The Ultimate Champion

^I bet every of the 30 organizations has their own little Oney Guillen, i.e. loudmouth little s*** waste of air who is unfortunately privy to normally hushed team information due only to the fact that he's related to someone too important to fire. And I bet these little stains are the ones where a lot of the radio guys get their quotes, same with the Cowley-type beat guys no one respects, they get their info from a bad source because no one of consequence tells them anything.

QUOTE (GREEDY @ Jan 2, 2014 -> 02:09 PM) I forgot about Elmore! Dang, ALL OF THE RIGHT HANDED UTILITY INFIELDERS!!!! LeuryG needs to make this team, and find a way to hit tough righties, so Alexei and/or Beckham are tolerable. Konerko really put a damper on this team's bench situation. Keppinger is toast. Gillaspie works fine with Davidson for the first few months if there is room for him, but I'm starting to think that the only way Davidson breaks with the big club is if Keppinger and/or Dunn are not on the team... Pull Konerko off the roster though & we're still loaded on our bench. There are really only 2 main things hampering us IMO, 1) Dunn's deal, and 2) Keppinger's deal. Hopefully we can dump Kepp without eating more than $1.5M per or so, and hopefully we just dump Dunn for nothing if we have to. If we do that then things start looking a lot better, since Viciedo is the DH and DeAza is the LF, and at least one of Leury/Elmore gets to be on the club in Keppinger's spot, but as more of a true UT player. Also, I think people should consider that if Paulie really sucks at the plate he might come down with a few "sore thumb" type of trips to the 15-day DL this season, and nobody is going to care, not the league, not the player's association, no one. OTOH if he hits a little bit we'll be happy about the whole thing, appreciating Paulie's career during his farewell tour.

Athletes these days can be major p*****s. WTF do you want, you're playing a sport for a f***ing living and you have a shot of earning millions of dollars *even if you suck* provided you get through the first 3 years at the league minimum or thereabouts. You got a team plane, catering, all the best restaurants... me first & selfish? To whoever said that, grow a pair of balls you little girlyman. We've heard that s*** about AJ & Frank both for years, and if what they say about Eaton is true, and that attitude results in Eaton expressing even 1/2 the level of dedication to the game those guys have, then that is exactly the kind of player I want Hahn out acquiring in the first place and that also is exactly the kind of player I want leading this team. Being obsessed with excellence isn't a bad thing, nor is it repulsive to anyone who also expects the same of himself. Whoever made these comments about Eaton should go hang around with Nick Swisher and do the worm together like little girlymen who have no balls. That's what I think.

^And as things stand Leury doesn't even make the team over Keppinger since Kepp is being paid... either that or Gillaspie is dumped because he's out of options

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Jan 2, 2014 -> 11:47 AM) Yeah, Elmore is a good asset. He and Leury would be on the utility man all-star team. I think it's probably one or the other IMO We have to take Paulie, so I think we're looking at a C, a SS who is the IF UT guy, then either a corner IF type or an OF Right now, on a 4 man bench I'd say we'd have Paulie the rolemodel & RH PH, a C, Leury to cover the MIF, and Gillaspie as the corner IF & LF backup plus the LH PH... DeAza is the backup CF to Eaton and when he's not there you have either Viciedo or Gillaspie in LF

How many users are there here at SoxTalk? If there are 5,000, I'd say 4,999 of us also forgot about Elmore. Oops, I mean 4,998 Forgot about the Elmore thread

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Jan 1, 2014 -> 02:39 PM) Does Gillaspie play LF? Not yet, but he will if we keep him IMO. If he's a reserve he should be expected to see time there.

