Jake

QUOTE (raBBit @ May 5, 2015 -> 09:53 PM) That is cruel. I feel like you'd end up on the news for that now a days. This. You've been dealing with kids long enough where you know who you can trust. Worst case you're out 5-10 dollars. Worst case is probably more like explosive diarrhea in front of his entire class

How would you fail to notice white out in coffee, of all things

QUOTE (fathom @ May 5, 2015 -> 10:23 PM) When Jeff's throw to first base first came out of his hand, it looked like it was going into the 20th row Agreed, that had a weird trajectory

QUOTE (Feeky Magee @ May 5, 2015 -> 09:57 PM) Nah, high line-drive rates aren't sustainable, their year-to-year correlation is the worst among the most common hitting metrics, and they tend to regress to career average. This is true, though that doesn't mean that a person "lucks" in or out of line drives. It's just that there's 180 degrees, vertically, where a player can hit a ball. The bottom 90 is all in the ground ball bucket. From 20 to 50 (above parallel to the ground) is the fly ball bucket. Above 50 is popups. Liners fall into the 5 to 20 bucket. Even if you assume that the vast majority fit in the the middle 90 degrees of the the 180 possible, you have 50% of possible directions going to GB, 33.3% to FB, 16.7% to LD, and 5.6% to popups. Interestingly, these figures are really close to league averages. So of the three major batted ball outcomes, the only way you wouldn't have much more variation in LD compared to the others is if players were much more consistent in their LD% than any other type of outcome, which clearly isn't true. The soft/medium/hard stats are all relative to the batted ball type. So the exit speed of a "hard" grounder may be a "medium" liner and so on. That his hard% is high indicates that he's not hitting a bunch of flared liners.

The definitive word on Avisail's BABIP Not as inflated as you might think. Line drives aren't luck except to the extent that you get to make your own luck.

QUOTE (bmags @ May 5, 2015 -> 10:39 AM) Did anyone read Woj's article? All I want to see is some coherent explanation for this riff. All we get is "Thibs is a great coach and the crazy front office hates him." We saw what happened with Ron Adams, but that was never well explained. It was either that Adams was insubordinate or Adams was fired just to spite Thibs. Otherwise, most of what we hear is that there is an irreparable problem and nobody mentions anything that Thibs has done wrong. Maybe this is mainly the fault of the FO, but I'd like to get an explanation better than "Gar doesn't get along with Thibs." That doesn't sound right to me. QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ May 5, 2015 -> 12:19 PM) Describe "run into the ground". Do you mean, Noah was hurt, had surgery, didn't have a full off-season and as a result has not been the same (cause he certainly hadn't played a lot of minutes this year). And with Taj, do you mean, his ankles, which are a consistent problem, are hurt and he even said himself won't get better this year. Minutes haven't been an issue for the team this year and people still make this comment. If anything, us not playing minutes has been an issue, lol. PS: Taj has been pretty good this post-season, imo. That wasn't supposed to be a Thibs criticism, just that the years have clearly taken their toll on those guys. They've been handled really carefully this season and for good reason. They both just have flawed bodies at this point and I'm not super optimistic for their long term future because of it. QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ May 5, 2015 -> 12:33 PM) Pau's rebounding in the playoffs has been very good, imo. He's brought his energy up a notch. Loved Pau's performance yesterday (especially in that dominant 3rd). When the Cavs were making their run, I was busy yelling, get Pau the darn ball. He is a huge x-factor in this series and will need to be because LBJ > Butler and Kyrie > Rose. He has definitely had much less of the lackadaisical play that he sometimes had in the regular season. It's nice to see he has it in him. QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ May 5, 2015 -> 12:43 PM) By the way....f*** yeah D Rose! Loved how you have responded and how you have grown this post-season. Keep it up my good man. I know this feels good, but this is just the start!!! I don't know if he reads Soxtalk. QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ May 5, 2015 -> 04:48 PM) This actually worries me There's no amount of jumpshots Derrick can make that will make me feel like it's a good thing that he hits them. I mean, yes I want him to make all his shots, but I feel like for every deep two or three he hits now, there are some terrible ones put in a trust fund for a future date.

I will say that I left my post as resident optimist over the offseason because I didn't like trading Semien for Shark and I wasn't a fan of the Melky signing

QUOTE (oldsox @ May 4, 2015 -> 08:37 PM) I was reading an article on the Rockies yesterday, and it mentioned that they had the second worst base running stats in MLB. Second to the White Sox, of course. I don't know what goes into that stat, however. Assuming it's UBR where the Sox rank last by a large margin, every baserunning event is assigned a run value. If you steal second base, the chance of scoring a run goes up by X amount, so that goes towards your baserunning value. If you don't take third on a single when others would, your chances of scoring go down by Y amount, so that will knock down your running tally.

On the bright side, it looks like it is still in the right place

Derrick has played really well tonight. Even on the plays where he isn't scoring or obviously making the big play, he's doing the right stuff.

Pau has that all day long. I hope they start to adjust because there will be a great counterpunch available.

I guess that's technically a charge, but you can't have a guy who makes first contact right as he lands get whistled for a charge

Looking vulnerable. Need to play better offensively, we've not been playing the brand of ball that got us a huge portion of our baskets from assists

It stinks that we get Derrick healthy for a playoff run but Taj and Noah have been run into the ground. All year they both have looked like they just don't have the athleticism they used to.

Got robbed on the no-goaltend call

Gotta weather the storm when Kyrie is going that well. Need to get Rose out of foul trouble, though. Also have to make sure to take advantage of his piss-poor defense, which we have been doing a bit.

Disregarding the (usually bad) results, Rose's three point shot is so inconsistent. The arc has a semblance of consistency, I guess, in that it is usually incredibly flat. The most glaring thing is that he frequently releases at different points of his jump. He also tends to have his feet and weight going in different directions.

QUOTE (Boogua @ May 4, 2015 -> 07:44 PM) Noah is pretty useless on offense. He has really lost it. I don't understand, either. He can't even make a decent pass anymore.

I thought Soto would be better than this.

What a rotten call to end the inning. Nasty pitch though

Alexei is by most accounts a real tough SOB but he never fails make a show of it when he gets hurt.

QUOTE (whitesoxfan99 @ May 3, 2015 -> 03:28 PM) It is unclear what Danks has to do to lose his rotation spot at this point. He is f***ing awful and has been for a long time. Retiring would help. QUOTE (fathom @ May 3, 2015 -> 03:29 PM) Avi looks awesome at least. Hit almost all liners in this series. I don't know how many times or how long he has to put up pretty good numbers with iffy peripherals before we just decide that the kid can hit in spite of an approach that needs some work

While it's pretty presumptuous to think this way, I've been dreading the potential Bulls-Wiz matchup in the ECF more than Bulls-Hawks

While I still wouldn't do it nearly so soon, I would think the soonest you see a managerial change is at the end of the upcoming homestand. A long road trip where you miss days of games while locked up in your hotel and then have a bunch of guys get sick probably isn't the time you can make final conclusions about what's going on. And if you thought he had to go before then, you shouldn't have started the season with him.

One thing's for sure. If we want to do another round or two of this rotation with no personnel changes, let's go ahead and demote Danks to 5. No matter what you do, Danks sucks. Noesi hasn't pitched well, but it's hard me to blame him when he's had about 12 days rest in between each outing. Let's go ahead and give the washed up, injured guy the we-don't-give-a-s*** treatment. Makes no sense to jerk around a pitcher who struggles with command like that, especially when it's all for the benefit of a guy who by all appearances is a lost cause and at the least would benefit much more from time off.