Jake

People are so fearful of losing favor with their party's leader and potential POTUS that nobody in the party really wants to oppose him at this point. It's really a structural problem that would happen to the Dems too if they had a candidate they hated. Your political career rests too much on the ensuring the party leadership likes you...unless you want to just become rich and famous and jump in later in life ala Trump. But then you become the kingmaker, the problem continues.

QUOTE (JUSTgottaBELIEVE @ Jul 21, 2016 -> 07:18 PM) Govenor Rauner continues to bury himself a deeper grave. Looks like he will be a single term governor at this rate. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/p...0721-story.html QUOTE (bmags @ Jul 21, 2016 -> 07:33 PM) That is awful, but I will say at the very least this is an actual apology: ""Significant change can be frustratingly slow; this is especially true in public education. Many of us, at one time or another, have sent hastily crafted emails containing inaccurate or intemperate statements," Trover's statement said in part. "This particular email was sent out of frustration at the pace of change in our public school system. The governor regrets writing it and apologizes to CPS educators for making an unfair, untrue comment."" To me, this doesn't qualify as a particularly interesting controversy. For one, as bmags said his people have apologized and disavowed the comment. It's also a bit old. And perhaps most importantly, the people that like Rauner would agree with his statement.

Spencer Adams strikeouts by month: April – 8.0/9IP May – 6.5/9IP June – 4.9/9IP July – 4.5/9IP That is an odd trend to reward with a promotion

You know, there's a good argument for moving Sale over Quintana. My main thought is you can keep Quintana longer at less per year and he is only barely worse than Sale as a player. But I think other teams would be willing to trade MUCH more for Sale due to his name recognition.

Worth noting that Jose Quintana has more years of team control than Jurickson Profar.

If Robertson does in the next two years of his deal what he has done in the past two, he's pretty much lived up exactly to the market value of his contract. The thing with closers isn't that $11M is too much for one; a good one will definitely be worth that much. The problem is that relievers are so inconsistent year to year that the guys you can entrust a long term deal to are few and far between. There are very few guys out there like Robertson that have a pretty long track record of excellent pitching late in games and that's part of the reason he was able to get a long, lucrative deal. Many other closers come into the role and exit it before they are ever able to hit the free agent market.

The defense for this Bulls team will be something to behold

QUOTE (raBBit @ Jul 19, 2016 -> 02:38 PM) Do you see a trend here? The White Sox are always stupid as long as the results aren't good!

Navarro has been worst or near-worst in the league in pitch framing for almost every season he's been in the league. There is little doubt that he cost Robertson big time in that inning. Robertson's command was still bad and that's why he ultimately got burned, but an average job of framing very probably could have gotten Robertson out of that inning. The reason to be frustrated is that Avila is hurt—he's not good when it comes to framing, but he's considerably better than Navarro on a year in, year out basis—and that Navarro hasn't hit as well as hoped.

We were stupid for getting him work in a blowout game a couple weeks ago, now we're stupid for not getting him work in blowout games

I thought Sale did not look sharp in the 8th

BTW, somebody needs to get drilled for Lind shooting his helmet like a basketball on his way to home plate

QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 19, 2016 -> 12:34 AM) And having a mediocre fastball He's never thrown hard, but his fastball is generally quite good because of the cut action. Looked very straight tonight though, probably due to the layoff. The poor command has been consistent throughout the year though

Walks finally catch up to Robertson, though some better pitch framing wouldn't have hurt

Nice to see a complete meltdown going on in the game thread

Main thing to take away from Morneau's stint is that he hasn't struck out much at all. That means he's not getting blown away by live competition.

Ranaudo makes much more sense than Turner and IMO more sense than Fulmer

Another way to compare the heights of our draftees to some kind of known standard would be to look at the average heights of the rest of the draft.

In Greg's defense, the Shark trade had loss all over it from the start

Big difference from last year's team: at the break last year, the Sox position players had a cumulative -3.1 WAR, by far the worst in the league. We also had a team 76 wRC+, worst in the league and by far worst in the AL. This year we're 26th in position player WAR, so it isn't as if we're setting the world on fire, but the bats are not so far from league average and the kind of leap necessary to push us into the playoffs isn't nearly as far-fetched. If Morneau is a 110 wRC+ bat at DH and Abreu returns to 2015 form (not an amazing year by any stretch) while everything else more or less holds steady, you're not far off right there. Have a couple things break our way and we're not unworthy.

Of note, regarding Anderson's defense: Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) gives him a +3 thus far, on the strength of Runs on Plays Made (rPM) with 0s for Runs on Good Fielding Plays (rGFP) and Runs on Double Plays (rGDP). That's a good pace and matches my eye test that he's making most of the plays he should, doesn't look the best on double plays, and hasn't completed any real eye-popping plays. Revised Zone Rating which is computed a bit more transparently also likes him. It's simply a percentage of the time he makes the play on balls hit into the zones that a shortstop fields at least 50% of the time. He's .830 on this metric, which is 6th best among SS with at least 100 innings. UZR gives him an overall 0.6, which computes out to 3.7 over 150 games. Not "oh my god" good, but good. This is another stat that is relative to the average SS, so being above is a good sign. All of his value in UZR comes from not making errors, while he is slightly negative (-0.3) in both range and double plays. This is in basic agreement with DRS, though it's a hair more conservative. I think most of us like him from the eye test as well, it's definitely a far cry from the player that just a year ago many still wondered whether he would be good enough to spend any MLB time at the position. You can see some of the roughness around the edges, especially with footwork on double plays, but he exudes baseball talent on defense IMO. He's been surprisingly sure-handed on routine balls and you can see flashes of that big range and playmaking ability. I'm not sure whether he's truly an above average SS or is benefiting from the kinds of opportunities so far, but he looks like a real MLB SS and perhaps a good one in the long run.

The main thing about what the Sox are doing—IMO—is little to foul up the long term. I continue to strongly doubt the benefits of a full-on, let's be the worst team style of rebuild, especially for a franchise like the Sox that would seriously lose revenue without at least a little bit of hope. The payroll is in good shape looking forward, you have some nice core pieces and your veterans aren't particularly expensive. Tim Anderson, Carson Fulmer, and Zack Collins are all guys to get excited about. We've been conservatively building the team and I don't see anything wrong with that. I think if there was a big, bold move to make that would really take the team a big step ahead, they'd make it. But I sure haven't seen it available. Heyward? Upton? Alex Gordon? Cespedes seemed to be the worst fit in the offseason but is the only one hitting in the actual season. In the end, it turned out a CF would have been the best fit in the first place. We brought on Frazier and Lawrie at very little expense and nobody is stopping us from flipping them at the deadline a year from now if things aren't looking up. To me, this is the kind of approach we had when we won the WS. The 2005 team was filled with question marks and the direction of the franchise was unclear. But we kept those core guys around and tried to bring on extra talent without mortgaging the franchise. It worked out. Maybe that was just a fluke and it shouldn't be a model for the future, I can't say.

Yeah a best case for us in the anti-Cubs crowd is they gut their system trying to add this year but don't ultimately get a ring.

I suspect if you drop the one abysmal outing against KC from his non-save stats, those would look good too.

While I've enjoyed watching them struggle, I still see no reason to bet against them as divisional champs at the least.