wrathofhahn

QUOTE (Dam8610 @ Jan 31, 2018 -> 09:44 AM) His BB% increased and K% declined throughout the year, his BB% last year was below his career average, O-swing% was below career average, Z-swing% was well above career average, Z-contact% was well above career average, contact% was the highest it's been since his partial seasons, swstr% was career low. All of those things point to improved plate discipline or the potential for it. His pull rate was well above career average, hard contact rate was well above career average, soft contact rate was well below career average, FB% above career average, IFFB% below career average, he had one of the highest average exit velocities in MLB, and he had some sort of arm injury in July, after which he didn't hit a HR for a month and a half. All of those things point to improved power numbers or the potential for it. I don't understand the argument. Prior to last year he was a .695 hitter and the numbers you mention are negligible improvements. For example his OSWING improved by 2 percent. His zone contact improved by 2 percent. While his OPS last year was 127% more then his previous career numbers. I'd also point out those OSWING numbers aren't good. So when you improve from not good to still not good you are still well not good. 39.8% OSWING is not a good number. 84.3% Zone contact is below average. Stat Average O-Swing 30% Z-Swing 65% Swing 46% O-Contact 66% Z-Contact 87% Contact 80% Zone 45% F-Strike 59% SwStr 9.5% With that being said not all players are equal. For example the contact rate and plate discipline of Abreu is less important then Garcia because he has a career ISO of .224. He can afford to have a career OBP of .360 because he slugs .524.

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ Jan 31, 2018 -> 02:55 AM) Personally while I believe in advanced stats to a degree there is an over reliance on them.Baseball Common Sense 101 tells me when you hit .330 you did a lot right and just didn't get lucky. While I will have to agree that his batting average is likely to regress because of a large number of infield hits it wasn't just luck . I think we forget baseball takes a large amount of skill to get hits and all this talk about his numbers declining to pre 2017 is just people hedging their bets playing the odds that previous bad seasons still outweigh the 1 good one. Why can't the Sox have a player who breaks out in a big way ? Happens all the time. The only way to get a feel for a player is to watch a lot of games. I don't mean 1/2 the games I mean at least 75% and watch what the player is doing up there in the batters box. There's a lot to be said for actually watching/studying baseball. Sigh baseball is littered with BABIP one year wonders. Remember the era of Pat Listach? Me neither. Jose Iglesias. Mike Aviles. The era of Danny Santana? The thing about Garcia is he has talent but he needed to make changes prior to last season and instead found success. So what are the chances he makes the necessary changes of him being more patient at the plate and trying to get more loft on his swing with the success he had last year? I mean we'll see but one of the sort of curses of the BABIP monster is you see many promising young players never sort of recover they are trying to recapture the magic of their rookie year instead of writing it off as the fluke it was and making the necessary changes for longterm sustainable success.

QUOTE (Dam8610 @ Jan 30, 2018 -> 10:55 PM) Explain how the advanced stats scream regression without using the acronym "BABIP". That's the only one that is strongly favoring negative regression, and other advanced metrics point to the possibility of positive regression in both power and plate discipline. If he puts up a .290/.360/.540 line, is he any less valuable? Because I could see that based on his 2017 numbers factoring negative BABIP regression with positive regression in the power and plate discipline categories. Um okay he doesn't walk. If you look at the batted ball data you will see he really wasn't doing anything all that differently. He wasn't hitting lasers all over the field. His LD% was actually lower then the year before and his career numbers. He's not a contact hitter either the percentage of pitches outside the strike zone he swung at was basically unchanged from the year before. His zone contact percentage was negligibly better then last year. He mainly just got lucky. You want to see how hard to do what Garcia is attempting to do take a look at Melky someone who plays no defense and puts up .130 to .140 ISO power. Then take a look at the batted ball data and contact rates.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jan 30, 2018 -> 08:00 PM) Let's face it, there are people on this board (I'd say 40 percent of the peeps, maybe a bit more) who will never "believe" in Avi. His age and his production scream "excitement" and "potential" but Sox fans just can't unequivocally support the guy. That's fine. He's got to prove it again. I'd say if he has the same year this year as last there still will be severe detractors. I guess they will want at least 15 more homers from Avi, a ton more RBIs. The funny thing is that the advanced stats all love Avi and still the advanced statniks here can't buy that Avi is a star. Again, that's fine. We Avi lovers can't win; and Avi can't win. If he sucks in April and May ... wow the naysayers will want to run him out of town. If he excels? Big deal. It's not sustainable. Tough tough crowd and it makes no sense cause of Avi's age and his WAR. p.s. Would the nontender crowd like for Hahn to just dump him for scraps ASAP? Dat's a good question. p.s.s. The Royals getting rid of Moss?? Now that makes sense in all aspects. Avi being dumped? Makes no sense. BELIEVE.IN.AVI. He will deliver, folks. It isn't about belief it's about facts his BABIP was far and away the best in the league. If he makes some further improvements in his plate discipline and knocks a couple extra of HR's he can help stave of the regression but his BABIP will force his BA regress the only question is how much. But in order for that to happen he's going to have to get more loft on the ball. Only 27% of his balls put in play last year were flyballs. He hits around 26 for his career. His HR/FB is actually a pretty respectable 16.1. I have no idea what league average was last year due to the balls being juiced but it's usually around 10 percent. So basically what he did worked last year but unless he wants to max out at a .760 ish OPS he's going to have to adjust his approach. Steamer by the way projects him to have a .333 BABIP which is till too high.