If Davidson makes the team and the Sox dump Dunn: C - 2 of Flowers/Nieto/Phegley/Someone else we bring in 1B - Abreu, Gillaspie DH - Viciedo, Paulie 2B - Beckham, Leury, Keppinger, Semien, Carlos Sanchez/non-roster invitee SS - Alexei, Leury, Semien, Carlos Sanchez/non-roster invitee 3B - Davidson, Gillaspie, Keppinger, Semien LF - DeAza, Viciedo, Gillaspie probably, Leury CF - Eaton, Danks, Leury RF - Avisail, Danks That's 17 different position players, leaving Hahn with great fluidity here. Some of these guys have options too. I think the first thing you do is dump Dunn - and you eat all the cash if you have to. The second thing you do is try to dump Keppinger - but you *do not* just eat up all the cash, because I really don't think you have to. You do those first 2 moves because they are the easiest to make & provide the least amount of talent/value back in return. From there you shop Alexei, Beckham, DeAza, and Gillaspie, and if you get a good deal for any of those guys you take it. If not, you're looking at a seriously limited bench, losing an extra pitcher, etc. But without Dunn & Kepp you've got the ability to mix pieces; you definitely need a backup SS so Leury is the biggest bench favorite on the team, but if you trade Beckham for example, Semien can he the starter at 2B and the SS backup, meaning Danks can be the OF and Leury goes to AAA. There are lots of options. But Keppinger should be pretty far back on our depth charts so I think we should move him if we can.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Dec 31, 2013 -> 03:36 PM) so past the J4L porn talk and NPB sucks talk, how long will this process take? Tanaka & the posting process? Who knows. The teams all are going to give out $20M bids, it's just a question of how long his agent can drag this thing out before teams start looking differently at Ubaldo, Garza, and Santana. That could be a week or more IMO.

QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Dec 31, 2013 -> 11:20 AM) You are entitled to your own opinion. You can think the league sucks but most people with baseball knowledge will simply disagree with you. The MLB is the MLB and the NPB is the NPB. They have completely different playing styles. The MLB is a conglomerate of the world's best literally. The NPB is primarily Japanese. So yeah, it should be no shock that the world's best would beat a league full of the best Japanese players. Most of the good players aren't even America in the MLB which is kind of ironic if you ask me. I'm just being a typical all-or-nothing type of fan ready & fully willing to dismiss anything less than MLB excellence. NPB, if perfectly on par with AAA, "sucks" to me just like AAA does. However, in both leagues, there are exceptional talents which appear here and there, but unlike AAA, in Japan they stick around because there is no other higher level to transition to. I'm just an asshole sometimes in general, but I do respect Japanese culture & the way their athletes approach sports. As an MMA fan I've followed MMA in Japan, totally different sport, but in both MMA & baseball I can tell the approach to sports is just about completely opposite. In Japan it's about honor, respect, tradition, the fighting spirit, the art form, basically it seems like sports are done in large part to show how exceptional the human body & spirit can be. Winning isn't everything. In contrast, in America (and Canada & Brazil in MMA) it's all about the money, the records, bigger is better, the lifestyle, the status, the jaw-dropping amazement factor, etc. In MLB the best athletes may roid to the gills to become superhuman, and it's a giant sponsor-aided dick measuring contest where how fast you can run or how high you can jump supersedes the respect you have for the sport & how you treat other people. In Japan, I doubt many athletes would say "If you ain't cheatin you ain't tryin" or "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." With that said, while as a fan it warms my heart when I read about how Ichiro won't spit on the field or in any way disgrace the dugout, if I had Ichiro on my team I'd gladly ship him out of town for some spoiled brat rich kid with the ability to hit a baseball 450ft. That's how I approach the game as a fan, which probably explains why I'm a dick.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Dec 31, 2013 -> 02:43 PM) What type of internet sex? There are lots Full-on, hardcore intellectual penetration is what I would believe he's referring to. But I wouldn't even attempt that with EMinor anyway especially not when dealing with trends, statistics, prospects, anything like that. If you don't wear the proper intellectual lingerie you're probably not going to entice him at all, he'll just scoff at you & walk away, leaving you with no chance to mentally ejaculate in the company of another and far too ashamed to try to do it for yourself.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Dec 31, 2013 -> 10:26 AM) Hahn did mention the possibility of Charlotte. I don't think the Sox would trade their cheap closer for a guy they thought needed much time in AAA, but we will see. It's all up to him. They just have to make him earn it. If Davidson has an excellent Spring & looks like an MLB player then he's the starter. If not, and maybe you get an injury or some real struggles, then he's going to have to earn it again in AAA. If Hahn came right out and said he was MLB ready and would be on the Opening Day roster then anything less than a stellar ST would probably be a disappointment, and he could risk setting the kid up for failure. I assume however that he'll be given a pretty low uniform number & regardless of his ST performance he'll stick around very late in order to experience the MLB clubhouse & work with the MLB hitting coaches.

