Jake

Power hitting is not to be trifled with in today's MLB

Yeah, I like category scoring because it's not readily apparent how good a guy is. There's also a degree to which you have to guess, but as a for instance you'd have to research to realize that Josh McRoberts is a nice mid-to-late round fantasy players because no one counting stat jumps off the page.

A DL that includes: Houston, Allen, Melton, Collins, Ratliff and Paea will be pretty damn good unless there is absolutely no depth past that

QUOTE (Stan Bahnsen @ Mar 12, 2014 -> 06:29 PM) Well, Molina getting too many chances to show he's not the bust we know he is. And we all know why. I look forward to the next fluff piece talking about the great strides he's making as a reliever. He's just been hurt and they intentionally put pitchers they don't care about in late innings in ST because they don't mind if a guy like Molina's pysche gets hurt from blowing a save

Allen was not good last year. Nice sack stat, but overall impact on pass rush was piss poor. Will be interesting to see if better utilization or maybe getting healthy over the offseason could get him going again. I sure wouldn't want to invest much, though.

I'm guessing MD Jennings is far from the presumptive starter, just a cheap value with experience to add some competition

Mundy's +0.2 rating on PFF would have made him our best defensive player last year

All of the top DE available are less than amazing pass rushers. Houston is only 26 and could play multiple positions if needed. Has longer track record than the other guys, too. Remember too that sacks are a small part of the pass rush. You'd trade three or four collapsed pockets / thrown away passes for a sack.

Wootton is a DT. He has never done well at DE and has always been a tweener, size/athleticism-wise. He played pretty damn well at DT last year, short of some discipline-related issues that comes with learning a new position. PFF has always shown him to be a piss-poor DE but he rated as one of our best overall defensive players last year once he started playing DT

A player who has put up two full seasons of high 90s wRC+ is not exactly far from being productive. Dayan only has to get marginally better to be worth keeping around indefinitely.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 11, 2014 -> 09:44 AM) He has been kissing up around baseball for a few months now. In the last month or so he got in the papers for saying something about how good he had it working for Kenny and the White Sox. Also said he really likes lobster as well as Kenny's suits

Don't forget cheese curds

If you want to waste some time reading about airline mysteries, google "D.B. Cooper"

QUOTE (flavum @ Mar 10, 2014 -> 06:05 PM) Wilkins trade bait to anyone? s***, we have an open DH spot next year. Wilkins has always been perceived to be a low-talent player, so I doubt he could ever have much value unless he produced in MLB

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Mar 10, 2014 -> 01:40 PM) Yea, I don't agree with you on Maddow, she's just like the rest of them, maybe not to the extent of Hannity or Limbaugh, but she's the left's version of Bill O'Reilly, but IMO, that's not really a bad thing. You only see everything she reports as fact because you want it to all be true. It's still an opinion show, and opinions aren't about facts, they're about interpreting them. It's not so much that I have some warped idea of what the facts are. I just see one person/side using the facts to make a partisan statement, and one side using partisan statements without regard for facts far too often. For an exaggerate example - "Wealth inequality is at an all-time, look at this graph. Also, this is a really bad thing that we should remedy via government intervention" "People are doing fine/you can make a living as a beggar, look at my investigative reporting" QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Mar 10, 2014 -> 02:55 PM) Jake is studying some form of journalism in school on a graduate level if I'm not mistaken. I wouldn't be so dismissive of him like that but to each his own. I'm a PhD student studying communication, I specialize in political comm. -- specifically politically oriented entertainment, which for some is a categorization that is inclusive of cable news. Academia leans left, but my field is largely empirical (we deal in facts! ). Academia is really very much neoliberal IMO, borderline libertarian. Liberal attitudes, little support for leftist policy QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Mar 10, 2014 -> 03:05 PM) Right, it's not like journalism schools lean liberal or anything. I actually wonder about that. J-Schools are professional schools, so I don't have contact with them really. Journalists are still really drilled with the "just the facts" BS, which I find really damaging. Probably mostly liberals, just because for whatever reason people that like to write tend to be liberals. QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 10, 2014 -> 03:38 PM) I see your point, but it's still a shade of grey. She was just recently on the Daily Show about her Iraq War documentary (because what hasn't been said about that the last ten years?) and she was getting pretty animated about it. She's got an agenda for that. I remember she had a long interview with Jon Stewart on her own show and they debated cable news generally and she was convinced that MSNBC was the "truth" but Fox News was the devil and Stewart kept telling her, no, they're the same. MSNBC copied Fox News. And she wasn't buying it. She found a niche with the hardcore left. Just like O'Reilly or Hannity have found theirs. I think she's trying to say that MSNBC, or at least her show, is highly invested in factual accuracy. Obviously, coming to the conclusion that fact X + fact Y = welfare state is another thing. My "academic research" fun tidbits of the day is that 1. people that watch one cable news channel tend to watch both sides, except CNN viewers, who avoid both FOX/MSNBC. 2. People experience massive cognitive dissonance when confronted with factual information that contradicts their ideological views, but self-identified Republicans have a substantially larger adverse reaction to these things. For instance, in one study people were presented with 1. Sarah Palin saying something which is untrue (it's her talking about the death panels IIRC), but the news article does not comment on the accuracy of the statement or 2. the same thing, except the article mentions that what she's saying is false. When Republicans read the article in which she is contradicted, they are MORE likely to believe what she said. Oh, and the other relevant tidbit here is called the "third person effect." This refers to the difference between how much one things media affects themselves versus affects others. Conservatives tend to perceive a great deal of affect on other people from media while they believe they are immune from such persuasion. Liberals tend to think the media affects other people as well, but they also say it affects themselves. I think this in particular makes our political discussions more comprehensible, knowing that conservatives will be more hostile towards the media because they have the view that it is very influential on other people's opinions. FWIW, media effects research never finds a huge effect on people from watching any kind of political media. Watching the news, sometimes, makes you more knowledgeable. Partisans tend to feel more partisan when they watch partisan media. You don't see a whole lot of opinion change, generally speaking.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Mar 10, 2014 -> 04:23 PM) Precisely. Which is why if you argue that that pick isn't likely to work out anyway, you can pick a lesser guy there to pick a better guy earlier. Or you can say it's worth it to gamble on either 1. trading for a better prospect at the deadline or 2. getting a higher compensatory pick in the following offseason

