OmarComing25

QUOTE (Mike F. @ Sep 24, 2015 -> 04:34 PM) Even if Fulmer only ends up being a solid #4 starter (which is the worst case scenario IMO), that still gives the Sox a great rotation with Sale and Rodon as their aces and Quintana being a very solid #2 or #3 and then Fulmer behind him. Those 4 are pretty much locks to be in the rotation for the next 4-5 years, but I would have to think that at least one of Johnson, Beck, Danish, Adams, Montas, another prospect, etc will pan out and be a serviceable #5 guy at the very least. All in all, the Sox have a very bright future as far as their pitching staff goes. The lineup is another story. The hope is that a bunch of those guys pan out (or look to be on the path to do so) and we can start trading them for hitting.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 24, 2015 -> 04:30 PM) I would love to have the Abreu money back. Signing Q and Sale to extensions, laughable. Drafting Rodon... You are right just do the opposite they will be so much better. I get why people are unhappy with many of the decisions ownership and the FO have made, but the way a few posters here act like the White Sox never do anything right (or even rarely) is pretty ridiculous.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Sep 24, 2015 -> 04:24 PM) Ouch. The Royals are really stumbling right now. Davis will make a fine closer and they should have enough depth in the bullpen to survive. But I can't see them winning a 7 game series if Cueto isn't pitching well. All it could take is an offensive outburst in a game or two and a middling pitcher having a good start, even if Cueto sucks.

Nothing against Fulmer, but have to go with Rodon here.

QUOTE (Lip Man 1 @ Sep 24, 2015 -> 01:11 PM) Absolutely...and since then? It's pretty clear 2005 was an outlier (as was 2008) Rick Hahn himself said at his press conference the goal was to build "sustained success..." Now what that means is subject to interpretation but since the White Sox are the only one of the original 16 pre expansion MLB franchises to have never made the postseason in consecutive years, that would be a good place to start in my opinion regarding his comment. How close are the Sox to making the playoffs in back to back years? How close are they to even making the playoffs once? Ladies and gentleman of the jury, the prosecution rests. Mark Why do 2005 and 2008 have to be outliers? They still won 90 games in 2006, and that was with every starting pitcher performing significantly worse than the year before. Hell if Buehrle just has his usual season we would have made the playoffs that year. 2003 and 2004 they weren't too far off either (83 wins with your two best hitters out the whole year isn't too shabby, who knows what would have happened if Frank and Maggs were healthy). We were also a couple small things going our way from making the playoffs in 2010 and 2012. It's not like we're the Marlins who lose 90+ games every season except for the two completely random seasons when everything came together. The last few seasons have been rough but from 2000-2012 the White Sox were usually in playoff contention. Things certainly haven't been great, but it hasn't been quite as bad as you're making it seem.

That guy is 16? Holy s***

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 24, 2015 -> 11:19 AM) I would argue this team has spent the last 10 seasons doing very much the opposite of what helped assemble that team in 2005. They were built through trades, drafting, and free agency...and in virtually every case the White Sox acquired someone who was undervalued. There was almost no one on that roster that they paid full price to acquire in either trade or free agency. Contrast that with what we did last offseason as an example, where we paid high prices for free agents to outbid people rather than looking for value additions and you might have a formula for why we've struggled to replicate that season. Outside of last offseason and Dunn, when did we pay full price in free agency in the last decade? I'm not seeing the trend here.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 24, 2015 -> 11:56 AM) I continue to think it's also very smart to get him throwing extra innings at this time of year to stretch his arm out on the off chance that he is needed in a playoff run during these next couple years. This is endurance training. Agreed, I don't see any reason to treat him with kid gloves right now, if he's still getting tired at the end of the year then giving him an early rest isn't going to help him in the future if we need him for an extended run.

