3E8

Most of the Sox didn't strikeout too frequently last season. Dunn severely tips the scale for the club as a whole. The strikeout rate for the team excluding him would rank low.

QUOTE (Jake @ Jan 26, 2013 -> 12:17 AM) Well if we take Paulie's word for it, they didn't know how bad it would be until they got in there. The irritating part is that it seems he avoided doing this last offseason basically just because he didn't feel like dealing with it. This. Sounds like our training staff probably gave him a best/worst case scenario. And given his performance the two years prior, the choice was up to Konerko. Before that minor procedure in June: .366/.455/.617 After: .263/.332/.417 He took a bit of a gamble and it seems to have not exactly paid off. Hopefully the wrist is truly healed and won't be any nuisance this season.

It should read hundreds of percentage points. Which I suppose is somewhat vague but the general idea is the Sox have sold at least twice as many season tickets compared to this time last year. That increase is from the cheaper 7 and 14-game plans as SS2k5 mentioned.

De Aza also missed 20+ games from late July on due to various injury/illness which would make it harder to put Viciedo on the bench.

Get a lab diamond since there is no way to differentiate and you can feel good about not contributing to the blood trade.

QUOTE (Lamar Johnson 23 @ Jan 21, 2013 -> 01:08 PM) My oldest son will be driving within two years; should I tell him that I'm going to buy him the best car possible, then get him a jalopy, and then try to convince him that its the best, or should I tell him I'll get him the best car that I can afford? I think what the Sox are doing is buying the best car we can afford without taking a high-interest loan or dipping into that money we promised we'd put away for our son's education. Good for now and good for later.

QUOTE (Lillian @ Jan 20, 2013 -> 07:29 AM) It's pretty obvious that the Sox can't hit Tiger pitching. Quite a large conclusion to jump to working with small sample sizes. Using a similarly small sample, it seems Hahn has already signed that left-handed, middle of the order, "Tiger Slayer". In 35 career games, his line against the Tigers is .329/.380/.562. A .941 OPS. And he didn't cost much more than the league minimum!

In terms of bWAR, the Twins traded their #1 and #5 players by value (over seven wins combined) from 2012 for prospects and Vance Worley.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Jan 18, 2013 -> 12:05 PM) Since anyone complaining about Dayan Viciedo is a horrible thing in your opinion, I'll go off on your ridiculous homerism and your more ridiculous confidence that your way of thinking is so great. Viciedo's on base percentage is horrific, and he was worse than a replacement-level player offensively while providing no defense as a corner outfielder on a team that lost the division by 3 games - while he had an OPS of .660 after May. But keep slurping Dayan Viciedo and wearing your Sox-player blinders, Dick. 14 jacks over his last 100 games. Let's all roll out the red carpet for the future superstar and see nothing wrong with him ever! He was very slightly worse than the MLB league-average player offensively. Not worse than a replacement level player. Though I understand your concern. Viciedo's value will mostly come from his bat, and since he doesn't draw walks, he's going to have to make more contact and hit for even more power. But as Dick Allen said, he's still quite young, so we'll see.

And last year we actually underperformed based on our run differential. Our Pythagorean record was 88 wins.

QUOTE (bhawk99 @ Jan 16, 2013 -> 04:37 PM) Wow great news, Flowers is projected to hit under .220 with less then 15 HR's and under 40 RBI's. Who needs AJ with those impressive numbers from our new starting catcher. That projection for Flowers is only 331 plate appearances. Prorate it up to 500 PAs, which is more reasonable for a full-time catcher, and the projection is for Flowers' fWAR to be 1.7. AJ posted a lower fWAR than 1.7 in four of the last six seasons. And, as already mentioned, Flowers will be making near league minimum salary.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 16, 2013 -> 11:07 AM) Not a single pitcher is projected to have an ERA under 3.67 in the pen? Don't worry too much with the counting or rate stats. The big picture is that ZiPS projects 21 wins between our starting rotation and bullpen, which is one of the highest if not the highest I've seen yet. Unfortunately we have only a couple position players above average, and just barely above average at that.

For those of you that don't have Showtime, this is a free preview weekend for many cable providers. I'm gonna try to cram in season 2 of Homeland.

