Jake

Stoney wears on me more with Swirsky in the booth. Swirsky is extremely modest and wants to make a show of deferring to the expertise of Stoney and Steve likes this way too much. He shrugs off some of Chuck's questions and comments like they're beneath consideration. I've said this elsewhere (or earlier in this thread), but having two big egos helps to make it less clear that anyone is being a big shot.

I do get a good laugh out of how our only solution for the 2 hole after Melky is the one guy who's hitting as bad as he is. I hate to say it, Gordon is probably the right answer

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ May 20, 2015 -> 01:59 PM) Even if we doubled it from 9 to 18 (your 2:1 ratio above), then that still wouldn't come anywhere close to what the Bulls have done since 1985, or the Blackhawks in terms of level of success over the last decade. No matter how many ways we spin it (the record between 1990-2013 was the 4th or 5th in MLB, trailing only the Yankees, Red Sox, Braves and Cardinals, etc.), there's still the predominant perception that we're a "losing" rather than winning franchise, and that's going to take a LOT more than 2nd and 3rd place finishes to change. In case anyone is curious, with 18 teams making the playoffs, the Sox would have made it in 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, 1995, 1994, 1993, 1992, 1991, and 1990. Quit looking earlier than that. Put differently, would only have missed 2014, 2013, and 2007 in the years since 1989.

Walker I think is someone who was clearly promoted too aggressively and was irrevocably harmed. I don't mean to say I think he'd have been a major leaguer with better development, but his production and things like the way he has talked on Twitter make it clear he has struggled to handle the massive failures he's had at just about every level. I really hate promoting guys with sky-high K rates like he's had just about every year and level except this one.

This is a mistake I vow never to make again. I would continue to find the right spots to play him without promising anything

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jun 4, 2015 -> 10:08 AM) Don't worry, he'll back to DHing everyday in no time. TBH, I'm willing to accept a dropoff in defense in exchange for not relegating Abreu to the DH role so early in his career

I think KW is a more interesting interview and the organization is happy to trot him out there occasionally

The main thing that doesn't make me regret losing Hector (beyond what we got back for him) is that he's still nearly the most flyball-heavy starting pitcher in baseball and that just won't work in our ballpark over the long term.

I think the dress code is a little suspect, but I don't care about their restrictions. At the least, the half-assed TB fans will make a bunch of money on the secondary market

if you can get some value out of your draft picks, that will be very big, whether it involves trading Noah/Taj or not. It's basically the #1 way to remain competitive once your best players are off their rookie contracts

It wasn't the most impressive complete game shutout ever, but he really did pitch a nice ballgame. If he pitched like this again, he'd probably give up a couple of runs. If he had bad luck, he could have given up 3 or 4.

I guess Danks picked up a trick or two from Keuchel yesterday

QUOTE (SCCWS @ May 31, 2015 -> 01:16 PM) Actually Sanchez has struggled for a month. His average had dropped 60 points over 3 weeks before he was recalled from AAA. From .400 to .340!

QUOTE (ZoomSlowik @ May 31, 2015 -> 03:50 PM) The cap's projected at $67 million right now, so the MLE is really their only recourse. They're above $62 million for 8 players, and that doesn't count Jimmy Buckets. I'm not 100% sure, but I think he'll still count at about $3 million from the last option year on his rookie deal. That still doesn't leave anything under the cap since they still need to fill several spots. From there, you get into attempts of dumping someone's salary to a team under the cap, which don't usually go anywhere because they can just sign FA's. Whether they can get one of the guys for the MLE is another question entirely. I would assume they'd get more than that since everyone wants 3 and D guys now, but Mathews' injury is a major wildcard. With the looming cap explosion, you have to wonder if a guy like Mathews might go for a one-year MLE deal to rebuild his value coming into the more favorable FA year

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