Morel was a real bright spot coming up through the system. I remember being angry when the Sox took him, there was somebody else I wanted there who went to the Royals and became a bust. Forget who that was, he was a pitcher. As a 3B Morel didn't look too impressive but the fact that he was a former C, the arm strength, the surprising SB totals, the high average with legit pop, he really looked like he could be a find. I got pretty excited about him, and I still think it was just the back that did it and ruined his career, not really anything else. It seems that in most cases, for a talented prospect to turn out, just about everything has to go right and in order. The guy has to stay healthy, advance levels when he's ready only, and then when he's MLB ready he gets the shot immediately and acquires large amounts of MLB playing time regardless of the situation, i.e, unlike with BA & Fields he doesn't get benched for Erstads or a recovering Crede, etc. It seems like with so many guys, especially position players, that if there's any hiccup in there outside of the normal struggle-adjustment-struggle cycle, the guy just falls too far behind, gets passed up, then gets stuck on a AAA roster eating up an MLB option.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Dec 30, 2013 -> 09:11 PM) Alright. I just asked Dan Szymborski about this, who is the inventor of the ZiPS projection system and works for ESPN (I play TF2 with him on Steam). I'm going to post the conversation verbatim: Eminor3rd: Have you done your own equivalencies for NPB stats? [AiF] Zim: Yup [AiF] Zim: Couldn't project if I didn't! Eminor3rd: And how do they compare to MiLB? I've heard roughly AAA, is that true? Eminor3rd: or do you just have linear weights for every type of event [AiF] Zim: Like AAA+.5 [AiF] Zim: BA type stuff almost no hit, HRs bigger hit than moving from AAA There you have it. Not opinion, but statistical research on equivalencies that show NPB numbers to be roughly AAA level and then some. And this is coming from one of the biggest names in this tiny field, so much so that ESPN uses his numbers. And I still don't care about any of that, but whatever. You win, I'll retract my statements about NPB players being incapable of making it out of AA and being far lesser than AAA guys. Of course I still stand by everything else I said, i.e. that the league sucks, the stress level on a pitcher is far lesser than anything they'd have to experience in MLB & as such the pitch count worries are probably overblown, and if quality AAA players/fringe MLB guys are the equivalent to most of your star NPB players then I don't see why they wouldn't beat the unholy dogs*** out of the NPB league if enough of them ever went over there at once. Caulfield says there are rules in effect preventing that, and good, there should be, because it would be embarrassing overwise. The goal over there is to win; the goal here in America is to create enough competition to develop the few legitimate prospects that exist around the league while creating an opportunity for fringe-roster players and rehabbing MLB vets to get playing time. Should the games matter as they do in Japan you wouldn't bench your best performers to let a top prospect struggle while you're contending, nor would you give out gift organizational promotions to under qualified prospects simply to maintain an organizational status quo. In Japan you throw a 1000 pitches to be a living god, in America you throw 50% breaking balls in important games/situations just because your pitching coaches want you to develop the pitch. But otherwise, I agree that your work here is impressive and you are definitely devoted to the numbers at a level where you should honestly pursue a career in baseball if you're not doing so already. And I don't like it when you disagree with me. Please refrain from doing that, just agree with me please.

