arm fatigue will be lessened in each arm if he is only throwing 70 pitches with each arm, or however the split may occur. Steve Stone always says something like if your legs can carry you through 6 innings, your arm can carry you the last 3. Well what if EACH arm can carry him the last 3. Could someone like this pitch a 12-inning complete game? I'm sure someone has looked in to this before. He just means that your lower half is what drives you, but the comment really doesn't make any sense IMO. It's like throwing a punch or a kick or something, you use your mass and built-up momentum to focus the force on one specific point which you then use to release that energy onto your target. If you're throwing a punch or a pitch you're not throwing with your arms. That's really the main reason behind all the scouts loving monster 6'4"+ pitchers with thick and sturdy looking lower halves who have clean mechanics. They're the types that you'd think have a better chance at lasting longer, throwing multiple seasons in the Majors at 200IP, etc. They're also IMO the reason why Tyler Danish isn't considered a top-100 prospect right now, and probably the reason most teams would rather pick up Montas in a trade even though Danish is more polished and probably the better bet to get MLB hitters out *at all* at any point. Anyway you need your lower half for 9 innings if you are going to pitch for 9 innings. If you're just out there overexerting yourself all the time (beyond what would be expected of anyone trying to build stamina) then you're just going to get hurt. I think I know what Stone is getting at here in that if you can go strong overall for 6 then you're probably set up well enough to "pitch" the last three innings by using speed variance and location more than power and "stuff" but still, that seems like some terrible advice to give anyone, especially a pitcher. I've never heard Stoney say that but that sounds like a good way to get someone doing something wrong mechanically late in the game when he's out of gas, and that's probably one of the best ways for a pitcher to hurt himself.

^Anyway I guess my point is, there's nothing "we" could have done. It was DeAza's head stuck up DeAza's ass, not anyone else's. DeAza was the only one who could have righted the ship and obviously it took a trade getting him the hell away from this team to allow him to do that, so whatever, good for him but I doubt we did anything poorly. Todd Steverson is the greatest thing ever, obviously he did nothing wrong.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Sep 14, 2014 -> 08:59 PM) I guess you are right, but I think he had 2 bad years, right? This year and last year. I think he's had a two homer game in Baltimore as well as a game in which he had 2 triples, which is probably a team record. I'm assuming they love him in Baltimore right now. Like I was saying though, if he becomes a stud leadoff hitter/outfielder, it's time to question the Sox ability to coach/motivate players. I mean, seriously. DeAza like somebody likes to say was a "bucket of suck" for two seasons in a row in Chicago. He has a lot more ability than he showed here, but he was just the prototypical change of scenery candidate. I think he's definitely a better player than Dunn or Beckham but the return didn't show it. And really it shouldn't have, he just played like s*** here. Basically he had trade rumors swirling around him for 2 straight years really and just got worse. He started this year in a platoon role and was already trying to hit home runs in his first game (he did hit some early HRs but thta's obviously the wrong approach for DeAza... DJ even talked about it on the radio at the time, saying the HRs were nice but that's not his game and wondered if it would affect him later, well obviously it did). DeAza had some pressure on him & probably a lot of that pressure he put on himself. Some players just can't play through that stuff and it looks like he is one of them. Getting traded probably took a lot of that off him and now he can just go out there and play. It's actually not a bad situation for him at all. He was going to be a non-tender off a s***ty team coming off a s***ty season and at that point he'd have had to settle for a low base 1 year guarantee as part of someone's bench most likely, but who knows, now he's got some playing time with a team that for all we know could go all the way. He has an opportunity to play for a contract. Look at some of the money players like Cody Ross and Angel Pagan have gotten, both of whom were kind of in that DeAza type territory for a while as starting caliber players that you really didn't know if you wanted to start or have as more of a rich man's 4th OF. Postseason success leads to added interest & possibly bigger paydays, so maybe he'll set himself up for a 2-year deal or a 1-year deal similar in pay to what the Sox would have non-tendered him over. At least he has a shot in Baltimore, he didn't have a shot at anything here.

