Reddy

QUOTE (Baron @ Jan 10, 2014 -> 06:14 PM) Why the hell would we sign Matt Garza? He did so well in that launching pad in Texas lets put him in another one. ^ Garza is a KW move. I don't think Hahn brings a flyball pitcher to the cell for that kind of money after putting together a full bullpen of groundballers

QUOTE (Jake @ Jan 10, 2014 -> 05:28 PM) Pods was a no-defense, no-arm, no-power, little-walk, okay-hit, super-fast-until-he-got-hurt-all-the-time player. Eaton is a good defense, strong arm, better hit tool, many more walks, and just as promising but as-of-yet less productive runner. They're really not very similar. Pods should be seen as a floor of Eaton -- productive as a LH speed guy for a few years ^

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jan 10, 2014 -> 05:22 PM) Got it. Trading for young prospects >>>>> winning trading easily replaceable pieces for major league ready talent = winning.

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ Jan 10, 2014 -> 04:12 PM) Ugh. Right. Go back to all the Flowers is better than AJ posts for another version of this. Or Fields over Crede, whatever. On paper ceilings look beautiful, then s*** happens. Pods stole 70 bases in a single season & stole a combined 212 bases during a 4 consecutive season period *in the Major Leagues.* He also battled injuries. He was also, like Eaton, a CF prospect with questions who had to move to LF because he lacked arm strength for the position. Whatever his perfect world on-paper ceiling was it was certainly much higher than what he actually accomplished, and when you look at what he actually accomplished he did quite a bit, much more than most OF prospects who make it to the MLB level. Whatever you think Eaton's ceiling is, get ready to be disappointed because it's pretty unlikely you're going to get it. And if at the end of the day Eaton puts up a career similar to what Pods has done, then he's been worth trading for & worth starting. As far as that projection crap go back and look at our wonderful history of pre-season prospect projections, where guys like Flowers and Anthony Carter and Jon Link etc. play important roles on the team. It means nothing. The DBacks traded a very good LHSP prospect to upgrade over him with a butcher of a K machine in LF, looking for power. Now while it may be easy to say the DBacks are stupid & we're geniuses, I think it's much likelier that they actually know to evaluate their own players & that your expectations of Eaton are unrealistically high. I'm sorry man, looking at REAL NUMBERS, Podsednik never came close to what Eaton has done at the minors and in Spring Training, and his age 25 season in the majors pales in comparison to Eaton's 23 and 24 year old seasons. Pods in the minors had a career .692 OPS and .719 in the majors. Not far off. Eaton's is .951 in the minors. Obviously time will tell, but Pods only had ONE season ever with a WAR above 1.5 and Eaton is projected for 2 or 3 in his age 25 season. Is it certain that Eaton is better than Pods, nope. Is it highly, highly likely? Absolutely.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jan 10, 2014 -> 04:13 PM) So if these prospects do flame out and the Sox keep losing 90 games every year, is he still doing a good job? As long as he keeps making moves like this, yes he is.

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ Jan 10, 2014 -> 03:51 PM) http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/p/podsesc01.shtml Scotty Pods has quietly had a pretty nice career & has a .281/.339/.379 career line. If it weren't for all the injuries he would have made a lot more money than he did. I say a poor man's Pods in relation to Eaton's offensive value as a weapon at the top of the order (not nearly the threat of a prime Pods). But given how Pods was just a LF, if Eaton can be a solid defensive CF and generally put up the type of overall numbers Pods has done then I'd say we'll be happy with this trade. see the above post. Eaton is absolutely equal or most likely above Pods in the "offensive threat" category.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 10, 2014 -> 03:48 PM) Prospect rankings are a lot different than "where they were drafted". Pujols was ranked 42 and Piazza 38 at one time. Some guys will be All Stars and never ranked in the top 100. Some will be ranked #1 and be Delmon Young. The fact is, most prospects bust. You can't be sure how Hahn did until the results come in. He either hit a home run or struck out. We will know in a couple of years. Sooner if these guys can really play at the major league level. But to think the Sox haven't had prospects just as highly thought of as these through the KW regime is crazy. They just didn't develop. Hopefully the times have changed. You absolutely can. The fact that he's flipping non-important pieces (or at least replaceable pieces) for legitmate MLB-ready prospects already means he's doing a good job regardless of the outcome. As you yourself said, most prospects flame out. Well most pitchers do too, and I'd rather have a GM who's interested and focused on rebuilding WHILE maintaining a competitive team. In one offseason Hahn did just that. If it doesn't work out 100% so what? I want the GM who makes THESE kinds of moves instead of the one who overspends for 10 year contracts to aging superstars.

