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Free Tim Elko (Back in Jail)


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11 minutes ago, vilehoopster said:

I remember people suggesting, when the Sox re-signed him, to just DFA him and be done with him. I really thought this was extreme and showed a lack of patience and understanding of how long it takes some players to develop. 

But I am with those people now. I am done with Vaughn, done. He's just terrible. 

Let's be honest, and I know this is complete conjecture; but how many MORE games would the Sox have won with year with Vaughn gone at the start of the year, and the Sox sharing 1st base with whoever: Sosa, Vargas, our other catcher, whoever?   I say having his weak bat and terrible defense and baserunning gone from the lineup; even this early in the season, it's, at least, two games.  Two more wins already with Vaughn gone from the start. And with a team scrapping  to win whatever they can, two more wins are significant. 

Let's look at it this way. Let's say he heats up the 2nd half of the season like last year. So what, that means he's going to get semi-hot and get his batting stats up to only below average. 

Again, I am done with him. 

The problem with Vaughn is he has 588 games and 2,367 plate appearances under his belt. He's just not any good, its been long enough to see this. He needs to go, maybe a change of scenery would do him good (and I mean another organization, not Charlotte.)

Compared to someone like Sosa, he only has 190 games and 677 plate appearances. He's a guy you put out there all year to see if he's going to turn it on or not. 

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14 minutes ago, mac9001 said:

I'm not a fan of Vaughn, but he's actually hitting the ball hard. Statically he might be the most unlucky guy in baseball right now. I don't have a problem just DFAing him, but you can play Elko and still find ABs for Vaughn. There's at least 2 other guys I would probably DFA right now so it's not like creating a roster spot or finding ABs for Elk would be difficult.

The announcers keep quoting this stat, "hard hit percentage" to justify his terrible stats and and say it's just bad luck. 

But hard hit balls and hard hit percentage??   Can't that just be justified by his uncountable number or warning track flyouts. He has soooo maaany of those throughout his career. Don't all those warning track flyouts, aren't those being counted as "hard hit balls".  To me, that's not bad luck: with Vaughn, it's a guy who when the aluminum bat is taken away, he only has warning track power. 

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8 minutes ago, vilehoopster said:

The announcers keep quoting this stat, "hard hit percentage" to justify his terrible stats and and say it's just bad luck. 

But hard hit balls and hard hit percentage??   Can't that just be justified by his uncountable number or warning track flyouts. He has soooo maaany of those throughout his career. Don't all those warning track flyouts, aren't those being counted as "hard hit balls".  To me, that's not bad luck: with Vaughn, it's a guy who when the aluminum bat is taken away, he only has warning track power. 

His line drive percentage is 8.9% which has to be close to the worst in the league

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15 minutes ago, 46DidIt said:

Plus we had Abrey

Dude's hitting .354/.432/.732. That's about as Ruthian as we're going to get out of a minor leaguer

Understood but I wonder how much of a liability he will be when he hits a single and clogs the bases. Perhaps bench AV for a while and try other players who are already on the roster for 1B..perhaps  Sosa or maybe even Baldwin. This is a tough one because AV is a fan favorite and a great guy.

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8 minutes ago, tray said:

Understood but I wonder how much of a liability he will be when he hits a single and clogs the bases. Perhaps bench AV for a while and try other players who are already on the roster for 1B..perhaps  Sosa or maybe even Baldwin. This is a tough one because AV is a fan favorite and a great guy.

Clogging of the bases is the least of our concerns with this offense. 

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13 minutes ago, tray said:

Understood but I wonder how much of a liability he will be when he hits a single and clogs the bases. Perhaps bench AV for a while and try other players who are already on the roster for 1B..perhaps  Sosa or maybe even Baldwin. This is a tough one because AV is a fan favorite and a great guy.

I think fan favorite is a bit of a stretch. If I had to pick between his jersey and Baldwin's, I'd take the latter, and Baldwin only just got here.

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15 minutes ago, 46DidIt said:

His line drive percentage is 8.9% which has to be close to the worst in the league

According to fangraphs it's 8.9. According to statcast 13.1, but that still results in 8th from the bottom in mlb. Which puts him in some very bad company. Considering he has expressed that he has zero interest in adjusting his approach, seems unlikely to improve much

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16 minutes ago, Harry Chappas said:

To add to the tragedy of this fella, they were so certain he was going to hit and hit well, they made him a RF and LF.  Wow did they miss badly on evaluating him.  He was insanely rushed with zero skillset to back it up. 

