shysocks

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Sep 9, 2014 -> 11:01 AM) Ah, it must not have updated last night's yet -- he was sitting at 89 yesterday. Fair enough, saw the time of post as this morning and figured it was up-to-date. Come on Fangraphs, get with the program. Side note - Flowers' WPA last night was an even 1.0 Gotta be close to tops for a single game this season. Anybody know if the WPA for every game by every player is on a leaderboard somewhere?

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Sep 9, 2014 -> 10:46 AM) You'll be missing out then. They barely released anything in the Alpha/Beta, I'm stoked for this game. Hope you're right. I haven't made up my mind yet. Don't even know if I can look to reviews because they're usually not meaningful for big releases like this, so I need word-of-mouth.

QUOTE (danman31 @ Sep 7, 2014 -> 01:49 PM) I'm excited for it, but it's probably pretty far away still so I'm not getting too worked up about it. It looks phenomenal. The art style and the presentation look so good. Yeah, it's gorgeous. I'm worried about Destiny. I've enjoyed every Halo I've played so there's reason for optimism, but that beta didn't grab me at all. Like Borderlands, but somehow missing the things I loved about those games. I might sit this one out.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Sep 8, 2014 -> 11:30 PM) Oakland's season is feeling a lot like 2005 for the White Sox, except Cleveland (unlike the Angels) never caught and blew past us because we were something like 14 games up at one point. So not really anything like 2005 for the White Sox.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Sep 8, 2014 -> 10:45 PM) Maybe Tyler will hit another homer to win it at some point. Prophetic. QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Sep 9, 2014 -> 06:49 AM) Well, Flowers is ranked 30th among catchers in the MLB in wRC+ (more accurate, league adjusted version of OPS). So, he's still substantially below average, no matter what you think of catcher offense. That's a mischaracterization - it looks like you're including any catchers with any plate appearances at all, in which case he is 30th out of 97. And there are guys ahead of him with 15, 20, 40 games played. The league wRC+ for catchers is 94. Flowers now sits at 96. That doesn't hit me as substantially below average.

QUOTE (flavum @ Sep 8, 2014 -> 03:28 PM) https://twitter.com/whitesox/status/5090737...6137985/photo/1 Dunn will have all three outcomes. I'll be there tonight and will be giving Dunn the reception most opponents get - nothing. Maybe a couple claps. His performance doesn't merit cheering, and his off-field demeanor doesn't merit booing. Unfortunately I'm sure a lot of people will disagree.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 8, 2014 -> 03:26 PM) It isn't just McCarthy + 4 guys. It is 4 guys, half a season of Bmac, and half a season of Scott Carroll, Andre Rienzo, or some other AAA pitcher. In that case, Noesi is a better idea. He won't outpitching McCarthy while Brandon pitches, but Brandon is a lock to miss a chunk of the season. "Lock" might be a strong word, considering he's stayed healthy this season. But this'll be the first time he's ever made 30 starts. His spiking ground ball rate and changing pitch mix (a lot more fastball + curveball than in recent year) certainly look like a conscious approach change. For the record, I'd look elsewhere for help too.

QUOTE (Vance Law @ Sep 8, 2014 -> 03:00 PM) Yes, lower walk rate, but he leads MLB in giving up hits this year. So his WHIP is right up there. McCarthy may be a better pitcher (or maybe Noesi takes another step forward) but by how much? And even if he is a little better, it's not enough to guarantee better results (see 2013 - 2014). Noesi costs nothing, what is McCarthy going to get on the FA market? If Danks is unmovable, and the Sox expect Rodon up at some point next year and you're ultimately replacing Noesi with someone like Mccarthy, it doesn't seem the cost is worth the (possible) minimal upgrade. Now if they are willing to cut ties with Danks or put him in the bullpen at some point, that's another story. But I'd say if they're going after a FA pitcher next year, I'd hope they go for someone higher up the food chain. If everything else is equal you're probably happier with 4 guys + McCarthy than with 4 guys + Noesi. No guarantees of course. McCarthy has turned into an extreme ground ball pitcher, which plays better in our park, and his peak is undoubtedly higher. I'm not really even advocating we sign McCarthy. I will say that to me, keeping Hector Noesi in the rotation is a suspect reason not to sign Free Agent Pitcher X. Noesi's been a nice player to have this year and has surpassed all expectations, but this might be the best he ever pitches. The Danks thing is more complicated. I know everyone wants him gone, but then you're essentially paying McCarthy-or-whoever $26M a year instead of $13M a year because you had to dump Danks' deal. We'd need some serious trade wizardry.

QUOTE (Vance Law @ Sep 8, 2014 -> 02:04 PM) Look at McCarthy's last 2 seasons. He is basically Hector Noesi (2014 White Sox version) The ERA is the same... the peripherals couldn't be more different. McCarthy has one of the lowest BB rates and highest GB rates in baseball in those two years. When he's on the mound, he's a better pitcher than Noesi.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Sep 8, 2014 -> 07:11 AM) Scotty Carroll Somebody should tell him then. Seems like maybe they appointed #'s 8-14 on this list instead.

Bourn had a good seat for that AB.

QUOTE (scs787 @ Sep 5, 2014 -> 03:04 PM) Because Dominic Brown is not very good. He's a left handed Dayan Viciedo. No way Willingham gets a QO. Wonder how much Cuddyer gets. He's been injured this year so that should drive his price down a bit. I'd love to have him here on a 2 year deal to DH and occasionally play the OF. Willingham changed teams, so there literally is no way he gets a QO.