There is the possibility - I'll throw it out there to be fair - that the Japanese market is underdeveloped. I have a hard time believing it, especially since it still seems like their main export is tricky relief pitchers, but it's a possibility. And if that happens to be the case then it will be overdeveloped pretty quickly with the new posting system & players not costing draft picks or INTL signing pool slots.

^This is true. However Matsui, Fukudome, a bunch of these guys got good money, good enough to get some people thinking about moving a good distance from home, especially when you factor in the traditional team perks like personal translator & assistance, help getting organized as far as place of residence and so forth. There is a trend here where teams just keep spending more and more on unproven players so long as the spending isn't capped. I believe there would be a lot of this happening in Japan if MLB scouts liked the players over there enough. That Concepcion guy got $7M something from the Cubs for basically sounding like Quintana who we signed as a MiLB FA that same offseason, and most of us were pretty interested in Noel Arguelles who got good $$$ from the Royals but became a bust. If MLB execs viewed NPB baseball as Triple-A level with MLB quality players I think we can fairly assume they would throw a ton more money over there than they do given how they spend in other areas of international free agency.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Dec 30, 2013 -> 04:56 PM) People don't need stats to disprove baseless claims, people need stats to support their otherwise baseless claims. The "experts" in the media commonly refer to the NPB as being roughly equivalent if slightly superior to AAA baseball. From my personal consumption (admittedly mostly from memory of podcasts), sabermetricians and talking heads agree on this point. If you want to claim a different opinion than status quo, you should be the one providing evidence. See, they have their opinions, that's fine, but what you just posted is equally as baseless. I could just as easily turn around and exclaim shock at the notion of your general/average NPB players being at the same level as your American & Latin players in the high minors in the MLB system, much less actually superior. In fact, I am going to. What evidence do you have that the Japanese players in NPB came up facing an equal or greater level of comp as those in our AAA system currently? Players here have had to mostly work straight from Rookie or Low-A ball up through multiple levels before eventually topping at as ST invitees or 23-25th type roster players. Think seriously for a second about all the players in MiLB baseball, from the all the Summer League teams and organizational camps to 2 levels of Rookie ball to 3 levels of A ball to AA to AAA, and consider just how many of these players there are. Then consider the pool they come from. These players have come from all over the world, some are very serious athletes as well, and some of these guys have been given substantial signing bonuses which I am sure would rank well in comparison to some of the salaries in Japan alone. Consider how many if not most of the players here have been scouted by multiple organizations intensely, each organization of course being worth on average what, a few hundred million dollars? This is big business over here. There's a lot a players picked from a lot of places, there's a lot of money in the scouting, the signing, the development, the the training, etc. of these guys. And for someone to just run out there and say that the NPB guys are the same level or better than the AAA/fringe MLB players he had better have some real proof. To me, making a statement like that shows a total lack of appreciation for what players who have made it that far in MLB's system have actually accomplished. For anyone to make such a statement and be accurate they'd need some real data that *does not* involve NPB stats which of course prove little to nothing. I want to know what the average FB velocity is over there, I want to know what the average breaking balls look like, the bat speed, the time out of the box to first, the type of thing a scout would look for. Otherwise the claim that NPB is as good or better is just as baseless. Some "expert" number crunchers know what, exactly? Amateur free agents don't get signed by numbers, they get signed by ability, and you look to the numbers for support. If you want to come up with a way that actually measures the talent level somewhat objectively then sure you can go ahead & say they're as good as our AAA guys if that ends up being the case. But I would bet on the contrary, that if you wanted to create a league in NPB that would be comparable to the AAA level you'd probably have to contract several teams over there and squeeze the rosters quite a bit. And lastly I don't buy for a second that more players don't come over here just because they want to stay in Japan. I'd say it's because MLB teams won't pay them enough and guarantee them enough to make it worth their while to leave their family behind and/or take their kids out of school and move halfway across the globe. But there's a price for everything. Darvish was talked about for a good year or two before he was posted, and supposedly he didn't want to come over here. That kind of money changes things, and there would be more of it handed out if MLB teams figured it was worth it.

