Jake

Bulls player ratings per Nate Silver's new RAPTOR statistic, which is particularly strong at quantifying defense (compared to all other alternatives):

Coach of the year!

I don't think the "chase the two" kind of thing is all that uncommon. My first college start, the senior catcher told me "chase the two" (or some other number) with a man on second and once I looked at the signs I had to call him to the mound and ask him what the hell it meant. So at a small school, we had been using that sort of thing for a while. That general type of thing is not much different than the "indicator" most 3B coaches use to relay signs to batters.

According to this article (paywall), Bulls have been making Coby guard the 3 a lot and even switching him onto bigs and he's held up fairly well. Looks to me that the problem with Hunter so far is mostly just his offense, where he's been a low-usage player and doesn't contributing much beyond scoring (which he does inefficiently). I wouldn't read into the defense as much because I believe it's a noisier metric and his number isn't bad. Could also reflect things like help defense that are really hard to see without studying tape. Also, I'm feeling pretty good about the Bulls not picking Cam Reddish.

Rookie rankings using Nate Silver's new RAPTOR metric, which captures defense much better than any other advanced statistic:

I honestly don't think it makes sense for the Sox to sign two starters to multi-year deals. You could justify a major signing like Wheeler and then someone like Gio Gonzalez on a 1-year. Also, isn't this thread about Grandal?

Ryan Arcidiacono is a good professional basketball player.

I like what we've got in White. How good will he be, I'm not sure, because it's not clear what kind of a shooter he'll be. But he seems to be playing adequately in every other facet of the game so he'll live and die by his scoring.

I'd be more excited to see the Sox make a serious offer to Ryu than Odorizzi or some of these other guys besides Wheeler. Yes there's injury risk, but you also know he's probably going to be great whenever he goes out there for you.

Really liking how Coby White looks, especially his ability to finish at the rim. I thought that would be a problem in the NBA. He's super confident out there and it can be hard to teach that as well. And good lord LaVine can put the ball in the hole, he's really getting fun to watch. I think we may have found a useful role for Dunn too.

I'm clearly a glutton for punishment because I'm excited about this Bulls season. Not in the "this team is going to advance in the playoffs" kind of excited, but like the arrow is pointing up and this roster may include players that are on the Next Good Bulls Team.

The Samardzija move was bad no matter what Samardzija did because he was going to become a free agent. It made it a very low upside move for the Sox and while Phegley/Bassitt were not high upside players, Semien was a relatively high upside one. Worth noting, however, that there's a good chance that Semien would have been cast off by the A's if he hadn't crossed paths with Ron Washington. He played some shockingly bad defense at shortstop in his first years with the A's (35 errors in one season!). To be honest, I was surprised with how underwhelming Semien's bat was until this year, but now that he's playing some very strong D and has finally found the kind of stroke he had as a minor leaguer he's looking really good. I have a hard time looking back on the Peavy move as some terrible thing. He was making a lot of money and got hurt right away. But we gave up nothing. Clayton Richard had one decent year that seems largely predicated on luck and playing in the best pitchers' park around. There was real upside on the Sox side of the deal and there was very little upside on the Padres side. Sox had very bad luck with Peavy getting hurt in an unprecedented way right after he was acquired and he still ended up providing some decent value.

Another possible explanation for this is that Ryan Goins getting an apparently permanent call-up is what led Escobar to believe he was lied to. May have been given the impression that if injuries created a need for a veteran IF to get called up, it would be him.

I suspect that sometimes stuff like this happens because of miscommunications with the agent

Was Skole already on the 40 man? At any rate, I'm not as down on the idea as others. I really would like to see someone other than Palka and I can live with the desire to call up a lefty. Makes sense to let Collins gets his reps at catcher down there and call him up in September. Skole has slowed down since his blazing start to the season but he's got some pop and has earned a shot.

Collins looked so bad last time here that I'm not sure that they'll want to call him back up despite his strong play since he was sent down. I assume they'd want to be able to get him more catching reps than he'll be able to get up here as well.

I'd like to know how we ended up underspending our international pool — I didn't realize we were trading current-year money. So in this case, it may not be this trade that is a huge fuckup but something else that happened before

This is a real headscratcher to me. Unless there's something we don't know about these prospects, it seems like we just gave up a big chunk of a very finite resource (int'l pool $$) to save a little money on Nate Jones

Fulmer will be with us until the 5th spot comes up again at which point we'll call up Hector. Whether Fulmer stays past that point will probably depend on who among the players with minor league options is rested.

Anything's possible, but I think there's a very small chance that Jose Rondon is going to be a MLB player of any value. I do not think he's better than Yolmer, who has also been disappointing. Last year, Rondon had a solid offensive year in AAA and MLB with a sub-.300 OBP and low batting average. He hit 24 homers between the two levels after never topping 7 in any prior season. He simultaneously began to strike out at a rate that is only sustainable with either a lot of walks (nope, very few) or a lot of power. His defense did not look good to the eye or the metrics, especially at SS. He's not a fast runner. While I generally am skeptical of things like this, he also gave the impression of having his head up his ass much of the time. I'd rather watch Ryan Goins play than him.

I strongly doubt the front office is hoping to lose at this point. The value of shuffling around a handful of draft spots is not large. You can see how being just a tick better this year has helped push attendance and TV ratings up. At some point, you need to give fans something to cheer for, because eventually they stop being fans. About half the guys I knew in high school that were Sox fans are rooting for the Cubs now and these weren't people who don't care at all about baseball. But you can only keep running horrible teams out there for so long. That doesn't mean we need to empty the farm to bring in Zack Greinke or something, and it doesn't even mean we shouldn't look at trades for guys like Colome, but there's no urgency to lose. The effects of losing are primarily negative.

Seems to me the right choice when TA returns is to send Reed down. Then you can move Jay (who seems to clearly be playing hurt), Eloy, and maybe Castillo through the DH.

Are they that much more dysfunctional than the Lakers?

Give them Carson Fulmer and let's make a deal. If they're too stubborn, I'll throw in an Alec Hansen

Grindiness