OmarComing25

Damn we really need to go maximum 3-6. The last series of the season is going to decide it between us and the Tigers.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 29, 2015 -> 09:12 AM) Out of curiosity, is there anyone out there who does defense number splits? What I would like to see is if, and by how much, Sox defensive metrics changed over the course of the season. Specifically as a couple of changes were made (benching Gillaspie, Sanchez replaces Johnson, improvements by Eaton and Alexei as the season went on) how much, or how little, the team defense improved. I know the season long ratings have us really low, but I wonder how much of that is from burying themselves with an awful start. Fangraphs doesn't let you do seasonal splits by UZR, but it does let you do it by the overall defensive number they have. Overall: April: -11.3 May: -13.0 June: -9.7 July: -8.0 August: -8.2 September: -12.8 OF: April: -5.4 May: -9.2 June: -7.5 July: -8.3 August: -8.7 September: -9.2 Fangraphs allows you to split by OF but not by IF, but it looks like the infield defense actually had positive numbers in July and August (just going by the difference between the two numbers), but fell off considerably in September. I'd be interested to see our DRS values, but by UZR we were still by far the worst defensive team in baseball in the 2nd half.

QUOTE (bmags @ Sep 29, 2015 -> 09:17 AM) Honestly I have zero belief that if the execs were to rate the top 20 pitchers in baseball that Quintana would make the list. Look at how he doesn't make the top 50 value pieces in baseball over and over. There is a global conspiracy to believe this great pitcher is great. Fangraphs had Quintana at #41 in their top 50 trade value column, and pretty much said 30-50 could be interchangeable without much argument.

QUOTE (fathom @ Sep 28, 2015 -> 09:54 PM) With how bad so many bullpens are, how did the Cubs get F. Rodney for nothing? Another career AL player now making it look easy in the NL Because Rodney was complete garbage with Seattle? He's pitched 10 innings for the Cubs, I wouldn't call him another AL-NL example just yet.

QUOTE (bjm676 @ Sep 28, 2015 -> 01:20 PM) The white sox are lucky with Quintana. Just like they were lucky to get Rodon and lucky that Sale turned into Chris Sale. when it comes to the Sox scouting and player development, they are more lucky that any of their drafted players turn into MLB caliber players. This is Kenny Williams and Buddy Bell we are talking about. No, the Sox may suck at player development but that is almost all on the position player side. They have a very good track record with pitchers, and the Sox deserve credit for it, just like they deserve blame on the lack of hitters that come through the system.

I know it's a bit early to think about, but say Arrieta has two more Cy Young caliber seasons in 2016 and 2017 and then hits free agency, where he'll be 32. What kind of contract does he get? Is there a team that would be willing to go 5 years/$150 million?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 26, 2015 -> 05:03 PM) See, this thinking drives me completely batty because this is the thinking of the White Sox front office and it's so much the thinking of a losing organization. All you've got is a list of "excuses" even if you don't want to call them that. "Oh if LaRoche had kept this up", "If Sale had kept this up", "we're so close we're right there". Every single losing organization can say stuff like that. They're still losing organizations. But you know what? The winning organizations could say that too, but they don't. Put the Cardinals in that same mode. How many excuses could the Cardinals make this season? "Wainright missed almost the whole year. Holliday, our best hitter, was out for more than 1/2 the year. Molina has hit the DL. Adams has missed most of the year. Peralta has put up a .626 OPS the 2nd half. Yadier Molina has a .660 OPS on the season - that's his worst in 5 years. I could keep going if I wanted. Winning organizations put together rosters that can take that. Losing organizations give a list of all the bad things that happened and pretend "oh if a few of those were different we'd be right there". Some things always go wrong! Especially if you're buying guys who are in their mid to late 30s. Play the excuse game the other way with the white sox and you can make them seem awfully lucky. In 2014, Abreu, Sale, Garcia, and Eaton all hit the DL. Nate Jones was out for the whole year. This year we've been remarkably healthy, out of that group the only thing resembling the DL was Sale missing 1 start. Eaton looked like an injury prone player last offseason and he's been almost 100% healthy. We've gotten great stints from Soto and Trayce Thompson that no one would have expected. How on Earth did the White Sox get that lucky? No one would have ever guessed all those positive things could happen. The Cardinals could make excuses like that. Their excuses put ours to shame if they wanted to make them. Instead they went out and won >62% of their games and put away the only division in baseball that has 3 playoff teams with little stress. That's the difference between a winning and a losing organization and we're the latter. First of all you're comparing us to the best organization in the MLB, yeah the Cardinals are very good at developing talent. Secondly, Nate Jones was hurt most of the year, as was Albers, and Sale got off to a rough start due to a lack of Spring Training, but I'll give you the breaks we've had on health. That's about it for breaks though. Literally everyone had a massive drop-off from 2014 except for Q, Eaton, Danks and a couple bullpen guys. I get there were risks of guys not repeating those years but there was a HUGE drop-off from almost all of them. Very few guys performed how they were projected to do, and the projections were pretty pessimistic as it was. I'm not trying to make excuses, I'm pointing out that the difference between the White Sox this year and contention is not as large as people are making it out to be. I still think 2016 should be a rebuilding year, and there's still a lot of work to do, I just don't see the reason for extreme pessimism like so many have here.

