Kalapse

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Jun 13, 2011 -> 11:17 PM) Maybe in 6 months or so Ill be able to comment on Dr Who. Based on earlier comments I decided to load it up on the Netflix and Im starting season 3. Blink and The Master, some good stuff that season. Plus if you're skipping season 2 you don't have to sit through Love and Monsters and Fear Her which were just brutal television.

QUOTE (Real @ Jun 13, 2011 -> 10:05 PM) You all are saying these things about Pierre, "Not what he used to be", "Not very good at his job" What about Rios? In terms of WAR, they're both damn near identical. Is Rios washed up? Just putting it into perspective, just because a guy is having a horrible year doesn't mean he's done. Juan Pierre's been bad for 7 years and now he's getting into his mid 30's and his legs are failing him, he can't bunt and his defense is going to s*** all that on top of his other obvious shortcomings and you have a guy who's reaching the end of his usefulness as a major league baseball player.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Jun 13, 2011 -> 04:16 PM) Leads the AL in plate appearances. WTF He also leads the game in outs just as he did last year. Dude made 515 outs last season and another 220 this year.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jun 12, 2011 -> 11:30 PM) Pierre is not that good, but he's not deserving of the venom he gets on this site. I don't like slap hitters like Juan, who also has lost a step stealing bases and in the field, but he's not one of the worst players in baseball, either. People got on me for praising Bobby all last year saying it was 'ad nauseum.' We get it. Most of you hate Juan. Why beat the same ol dead horse over and over and over? At least shut up when some of us beat a dead horse on things you don't want to hear about cause we get it ... Juan sucks and you hate Juan ... on and on and on. 3rd worst is still pretty damn bad.

I love how Hawk says Juan Pierre has really struggled with his bunting this season. Funny because I seem to remember keeping a running tally of his failed bunt attempts last year when he was falling behind 0-2 or popping out in seemingly every bunting situation.

Juan Pierre's been struggling for 7 years.

QUOTE (iamshack @ May 31, 2011 -> 08:44 PM) Before we all get ahead of ourselves, again, he only has 1 year of service time. Do we even have to worry about locking him up? No, all the same rules apply, nothing changes for him. If he finishes the season with 2 years of service then he's ours for the next 4 years and can make $500K next year. There is absolutely no reason to think about locking him up. He's made 10 starts this season and is under team control for the next 4.5 years, there's plenty of time to let him sink or swim before committing to him. And yes, I worry about a starting pitcher with a 5.0 k/9, that's asking an awful lot of your defense.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ May 25, 2011 -> 11:36 AM) Kalapse, Had to look up with Gallifrey was and Im not sure what the question was. ---- Game of Thrones has been great, they could have given a little back story to start, but maybe they didnt want it to seem to much like Lord of the Rings. Just something about the families, etc. It's a Doctor Who reference, I didn't think anyone would get it. What you described was basically the plot to David Tenant's final episode.

It's simple: there IS a salary cap in baseball in the form of a self appointed team budget. Every team has one and the fans generally have a pretty good idea of what the team is willing to spend, the Sox have been around $100M since 2006, all that changed this season with a jump to ~$120M but if this team bombs that payroll will be dropping next season. So basically people care because there's only so much money to go around and that money needs to be spent as efficiently as humanly possible. And yeah, you load up your payroll with bad contracts and it will destroy your franchise with few exceptions.

QUOTE (SpainSOXfan09 @ May 24, 2011 -> 06:40 PM) Kalapse, why does Vicedo go directly to ARB and not pre-ARB? By virtue of the fact he signed an MLB contract and not Minor league? All that data is as of Spring Training and the sheet assumes that anyone on the 40 man roster earn a full year of service for each of the next 6 years, this obviously will not happen with everyone but it needs to be assumed otherwise there's no good way to plan out a player's next 6 seasons. This also assumes a player will not qualify as a super 2. With that said Viciedo's signed for the next 2 seasons with no out clause and less than a year of service coming into the 2011 season so he's under White Sox control for the next 6 years. 2011 and 2012 would be pre-arb years along with 2013 if he weren't under contract and if he doesn't get his .089 years of service up to .172 this season (which he likely will not) then 2014 will become a pre-arb season and he'll be under White Sox control through 2017. Every player is under team control for 6 years of service, a service number of 3.000 - 5.171 makes a player arbitration eligible anything less than 3.000 and he's pre-arb. This only changes if a player is under contract or qualifies as a super 2 player. Viciedo is under contract through 2012 so he already has a fixed salary for 2 of his pre arb years, the contract runs out then he becomes pre-arb until he reaches 3.000 years of service. The bottom line of this convoluted answer: 2011 and 2012 would be pre-arb if he weren't under contract. (Note: he could very well be a super 2 player in his 3rd year of service turning that 3rd pre-arb year into an arb year)