Got to get this years quick before they remove it

QUOTE (Tony @ Jan 28, 2018 -> 10:50 AM) Rick Hahn is the voice for the entire organization. Ownership doesn’t give many interviews, so it’s the job of Hahn to speak for the franchise. Because of that, he has to hedge in interviews a bit. He can’t come out and say “Listen, 2018 and 2019 are going to be a mess from a W-L perspective. If you want to see wins, go someplace else.” It’s a marketing disaster. On top of that, why can’t the plan change? What if the team as currently constructed goes out and wins 82 games with huge seasons from Moncada, Anderson, Giolitio, ect. 2019 is just supposed to be a lost year because it was never part of the plan? Things can change. It isn't so much the fact that plans can change of course they can but my question in this case would be why? That quote was from September of last year. You mentioned ownership and that is sort of where I was trying to go with things. I hope he is given the time to do a proper rebuild. In any case I don't want to be alarmist like you said it maybe nothing but he's been making conflicting statements. QUOTE (BlackSox13 @ Jan 28, 2018 -> 02:27 PM) Funny thing is, is that if the rumors were flipped and it was reported the Sox had no interest in Machado or Yelich this winter, these same people would be complaining about it. Whiners are gonna whine. One thing ignored is that Hahn has said repeatedly they would continue to seek players that can be apart of the next contender and come with long term control. Yelich fits that and until Machado made clear that he would not sign an extension, so did he. I see no inconsistencies whatsoever coming from Hahn. The problem with Yelich is the same problem we had with Q. He has control but on a rebuilding club that control doesn't mean as much because a good portion of his control won't be part of the Sox window. And more to the point the Marlins are doing a trade now because they are willing to sacrifice the shortterm for the longterm they were never going to walk away with a package that at first appearance made them worse in the shortterm AND the longterm. For example in 2020 unless the prospects bust the package the Marlins got back will probably be worth much more then three years of cost controlled Yelich. In any case I don't really want to belabor this any further. I just don't see why it made sense to make some of the trades last year if the plan was to just trade many of the same prospects back and get someone with 1 or 2 years worth of extra control. This whole offseason has been very confusing it went from moving Abreu and Garcia to instead possibly acquiring Machado and/or Yelich.

QUOTE (Jerksticks @ Jan 27, 2018 -> 05:07 PM) When does a rebuild complete exactly? I feel like the goal is always to have awesome players at every position. Some of those are going to come through free agency and trades. The whole point of having a farm system is to supplement the major league roster. I'm not really forecasting I've just been hearing some conflicting statements. At the end of last year he was talking about 2020 being the earliest where we could realistically be competitive. Now he's talking about trying to make trades for ML players like Machado and Yelich suggesting the window changed. I guess the question what caused him to change his thinking? “Both Avi and Abreu are under control for the next two years, through 2019. I think even under the most optimistic projections of our ability to contend, certainly ’18 and ’19 don’t include the bulk of the time when we anticipate having a window open to us,” Hahn said. “So obviously with any player who isn’t controllable through the bulk of that window, we have to make an assessment." I think for me if the plan is 2020 which makes perfect sense lets make the 2020 team as good as possible with as many controllable assets as possible. It also gives us ammunition to make a deals if we need to as well.

QUOTE (Dam8610 @ Jan 27, 2018 -> 04:11 PM) Great, hopefully he can develop into a 2+ WAR CF so that that's the White Sox worst case scenario when it's time to compete, with an upside of a 5+ WAR Robert. I think we are sort of fine at CF we have three guys who can play the position in Garcia, Tilson and Cordell all are intriguing. I think L Garcia has some power if he can figure out to be a little more selective thats sort of the difference between him being a .700 hitter and a .800 hitter. Tilson is a guy everyone was high on. Cordell has raked in the minors. It's why I never really wanted to trade for a CF like Yelich. We don't know what we have not even with robert but the wave of guys ahead of him. We need to let the young guys play and then figure out from there where we need to fill holes. It's hard to sort of know at this point.