Meh, it's their first playoff birth in 7 years.

Danks has been very good against good teams this year (and last year too). It's the bad teams he sucks against.

QUOTE (Swingandalongonetoleft @ Sep 26, 2015 -> 03:57 PM) Hope Danks does well. There is a litany of names on this roster that are a bigger reason this year is the way it is than JD. He's been fine as a 5th starter.

Abreu 97 RBI on the year.

Nah Frazier isn't worth it. His bat has disappeared since the All-Star Break, he'll be 30 next year and the Reds would want a ransom for him.

Road team has won the last 5 games between the Cubs and Pirates. Maybe having homefield advantage isn't a good thing.

Hell, you don't even have to go back to 2014. LaRoche had a .760 OPS entering June. He keeps that pace the rest of the year, Samardzija doesn't completely fall apart after the deadline, and Sale repeats his first half ERA, there's a good chance we make the playoffs. And again, a 10-game improvement really isn't that much in baseball, that's turning 5 of your losses over 162 games into wins. The difference isn't as big as it might seem. My point is that we were a couple breaks away from a playoff berth even this year, yet a lot of posters here act like the situation is completely hopeless.

The way some Sox fans talk you'd think we're on pace to lose 100 games this season. If two of LaRoche, Melky, and Alexei just repeated their 2014 seasons, we'd be right there for a playoff spot this year. Throw in one of Samardzija and Sale coming even kind of close to their 2014 ERAs and we probably win the second wildcard. The difference between 76 wins and 88-89 wins is really not that much in baseball, teams make that kind of jump every year, and we have done it several times in the last decade. All it takes is a couple breaks going your way.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Sep 25, 2015 -> 09:50 PM) Joe Borchard for Matt Thornton Loiaza for Contreras Jon Garland trade too

Seems like Rodon's getting squeezed a little bit.

Holy s*** Trayce. Hell of a play!

Dumb play by Alexei but dumber play by the fielder saves him.

That looked painful

QUOTE (nitetrain8601 @ Sep 25, 2015 -> 06:43 PM) Has he showed vast improvement from one year to the next? Not really. In fact, you can argue his defense has gotten worse. Even if he's peaked he'll be easily worth his contract. But his power numbers and baserunning value are significantly better than last year.

A lot of money comes off the books after next year. Get a few value signings/trades this offseason (lotto tickets and such), let some of the young guys play, and look to 2017 to compete when guys like Anderson and Fulmer are hopefully ready. Don't expect to be contenders, but if things go well and a few guys rebound or break-out we could have a year like 2008 while not sacrificing any pieces for 2017.

QUOTE (Mike F. @ Sep 25, 2015 -> 06:34 PM) Isn't that what the Sox tried to do this year, and the year before that, and the year before that? We all know how that plan worked out. No, the Sox didn't try to rebuild this season. Rebuilding teams don't spend all that money in free agency or trade away 4 young players for a guy in his walk year. 2014 was the only year they really tried that, and the results were as expected.

Another thing to consider is that there's a difference between scorched-earth rebuilding and general rebuilding. You can rebuild without blowing everything up, which is what I think we should do for next season. It doesn't have to be one extreme or the other.

With how the Yankees lit up Rodon last time they faced him, this is a pretty big start for him.