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ May 24, 2011 -> 02:14 PM) The Event hasnt really been explicitly explained. Since that was all from the last episode I gave it spoilers. Gallifrey, yes?

Another thing to remember about Alexei: we know he tends to blow for the first 6 or so weeks of the season. You can say that his numbers this year aren't THAT much better than his rookie stats (though there is a substantial .013 point difference in wOBA) but Alexei only had 73 PA in the team's first 49 games in '08, this season he has 200 PA through 49 team games. He's typically been significantly better in the final 110 games of the season: 2008: First 50 team games: .200/.230/.300/.530 Final 113 team games: .305/.332/.505/.837 2009: First 50 team games: .253/.299/.335/.634 Final 112 team games: .288/.349/.414/.763 2010: First 50 team games: .254/.288/.385/.673 Final 112 team games: .293/.324/.450/.773 2011: First 49 team games: .282/.347/.448/.794 This is far and away the best start to a season he's had in his career to date, he's not putting himself in some big hole to start the year. He wasn't given the opportunity to dig himself a ridiculous hole in his rookie year because he barely played. If the trend of him picking up his play in the final 4 months of the season continues into this season this should be the best season of his career, likely a .350+ wOBA season. Over the last 3 full seasons the top 5 offensive SS in the game have been at .348+ (Young, Reyes, Jeter, Tulo, Ramirez) so historically .350 puts you into elite company throw in his typical top of the league defense and you have an outstanding baseball player.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ May 24, 2011 -> 12:00 PM) Agreed. He's definitely top three. I'd have him behind Andrus as well. Only thing holding Alexei back from being number one to me is the boneheaded errant throws he still seems to make too frequently. He makes some amazing plays, has ridiculous range and has a solid arm but he does already have what 8/9 errors? Too many. Andrus has 10 errors this season, 3 less throwing errors over the past 2 seasons and 2 less total errors. Not a big difference there.

Since the beginning of the 2010 season Alexei has the 2nd highest WAR among SS in the game, the best UZR/150, 2nd highest +/-, the 6th highest wOBA and his walk rate this season is right at his respectable 2009 level, a number that I would accept for the rest of his career. There's a lot to get excited about with Alexei Ramirez, he's one of the best all around SS in the game at an incredibly important position.

QUOTE (Andrew @ May 23, 2011 -> 10:47 PM) ??? - You lost me right here on your first sentence. I would think it has EVERYTHING to do with performance of pitchers. If the defense messes up, the runs are unearned, so....like... yeah.... thanks. Do you mean to say the Red Sox started off badly and came back? And we didn't? And we didn't support our best pitcher, in particular? If so, say so. We hit like s***. We have a dumb f***ing mgr. who squanders outs and real live baserunners like they're toilet paper and he's wiping his ass. Not even sure what you're point is. If I was John, I"d run like f***ing hell from this team. Can't really blame him if (when) he does. I was referring to Lester's 6 wins compared to Danks' zero, notice the last thing that's said just before the line about the pitcher's performance: Lester has 6 wins. so yeah

John Danks has 6 quality starts which is the same amount as Jon Lester who has 6 wins, while part of this has to do with the performance of the pitchers (though Danks actually had a lower FIP coming into today) there's also the fact that Lester is getting over 5 runs of support more than Danks while in the game (3.39 r/s for Danks is the lowest in baseball, 8.48 for Lester is the 6th highest). Both pitchers have 10 starts this season and Danks has actually thrown about 3 more innings than Lester so it's not the length of outings (they both have 4 outings with 7+ IP, Danks has 3 of 8+ and Lester only 1). The Sox have scored 25 runs in John Danks' 10 starts this season and over a quarter of those runs came in one game. Baseball's a funny, sadistic game.

