2015 Offseason

[caulfield12]

http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/stats/_/id/2...lejandro-de-aza

 

DeAza's WAR is almost the same in 37 AB's for the Orioles as the 0.6 for almost 5 months with the White Sox.

[LDF]

He has a lot more ability than he showed here, but he was just the prototypical change of scenery candidate. I think he's definitely a better player than Dunn or Beckham but the return didn't show it. And really it shouldn't have, he just played like s*** here.

 

Basically he had trade rumors swirling around him for 2 straight years really and just got worse. He started this year in a platoon role and was already trying to hit home runs in his first game (he did hit some early HRs but thta's obviously the wrong approach for DeAza... DJ even talked about it on the radio at the time, saying the HRs were nice but that's not his game and wondered if it would affect him later, well obviously it did).

 

DeAza had some pressure on him & probably a lot of that pressure he put on himself. Some players just can't play through that stuff and it looks like he is one of them. Getting traded probably took a lot of that off him and now he can just go out there and play. It's actually not a bad situation for him at all. He was going to be a non-tender off a s***ty team coming off a s***ty season and at that point he'd have had to settle for a low base 1 year guarantee as part of someone's bench most likely, but who knows, now he's got some playing time with a team that for all we know could go all the way. He has an opportunity to play for a contract. Look at some of the money players like Cody Ross and Angel Pagan have gotten, both of whom were kind of in that DeAza type territory for a while as starting caliber players that you really didn't know if you wanted to start or have as more of a rich man's 4th OF. Postseason success leads to added interest & possibly bigger paydays, so maybe he'll set himself up for a 2-year deal or a 1-year deal similar in pay to what the Sox would have non-tendered him over. At least he has a shot in Baltimore, he didn't have a shot at anything here.

 

another excellent analysis.

 

I was going to add his success will not be sustain. he has had success and then he comes back

down. the good thing with the trade, he just happen to be having nice success at the right time.

[greg775]

http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/stats/_/id/2...lejandro-de-aza

 

DeAza's WAR is almost the same in 37 AB's for the Orioles as the 0.6 for almost 5 months with the White Sox.

He's 13-37 hitting .350. He hit two homers in a game (a win) and two triples in another game ( a win). I don't understand WAR. Are u saying he's been GOOD with Baltimore and was GOOD in Chicago? Cause his traditional stat numbers in Baltimore have been excellent.

[caulfield12]

He's 13-37 hitting .350. He hit two homers in a game (a win) and two triples in another game ( a win). I don't understand WAR. Are u saying he's been GOOD with Baltimore and was GOOD in Chicago? Cause his traditional stat numbers in Baltimore have been excellent.

 

 

Statistically, he's contributed almost as much to Baltimore in 2 weeks than Chicago in 5 months...within the margin of error, statistically.

[ChiliIrishHammock24]

He's 13-37 hitting .350. He hit two homers in a game (a win) and two triples in another game ( a win). I don't understand WAR. Are u saying he's been GOOD with Baltimore and was GOOD in Chicago? Cause his traditional stat numbers in Baltimore have been excellent.

 

It says he has helped his team in 37 AB the same amount he helped the Sox over 5 months. Basically he was awful with the Sox, and has been awesome with the Orioles.

[Quin]

He's 13-37 hitting .350. He hit two homers in a game (a win) and two triples in another game ( a win). I don't understand WAR. Are u saying he's been GOOD with Baltimore and was GOOD in Chicago? Cause his traditional stat numbers in Baltimore have been excellent.

 

WAR is cumulative. A player gathers WAR over a season, think of it like triples.

 

De Aza hits three triples with the Sox in five months, in two weeks he hits three triples for the Orioles.

 

Now De Aza has three triples with both teams.

 

De Aza's WAR with the Orioles has already matched his WAR with the Sox. This means he has contributed to the O's enough that he is just as valuable to them in two weeks as he was for the entirety of the rest of the year with the Sox.

[Eminor3rd]

I guess you are right, but I think he had 2 bad years, right? This year and last year.

I think he's had a two homer game in Baltimore as well as a game in which he had 2 triples, which is probably a team record. I'm assuming they love him in Baltimore right now. Like I was saying though, if he becomes a stud leadoff hitter/outfielder, it's time to question the Sox ability to coach/motivate players. I mean, seriously. DeAza like somebody likes to say was a "bucket of suck" for two seasons in a row in Chicago.