QUOTE (SOXOBAMA @ Jan 11, 2013 -> 12:26 PM) I believe we could bring in many great prospects in return, if we traded way PK, Rios, Dunn, Crain, Alexei, Beckham, Thornton, Floyd and DeAza. Unfortunately, we could not. Dealing a lot of players with marginal surplus value isn't equivalent to dealing one player with significant surplus value. You cannot demand the same kind of "great prospect". You mentioned the A's. They dealt Gio Gonzalez, Trevor Cahill, and Andrew Bailey to get some of the prospects which helped them win the West. All of those players they dealt had proven themselves to be above average players over multiple seasons while entering either their first or second year of arbitration. None of the Sox players you listed as potential trade bait come close to the same value when you consider respective salaries and the aging curve.

I think I'm the only one who finds Silver Linings Playbook overrated. Yes, better than your average romantic dramedy, but nominations in every major category? Jesus. And it's not just the Oscars, everyone I've talked to is in love with it.

QUOTE (Lamar Johnson 23 @ Jan 11, 2013 -> 10:17 AM) It's pretty sad that as Sox fans, these are the names we're supposed to get excited about. Dodgers fan: Hey! We signed Greinke! Angels fan: So what? We got Hamilton. Bluejays fan: We traded for Josh Johnson, Buehrle, Jose Reyes and traded for RA Dickey White Sox fan: We re-signed Peavy, and signed Keppinger, Josh Bell, Brian Anderson, Trancoso, Gartrell, etc., Yep...(cricket sounds) It's always exciting when your team lands the consensus #1 or #2 free agent, but twenty-something other teams missed out on them along with us. And this is not meant to be any kind of predictive statement for 2013, but the combined bWAR of Peavy and Keppinger was higher than the combined bWAR of Greinke and Hamilton last season. Sox fans shouldn't be too upset.

At least now the team is acknowledging their ticket costs have been too high and are lowering prices across the board.

This chart gives more detail to the first paragraph of the article. source: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archiv...th-care/237171/

We cannot rebuild even if we wanted to. Nobody is going to give us an impact player like Wil Myers, Travis D'Arnaud, Jarrod Parker for anybody except Chris Sale. Which obviously would make no sense for us to do. We could acquire young players who aren't really top prospects, but to punt the season for that is simply a salary dump and risky in more ways than one. We also cannot buy our way into competition as some wish. By most indications we're already near the payroll limit. To catch the current Tigers roster "on paper", we need to add around 10 wins. That costs about fifty-million dollars which is not feasible. So we're stuck in the middle and I agree with wite that we're a slightly better than .500 team. With luck, this team can compete for a playoff spot, and possibly add at the deadline if it makes sense. If after the All-Star break it looks like it won't be in the chase, we can try to move some of our guys who would be more attractive to certain teams than they are right now.

Frank's got the counting stats, sabermetric support, advocated for drug testing, and there will be more pressure on the BBWAA after what just happened. I think he'll get in comfortably.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jan 9, 2013 -> 02:54 PM) There are a multitude of reasons why you don't tear the team completely apart and like 1, maybe 2 reasons why you should (not having to worry because they're going to suck, and draft pick). There's no guarantee of success, the entire regime will end up changing again, and then you lose the majority of the young person fandom. Blowing up is just a terrible, terrible idea. Especially for a team of our means. The way to get that cost-controlled talent and build a really strong team is to invest in scouting, amateur draft, and international free agents. These can be done for the most part while salvaging a competitive roster. Unfortunately the Sox neglected investment in these areas for years. Only until relatively recently can we see their philosophy slowly turning around. And the new CBA helps us in this area too, I would say.

Just for fun, here are our optimized lineups per baseballmusings.com's lineup analysis. If we use players' career OBP/SLG: 4.900 runs/game 1. Dunn 2. Konerko 3. Beckham 4. Rios 5. De Aza 6. Viciedo 7. Ramirez 8. Flowers 9. Keppinger If we use players' 2012 OBP/SLG: 4.936 runs/game 1. Keppinger 2. Konerko 3. Beckham 4. Rios 5. Dunn 6. Viciedo 7. Flowers 8. Ramirez 9. De Aza

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Jan 6, 2013 -> 12:34 AM) "Jeff Who Lives At Home“ was pretty awful. http://www.soxtalk.com/forums/index.php?sh...p;#entry2566206 Look out Siskel and Ebert!

Not to mention Pujols' plate discipline has been falling precipitously the last several seasons. A huge chunk of his value over Konerko is not in batting but in fielding and baserunning. Probably not a good idea to take on $200M for a more agile first baseman.

QUOTE (Reddy @ Jan 1, 2013 -> 02:19 PM) fitness related goals for 2013? Work out 260 days this year. Average of 5 days a week. A hour a day. The funny thing? That's only 3% of my time. EZ. Gain a lb of muscle each month. Going to be more difficult than last year.