OmarComing25

QUOTE (Feeky Magee @ Jun 12, 2015 -> 08:28 PM) An underrated bad part of it was trading Phegley. I hate this 4A crap. Hitters that hit at AAA more often than not end up hitting at MLB. It's only 85 PA, but I didn't realize he had an OPS of .855. Damn, would have been nice to have him instead of Flowers, even if his performance dips.

QUOTE (Soxfest @ Jun 12, 2015 -> 08:53 PM) Nothing that is my point Sox think Flowers is just fine. What makes you think this is the case?

QUOTE (Feeky Magee @ Jun 12, 2015 -> 07:41 PM) Hammel is pitching wonderfully with the Cubs and is a bargain. McCarthy was pitching excellently before he was injured bar a freaky HR/FB rate and who's to say he gets injured if he comes here. I don't see how you can possibly make that argument. With the rotation we started the year with, we had Danks and Noesi as number 4 and 5, with their SIERAs of 4.46 and 5.06. My rotation has Hammel and Rodriguez as the 4 and 5s, with SIERAs of 2.86 and 3.99. Again, McCarthy mightn't go down if he's here and his SIERA was 2.48 to Samardzija's was 3.91, not to mention the cost given up to get him. And even if you say he still probably gets injured, I have Rodon to come up, and I give Junior Guerra spot starts. As for the future, I have years of control on my pitchers that Samardzija doesn't and you don't want with Danks. I agree with you here but you are looking at it with a bit of hindsight. Rodriguez is 36 and hasn't pitched more than 100 innings since 2012. Hammel pitched significantly worse than Samardzija when they were both on the A's. If we had picked up both those guys instead of Jeff before the season people wouldn't have been nearly as happy. Also McCarthy has been a big injury risk for a while now, but we do have a track record of keeping pitchers healthy.

QUOTE (Soxfest @ Jun 12, 2015 -> 07:19 PM) I disagree he was solid #3 and they could of waited on a extension, no rush he was under team control 2 more years before extension. There were not 50-60 pitchers better than him during that time (which is what a #3 would be). If he hadn't gotten hurt the extension would have been fine.

QUOTE (Mike F. @ Jun 12, 2015 -> 07:12 PM) Maybe not #4 material, but definitely #3. He was only the third best pitcher on that 2008 team behind Buehrle and Gavin Floyd. No he wasn't, he was our best. Floyd was a bit overrated that year.

QUOTE (Soxfest @ Jun 12, 2015 -> 07:06 PM) #3 on his best day. The extension from KW should of never happened. Danks was 19th in WAR among starting pitchers from 2008-2010. A top 20 pitcher in baseball is not a #3. He was deserving of the extension. Not his fault he got an injury that no one has successfully come back from. You guys are underrating him here. WAR might not be the be-all to end-all stat, but he was no worse than a #2 pitcher during those 3 seasons.

QUOTE (Mike F. @ Jun 12, 2015 -> 07:06 PM) That's debatable. I always saw him as a #3 or #4 in 2008/2009 when he was at his best. He had over 5 bWAR 3 years in a row. That's #4 material?

QUOTE (Mike F. @ Jun 12, 2015 -> 07:00 PM) He was ineffective half of the time even when he was in his prime. That's just not true. In his prime he was a very good #2 pitcher.

Saying that Lebron's GOAT status hinges on the result of this series seems pretty absurd IMO. So if he's a complete monster the rest of the series and goes 60/20/15 from here on out on 70% shooting, but the Cavs lose by 1 in Game 7 because JR Smith made a stupid play then he's not co-GOAT, but if he plays sub-par and the Cavs win anyway then he is? That doesn't make any sense. Let's not judge a player for something that is out of their control, like Curry suddenly catching fire or a teammate making bone-headed plays.

We may be behind a bunch of teams but everyone has basically been staying around .500, so if you go on a 7-3 run or so suddenly you'll be right on the cusp. There's not really any "easy" wins in the AL, but there's not really any great teams either.

