Jake

Wow, another drop. On the bright side, Clausen looks extremely accurate and works the pocket pretty well

Special teams come through like usual. And a sensational play call for the TD

Awful no-call

Jeffery caught one!

Clausen looks excellent. Accurate, making smart decisions, has been victimized by four drops at least by now. The one bad play was the fourth down on the goal line - I don't know if there was a guy to throw to, but he chucked it up to Eben Britton

Clausen actually looks really good.

QUOTE (scs787 @ Dec 20, 2014 -> 11:05 PM) A google search tells me no but maybe I'm missing someting...In an effort to save money I'm thinking about getting a roku...but only if theres way to full baseball, basketball, and football games...I'm SOL n that regard right? Basketball is possible via NBA League Pass - $149/year. MLB.tv is possible, I believe that's also $149 for a full season. I might be wrong and it could be as high as $199. There is no streaming support for NFL on Roku or any other streaming device other than game consoles

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Dec 18, 2014 -> 08:11 PM) I think you're reaching a bit here. I won't deny that actual WAR is fairly predictive of actual wins, but projected WAR doesn't seem to be very predictive of actual wins. I mean, we're only talking about a .43 r2 between projected and actual WAR. And again, actual WAR is fairly predictive of actual wins, but it's far from perfect (BTW, not suggesting it should be). So saying projected WAR is "fairly predictive" of actual wins doesn't seem entirely accurate to me. I would say that projected WAR is directionally right more often than not, but it will still have its fair share of misses, some of which are quite sizable. I'm not arguing that these projection systems don't provide value, because they do, but I would never use them more than a frame of reference when setting my own expectations. Without more human input, the accuracy of these protection systems will always be limited. I'm a social scientist, so we poop our pants when we see an R2 that high

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Dec 19, 2014 -> 04:57 PM) Family plan. I'm in the same boat. I'm on a company line where there's just no way it's advantageous for me to get an off-contract device short of needing one before I'm eligible for upgrade. The thing is, if I call them (ATT), they always give me an early upgrade.

Once the cap moves up, whatever we pay Jimmy in the summer will look like a steal

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Dec 18, 2014 -> 06:15 PM) It's an admittedly small sample size, but this begins to paint a picture. What I thought about while reading was - okay, so we know actual WAR is very predictive of actual wins and that projected WAR is fairly predictive of actual wins. What would be nice is a comparison to other things. Maybe compare against analysts' predictions and against some other statistics, like bWAR or WARP or non-sabermetric statistics.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Dec 11, 2014 -> 10:46 PM) Speaking of Democrats and Obama ... Did anybody see that AWESOME skit on Sat. Night Live a week or so ago where they had that funny cast member, don't know his name, the chubby (fat?) guy as host of a panel discussion. The gist of it was he asks his black guests questions about Obama failures and the guest comments on them and agrees that Obama is a joke, then the host asks the guest, "Does he lose your vote??" The guest immediately says, "No." He repeats it with 3-4 guests and they all say "no," when the host says, "does he lose your vote?" It's really funny and backs what I've said all along that Obama would be president the next 20 years or so if we had no term limits and he could keep running. No matter what he does and how inept he is ... he'd keep winning. It's a big LOL on our entire country. s***, it's like Kansas. Brownback is the worst government official probably in U.S. history (did you see the cuts he announced this week; slashing all sorts of organizations who do good things for citizens; and he'll kill all the programs for the elderly, etc) and what do KANSANS do ... they re-elect him. Shakin my head. You do realize the whole point of the skit was that Obama was still better than the alternatives. The gist was that these black folks felt so unwanted by the rest of politics that of course they weren't going to desert the first black President. Besides, they weren't listing off Obama failures, they were listing off hypotheticals like having his daughters talk back to him and other stuff like that.

He meant adding teams to the playoffs.

Playing for the scout team likely left Fales completely in the dark when it comes to our offense

It sounds to me like Cutler leaked the QB change

I'm glad this has sparked a lot of conversation. Clearly, a lot has to go right for us. Everyone knows I tend to be an optimist, so I'm not ruling out the possibility that these things do go right. But one of the keys to being a happy optimist is keeping hopes high and expectations low. My expectations low. Key developments that would change the trajectory of this team: -Noesi breaks out, Danks comes back, and/or Rodon breaks in -Somebody at 2B is league average or better -Putnam and Petricka prove not to be one-year flashes -Avisail requires no learning curve or simply starts playing good defense -Conor improves upon last season or Matt Davidson finds his way back into the fray

I don't have high hopes for Jimmy Clausen, but let's all acknowledge that the guy has started 10 games in his career, all in his rookie season on a terrible team. It's not like the book is closed on the guy. You don't have to be fabulous to be successful with this offense.

I wonder how much of a look they'll give Saladino at 2B. He very well could be the best of the bunch, especially for this season.

They should have done this much sooner. At the least, you want Clausen to get enough reps that you know whether or not he's worth a s***. At this point, I'm not sure if you can learn anything from how he plays. See Cousins, Kirk

The problem with the shirt is the extent to which it reads a lot like a death threat to all those who break the law

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 16, 2014 -> 05:07 PM) He is going to be a limited sample size guy no matter what the stats say. Just watching him out there, he looked like a little leaguer fighting the ball and routes. I felt like he had a few head-scratchers out there but also several fabulous plays. I'm honestly not sure how good of a defender he is. I'm not convinced he's bad, but I'm not convinced he's great either.

The main question to ask is if there's something about these projections - that have little human input besides the playing time portion, which has a few errors - that makes it pessimistic towards the White Sox and not other teams? QUOTE (ptatc @ Dec 15, 2014 -> 02:51 PM) This is the most likely outcome based on the metrics this group uses. You should clarify that. In the medical world, I never based my conclusion on anything just one person/group says. Yes - it's an ATTEMPT at finding the most likely outcome by weighting all possible outcomes. It's like setting betting odds, but a little less vulnerable to outside influence.

QUOTE (thxfrthmmrs @ Dec 15, 2014 -> 12:46 PM) One thing these computer based projections don't account for simply adding stabilizers like Robertson and Duke at the end of bullpen will take away pressure from guys like Petricka, Putnam, Guerra and Webb. If we are only asking them to pitch the 6/7/8 instead of high leverage 8th and 9th, it would put them in a better position to succeed as well. 3 of those guys have a big fastball, they just didn't command it well last year. Taking pressure off them would certainly help. But yea, 2 WAR for this bullpen grossly under-projecting. They don't do that because the effects of doing things like that are repeatedly tested and never show an effect. If it does, it is so infrequently that it can't be distinguished from random chance. The only thing about those acquisitions that makes us better is that those players are better than the ones they are replacing.

To assume that Johnson will be starting at 2B - unless the Sox just don't give a s*** about his measurable readiness - and Rodon will put up 2 WAR is ludicrously optimistic. This isn't about "what could be," this is about what is the most likely outcome if weighting every possibility based on its individual likelihood.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Dec 15, 2014 -> 09:14 AM) Why do you love Flowers. Mainly because he's been a White Sox for the better part of a decade and he's by most accounts a decent guy. I want him to play well and I hope for the best for him in his personal life. As opposed to Melky, who is not a long-time White Sox and for whom I do not wish happiness, etc. beyond what he earns on the baseball field.