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Sep 4, 2014 -> 02:32 PM) Pitchers are trying to bury him down and away, and he's just poking them to RF. Earlier in the year they were trying to bust him in, and he was turning on them for HR. I am just guessing here, but I would think that has something to do with his power outage as well. I think he took those inside fastballs out of the park, and is now taking those low and outside breaking pitches off the bat in to RF. But he would also wave at breaking balls low and away. Sometimes it would look so bad, it seemed like he had made up his mind to swing before the pitch was thrown. It's obviously much less a problem now.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Sep 4, 2014 -> 12:15 PM) Where can I get platoon stats on Conor pre and post all-star break? Is it possible he's been facing more LHP in the second half? I wish I knew where to find that quickly, but I looked it up in his play log. 24.07% of his PA's have been against lefties since the break, compared with... 24.08% before the break.

QUOTE (TRU @ Sep 4, 2014 -> 12:06 PM) Him being at .295 right now means nothing to me. He started the season unbelievably hot and has since faded into a .240 hitter since the all star break. I don't care if his avg ends up being .290 because that doesn't tell the whole story. Its inflated from two months of hitting .330 and .394, numbers that he has a good chance of never reproducing. Its more telling that he hit .245 his first year with the sox, and has hit .240 since roughly the first half of the season. I don't think its unfair at all to view him as a .250 hitter. I'm sorry it means nothing to you, because it's actually his current batting average and it does a better job of telling the whole story than the 42 games since the break in which you're placing so much stock. If we're gonna rely so much on monthly splits, he also had months at .302 and .264 alongside the .330 and .394, so now we're looking at one month under .250. Evidently that's the only one that counts. This reminds me of people arguing that John Danks isn't so bad if you ignore his five or six worst starts. It's true, but those starts happened, they're part of the record, and now they're data points for trying to predict future performance. Same thing here with Gillaspie. Could he hit .250 for the rest of his life? Absolutely. He could also hit .300. An objective guess is probably right in the middle. I agree he shouldn't face lefties, there's no argument, but I quibble with the statement that he has no power. .138 ISO puts him 91st of 152 qualified hitters. You can do a lot worse.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Sep 4, 2014 -> 11:59 AM) Yeah well then he's gonna get his head cryogenically frozen and when they figure out how to revive people 225 years from now, he's going to be asking for a back payment with interest included, and that will end up somewhere around the billion dollar mark. Sounds familiar.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 4, 2014 -> 11:52 AM) Abreu's heat map over the last four weeks is insane. Look at down and away. You mean where he was striking out once a game earlier in the year?

This thread is a thing?! Didn't notice anybody mentioning No Man's Sky. The hype has cooled off considerably since E3 - once people started wondering if anything in the game will actually be fun - but I'm still irrationally excited for it. I love open-world games; Minecraft was my jam for like a year and a half.

QUOTE (TRU @ Sep 4, 2014 -> 10:39 AM) Why are you so convinced hes not? Just look at his body of work over his time in the majors. Im not going to look at a month of hitting .394 and say the guys awesome. He hit .245 last year and has hit .242 since the all star break. His time in the majors includes 29 games in SF that you can basically write off, one year with the Sox at .245, and 80% of another year at .295. He was consistently in the .280-.290 range in the minors. Looking at that and penciling him in as a .250 hitter for life seems like an unfair assessment to me. QUOTE (TRU @ Sep 4, 2014 -> 10:39 AM) He had two months where he hit .394 and .333, those are outliers. Why isn't his .177 last June an outlier? That month pulled his end-of-season average down 12 points. You can always find weird months. Bottom line, he's hit .270 as a White Sox and I don't understand what makes 2013 the real Gillaspie and 2014 the fluke.

QUOTE (TRU @ Sep 4, 2014 -> 09:43 AM) Yes, but my thinking was id hope we wouldn't have to play match ups with our DH A lot of teams play matchups with their DH now. It might be the better way to build a roster if you're lacking David Ortiz or Victor Martinez to just plant in the lineup and mash. Why are you so convinced Gillaspie is a .250 hitter?

QUOTE (Dunt @ Sep 4, 2014 -> 08:55 AM) As of today, they have the same WAR despite having two very different seasons. Does this suggest that we have been underrating Flowers this season or overrating the season Gillaspie has had? I'd lean more towards underrating Flowers. His streakiness makes him harder to evaluate objectively. That, plus Gillaspie struggling in August, and we are where we are.

Dunn homers again in the 4th in Oakland. Only run of the game so far.

QUOTE (StRoostifer @ Sep 3, 2014 -> 12:24 PM) I stand by my previous post. Honestly, I would rather have Dunn. I'd rather have a retired Dunn than Ryan Howard.

QUOTE (SoxPride18 @ Sep 3, 2014 -> 10:22 AM) I like your scenario because based on what Hahn has said, those players make sense. I would love to get all over Kemp and stick him in left or right. Honestly, Mauer was a name I thought of too. Him making 23 million next season hitting 273 with 4 HRs scares me a ton. He also wouldn't fill the positional need that Kemp or someone would. He's a full-time 1B now. I guess he could DH and spell Abreu, but yeesh.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Sep 3, 2014 -> 09:46 AM) I think you will have to deal with him for at least another year. That would be a mistake. He's had his shot, time to wash our hands.