I want more certainty from Hahn. He talks about Yelich and Machado but the problem with that is the rebuild hasn't been completed. I want his assurance he will follow the season ender PC where he talked about 2020 being the target date. Last thing we need is to be back where started in no mans land because Hahn or more likely Kenny didn't have the stomach for a proper 2-3 year rebuild.

QUOTE (GreenSox @ Jan 26, 2018 -> 11:04 PM) Broxton is a K machine. .323 BABIP with a .220 AVG thats pretty hard to do

QUOTE (knightni @ Jan 26, 2018 -> 10:09 PM) I'd be interested in Broxton for Fulmer, but Fulmer may not be enough. I mean if he comes cheap enough sure but he was a 0.7 WAR player last year. He's 27 and his pedigree has been much greater then the results. We also have CF already who deserve play. Tilson looked good prior to getting injured. Garcia has been playing well. I think he makes sense to a team who has no internal options like say the SFG but for me I'd rather see what we already have with the guys on the roster.

QUOTE (SCCWS @ Jan 26, 2018 -> 10:17 AM) The teams that signed Pujols Fielder Ellsbury etc may be tired of setting their money on fire. But I would ask you how many of those franchises are having financial problems because of it. They may not have gotten player production vs dollars spent but did the signing of those players generate income? Did they sell more tickets?? Did they sell more merchandise? Did their advertising revenue increase. These owners are not dummies. They are making money by the truckloads. When their bottom line gets affected they will watch what they spend on salaries. But if spending X ( even if they don't get their true value) nets them X+ they will continue to spend millions on salaries to make more millions in revenue. The answer is no those teams have not gotten a good return on their investment and since we have one of these players on the roster ourselves lets just keep things honest. Does Shields sell more merchandise? Does he draw fans? Does he increase advertising revenue? I mean what you are saying is nuts. The other problem is most of these players switch teams so the fan attachment is not there after they struggle Pujols is he beloved by Angels fans? No. Was Fielder beloved by Tigers fans? Ellsbury with Yankee fans? QUOTE (GermanSock @ Jan 26, 2018 -> 09:10 AM) Except is isn't really both ways, yes a few players get massive guaranteed contracts but the compensation is that ALL players are very cheap during their first 6-7 years which is their prime years. Sure it sucks you have to pay 30m to washed up pujols but both ways would mean giving pujols at 35 30 millions and trout or Bryant at age 24 50 millions per year instead of 500k. The overpaying of (a few) veterans was the price owners paid for getting young talent to work for almost free. It worked excellent for the owners, sure there are the pujols deals but overall the players share of mlb revenue dropped a lot in the last 10 years (salaries went up but less so then mlb revenue). Why would opposing GM's care how much surplus value a player produced for an opposing club? Their job is to produce wins for their club not right some sort of inequality between a player and their old club. Should we sign Jose Bautista to a six year 200 million deal because the Blue Jays were able to extract so much surplus value through his prime years? I mean comeon. QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Jan 26, 2018 -> 04:44 PM) I think that's a softer way of saying what I said. Boras has worked so hard to make free agents get paid MORE than they're worth, that he's essentially priced his clients out of teams' plans. He has made his own product so overpriced that the entire market has shifted to bypass him. It's complicated but that is a large part of the issue. I also think what doesn't get discussed enough as well is the impact of IFA. If you are a rebuilding club would you rather sign someone like Robert or Cain? Lets say your window of contention is three years in the future. Well that makes Cain what 35. Robert was 19 and would be 22-23 and just ready to be called up. Which makes more sense? The other issue that Boras has is once teams decide to forgo traditional FA and instead devote resources to scouting and the draft along with IFA then they also look to at that point sell off their own assets for prospect capital because that allows them to burn through cheap veterans and keep control of their prospects until they are ready to compete. For example for the Q trade. Q had 4 years of control when he was moved but three of those years of control are not valuable to a team that is rebuilding. Eloy on the other hand has six years but you can keep him in the minors for one year or two years and call him up when you feel the team is closer to contention. For us Hahn has hinted at it being 2020 so lets say we call Eloy up in june to keep his clock set back a year. That means when Hahn feels we will be contenders Eloy will have FIVE years of control Q would have ONE year then be a FA. I know it's a little convoluted but the idea is to have as many players become good at the same time to keep your window open as long as possible. Which makes perfect sense. The problem for Boras is these players eventhough under contract are essentially competing with top FA. If you are the Astros why sign Arrietta when you can just trade for Cole on a 1yr deal. I mean if you are going to extend anyone you would probably prefer it to be your own core players over a player whose 30+ with a declining fastball. If you are the Cardinals and you need a corner OF would you rather trade for 27 year old Ozuna with two years of control remaining (4.8 WAR)? Or sign a 30 year old JD Martinez to a six year 200 million dollar deal or if you are lucky maybe he'll settle for 5 years 150 million (3.8 WAR)? So yeah if you managed to get through this wall of text basically what I'm saying it's a combination of things that is causing this but the main reason is teams are just being smarter and rebuilding teams are realizing that while rebuilding their young players who won't be around when they are good have surplus value to teams that are looking to contend, it makes more sense to spend their budget on IFA, and contending teams realize inorder to keep their window open for as long as possible they need to extend the best YOUNG players on their roster and not be tied down to bad longterm deals for 30+ plus veterans. So they are using trades for shortterm upgrades rather then FA.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jan 26, 2018 -> 02:11 PM) Am I mistaken or is the Cain signing a pretty fair deal for the Brewers? I presume there is risk on the back-side (given age, etc) but early on, given his recent production (when he's healthy) he's been a 5 WAR+ guy which at $16M per year feels reasonable. It's not terrible on it's face the problem is the Brewers already had a set outfield and most of Cain value won't be realized if he doesn't play CF. If I was a brewer fan I'd feel alot better with using the money on a SP. Or if I did sign Cain using the prospects I moved to get a starting pitcher. I doubt they'll get much for their spare OF parts unless they move santana which brings you back to the question why sign in the first place and instead use that money towards Yu or some other FA pitcher.