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ Jun 11, 2015 -> 01:41 PM) Avi somehow lost .2 fWAR last night. Sometimes I'm really not sure how the defensive metrics are working because was he expected to catch the ball in the 9th? That was a smart play keep the ball in front of you don't turn a single into a triple, even with a 2 run lead you just don't want to give away runs. How does one defensive play have that much of an impact on his WAR?

QUOTE (Mike F. @ Jun 11, 2015 -> 10:11 AM) The Sox seriously drafted a Reinsdorf? lol He wouldn't have been drafted had it not been for his name. It sucks that a more deserving player didn't get a chance because of that. Last pick in the draft though, who cares.

Hell two of the baseball experts out of six on Grantland picked us to lose in the World Series to the Nationals.

Unfortunately we only have 1 series from now until the All-Star Break against a team with a losing record, and that's the 28-30 Orioles. But I feel much better about facing good teams outside the ALC, we always seem to play them well.

QUOTE (Feeky Magee @ Jun 10, 2015 -> 07:13 PM) The projections didn't like us because we had huge offensive holes at catcher and second base, with question marks elsewhere, horrendous defence/baserunners and huge holes at 4 and 5 in the rotation and just an okay bullpen. I wouldn't say that's anything close to great on paper. I called it as an under .500 team preseason. Yes but my point is that even though the projections were pretty bad and pessimistic, most of the guys are still not even hitting them. Our black holes at second and catcher have been even blacker than expected. Only Avi (and Shuck somewhat) is significantly outperforming his projections on offense. LaRoche, Beckham and Soto are right there, and then everyone else is under. Abreu, Eaton, Sanchez, Flowers, Bonifacio, Gillaspie, Ramirez, and Melky are all performing significantly under their projections from all three systems. So my point is that even if we might have looked bad on paper, we've performed significantly worse than expected on offense, even if you were pessimistic about this offense I doubt you could have expected it to be anywhere near this bad (our position players collectively have a negative WAR for crying out loud). The good news is that even with that underperformance we're only 2 games under .500. If those guys above can just hit to their bad projections then that would be a big improvement over what we've seen so far.

Sox defense let Q down once again but he was able to overcome it. Our rotation is looking good. If only Erik Johnson can keep it up and eventually replace Danks.

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Jun 10, 2015 -> 10:29 PM) Exactly. It's nice to see Sale getting all this national attention this week, but Quintana (not necessarily this year, but in general) deserves some too. Even this year Quintana's FIP is still pretty good, it's in the low 3s. He's also top 30 in WAR for starting pitchers on the year. He's been let down by defense and a bit of bad luck (high BABIP).

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Jun 10, 2015 -> 10:25 PM) The casual fan sees his 4.28 ERA (before the game, now it's 4.00) and assumes that he's trash, I guess His 2-6 record probably jumped out at them too. But it's not like he's a rookie, he's been great for several years. He was top ten in WAR among starting pitchers last year for crying out loud.

Was just reading an Astros board and they were complaining about once again being shut down by a "horrible pitcher". Quintana really gets no respect.

Score two more then put in Guerra.

With Avi and Abreu hitting bombs lately and LaRoche doing well the last few weeks, if we could get Melky, Alexei and Eaton to approach their 2014 numbers our offense wouldn't look bad.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jun 10, 2015 -> 10:06 PM) Not to jinx the 9th, but the Sox have done a great job of limiting home runs by the Astros in the 6 game series. Jennings was only person to give one up, I believe. Duke last night to Correa.

Just looked at our schedule and there's only one series from now until the All-Star Break against a losing team, and that's Baltimore who's just under .500.

He's struck out the side a bunch of times already this year, he's been nasty. Gave up a few HRs early on but other than that has been straight filth. Last year his K/9 was 7.6, this year it's 13.7. Big difference.

With that bomb Soto's OPS is now almost 100 points higher than Flowers'. I was also looking at the one thing Flowers has done well this year (pitch framing), and Soto is right behind him in that. Basically there's no reason Flowers should get more playing time.