Jake

He was on track for a regression. I was hoping his FIP would regress to his ERA, but that's not usually how that works

Javascript blocker killed that popup for me Rock

He had a ton more value last July than this one. We just weren't willing to send any money along. Not a bunch of surplus value on his contract

I've always heard that, especially at this time of year, there are so many guys on waivers that many just get missed. When there are realistically 20 or more players you'd want to claim on the wire, you can't claim all of them because then you're stuck. I'm guessing the majority of teams just assumed the Yankees had no intention of letting him go to the team that claimed him

I don't think Biogenesis was around long enough to implicate guys who haven't played in the past 4 or 5 years. Were busted too soon to implicate Abreu.

Sweet Jesus does Adolfo have a catastrophic K rate. This level might be too high for him to get better. That would make Jared Mitchell blush. Tough call for the Sox to get him near our best instructors but still try to keep the competition level manageable.

White Sox players have been pretty unharmed in all of this stuff over the years

I think Martellus is beloved by his teammates. Fuller cheapshotted him and I think whatever it was he said to Martellus made him lose his cool. Trestman is in the right to punish Martellus for losing his cool so easily.

I'd be shocked if he makes it through the NL

QUOTE (kev211 @ Aug 5, 2014 -> 11:12 AM) What was he doing before the glasses? Was he just going with his regular bad vision? Or was he wearing contacts? I don't see how switching from contacts to glasses would help any. Glasses still offer better vision correction, especially when it comes to people with vision problems like astigmatism. If he had allergies (I've been there), contacts can become unwearable as well. You'll have them coming out of place and getting literally covered with the gunk your eyes are producing

I think being short is a big part of the national doubt about him. Funny motion AND a short guy? No likey. I tend not to care about height when present stuff is plenty good

The key to the recent run has been that his K numbers haven't been unbelievably, remarkably, disgustingly high. At the peak of his early season run he had 40% K rate. He couldn't have been "fixed" at that point because you can't be a singles hitter who fails to put the ball in play 4 out of 10 ABs

Jesus Christ with the baserunning Adam

So how well does Tyler have to hit before we take him seriously?

T Flow fo shooo

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 4, 2014 -> 07:30 PM) Does anyone actually enjoy "Beer Money"? I wish they would just go back and broadcast old TWIBs. Jen Lada is so charming that I find it tolerable. There are a lot of cringe-worthy moments on there, though QUOTE (BigHurt3515 @ Aug 4, 2014 -> 08:01 PM) Not a good feed from Abreu but Noesi should still catch it It's really, really difficult to make that catch and step on the base at the same time. The ball has to hit your mitt at least a step before the base. It doesn't look like much, but it's hard to do both things at once and Abreu should always be coming over the top from that distance

I would say Danish has elite stuff. Low 90s sinker with heavy, heavy sink, a swing-and-miss slider, and a changeup that is now being raved about as an awesome pitch. Last year, BA said his stuff was reminiscent of a young Tim Hudson or Jake Peavy. The sky is the limit for Danish. It's just a matter of convincing people of his longevity and overcoming being just a 6-footer, something Marcus Stroman faced coming out of college.

I don't like the "helps every day" argument. He does, but he rarely can win you the game. A pitcher requires relatively little assistance to directly and almost completely determine the outcome of a game. And he'll do it every time he pitches. A hitter bats 4 times a game and makes a handful of defensive plays. When he can do too much damage at the plate, they'll walk him. Whether Abreu is at bat when you need a run is a matter of luck. Whether the starting pitcher is pitching when you need to hold the lead is a matter of skill.

QUOTE (BigHurt3515 @ Aug 4, 2014 -> 05:39 PM) Question with bold; How many good starting pitchers are out there and how many good 1B are there?? I am pretty sure there are way more good SP then 1B Obviously there aren't many on the level of Sale or Abreu I would imagine there are more "good" starters, but the problem is the need for five of them.

Adam Dunn of 2011 fits in at -3.0, the 11th worst season of all time. Mike Caruso's -2.7 in 1999 is the 18th worst.

It's nice to see the Cubs have decided to give a s*** about their fans and just try to put one of the organization's better players on the field. I mean, it's not nice because f*** the Cubs, but I wouldn't mind as a fan of theirs that they made this decision without considering the Super 2 bulls***.

The other thing about getting wrapped up in single season WAR numbers is that the defensive statistic underlying the calculation is susceptible to some year-to-year variation. UZR ideally has a sample size of three or more seasons, so when looking at a player's defensive component, it's always important to see whether it lines up with his career norms.