The Yelich trade makes sense if they wanted to use the savings of not signing Cain for a SP. Signing Cain makes sense if they wanted to save their prospect capital for a SP trade. The both together make zero sense at all. Brewers spinning their wheels.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 25, 2018 -> 09:01 PM) It's not just him complaining about right now. Him putting this complaint out there is him speaking both on behalf of and to his clients and to his future clients. He's playing "public lobbying" right now. This is indirect pressure on the MLBPA, and that pressure eventually will turn up in the CBA talks. And right now, conveniently enough, MLBPA is negotiating with MLB on a way that both sides could agree to a pitch clock; MLB can do it on their own but if they want the players to agree to it they need to give something up to the players that is of value to them. Doesn't matter teams are just so much smarter now then they were then. If you are rebuilding it makes no sense to clog up your team salary with a bunch of overpaid veterans who won't help you win and won't be able to produce once you get good. Nothing Boras can do about it. One great player doesn't have the same level of impact as basketball or football. Basketball only has five players on the court. Football is run by qb's. In baseball the best pitcher in the league only starts once every five game and in that one game may pitch 60% of the innings. Your best hitter is one of 9 players playing and also has to play defense. Time and time again we've seen agents convince bad teams to go for it and resign for example Stanton. Or sign Mike Hampton.

Like I said in the other thread players contracts are bloated. His players would sign in a NY minute just not based on the bad deals of the past. You can go through these 7-10 year deals they almost never work out. Pujols. Fielder. Ellsbury. Crawford. Owners are tired of setting their money on fire and I don't blame them. Until you can build a competitive team via FA why should rebuilding teams bloat their caps with a bunch of unmovable deals?

Yeah, I just checked Braun contract and he has a no trade. He is someone who could actually play LF this year before transitioning to DH but it's hard to see him accepting that role moving from a contending team to a rebuilding club.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Jan 22, 2018 -> 01:39 PM) Right -- if you're worried about where Ellsbury would play if the White Sox acquired him, you're thinking about it wrong. If we get him, it's because of what comes with him. Which is sort of my point the more I think about it and the players already on the roster the more I've sort of realized there would be no spot for him here either to play everyday. He doesn't hit well enough to DH and realistically all his value is being able to play CF for maybe a season more. That would need to be factored in any trade. I also think with the way the market has developed many of our predictions or mine to be specific at the beginning at the thread are wrong. He probably gets a ML deal but less then 10 million and probably for only one year. So the amount of sunk cost we'd be eating in a trade is much higher. I think I used 9 million as a baseline and a three year deal before. Hard to see him getting that now in this market and if we have to eat his full deal thats 68.6 million. Which changes the formula of what you should expect back. To give that number some perspective fangraphs using it's own formula valued Frazier at 38 million and the 34th prospect overall. https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/valuing-the...-100-prospects/