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ Sep 14, 2014 -> 12:27 AM) If anything Tank has the opportunity to prove he should be "in the mix" for next year but if there is an upgrade available at 1B/DH/LF then obviously you take it. And let's be honest say absolute best case Viciedo turns into a league average 1B that hits 260/300/450 -- that's still hardly even a 1.5 WAR player -- and that's best case. I just don't see him ever having enough power to carry his lack of fielding. Viciedo has enough power and bat speed to go with it to make up for any lack of ability elsewhere. But I just don't know about him. I don't think he barrels the ball up very well, I think he takes his eye off the ball a lot with 2 strikes, I think he sometimes makes decisions too soon in the batters box and is overaggressive before he needs to be, etc. Then again he does have a lot of those "unteachables" and he is still young. At the same time he's well into arbitration and whether he figures it out or not you're still going to be looking at a tough financial decision especially with Borass as the agent (if Tank hits 40 there's no way he doesn't hit FA). But even with that, if the Sox keep him and he's either in a platoon role (especially one that minimizes time in the field) and/or "gets it" and goes off, he can still help the team in the short term on the field and maybe in the long term via midseason trade. There are reasons to keep him and reasons to sell. But if you sell you need upside for sure. I didn't see the home run but I caught a couple of his ABs the first game. The one he got a great pitch to hit, hit the ball hery hard, but caught it toward the end of the bat, not on the barrel, and flew out. It seems like we see that a lot out of him. Then the other PA I can remember, IIRC it was bases loaded nobody out, the guy on the mound was Tonkin I think, fastball-slider with control issues i.e. WTF should you be looking for, fastball only right? And he did look fastball but first pitch he tried to swing for the fences on a fastball that ran inside on him. Then he goes after a pitch away, fouls it off, then IIRC goes down on a slider out of the zone. He really had 2 pitches in that sequence which really weren't great pitches to hit but other players could have gotten the bat on and hit a sac fly on at least. Instead he K's and drives in no one. With Tank I again think of a fighter with huge power who is just get getting picked apart because he's swinging for the fences and not trying to just land something. The corner keeps telling him "just touch him" over and over, and I think the same about Tank. He has the bat speed to catch up to the fastball if he waits a bit and lets the ball deeper, really he has the bat speed to buy him a margin of error most guys don't have. And he has enough power to go yard any direction in any ballpark. So why not just focus on seeing the ball more and "touching" the ball with the bat? He loads up too much. So in all I think he probably just doesn't have that natural ability to barrel it up as often as those elite MLBers do, and on top of it he's often overaggressive and takes the wrong approach to the situation. I guess the HR last night which I didn't see was the result of a great approach and fouling off a lot of pitches. And that's the problem with Tank because he will tantalize you & you can see him really putting up some numbers if everything goes right. But it's just tough to keep dreaming on anyone, especially defensively limited players who are arb-eligible with Borass as their agents. So maybe you keep him for next year and give it another shot or maybe you trade him, but if you trade him then you better get upside in return or else there is no point. I think Hahn can do either and each option would be easily justifiable.

QUOTE (Jake @ Sep 13, 2014 -> 01:44 PM) How is it that you are devaluing the person with a comment that says they are girl-like without your comment also implying that there is something bad about being like a girl? I take it that you are a very nice person and you probably haven't insulted many others on purpose in your life, so you probably don't know how put-downs work. That's okay, I will explain. When you put down someone else there are mainly 2 roads to take, one via intellect where you rack your brain a bit and maybe even make the person have to think about it (the back-handed compliment is probably the most common, or one of the most common) or you take the quickest route possible, i.e. you find the most obvious thing that you think another person would be sensitive about and you put it out in the open. And if there's really nothing there, you pick something very general that another person would likely take pride in (i.e. competency, sexuality, etc.) and compare it to something else that is deficient in those qualities/aspects. When you get to the "you throw like a girl" part you are taking the simplest route possible. You are obviously telling this to a boy/man because you wouldn't ever tell a girl that she threw like a girl.... what's the point? It wouldn't work. So you are deliberately making an obvious assumption (this boy/man is confident in his masculintiy) and then comparing him to a girl as an attempt to bring him down and laugh at him. That's why you do it. And if you have a habit of doing these things where you and a friend or whatever are jokingly putting each other down all the time, it's really just a game. In the Hawk sense it's a bit larger in scope, i.e. the seriousness/integrity/manliness/history of the game is being undermined or questioned, so you respond by questioning the goal of the subject, i.e. to make baseball a girl's game and so on. What you are doing is not devaluing a woman or a girl, you are picking a characteristic about a certain thing that would not be ideally identified with that thing and then making a comment to create whatever effect you had intended, i.e. question a rule, put someone down , etc. You just pick an undesirable or inapplicable quality and apply it somewhere, with or without reason. But the quality you are defining only applies to what you are attaching it to, i.e. in "throwing like a girl" the "girl" part only applies to the specific person in the specific act of throwing, nothing more. It isn't an indictment of women or a call to violence. Only a complete moron with no social conscious whatsoever (or in this case an intellectially devoid corporate media hack) would ever think as much. It's just a simple thing with a simple purpose. A put down or a totally hyperbolic statement or comparison has a very simple purpose and poitn. And I guess in that respect you can draw a comparison to a put down and domestic violence, which also has a very specific purpose and point. But one is innocent or relatively innocent; one causes no physical damage or bodily harm. The other puts you in prison and gets you raped by big, angry iron-pumping sexally frustrated men. And for very good reason. Only some dumbf*** hack would try to connect the two. And f*** the media basically, that's really my larger point here. Eat whole foods & f*** the media.