Sale, easily. 25 years old versus 27 years old. Starting pitcher vs first baseman - another easy choice. Getting a good first baseman is fairly easy. Getting a good starting pitcher is always difficult. The nature of projecting a pitcher versus a young hitter. There was rarely ever a doubt that Sale would be good because his stuff is so evidently great. He can throw 100 with a funky motion and has deceptive, nasty off-speed pitches. Everything thrown for strikes. Abreu has all the tools to be a great hitter but lots of guys do. Lots of guys hit like a great hitter for a long stretch of time and then fall off the wagon. Track record. Sale has been consistently a top 5 pitcher in his position in the major leagues for three seasons now. We have 90-some games for Abreu, total. Not even a minor league track record to fall back on. Abreu is as easy to project as Adrian Nieto is. While picking Sale over Abreu risks the possibility that Abreu is the next Frank Thomas, the risk of Abreu's talent upside is minimal because you're choosing one of, if not the best pitcher in baseball over him. Injury risk. Sale clearly loses here, but at this point he's done enough to make me feel comfortable that it at least is not a foregone conclusion that he has a big problem. The fact that his little bouts of soreness have been in the elbow are also encouraging because I'd be much more worried about major shoulder surgery. Don't forget that Abreu has teased us with foot troubles himself, the sort of injury that plagued guys like Big Hurt. Sale's age plays in here, too, because he could go down with TJS tomorrow and still be up and running at 26 or 27 years old. A lost season for Abreu cuts out some extremely valuable prime years, while Sale arguably hasn't even reached that stage of his career yet. Luckily, my team has both of them for a long time and on decent contracts.

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ Aug 4, 2014 -> 04:31 PM) Good explanation as usual from you educated folks But many of the points you make can be made without the advanced stats. Their ages ,the late blooming,standard MILB numbers, Abreu's 1st year, sophomores slumps etc are all part of baseball past stats and folklore. Besides Abreu's near the best at his position now so it's probably a bad example of trading Abreu for Donaldson and much more useful for trading more similar players. Besides no stat can predict the future . I probably toot my own horn too much but I've had debates on here about choosing one player over another in the off season for certain trade possibilities and kept those debates in my mind while looking at the production of the players involved over the next few years and I'm usually right . Right - that's what I saying. To look at WAR and say "WAR says this guy's better but I totally wouldn't trade for them" would be a misunderstanding of what WAR is supposed to do. That's what I was trying to explain. There are all kinds of other things that go into projecting a player and deciding how to build a team.

QUOTE (JUSTgottaBELIEVE @ Aug 4, 2014 -> 04:09 PM) To me, it's a simple question. Who is harder to replace? Isn't WAR all about replacement value after all? In my opinion, it's always harder to find the star offensive player, the guy that makes everyone else in the lineup better (ala Miggy, prime Pujols, Bonds, Big Hurt), than a guy like Donaldson who is very good at everything but not great at any one thing. Generally speaking, it's far easier to find a good 1B than good 3B. The best 3B in FA this past offseason was Juan Uribe. The year before that it was some combo of Eric Chavez/Jeff Keppinger. The year before that, you had one good player - Aramis Ramirez. For 1B, several solid guys became available - Mike Napoli, James Loney, Justin Morneau. The year before that - Nick Swisher, Mike Napoli, Adam LaRoche. The year before that - Albert Pujols and Prince Fielder. With that said, it is harder to find a guy who is good at multiple things than good at one thing. Great at one thing? Always difficult. The whole point of this process, though, is there is no requirement for an amazing hitter. This entire discussion is about the fact that you can quantifiably reproduce the run value of a great bat by being an all-around good player. There's nothing magical about a great hitter that makes the hitters around them better. Who has Abreu turned into a good hitter this year? What about Barry Bonds? The only guy I can see him seemingly having an effect on was Rich Aurilia in the 72 home run year, though Aurilia played far worse the years before and after in the same spot in the batting order, so that seems dubious. There is a lot of research on protection that shows that, over many many years of baseball, protection is never measurable beyond the extent to which you would expect random variation in performance. While a great hitter is always better than not a great one, a good hitter that is a good fielder is usually better to have than a great hitter who can't field. The more a guy's game is focused on a single thing, the more that single thing can make his value disappear entirely. Compared to last year, Donaldson is having a bad year at the plate. However, because he's an excellent fielder and decently quick on the basepaths, he's still having one of the best years in the game.