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 22, 2018 -> 11:50 AM) He is still putting up productive numbers. 1.6 fWAR last season, 2.0 the year before. He isn't putting up superstar numbers anymore, but he isn't worthless either. Due to his positional adjustment. The last three years he's put up OPS+ of 83, 88, and 97. He's a below average bat already in his decline phase. Where do you move him when he can't play CF? He's 34 and has 3 years left on his deal. With that being said I wouldn't oppose trading for him but it would be with the understanding we wouldn't get much of anything out of him and it would have to be for a bunch of prospects. Not one. It would be Frazier ++. Honestly if we did trade for him I wouldn't be opposed to giving him his release. It would allow us to not have to try and convince him to waive his NTC and we wouldn't have him clogging one of the OF spots.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 22, 2018 -> 11:11 AM) If he were a free agent today, he'd still get a major league contract for sure. It wouldn't be a $20 million contract, but Ellsbury still brings positive value. He was around 2 war each of the last two years. There are a number of teams he would start for. Ellsbury projects to have a 0.3 WAR this season. He's already 34 how much longer do you think he can play a competent CF? Because almost all his value is in his positional adjustment.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Jan 22, 2018 -> 10:46 AM) He also just said that Braun is not in the trade. Definitely points to a potential Ellsbury deal, obviously doesn’t mean we’re involved. Still can’t believe the Brewers would take on that kind of salary. Would think a team like us or the Phillies would have to be the ultimate landing place for Ellsbury. I guess I'll say I don't believe it. Unless the Yankees are eating 90 percent of his salary they are still in on FA right now. Plus it just doesn't make sense Ellsbury is RL at this point. He won't be able to play CF much longer. They can find a cheap CF with control via a trade a heck of alot easier. I'm sure for example Hahn is willing to trade L Garcia for a modest package. Cain makes sense because well he is still way above RL. Ellsbury is JAG at this point.

QUOTE (ChiSoxFanMike @ Jan 21, 2018 -> 09:17 PM) I would love this deal for the Sox. Ellsbury's contract sucks but it's worth it to get Brinson and possibly other prospects as well. And it's possible that the Yankees/Milwaukee could eat some of his contract too. Why would the Brewers do that deal? Not happening. It maybe Braun being dumped on Sox. If they made a trade for example of Braun plus Brinson, Ortiz Burnes, and Lutz for Abreu they could move Thames to LF. Sign Darvish. Trade for Abreu while only increasing their payroll by 10 million or so.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 19, 2018 -> 03:11 PM) We can only offer $300k. https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2018/01/late...o-martinez.html If Martinez does indeed become eligible to sign before June 15th, he’ll have the open of signing either in the current or the ensuing period. That will help open up his options a bit.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 19, 2018 -> 02:57 PM) Ben Badler‏ @BenBadler 16m16 minutes ago The Yankees and Marlins had private workouts for CF Julio Pablo Martinez. Here's the latest on Martinez: http://bit.ly/2BcFcMp We should get in on the action though the OF situation is pretty crowded one of the top guys will probably bust just going off odds.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jan 18, 2018 -> 04:59 PM) Those two big market teams have exactly one World Series appearance this decade. We had Kansas City one run away from back to back titles, then Cleveland was that close to winning a title, so it's not like the big market teams are the only ones winning. Houston is a big market, but never near the largest payroll, and they just beat both of those unstoppable large morket forces. And it's not like the other owners don't have any money to spend, they just choose not to. The owner of the Pirates is a billionaire but god forbid he spends some money to win more baseball games. Each owner just got a $50 million check from that Disney Tech sale but I doubt any of that goes to their payroll. The problem isn't an unwillingness to spend it's the recognization that spending does not equal wins. For example Stanton he was supposedly one of if not the best players in baseball. Marlins didn't even make the playoffs. The MLB isn't basketball where you can just sign Lebron and sim to the playoffs. You have to actually have a solid foundation behind Stanton and the problem is you can't do it in a feasible way via FA. Number one starters get paid 30 million. Number 2 get around 20. Number 3 get in the 15 million range. Number 4 10-12. Number 5 get around 5-8 million. Closers the top FA ones get paid around 15-18 million. Setup guys around ten million. Decent middle relievers get around 4-7 million. Thats well over 100 million before getting into position players. Owners are tired of setting money on fire and frankly I don't blame them and yes part of the issue is the smart teams have realized that the path to success is through filling the team with controllable talent then signing the top guys but raising the price on controllable talent is not the solution and will only cause FA prices to drop further as the top teams will have less money to spend. What we are seeing is a market correction. Once you take a look at FA and see a market where you could build a team via free agency then you'll start to see more teams engaged. Boras has done a good job of inflating prices for teams.