QUOTE (kitekrazy @ Sep 13, 2014 -> 12:18 PM) f*** political correctness. It is the most damning religion in this country. It's stench first started in Europe and now they are starting to see the error of their ways. Most girls throw different than boys. Go watch a school mixed PE class. You're right, and it is like a religion, but the religion isn't political correctness, it is the media. NEVER get your values from the media. NEVER rely on the media to choose your heroes, because all you'll get is athletes and various (usually superficially talented) celebrities. And when some event happens like this one, NEVER listen to these dumbf***s when they try to explain why it happens/how it happens. You can say we live in a media culture but I'm not sure where the culture is exactly. We just live in the media period, and there's nothing good about it.

I am jealous of their lineup. We shoudl find a way to acquire Santana, Vargas, Dozier, and get Eduardo back. Their 7/8 hitters in Suzuki & Escobar are probably more dangerous ATM than anything we have at the 5th spot or lower. If the Twins get any pitching at all they will make some noise.

CBS' James Brown in his earlier years?

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Sep 13, 2014 -> 09:39 AM) I really hate when sports announcers get political *cough* Costas *cough* but I really like what Brown said, because he made his statement in a way that was advocating personal and social responsibility rather than a political position. Kudos to JB. I didn't watch the speech but the transcript was one of the dumbest things I've ever read: This point in particular: "When a guy says "You throw a ball like a girl" or "You're a sissy." It reflects an attitude that devalues women, and attitudes will eventually manifest in some fashion" and then 2 sentences later he's throwing out a statistic about women who die from domestic violence events. First, when you tell someone he throws like a girl you are not devaluing women, you are devaluing the person you are speaking to intentionally. This is the same thing that happens when you make a comment to one of your friends (as a joke of course) that implies ambiguity re: his sexual preferences. No, calling your friend the "other" f-word is not devaluing gay people, you are only saying that because you get a rise out of your friend being offended. You obviously wouldn't call your friend that in the presence of someone you knew was a homosexual, nor would you say something like that around other people you don't know very well. If you say "Dude you're a sissy" you're not doing anything other than taking the quickest, most direct route to an insult. If you told a girl "You throw like a girl" she should say "I am a girl you moron!" or something like that, and not be ashamed of who she is. Same thing, call a gay person a derogatory name and hopefully that person is strong enough and proud enough to be able to say "Yeah I am, you got a problem with that you dumbf*** redneck?" That sort of thing. But there's a huge difference in making a comment meant as a joke or slight insult to a friend (or even making an insult) and physically harming another person, especially to the point of killing them. I mean come on. That guy is a f***ing moron for saying that. And there's zero reason to ever lecture anyone on why you shouldn't beat up women. Some things just don't need explaining unless of course you are a judge, a cop, or a lawyer. It's just another bulls*** attempt to save face by a member of the corporate media so that people don't feel bad about pissing their afternoons away in front of the tv watching some meaningless football game. Keep those f***ers in the their seats & swallowing all those commercials up. The network blowhards knew they had to address the manner in some way so they did. Also IMO that guy is a sissy and he throws like a girl, and if that comment enrages him to the point where he feels like being violent toward a woman then that is his problem, he's the one who needs to see a shrink, and if he legitimately thinks that people in a vacuum who decide to throw out insults are really these unpredictable loose cannons about to erupt into domestic violence events then still, that's his problem and he's still the one who needs to see a shrink. God damn it I hate when the media tries to speak on stuff like this, the comments themselves are often just as ignorant and offensive as the subject matter is. What a f***in douche, IMO that guy can go swallow a Coca-Cola flavored dick.