People can't act surprised when they see Dunn strike out against left handed pitchers. Even good LH batters tend to be awful against LHP

All that "no discounts" stuff turned out to be BS. Interesting. I wonder if Bennett's agent was on "get the highest bid" marching orders and Bears were highest bidder...then Bennett himself decides he want to stay in SEA.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 10, 2014 -> 03:43 PM) Scott Merkin ‏@scottmerkin 8m Flowers, hitting now, still looking like the White Sox No. 1 catcher as of March 10 (and probably beyond) I think this is the right call. And if Nieto looks capable of handling 150 ABs and not letting too many balls to the backstop, I'd go ahead and keep him and put Phegs in AAA. If Flowers can't keep his head above .200 after a few months, Flowers gets released and Phegley gets called up, probably to become starter

Welp, we're obviously mailing it in this year

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Mar 10, 2014 -> 08:14 AM) Not sure... but I can tell you that Scott Merkin told FS he's going by Micker Adolfo now. Apparently this is a paternal/maternal name thing, but many players from LatAm take on the more American paternal last name when they get here, which he apparently has. So you won't see the Sox using the Zapata part of his name. Micker Adolfo Zapata would be his name, but the Spanish naming custom is First (Middle) Father's Surname Mother's Surname. However, you normally wouldn't call someone by their full name, just first name and father's surname. For example, Dayan's full name is Dayan Viciedo Perez, because his mother's surname is Perez. Of interest is that it is not custom for women to take on the husband's surname in most Spanish speaking countries. In Latin America, if they do, it never becomes the "primary" surname. If you were Daysi Correa Perez and married Gabriel Abreu Gonzalez, you might change your name to Daysi Correa de Abreu, but you'd still be addressed as Daysi Correa or Senora Correa. Alejandro de Aza is really Alejandro Alberto De Aza Ceda - at one point in his past, I'm guessing his family name (or, very likely, the family name of the people who owned his slave ancestors) was not "De Aza" but rather something else followed by "de Aza," which would indicate that they came from the town of Haza, Spain. You can tell that this is no longer the intended meaning (beyond the fact that nobody really adds "from Chicago" to their names) because he capitalizes the word "De," indicating it is part of his last name. QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Mar 10, 2014 -> 12:19 PM) I have always wondered how much cash is actually exchanged in these types of deals. I am sure the league makes them give up something, but I bet it isn't even 5 figures. I think there might be a minimum amount set by the league that is in the 5 figures range for cash trades

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Mar 10, 2014 -> 01:19 PM) I gotta disagree with you here. Viciedo was a much better player in the 2nd half of last year. He put up a .291/.327/.466 slash line which was good for a wRC+ of 114. I think it's completely unfair to ignore the improvement that a second year player demonstrated over the course of the season. He also made a lot of progress against RHP. Maybe these improvements won't carry over to 2014, but I think it's pretty ridiculous to say he's gotten 0% better. Yeah, there are several encouraging signs from last season. A very strong second half, major improvement against RHP. Some weird things as well, like poor numbers against LHP and at home, both which seem more flukeish than the strong finish and numbers against RHP.

Sorry about the symbol confusion, that's how we all express that idea on another message board I go to. There's just an objective difference between Rachel Maddow (not as much the rest of the MSNBC lineup) and the O'Reilly/Hannity/whoever the hell crew. Maddow's show is quite obviously partisan, but actually employs journalistic rigor in terms of evidence-backed arguments, etc. She is going to push left-liberal ideas, but she also deals in fact. There is also a huge tonal difference on Maddow than pretty much any of the other shows, with the possible exception of Chris Wallace's programs. She occasionally gets a little animated, but she doesn't yell at guests, doesn't loser her temper and say crazy things, and generally goes for the "make a point by understating it" tone than the opposite. O'Reilly and even moreso Hannity play very loose and fast with the facts and often see their shows devolve into a bunch of gut-based inference and anger. Chris Matthews and sometimes Lawrence O'Donnell and Ed Schultz would be better comparisons here. I really don't think that Maddow has any good comparisons across the aisle or on the left in terms of partisan programming. Her appears-to-be-but-actually-isn't-brother Chris Hayes is probably the closest, but he is even more wonk-ish, even less emotional, and structures his show to be so more policy and research-oriented than Maddow's that I don't even like comparing them. On the FOX slate, as I mentioned, Chris Wallace is the one that seems most interested in his own integrity and at least appears to make some efforts to say things that are true and to treat his guests with respect. And let's give Al Sharpton some credit here, he is truly unmatched

UZR isn't a big fan of Saunders's CF defense

Hoffman still awaiting his first good statistical season