2nd highest WAR of any SS in baseball (behind Jose Reyes) at 2.0, tops in the AL (finished first in the AL last season). Alexei Ramirez is just a damn good baseball player.

Don't know if anyone's posted these but here's the Sox starters' numbers with regular and an extra day's rest: REST GS ERA WHIP k/9 K/BB PEAVY 4 - 119 3.82 1.275 8.9 2.86 5 - 81 2.78 1.065 9.2 3.70 BUEHRLE 4 - 186 4.33 1.364 5.0 2.27 5 - 113 3.30 1.201 5.1 2.77 DANKS 4 - 58 3.98 1.294 7.4 2.40 5 - 48 4.31 1.331 6.3 2.27 FLOYD 4 - 64 3.85 1.303 7.3 2.57 5 - 40 5.28 1.424 6.5 2.07 JACKSON 4 - 75 4.27 1.416 6.7 1.94 5 - 51 4.76 1.532 6.6 1.58

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ May 12, 2011 -> 07:05 PM) His wOBA of .266 is the 5th worst in all of baseball among batters with at least 150 plate appearances. That's pretty putrid. wOBA, as I'm sure you know, ignores defense and focuses only on what an offensive player can control, much like FIP for pitchers. So even when people say the defense is a fluke, he's not contributing in any other aspect. He's a waste of a roster spot. Seems like a solid guy. Hard worker. But he's not good as at baseball. And something has to be f***ing done about it. 3rd worst ISO in baseball last season (0.41) only ahead of Cesar Izturis and Elvis Andrus, I know he's a leadoff hitter and silly people think this stat doesn't matter for them but that's totally unacceptable. He's currently at 0.28 this season which is the worst in baseball and is on pace for 13 XBH which would tie Morrie Rath of the 1912 White Sox for the LEAST IN THE HISTORY OF THE GAME in a single season with at least 700 PA (725 instances). Yeah, bad. his 22 last season were the 7th least ever, BTW. To widen the scope a bit: 5,902 times has a player recorded at least 600 PA in a season, only 5 times has someone managed less than 13 XBH and 3 of those were in the nineteen oughts.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ May 12, 2011 -> 06:58 PM) Who are they? My interest is piqued. Ibanez and Willingham.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ May 12, 2011 -> 12:43 PM) Last nights game he turned a double into a triple with his weak arm (I'm probably being overly harsh on that) and on the Torri Hunter fly that was a catchable ball that a good outfielder makes 8 out of 10 times. He turned that double into a triple not just with his weak arm but by playing the long carom off the wall rather than going to the corner and getting it, when you have no arm and maybe the fastest player in the bigs running the bases you can't wait for the ball to come to you 20+ feet down the left field wall, you need to go get it, that's just bad defense. The first hit off Peavy was also due to poor defense from Pierre, he got an awful jump on the ball allowing it to fall in front of him. The dropped flyball off the bat of Hunter was pretty brutal. Instead of trusting the track he slowed up to feel for the wall when he was still well out of range forcing himself to leave his feet on a ball that was not just behind him but a few feet to his left giving himself little chance of making the play. I believe it was game 2 that he jogged to a ball hit softly in front of him toward the line, a single for most outfielders he turned it into a double by underestimating Kendrick's aggressiveness and lacking an adequate throwing arm. Last year baserunners didn't take full advantage of Pierre's weak arm, the opposite is true this season, they're taking that extra base and the added pressure of having to get to the ball and get it in as quickly as possible is only going to lead to more miscues. It's super early so sample sizes are small but he's more than earned his -34.3 UZR/150 for the season (4th worst OF in baseball, ahead of a 39 year old, a converted catcher playing in one of the biggest outfields in baseball and Nate McLouth), -2.6 ARM (worst in baseball) and -1.1 WAR (worst in baseball).

Juan Pierre in 2010: 734 PA, 22 XBH Carlos Quentin in 2011: 146 PA, 23 XBH Carlos Quentin in 2008: 215 PA, 23 XBH

The drafting of a QB should surprise no one they've been saying all along that their plan was to take one late.

Phil Humber: 2-2 25.1 IP, 1 HR, 1.07 WHIP, 3.20 ERA

Duncan Keith is trending worldwide on Twitter.