 

Eh, I wouldn't say 2013 was a "bad year," just not as good as 2012 and his partial 2011. He was basically a league average bat who played slightly below average defense, sometimes holding down an up-the middle position in CF. Nothing wrong with that at all, even if the mistakes he made were of the frustrating variety and made him seem worse than he was at the end of the day.

 

But yeah, this year he played like garbage.

 

I think he gets too much grief around here, honestly. Yeah, he made mental errors, but I never got the sense that they were LAZY errors, just boneheaded plays that held him back from being an above-average major leaguer. But he was also really athletic and did a lot of good things too.

 

At the end of the day, we probably won't think about him very much after this year, lol.

[southsider2k5]

^Anyway I guess my point is, there's nothing "we" could have done. It was DeAza's head stuck up DeAza's ass, not anyone else's. DeAza was the only one who could have righted the ship and obviously it took a trade getting him the hell away from this team to allow him to do that, so whatever, good for him but I doubt we did anything poorly. Todd Steverson is the greatest thing ever, obviously he did nothing wrong.

 

This might be the most true thing you have ever posted.

[southsider2k5]

Christopher Kamka ‏@ckamka 11h

 

Exactly 50% (73/146) of the #WhiteSox home runs this season have been hit by Cuban-born players (Abreu 35, Viciedo 21, Ramirez 15, Nieto 2)

[southsider2k5]

If you take a look at numbers like this, there are a whole lot of easy wins out there which could be grabbed next year, with just guys not having career worst years out of the pen.

 

Dan Hayes ‏@CSNHayes 4m

 

Also, Mon. was the 39th loss in which the #WhiteSox allowed an opposing team to rally to win. Only Texas (43) has more losses.

Per @EliasSports, Mon. was 6th time in 2014 the #WhiteSox lost when leading by at least 3 runs in the 7th inning or later. Leads MLB.

[LDF]

 

this just goes to prove about investing in a really good pitcher|s| for the pen. however

I don't know if the sox should look at a pitcher who was giver a QO.

[Chicago White Sox]

I totally agree. This is why I HATE that people use WAR to actually calculate win totals for a season. An average bullpen could improve our win total tremendously.

So very true. Context does matter and it's completely ignored by some people because it's difficult to measure.

 

And before someone says, "no one is calculating win totals using WAR", I see certain posters repeatedly take our current record and then add the WAR of potential additions and say "that only gets us to ## wins next year". Hell, Balta does this in about 50% of his posts regarding offseason moves.

[The Ultimate Champion]

First we need a rotation that 1-5 is capable of 6+ IP every time out while keeping us in the game. Get the number of innings the pen needs to eat down.

 

Then we need a quality long man that will further eat into those innings. Allow the setup guys and specialists to be setup guys and specialists.

 

Then we need at least one lefty SU guy, a closer, ideally a second lefty, also we'd like to have a go-to option as a righty specialist to use on a per-batter basis.

 

That's a lot of needs.

 

Again I'll reiterate the Danks to the pen idea as a potential solution here. Balta says the numbers don't work, Danks isn't good enough vs. LHH but I'll take my chances on the numbers evening out. Platoon splits can vary year to year but the general rule is that same-side batters don't see the ball as long and so the pitcher is most often at a slight advantage at least. There are exceptions to every rule but I think he'd do fine there. If he's the long man and the 2nd lefty while out of the rotation I think that helps in a lot of ways.

 

Hahn's got several holes to fill but I really hope he doesn't sign more than 2 guys for the pen to larger guaranteed deals, and if he does get a couple relievers I hope one of them is a closer candidate buy-low reclamation type that offers potential upside as a trade candidate.

[LDF]

 

this is totally unrelated to what was being discuss but I wanted to post this.

 

I was reading cbs sports and they have the top list of players since the all

star game.

 

I am not a stat guy so I will let them explain this.

 

http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/playerrankings

[The Ultimate Champion]

I'd be interested in shopping Webb around a bit too. He has a very nice arm but he just can't throw good strikes, still. It's not generally a good idea for rebuilding teams to trade prospects for relievers, but it's probably not all that dangerous to upgrade over a guy like Webb.

 

Byt the same token I think it might be worth it to shop Javy Guerra around a bit too, although given his past history of success he seems more like a solid bet as a MR than Webb does. What kind of sucks about Webb is that he can't reliably be a righty specialist or a long man because he can't make enough good pitches, nor does he seem to do very well under pressure. So it's kind of hard to "hide" him in the pen, especially in a bad pen.