Not giving him a single MiLB AB and then also stuffing into a position he had never played before is negligence.  Granted, we will never know if this missed his development window, but nothing has changed with him since the changes in the organization.  In fact he has gotten worse pretty much across the board since they  happened.

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I've believed that ownership  has been content with this losing team and LOW PAYROLL. Still, how can they be content with this situation of Vaughn? I would imagine that Elko can't be too thrilled still being  in the Minors.

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26 minutes ago, 46DidIt said:

Can't be any worse than Vaughn on the bases

Isn’t Vaughn statistically one of the slowest runners to first in the league?  You honestly can’t do worse, only match it

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11 minutes ago, Kyyle23 said:

Isn’t Vaughn statistically one of the slowest runners to first in the league?  You honestly can’t do worse, only match it

He's actually only in the bottom third according to Fangraphs from last year.  18th lowest out of 43 hitters with 300 or more PAs in the 1b category.  Of course Gavin Sheets was worse.

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1 hour ago, DoUEvenShift said:

the city just spent $100 million to revitalize the downtown area, with about half of that going to the stadium.  It's actually pretty nice for a low A stadium and has a full 360 walkable concourse, which I would assume is not very common for A ball. There are a few nice restaurants/bars/shops but it's pretty small. You are only 30 mins from Charlotte anyway if you need more to do.

Thanks. Sounds like I need to put it on my bucket list. I am visiting friends in NC for my bday next month but they are on the east side of the state. But I would love to wear my CannonBallers cap to the actual stadium one day.

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1 hour ago, vilehoopster said:

The announcers keep quoting this stat, "hard hit percentage" to justify his terrible stats and and say it's just bad luck. 

But hard hit balls and hard hit percentage??   Can't that just be justified by his uncountable number or warning track flyouts. He has soooo maaany of those throughout his career. Don't all those warning track flyouts, aren't those being counted as "hard hit balls".  To me, that's not bad luck: with Vaughn, it's a guy who when the aluminum bat is taken away, he only has warning track power. 

Baseball loves to give so much credit to things that never happened, its crazy. Hey this guys hitting .180 but he just hits the ball right at people otherwise he would be awesome!

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1 hour ago, 46DidIt said:

Can't be any worse than Vaughn on the bases

Not a problem with him too often- you have to get on base first.

Anyway, it should be Vaughn or Elko.  Sox need to be more athletic and run more.  I like the idea to just send Vaughn down.

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20 minutes ago, T R U said:

Baseball loves to give so much credit to things that never happened, its crazy. Hey this guys hitting .180 but he just hits the ball right at people otherwise he would be awesome!

yea some things that are cannon in the stats community turn out to be way more complex than the original figures figured. DIPS theory is a perfect example. I bet xWOBA and catch probability go through similar refinements over the next decade.

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3 hours ago, Princess Dye said:

If you have 5 years in the league i dont think you can be sent down without consent though. Does 2020 count as a full year of that?

Vaughn has 4 full years of service, not 5.  You need 5.0 before you cannot be optioned. 

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3 hours ago, 46DidIt said:

 

Dude's hitting .354/.432/.732. That's about as Ruthian as we're going to get out of a minor leaguer

And let's be honest here, who cares how fast your 1B is?  They need two step range, and should be bashing the ball out of the park.  The last thing you are worried about is them stealing an extra base.  Unfortunately with Vaughn we are getting none of that.

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9 minutes ago, southsider2k5 said:

And let's be honest here, who cares how fast your 1B is?  They need two step range, and should be bashing the ball out of the park.  The last thing you are worried about is them stealing an extra base.  Unfortunately with Vaughn we are getting none of that.

I'll take a Derrick Lee if you've got one, but I don't think the Sox are in position to be that picky

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1 hour ago, WhiteSox2023 said:

If Elko was 21/22, I might be able to understand keeping him in the minors for another year.  But the dude is turning 27 in December.  There is no reason for him to not be given a shot.

Elko deserves a shot. It looks like its not going to happen anytime soon.

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