Why would I have the burden of changing your opinion? WTF are you talking about? You love Japanese baseball and are offended by my comments. Too bad. Why does it matter that I assume your opinion? Never once did I say Tanaka sucks or that there aren't some guys out there that are good. Good to me means quality MLB players or prospects. Lacking that, I believe they suck. And I looked for stats, they're hard to find. Most of the guys who come from Japan end up as role players and that's usually the best they've got. In return, a few fringey guys go over there and dominate on a regular basis. The best proof I can come up with I guess is simply to look at how much money Tanaka is going to get & how little money is out there for anyone else. Who else is there? If the league was full of talented guys then more teams would be posting players. It's Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major...yers_from_Japan but there are 8 guys listed as being currently on MLB rosters. 8 f***in guys homeboy. MLB teams give millions of dollars every year to 16-year-olds out of buscone camps in the Dominican but somehow can't seem to come up with all these posting fees. Who was that guy Oakland didn't even want? They bid nothing for someone just to check in, and then when they got the bid they didn't even want the guy.

It seems like it is very difficult to find historical stats on Japanese baseball period, other than the fact that hitters like Casey McGehee can look like Miguel Cabrera over there. Our own Shingo didn't exactly look like Mariano or Trevor Hoffman or Lee Smith or Dennis Eckersly did he? Your argument is what? That the league is AAA or something? Where's your stats statman. Go find some reference and I'll look at it. Your comparison to the WBC is completely irrelevant to the overall quality of the league.

^Join the club buddy.

I'll agree that I'm a hater, that I'm ignorant, I'll agree to any of that, just not the part about Japanese baseball not totally sucking. We'll have to agree to shelve that point of contention I am afraid.

I think Jordan Danks has a chance to play himself into more playing time if he's good enough, so Jordan has a shot at raising his value while also being a cheap, serviceable 4th OF. OTOH DeAza is a pretty hard player to predict & he's just getting more expensive in arb. Even with a nice year, you're still looking at a LF who is getting closer to FA, so the opportunity for DeAza to increase his value that significantly I think is pretty small. On the whole though, DeAza is the type of player who fits in with the idea of rebuilding but not at the cost of totally unwatchable baseball. He shouldn't be dumped, and even though he's just a LF he could be a fit for any number of teams in either league around the deadline. If Hahn is getting low-balled then you keep DeAza and you take his AB from Dunn and/or Keppinger, not any of the young guys who could be a part of the new core.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Dec 30, 2013 -> 03:27 PM) It's a different game, but they're still plenty talented. And you see fringe MLB players both succeed and fail all the time, whereas these same guys destroy AA and AAA. Like I said, I think you're way wrong. You have the right to believe what you want to believe, and it's not really worth arguing anymore. I agree, not worth arguing about. Doesn't matter anyway, this thread is about Tanaka & we can all agree he is going to be good enough to play here at a high level. The dollars and cents, the years, injury potential, etc. add quite a bit to the equation however.

QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Dec 30, 2013 -> 01:03 PM) Japan actually eliminated Team USA in the previous WBC with the failed mlb prospects on that team. So there goes the neighborhood. Great, so you take a very small percentage of the absolute best guys there who are MLB-capable (just like Cuba) and you have a fair fight. How does that go against anything I've said? I never said all Japanese players suck, I said the league sucks. I'll stand by that & you can hate. Or I can hate. Or we can both hate. Or you can agree & we can hug.

QUOTE (StRoostifer @ Dec 30, 2013 -> 01:19 PM) While I don't agree with TUC's perspective on the talent level of the Japanese league, I'm not going to flame the guy over his opinion either. The last few posts are what people referred to in this thread here... http://www.soxtalk.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=90868 Outside of the Japanese talent level, TUC does bring up good points of concern with Tanaka's splitter/forkball, pitch count and projected contract. Thank you for being my friend.