 

Maybe Webb + could get us a quality lefty out of someone else's pen. Maybe if there's a team around with an extra one we could use as a SU man we could offer Webb + Rienzo or something (still think Andre has a legit shot as a 5th starter somewhere).

[The Ultimate Champion]

this is totally unrelated to what was being discuss but I wanted to post this.

 

I was reading cbs sports and they have the top list of players since the all

star game.

 

I am not a stat guy so I will let them explain this.

 

http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/playerrankings

Whoa, Chris Carter is White now! Man I knew he's been through some changes lately but damn....

[witesoxfan]

So very true. Context does matter and it's completely ignored by some people because it's difficult to measure.

 

And before someone says, "no one is calculating win totals using WAR", I see certain posters repeatedly take our current record and then add the WAR of potential additions and say "that only gets us to ## wins next year". Hell, Balta does this in about 50% of his posts regarding offseason moves.

 

I do it from time to time too but with the unwritten caveat that it should all be taken with a giant grain of salt. Like, if the Sox added Giancarlo Stanton to replace Viciedo (we'll say a 0 WAR player to a 5 WAR player) and the Sox are a 73 win team this year, it's not a stretch to say that, given the Sox exact same team and the exact same set of circumstances, they would have only won 78 games instead. It's also not a stretch to assume they improve upon that by 6 or 8 or 10 games. It's also not a stretch to assume that they don't by improve by quite that much.

 

At the end of the day, the Sox still need to get better. They've had really bad luck overall with the bullpen both with quality overall and closing out games, but the rotation beyond Sale and Quintana has also been bad too, which can also be improved upon. There are also several areas around the field where they can improve too. Even teams with bad bullpens can win because the starter prevents runs and the offense scores enough and you don't notice those blown leads because they were big enough to prevent it in the first place.

 

[caulfield12]

First we need a rotation that 1-5 is capable of 6+ IP every time out while keeping us in the game. Get the number of innings the pen needs to eat down.

 

Then we need a quality long man that will further eat into those innings. Allow the setup guys and specialists to be setup guys and specialists.

 

Then we need at least one lefty SU guy, a closer, ideally a second lefty, also we'd like to have a go-to option as a righty specialist to use on a per-batter basis.

 

That's a lot of needs.

 

Again I'll reiterate the Danks to the pen idea as a potential solution here. Balta says the numbers don't work, Danks isn't good enough vs. LHH but I'll take my chances on the numbers evening out. Platoon splits can vary year to year but the general rule is that same-side batters don't see the ball as long and so the pitcher is most often at a slight advantage at least. There are exceptions to every rule but I think he'd do fine there. If he's the long man and the 2nd lefty while out of the rotation I think that helps in a lot of ways.

 

Hahn's got several holes to fill but I really hope he doesn't sign more than 2 guys for the pen to larger guaranteed deals, and if he does get a couple relievers I hope one of them is a closer candidate buy-low reclamation type that offers potential upside as a trade candidate.

 

http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/splits/_/id/...ing3/john-danks

 

 

 

You're not going to like it, from 2011 to 2013, his OPS against LHB and RHB is exactly the same, 775, which is WAY too high.

[caulfield12]

I do it from time to time too but with the unwritten caveat that it should all be taken with a giant grain of salt. Like, if the Sox added Giancarlo Stanton to replace Viciedo (we'll say a 0 WAR player to a 5 WAR player) and the Sox are a 73 win team this year, it's not a stretch to say that, given the Sox exact same team and the exact same set of circumstances, they would have only won 78 games instead. It's also not a stretch to assume they improve upon that by 6 or 8 or 10 games. It's also not a stretch to assume that they don't by improve by quite that much.

 

At the end of the day, the Sox still need to get better. They've had really bad luck overall with the bullpen both with quality overall and closing out games, but the rotation beyond Sale and Quintana has also been bad too, which can also be improved upon. There are also several areas around the field where they can improve too. Even teams with bad bullpens can win because the starter prevents runs and the offense scores enough and you don't notice those blown leads because they were big enough to prevent it in the first place.

 

 

And we're not even anywhere close to an "average" defense with Viciedo, Garcia, Gillaspie and rookies all over the field.

[chitownsportsfan]

the problem with using WAR to project is that WAR is a description of what happened, not "what's going to happen".

