Look at Ray Ray Run

This is huge for A LOT of reasons. Let's see if I can summarize my thoughts on why this is a huge signing. 1. Timing: The White Sox just inked a major free agent before the Winter Meetings. This means they learned to go in with a top dollar bid and not play games. They signed him in COMPLETE silence; the last update on the market was that it was slow moving and yet, here we are 1 hour later signing Grandal. 2. Silence: However stupid this may be, this team is significantly better when they operate behind closed doors without a ton of leaks and bravado. When they shut up and get it done, that's when there are results. 3. Only the beginning: This is the FIRST signing; this leads me to believe that Grandal was one of the main priorities. This also confirms that his market wasn't as big as many thought. Regardless, I think the Sox may have quite a few larger offers on the table right now trying to wrap up negotiations early. This has me hyped. Don't stop now boys.

Makes sense. He had been a bit archaic and old school for the direction Getz seems to want to take the minor leagues.

I'm not sure why you think theres no doubt. Yermin has 107 games between AA and AAA in his career - his wRC is 147; avg age of 25.9. Collins has played 222 games between AA and AAA with a wRC+ of 135. - avg age of 23.5. Last year Collins played 30 more games and had a 140 wRC+ being 2 years younger than Yermin who had a 150 wRC in fewer games. They are actually very comparable.

Collins is much younger and left handed. While Mercedes has hit at every level, he's also been old for his levels. Collins has hit while being the average age or younger. People hate collins here because fans are impatient and draw sweeping conclusions based on minimal results. I get it, but Collins is far from a finished product whom we should be defining.

Mercedes was a prime R5 candidate with the rosters expanding. If you squint, you could argue he's a 3rd catcher + a 1st base/DH option for a team. That's a versatile enough package, that when paired with a bat that may play up is really enticing. Mainly because he would be attractive to both bad teams and middle tier teams without a true #1 catcher.

You should always get right up to 40 at the deadline.

There's zero chance that any team that is event remotely average is going to stash a guy who couldn't throw a strike or repeat his delivery on the MLB roster for the entire season. A team like Detroit is a risk to claim Hansen as they can afford his badness to be on the MLB roster if they still see a future there.

I never got invited into any cliques. This sucks!

Hes actually even worse defensively. Hes a great case in point for baseball caring a lot less about defense than 1st base WAR does. Bell was a 2.5 WAR player. If he was made available, his package would equal that of a 4-5 WAR talent not A 2.5 WAR talent.

Agreed. I cant decide if taubman is the kind of guy who would fuck over the Astros or if he's the kind of douche who blames mlb baseball and would never help them. Regardless, Luhnow doesnt strike me as the kind of guy who steps down.

Fake twitter rumor.

Two weeks from this upcoming Saturday is when the stove will start to bubble!

No one cares what a single baseball writer thinks a players destination will be. MLBTraderumors does predictions every off-season; based on feedback and things they're hearing and etc. They get about 4-6 out of the top 50 right every off-season. No one has any idea where anyone is signing or going.

This one always feels shitty to me. While you sign an agreement when you take up a job like this - or any job in a data analysis industry - it's likely that Luhnow built a lot of the models himself. The data he built the models with may have even been gathered and monitored based on technology he put in place, but technically that data is owned by the club. While you are being paid by the organization, and they assume the rights of your work once you complete it, it's really hard to work on something for 7 years and then you can't take it with you. It doesn't excuse his actions - for example, Theo had to leave all his information behind and start fresh - but it does feel shitty when you work for something for so long and then have to start over at a new spot.

The concern was never warranted in the first place. Cooper has a nice track record and noticeable impact on very specific arm types. In a tenure as long as his, times will change and failures will happen. Being WILLING to change with the times while pairing that with some old school thoughts that made him successful says a lot about the guy. People love firing coaches in sports; in reality, continuity and consistency at the positions correlates better to success than not.

165 million would put them at the same level as the Astros; do they struggle to compete with the "big boys?" I'm going to go ahead and stop responding as you are derailing the point of the thread with non-relateable posts complaining about completely irrelevant things.

What the heck does any of this have to do with Don Cooper's acceptance and strong embrace of advanced analytics for developing his pitching staff?

A payroll being 150-165 means the rebuild didnt work? So the cubs and astros rebuilds didnt work? You're all over the place. Also, again this has nothing to do with this thread or my posts. You're just going thread to thread to complain about the same thing.