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Sep 24, 2015 -> 11:55 AM) I personally think Sale should finish #2 at the worst in the voting. Sadly, ERA is weighted too high by the voters for that to happen. The advanced stats are all in his favor. Would have agreed with you a month ago, but Sale's crappy September has changed my mind.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 24, 2015 -> 11:31 AM) I've been pondering this for a while because there's something really odd about the White Sox fangraphs/BR WAR numbers. When I looked a few weeks ago the Sox had by far the biggest split between their fangraphs WAR and their B-R WAR numbers - fangraphs gave the pitchers much more credit while B-R was giving more to the lineup. There were other teams like this, but there wasn't an obvious pattern to it. If you looked at the teams that were terrible on defense, only the White Sox stood out with that same pattern, and the teams that were good on defense other than the Cardinals didn't obviously stand out the other way, so it's not just "Something that normally happens to teams with bad defense". I'm still trying to figure out what exactly that means. Some hypotheses I have include "The White Sox pitchers are unusually bad at giving up hard-hit contact" so that fangraphs is penalizing the defenders more than it needs to and rewarding the pitchers more than it needs to or "the White Sox are unusually bad at defensive positioning" so that balls are falling way more than they should even taking into account our defenders being really bad. I haven't yet figured this out, but it's an interesting subthread to this season. Regarding this, our pitchers actually have the 2nd lowest hard-hit% of all teams in the MLB behind only the Astros. We're also 3rd in soft-hit% behind the Pirates and Astros. The Astros are the only team ahead of us in both, so in terms of quality of contact given up, our pitching staff is 2nd-best in the MLB this year (unless the hard-hit contact our pitchers give up is several degrees worse than the hard-hit contact other teams give up). Hard-hit% rankings: http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=...0&sort=19,a Soft-hit% rankings: http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=...0&sort=17,d

The battle of the pitchers that have ERAs that are significantly worse than their FIPs (both by almost exactly the same margin too, heh).

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 24, 2015 -> 11:12 AM) Can every thread not turn into complaining about Jerry Reinsdorf? Even a completely unrelated thread about Sale and the strikeout thread has to turn into that. It gets old and ruins any discussion. Could not agree more

QUOTE (lasttriptotulsa @ Sep 24, 2015 -> 11:10 AM) And this is what I don't like. Sale is harder to hit by who? Players today or players in Walsh's era? If you say Walsh's era, well that's obvious. You can't give pitchers 100 years of science and technology to use to advance themselves but not hitters. This is why you can't compare eras. You can only compare a player in relation to his peers. And in Walsh's era, he was every bit as dominant as Chris Sale. Walsh was also facing a much smaller pool of talent. No black, Latino, or Asian players. It was easier to be dominant in his era.

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Sep 24, 2015 -> 08:47 AM) Yeah, bringing cheetahs to games is why they'll make the playoffs Well, they lost yesterday, so maybe jaguars are the answer, not cheetahs.

QUOTE (oldsox @ Sep 23, 2015 -> 08:48 PM) I agree with Fathom on the Sale issue. They would surely get 3-5 good players who can hit. This would be more valuable than the 12-15 wins Sale could get. Maybe get rid of LaRoach, too. Gotta check it out. It'll give Hahn something to do. Highly doubt any team is giving up 3-5 players "who can hit" for one player, especially in the era of the pitcher right now. I think some people are way over-estimating the package we could get.

QUOTE (CWSpalehoseCWS @ Sep 23, 2015 -> 08:47 PM) I would love for the Sox to figure out a way to get Machado from the Orioles for Quintana + but there's no way the O's are going to move him. Would have to trade Sale to get him.

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Sep 23, 2015 -> 08:20 PM) Joe Maddon brings cheetah to cubs game!!!!11 Another amazing example of Joe keeping the clubhouse loose!!1! This is truly revolutionary managing!!!!111!!!!!11! Maddon really is the perfect manager for the circus that surrounds the Cubs.

With all the money they threw at Hanley and Sandoval last offseason, does Boston have the resources to go after Price?

Quintana has held the title of the most underrated pitcher in baseball for a little while now. There are even several posters here that claim he's a solid #3 at best.

Too early to call. Harper's season has been so good that it would be incredibly difficult to replicate, regardless of how young he might be.

QUOTE (AustinIllini @ Sep 22, 2015 -> 09:14 PM) 8% to Notre Dame? Does that include the bowl game where they get destroyed by a hungry SEC team? So LSU switched conferences then?

There's no way the Dodgers do that trade.

So Montas has one bad inning and now you want to give up on him as a starter? It's been clear that he's a big project and an unfinished product for a while now. Still too early to make that call. This board can be so reactionary at times.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Sep 23, 2015 -> 12:03 PM) That rate is totally unsustainable. I am sure you personally know but league average is said to be 10%. His 12.1% HR/FB, 71.9% strand rate and .329 BABIP are all his career worst. I know it's unsustainable, my point was more that the recent barrage of homers he's given up has eliminated a lot of the sabremetrics-advantage he had over the other contenders.

If you're going with a multi-year rebuild you might as well trade Sale and Abreu. There'd be no point in keeping them if by the time we'll be planning on being good again their contracts are up.