Jake

Between Noah, Pau, and Niko, you have three bigs who are really quite skilled on the offensive end and feel comfortable working outside the paint and moving the ball around. I think Hoiberg can really work with them without really compromising the way he usually runs things. Taj is less of a fit offensively but he obviously has value as a defensive player and great finisher around the rim.

Chuck's humility really brings Steve's arrogance into focus. When you have Steve and Hawk together, they both have such big egos you hardly think about it. Nonetheless, they're fine to listen to. Also, what a clown show from Houston. They do not look like a first place team

Another thing to add is that we've outperformed our Pythagorean W-L by 3 wins and our BaseRuns projected W-L by 4 wins, both best in the league. You can often attribute this to the manager or simply luck. Either way, we're better off than we deserve to be. This can be taken as a negative, in that we look due to regress, or as a positive because we can play well and not have it be in vain.

Sox are 30th in WAR for position players 28th in the hitting portion, 26th in defense, 30th (by a lot) in baserunning. If you look at the May-only split, we were 30th in position player WAR in this month as well though our rankings by category look a hair better. By position: C - 26th 1B - 16th 2B - 28th SS - 29th 3B - 21st LF - 25th CF - 26th RF - 21st DH - 8th (out of 15) Natural areas where we can hope for growth start with 1B and SS. Our most-days 1B, Abreu, is more than just a middle-of-the-pack guy and we should expect him to move way up over time. Our SS, even if he has regressed, is not the second worst at his position. He's been top 10 just about every year he's been in the league. Some modest improvement from Eaton is expected. He hit pretty well this month, but his defense remains a bit of a puzzle. I'm not sure if we can count on him jumping right into the top half of CFers in the near future due to the way he started. Avi has hit really well but his defense is suspect as well. Melky? I don't know, he's hit like s*** so I assume he'll get better but at his best he's barely a top-half performer. Catcher and 3B are unlikely to improve. DH seems about right. 2B could improve, but I won't count on it. The bright side here is that the common mistake to make when projecting some guys on your team to improve is that you fail to account for guys getting worse. In our case, there's just about nobody who is really playing over their head. Avi is basically the only candidate for regression.

Robin tends to make lineup decisions in ways that involve the least change. Putting a non-regular into the lineup is best done - per this philosophy - by putting him in the place of the guy he replaces.

If you want to point a finger at somebody for why we aren't having a good year, the finger should point at Rick Hahn. I wouldn't necessarily endorse firing Hahn, either, but the players just aren't very good. He was aggressive in the offseason but there was too far to go. The team has the talent to compete, but we were always going to have to get lucky. We haven't gotten lucky. Some of the players that are normally not that good are once again not that good. Big shock, Tyler Flowers, Geo Soto, Conor Gillaspie, Emilio Bonifacio, John Danks, Hector Noesi, etc. aren't kicking ass out there.

Let's hope Pace is learning something about how hard it can be to get a read on these things. The things a guy says and the way he acts around you may just not be very useful in figuring out if he's going to get into trouble. Might just have to rely on his history.

The last time the Cubs had a pretty good club for several years with young big-time talents the Sox won a WS. It isn't great for the Sox if the Cubs end up playing well, but we'll make it.

If you had a single team who absolutely knew they wanted Thibs over anybody else, all you have to do to get leverage is just get them to believe you will trade him elsewhere

I'd love to see Noesi get something like a regular schedule of starts this season. Can we at least do a phantom DL stint for Danks if we're afraid of releasing him?

Harper also rushed up and stuck his toe in the box like a smartass

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 20, 2015 -> 03:22 PM) It's also not like Phil has any connection to Derek Fisher or anything like that, that was a random and completely unexpected hire. And it isn't as if Phil would want to tell his coach how to run his offense. Even if he did, Thibs would be cool with that.

I like Surkamp and don't think he's hopeless as a starter, but it makes more sense to give him pen innings if the Sox have no interest in giving him an opportunity in the rotation. Last year he was clearly uncomfortable with the short warmup, etc. so preparing him for his likely use case makes sense

The Bulls FO has gotten all the criticism for several years all while they've had minimal opportunity to do anything better than they've done. The team is clearly full of talented players and hasn't produced nearly enough. Some is due to bad luck, but we've finally had the no-excuses scenario this year and the poor play finally looked like it had to be due to poor coaching. And don't worry, plenty out there are still mad at GarPax. And they will turn against them as soon as things don't go right with a new coach. I think the other thing about the current fixation on Thibs is that nobody thinks there is any practical chance that GarPax get fired this year. People see a team that should have been a contender, is unlikely to change substantially going into next season, and a coach who reputedly can't coach offense alongside a team that couldn't score in the playoffs -- a theme of the past 5 or 6 years. Of the things that have a likelihood of happening and could plausibly make the team better, Thibs being fired is it.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ May 19, 2015 -> 07:51 AM) Despite his ascent as a major league prospect, Bryant honored his commitment to the University of San Diego, succeeded as a finance major and could have filled out the paperwork to apply as a Rhodes Scholar at the end of his junior year there. But he didn't because had he achieved the honor, it would have steered him away from pursuing a professional baseball career for at least two years.[/i] [/i] That's like saying Adam Dunn could fill out the paperwork to run for president, but loves hanging out in Texas too much to do it. Definitely has nothing to do with his qualifications

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ May 18, 2015 -> 10:48 PM) And Kobe Bryant is a Bull 8 years ago. Bernstein is a clown when he tries to break stories. Low hanging fruit

QUOTE (raBBit @ May 18, 2015 -> 09:33 AM) It's incredible how ready the media is to love the Cubs. Everyone saw it coming but my god is it jarring while it happens. I googled Javy Baez after the Twitter rumors and saw all these "Baez is back" "Baez has adjusted" "Baez putting it together?" type articles. He's having a decent amount of success but he's had 72 PA's. Plus, the 72 PA's come with a .400+ BABIP in the PCL. Baseball people are getting so used to the Cubs hitting prospects being world beaters across the board so they're just trying to be ahead of the curve with Baez. His K/BB numbers have improved a lot but he's only had a SSS in his second year in the PCL. Dayan Viciedo had a .300/.350/.480 type line this time last year in the MLB. LJ Hoes is doing this in the PCL in more PAs .333/.424/.500/.924. The Cubs Craze is in full swing right now. The stats community loves Theo and the Cubs but doesn't mention the following: Bryant - 30% K%, .417 BABIP Soler - 33% K%, .419 BABIP Russell 37.4% K%, .380 BABIP When thinking about their next prospect coming up, as a Sox fan who would prefer the Cubs to lose, I am much more worried about Schwarber. What a killer that guy is. Bryant-Rizzo-Schwarber-Soler is quite a young middle of the lineup looking at next year. Holy f***ing s*** is that bad. Quick, call them up and see what they'll give us for Davidson

I'm glad to see us finally get some runs. They made several mistakes early in the game and didn't really pay for it

What an absolute circus

He's gotten a lot better with each game. The difference between the first and second games was enormous

He definitely doesn't have the kind of voice like Hawk or Steve where you can tell just from the sound that he belongs on TV

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ May 16, 2015 -> 01:41 AM) Holy s*** does Vogt look like Jason Giambi. I knew he looked familiar

I don't think the Bulls should make many changes to the roster. They had the better team and this is why I feel like a coaching shakeup is justified. The main way you would argue against the coaching change and/or for a roster shakeup is if there are a bunch of guys who would be bad on any other team, but Thibs just happens to make them good players

I think both ATL and WAS would have a great shot at beating CLE

Bulls clearly won't get any calls on offense