Adam Eaton early projections via Fangraphs: Steamer: .278 .350 .403 2.3 WAR Oliver: .266 .341 .380 3.4 WAR Obviously those are just two projections, and should be taken with a huge grain of salt - they're not even my favorite projection systems by far - but notice this is going to be his age 25 season, and Podsednik was 27 before he broke out. Eaton has a higher ceiling, and frankly a higher floor than Pods did. I don't know why you'd consider him a poor man's version. At the very least they're on the same level, with Eaton having a higher OBP almost certainly.

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ Jan 10, 2014 -> 03:30 PM) The argument this is in response to is the "better prospect" argument, which it fits well. Eaton is definitely more of an overachiever and grindier than any of these guys. He also brings a different skillset. None of this means he was a better prospect than those guys were. If so, and grindiness/overachieverness outweighed raw talent then Tyler Skaggs wouldn't have been the headliner of that Trumbo deal, it would have been Santiago as the main piece. I'm happy with the deal too even though I do like Santiago's upside (I think he's been quite underrated nationally), and I hope Eaton can be somewhat of a poor man's Scott Podsednik who can be a better defensive fit as a CF. What makes you say "poor man's" Pods?

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ Jan 10, 2014 -> 03:08 PM) Brian Anderson had legitimate power potential and was a sure bet CF defensively with an arm and range. A much more talented & toolsy player than Eaton, regardless of whatever their minor league statistics say. Anderson was a total bust. He was taken 15th overall and was not a reach. Sweeney was also a total bust. He was perhaps the most exciting prospect in the system due to the sweet stroke and of course the power potential which never came. Sweeney fell to his absolute floor in the Majors. Sweeney was taken 52nd overall and that wasn't a reach either. Let's temper the Eaton excitement please. He's a 19th round rick (571 overall) who was taken I believe as a junior in college and that was the first time he was ever drafted. He's a lot like Santiago, an overachiever type who continued to fight his way up levels, but let's not pretend he's all super toolsy and has the kind of upside that your average highly-ranked prospect has. If he's a solid starting CF for us then we've done very well but it's not like this guy is going to be hitting the ball out of the park anytime soon or is considered a sure-fire bet to stick in CF. Um... http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/sweenry01.shtml Ryan Sweeney is a valuable bench piece and continues to be so. Was he a superstar? No. Was he expected to be? No. Has he had a successful major league career? Absolutely.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 10, 2014 -> 02:52 PM) Anderson didn't play in Reno. BA also was once rated the #37th best prospect. Eaton hasn't sniffed that. All that really matters is how he plays in the major leagues. Hopefully he is world's apart from BA, but the fact is, prospects rated in the 70s really isn't anything new for the White Sox. Perhaps these will pan out. That would be new. I'd also like to point out that rankings generally don't mean too much. Remind me where Buehrle, Piazza and Pujols were drafted?

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jan 10, 2014 -> 02:48 PM) I don't think Lindstrom really counts as a positive or negative at this point. Belisario IMO is perhaps more likely to be the break-out candidate, or Paulino. Some of the negativity about Keppinger has simply been the fact that 1) Rays players never seen to excel outside of Tampa and 2) we already went through a similar situation overvaluing Teahen, so this look like a rehash. And just being on the wrong side of "buy low/sell high" which was pretty predictable from the beginning. Finding Gillaspie to at least man 3B turned out to be a pretty decent move, too. As a huge Santiago fan, I fear we'll go through a period like we did with Daniel Hudson where his success elsewhere will be magnified if we don't get enough production out of Eaton. I'm much more worried about Davidson and Garcia than I am about Eaton tbh

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ Jan 10, 2014 -> 12:56 PM) Brian Anderson & Ryan Sweeney both were better prospects than Eaton & Davidson. So was arguably Jeremy Reed who was near MLB-ready when Kenny traded him. Garcia has a lot of ability, but just last June I was getting s*** from this very board proposing Reed for Garcia straight-up. Half this board didn't even like the guy a month before we acquired him. Also Josh Fields made a huge impression when he got here. He looked like a possible 40HR guy. Kenny has kept a lot of players rated as high or higher than these guys. Lots of them. He once helped develop the best system in baseball for the Sox, and most of those prospects that inflated the value of the system didn't turn into anything. Anderson never hit the way Eaton has. In AAA Anderson had a high OPS of .827 Eaton? .995 in AAA They're worlds apart. And guess what? Sweeney turned into a valuable and productive major leaguer!