What are you being critical of? What does any of this have to do with this thread? Yes, if their best starter gets hurt that would be bad. How do you contend in just one half of baseball? How was kopech going to make a 70 win team into an 82 win team? Development isnt linear. Guys you were disappointed in last year could make adjustments and come out strong. You honestly never know. Why is Balta the one that determines the success of the rebuild?

Yeah, and now you have a coach who still has some old school mental mind trick coaching paired with an analytical mind. Cooper can be a bit of a curmudgeon, but those quotes and reviews from his staff - particularly Gio who is now the leader of that unit - are glowing and lead me to be very optimistic. I still have hope for Lopez too; assuming he can find that ride on his fastball consistently. Time will tell if he can; it's clearly an arm action issue.

What do you mean? What are you asking? Do you think that the Sox now, somehow, are causing injuries? How did it set the rebuild back? What are you being critical of? You're just typing a bunch of stuff but not making any actual points. What have those teams figured out?

Giolito was broken when the Sox acquired him - he's now, arguably, a top 10 arm in baseball. Kopech couldn't find command; he struggled early with the Sox before finding his release point and really taking off. Dunning had developed really nicely before the injury. The Sox got a 4 MPH increase out of Stievers fastball in ONE off-season. They turned Tommy Kahnle, Anthony Swarzak went from worthless, to a piece they traded at the deadline for something. I won't even get into the find and development of Q and Sale.

Yeah, let's strip away all the success stories and then evaluate the effectiveness of the system then - that'll tell us a great story. Great take. No matter how good you are, you're going to have failures. It doesn't mean you'll always be correct. The Sox track record with pitching isn't bad in the least bit. So many pitching injuries ha; all they've done is revert to the mean. Likely their shoulder programs and etc have been copied and implemented across the league. Edges in baseball don't last very long; if you're doing something really well, it won't take long before people start copying your system.

That entire article is a great read; there are other excerpts as exciting as the above but I don't want to direct link too much because it's a subscription service. The piece about Cooper today in Fegan's piece touched on all of this further; some excerpts from that - I agree very much with the following. “There is a benefit to having the continuity of instruction, the fact our drafted players are hearing the same message in the minor leagues that they’ll hear all the way up the chain in Chicago,” Hahn said. “That’s in part because of the long-term continuity of Coop and the other pitching coaches in the organization. Another layer, our scouts have a really good sense of what type of arm action and deliveries we feel as a staff we’re really good at getting better, and what hangups we avoid because historically we haven’t seen good results from. There is a great benefit from that continuity from a development and scouting standpoint.”

After reading Fegan's piece in September about continuity within the system and one voice/message throughout all levels, paired with the massive jump in analytics this year at the MLB level, I find the anger directed at Cooper by fans to be misguided. When you read Eno Sarris talk about how the average pitching coach tenure is 1 season, you realize that continuity is likely a better driving force of success than constant turnover. You will have peaks and valleys within the tenure, but the continuity from level to level has a lot of value. Cooper also isn't as archaic as people think. An excerpt from one of the articles I found promising: But Giolito — who ditched his sinker and returned to working exclusively with a high-riding four-seamer because of a report from White Sox analytics in spring training — says that the simplicity of in-game cues frequently belies the complexity of mid-week work on spin axis, ride, spin rate, angle and extension. Getting López’s fastball to ride like it did over the barrels of Cleveland hitters all afternoon has been a back-and-forth battle with frequent hiccups. But it’s been about establishing in side sessions what elements in his delivery will produce the fastball action they’re looking for with Trackman and Rapsodo data, and getting him to carry that into games. “A lot of credit to Coop and Has (bullpen coach Curt Hasler) with having the old-school background, old-school pitching mentality and learning all this stuff from our analytics department,” Giolito said. “Really, really educating themselves so they can in turn help all the pitchers. We look at that stuff on an almost daily basis in our bullpens and stuff like that and that’s been super beneficial to me this year. When I can look at an outing and see I climbed up a little higher (in release point) and my ride wasn’t as good. OK, let me go into my next bullpen and focus on getting back into my good (arm) slot and then we have the Rapsodo on it and it’s like oh, there it is, there’s the carry and the way the ball should be coming out. A lot of credit to them for learning all that stuff, taking it all on.”