 

[Chicago White Sox]

the problem with using WAR to project is that WAR is a description of what happened, not "what's going to happen".

And context neutral, so using 2014 WAR to predict 2015 wins is unlikely to be very accurate.

[Balta1701]

And context neutral, so using 2014 WAR to predict 2015 wins is unlikely to be very accurate.

And yet, it appears to have been surprisingly accurate for predicting the 2014 white sox.

[Chicago White Sox]

And yet, it appears to have been surprisingly accurate for predicting the 2014 white sox.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here, but coincidences do happen in life. That doesn't change the fact that WAR is NOT a predictive stat and IS context neutral. WAR is a great tool for comparing the value varying players provided over a set period of time, but the stat is routinely misused and this right here is a great example.

[The Ultimate Champion]

http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/splits/_/id/...ing3/john-danks

 

 

 

You're not going to like it, from 2011 to 2013, his OPS against LHB and RHB is exactly the same, 775, which is WAY too high.

The only really good LR we had relatively recently that I can think of is DJ Carrasco. We haven't had much out there in that role. Right now the options are Bassitt, Rienzo, Carroll it looks like.

 

And the last time we had two quality lefties in the same pen was....? I'm really not sure actually. Probably Hector Santiago and Matt Thornton, when Hector was more of a reliever in a permanent role in his first full season. But even Hector really had problems serving up gopherballs on that "screwball" then, and then going back further to a point of 2 solid lefties, maybe we have to go back to Thornton and Boone in the pen at the same time, but back then Boone would go through periods where he couldn't throw a strike to save his life.

 

Basically the second lefty has been a bunch of crap, like Will Ohman and so on. Right now the options are Surkamp and Snodgress, that De Los Santos guy, yeah not much.

 

Asking Danks to be almost as good as DJ Carrasco was and better than Will Ohman/heap of dogs*** we've generally run out there... is that *really* asking too much?

 

In a perfect world some team will come around and offer to take on $10-12M or so of that deal & we'll just move on (yeah right, like the Sox would ever do that). But if we're going to be stuck with him at least try the pen, rather than put him back in the rotation. To what end?

 

BTW Danks did pitch a lot better the first couple months of the season. Maybe a lighter workload and being able to pick spots a bit with him would allow him to be more effective? It doesn't sound crazy to me at all.

 

Also, those numbers you posted caulfied..... compare his lines on number of pitches:

245 .287 .388 .675 on pitches 1-15

.297 .341 .538 .879 on pitches 16-30

.262 .304 .431 .735 on pitches 31-45

.276 .342 .404 .746 on pitches 46-60

.351 .405 .610 1.015 on pitches 61-75

 

To me that looks like a guy who starts out well, fades as the inning deepens, then starts out well on the new inning, and just fades/gets worse until finally 2nd/3rd time through he's toast. A move to the pen seems like it wouldn't be a bad idea.

 

Also, there is this:

Hitters are hitting .307 .309 .534 .843 against him on the first pitch and are averaging a HR every 19.6 AB. After 0-1 they are hitting .242 .276 .409 .685 with a HR every 25.2 AB. After 1-0 they are hitting .310 .389 .485 .874 with a HR every 33 AB. So it seems like he is getting burned in the strikezone a lot. When he falls behind on the first pitch he actually has a much better HR rate than when he throws the first pitch over the plate, although he ends up walking more guys of course. He'll never be safe in the strikezone but at least if he is in the pen maybe he'll be a little fresher, and he'll only be seeing hitters once and at most twice if he has to be a long man during his appearance. So at least then maybe he doesn't have to worry as much about changing sequences to the hitter.

 

The point is he's owed $28.5M and that's not going to disappear, nor is his fastball magically going to reappear. Time for damage control IMO, and hey, maybe he could even be an asset in the pen. Again, can he be *almost* as good as DJ Carrasco was for us and also significantly (perhaps) better than the likes of Scott Downs, Will Ohman, and all the rest of the trash we've trotted out there? I think so. JMO though.

[caulfield12]

Matt Kemp has quietly climbed all the way to 23rd overall in MLB OPS.

 

So much for acquiring him super cheaply.

 

Now Ethier and Crawford are different stories.

 

(In fact, the White Sox have produced 3 of the top 32 in the majors, in Abreu/C.Carter/Morse).

 

 

 

Puig/Kemp mini-feud?

 

http://www.latimes.com/sports/dodgers/dodg...0916-story.html

Edited September 17, 2014 by caulfield12