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 10, 2014 -> 12:39 PM) People need to keep in mind KW kept guys like BA, and Morel and for a little while, Fields, traded for Lillibridge and Castro and Flowers. These guys were all ranked as high or nearly as high as the Garcia, Eaton and Davidson. It all depends on how they play. NONE of those guys were ever ranked or touted like Garcia, Eaton and Davidson. You just think that because you're a white sox fan. If you weren't you'd have never heard of any of those guys.

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Dec 29, 2013 -> 03:54 AM) 13 HBP, 59 Wild pitches and 128 walks in 42 pro innings. Oh my f***ing god. In his last inning ever he walked 12 batters, hit 3 of them, threw 9 wild pitches, and allowed 12 ER. LOL, where the f*** was his manager? This was truly the greatest stat box I've ever read. Laughed out loud for a long time. That was awesome. Faced 310 batters in 42 innings and a 27 BB per 9 innings. twenty seven walks. per nine innings. my god.

Kurt Suzuki to the twins. Anyone else left on the market?

Obviously. Anyone who didn't get what he was doing last year needs to eat some crow.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 9, 2014 -> 08:43 PM) The guy who is older than our GM? man you're a little slow on this one. Robin, ie Batman and Robin, ie Robin the Boy Wonder.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Jan 7, 2014 -> 04:51 PM) how about forced to pay for it themselves if they want to expend medical care to a dead person? Although right now there is no indication as to who IS paying for the bills, the hospital (which means everyone else in the form of higher bills), insurance, the family or some mysterious benefactor. ok, but given that the system is what it is, dont the parents have every right - within that system - to keep their child on life support if they so choose?

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Jan 7, 2014 -> 02:16 PM) How is this inconsistent with my ideology? And I've lost people I care about. By pure bad luck I've also seen a lot of people who I don't know die. the parents should be forced by the state/hospital/etc to take their kid off life support? individual rights!

QUOTE (Real @ Jan 7, 2014 -> 03:08 PM) it's in his book for cryin out loud http://metsblog.com/news/mike-piazza/mike-...-upcoming-book/ he also admits to using amphetamines, another PED dude was doing everything in his power to boost his game Hank Aaron used amphetamines...

QUOTE (Real @ Jan 7, 2014 -> 03:23 AM) Piazza used andro, which has always been a PED, but not always a banned substance. So yeah he did use PEDs link?

I feel like this is all coming from a 24 year old kid who's never experienced an unexpected massive emotional trauma. There's no other explanation for the lack of empathy. That said, it's also massively inconsistent with his libertarian political views as pointed out by SS2K. Kinda love that part.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Jan 6, 2014 -> 06:42 PM) Piazza is the greatest hitting catcher of all-time, except for maybe Bench. The defensive rating on his WAR gave him the position adjustment but docked him defensively for his poor arm -- which was the only way they knew how to numerically measure catcher defense before the UZR/pitch framing era. It's very possible that he was not as bad as his caught-stealing rate suggests, we'll never know unless someone does some really rigorous film analysis. The case for Piazza is open and shut, IMO, if you just compare him to his contemporaries: http://www.fangraphs.com/graphsw.aspx?play...1000898,1009334 He had a higher peak than everyone in that graph except Bench, and was surpassed in career value by Fisk only because Fisk played like eight more seasons. While the C defense component of those fWAR figures is certainly incomplete, the offense is environment-adjusted. If you think Yogi Berra was a HOFer, Piazza is an easy in. Here's the graph above but with Ivan Rodriguez added: http://www.fangraphs.com/graphsw.aspx?play...1000898,1009334 ^ the whole "guilty by association" is absurd.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Jan 5, 2014 -> 04:44 PM) In Oakland a girl died after a botched surgery or something. The doctors pronounced her dead but the family insists she's alive, biology seems to side with the doctors. Anyways, the dead girl is getting some pretty ludicrous medical care to keep her heart "beating". This isn't cheap and I don't think health insurance extends to dead people. Who pays for this s***? This has been going on for weeks, if they have the money to pay for it themselves fine but unless they're ludicrously wealthy that's not possible. I read they want operations done on the corpse now, which makes no sense. The kid is dead, theyre probably sad about it, but I'm more concerned with who's paying for this kid to basically decompose while hooked up to a bunch of machines, You're such a sweetheart.