Jake

QUOTE (greg775 @ Nov 2, 2013 -> 08:56 PM) Yeah, he has produced terribly but as a No. 1 pick he has a lot of time left before he's deemed a total bust. I'd suspect he'll remain a Sox unless Hahn despises his offensive game which is always a possibility.The key here is what does Hahn think of these guys. He's been around and has seen them up close for a long time. Do any insiders know what he thinks of Lexi, Beckham, DeAza, Viciedo, Phegs and Flowers? It'd be nice to know what the GM thinks of these guys' futures. I'm guessing Hahn doesn't expect much from Beckham. He's a safe bet not to be sub-replacement level player, but there doesn't seem to be much reason to think he will suddenly bust out after all this time. I bet Hahn would love to get some value for him on the trade market - if he can get us Brett Lawrie, I don't think there will be a second of his hesitation. If there isn't a market for him, and I doubt there is, Becks gives us flexibility with Semien. We'll feel much freer to leave Semien in AAA for a while and, even if he Semien breaks camp with the big league club, Semien can bat for Becks against RHP at times while Conor plays at 3B. Then, against LHP, you can have Gordon at 2B and Semien at 3B. As for those other guys, I think the FO is cautiously optimistic about Dayan. I think they see a little sunk cost with him, but know that he's a relatively small step forward from being a really valuable player. I don't think they like Phegs and Flowers at all. I think they see Alexei for what he is: a guy making exactly what he deserves, playing awesome defense, holding his own at the plate, and adding a base stealing element to his game. With that said, I bet they're uncertain about his loss of power and are frustrated about the mental errors last year. I'm sure they'd like to see Semien become a SS, which would free them up to get some real value for Alexei.

On the bright side, I like what I'm seeing from virtually everyone else. Even Hinrich. Noah needs work, but I wonder how about his health. I think it's safe to assume that Derrick isn't going to suck forever. The team looks locked and loaded for when he's back to form.

I think I'd prefer just rolling with Leesman, Veal, and whatever scrap heap guys we invite to ST

Gordon quite clearly had unbelievably lucky run of soft hits and bloops when he came off the DL. He didn't produce well all year. I have very little confidence in him going forward. His defense even fell off, and I don't know what that could have to do with his glove hand

Jo still isn't right either. Derrick Rose cost us this game, though. If you had Mike James play in the fourth quarter, we win.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Nov 2, 2013 -> 08:41 PM) Rose is f***ing worthless right now. Worse than that, honestly. Looks like things are going to be real ugly for a while

QUOTE (Jake @ Nov 2, 2013 -> 08:38 PM) Shades of Ben Gordon

Shades of Ben Gordon

I like the aggressiveness of Booz taking it inside and then having the wherewithal to pass it out

I f***ing love Jimmy

Surprised to see Thad Young knocking down threes

I wonder how much this neck issue is a confounding factor with Derrick. This Sixers team is the epitome of what you get when you have zero depth. They can really compete when their top guys are on the court, but after player 6 or 7 it's f***ing horrible. Since they don't have LeBron James or Kevin Durant in those 6 or 7 guys, they won't be too good in the long run but they might be a somewhat fun team to watch.

QUOTE (TaylorStSox @ Nov 2, 2013 -> 01:15 PM) Of course I value defense. I will never value defensive stats. Defense is evaluated with eyes, not numbers. Don't even bother trying to change my mind, it will be pointless. QUOTE (TaylorStSox @ Nov 2, 2013 -> 01:24 PM) My eyes tell me if a player is a bad/good/great defender. I want to see his positioning, his instincts, his first step, his arm strength, the way he moves, how he reads the ball, the decisions he makes, his rhythm. Defense is an art, not math. All of these things are evaluated with human eyes in the calculation of UZR. Every single defensive play is watched and measured. The distance the player covered, the speed of the batted ball, whether baserunners advance more bases than they ought to, and a few subjective measures of difficulty (bad hops, for instance). Each play is given a number value based on how these things came together: did the guy not cover the distance that he should have but made a great throw to get the runner out? His range will be downgraded and his arm will be upgraded. Did he cover a ton of ground, then drop the ball? Range is upgraded, error rating downgraded.

There is a great deal of academic research on this subject and the vast majority shows a total lack of partisan bias in traditional news sources, and there is more evidence of conservative bias in the news networks than liberal bias. News media tend to give more airtime to opposing viewpoints that are factually false than what they merit, which is a much more significant source of news inaccuracy. There is more evidence that there are significant biases against female and minority politicians. It would be interesting to see if this still applies to Obama, as in the past many minority legislators generally only made the news when they had broken the law (and they are much more likely to be criticized for breaking the law than white legislators) or when they were at the forefront of a racial issue. The POTUS is obviously relevant all the time. What we're seeing here is a manifestation of another line of research, which is strong partisans on both sides finding the same news source to be biased against them. Those who claim bias in media consistently misreport what they remember seeing in a given segment. The offending pieces of info are more impactful and lead the person to forget the parts that backed their point of view. This applies not just to people that are strong ideological partisans, but also those who have opposing views of a particular issue. We call this selective recall. Selective categorization is similar: two sides hear the same sentence, both claim it is biased against them. This happens in law all the time, where defendant and plaintiff both think that jury instructions and things like that are harming them. Then there are different standards; partisans will each have their idea of which facts, opinions, etc deserve the most scrutiny and airtime. Another factor at hand, visible in this discussion, is another insight uncovered by political psychology research. People report more bias and inaccuracy the larger they believe the audience for that information is. Telling people that an article came from a journalist versus a student newspaper, for instance, can make partisans go from strong allegations of bias to relative agreement on non-bias. I've seen two different things that explain the difference between liberal and conservative differences in how much you hear about media bias. For one, Republican elites were the first to make claims about partisan media bias. The cultural association is very important. Beyond that, conservatives (not libertarians, fwiw) generally score much lower on a personality trait that some call "openness to experience." This means that they have a stronger preference for things that are familiar while those who are high on this trait (liberals) will be more apt to search for new experiences. This helps to explain a behavior that is relevant here: conservatives are much more likely to engage in what is called "safe argument," which basically means restricting political discussions to likeminded people. I'm guessing this is part of the reason for the popularity of conservative talk radio and why Fox News was commercially viable long, long before the change in content at MSNBC at continues to be much more successful in its ratings. People that frequently engage in these safe arguments (these are interpersonal interactions) are much more likely to report partisan bias in the media. A last note is that people that feel that they are strongly informed on their views will react to perceived media bias by counteracting it. That is, they will try to promote the information that they perceive as correct with extra gusto to try to correct the harm done by biased media. Conservatives tend to believe in their own political competency quite a bit more than Democrats and thus are a bit louder in their alternative media promotion.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Nov 2, 2013 -> 08:57 AM) Actually used that Find My Phone app that Apple has...pretty neat. Was able to find my phone in my yard using the signal overlayed onto a satellite image of our yard. Must have fallen out when I was warding off my idiot dogs or something. I used that in my old dorm. It was accurate enough that I could tell that it wasn't in my room, but was in the room next to me. Used the Android equivalent to find my girlfriend's SGSIII the other day and it was just as accurate. Very cool to see these features becoming standard. It has limitations for an expert thief, but for self-induced problems it's great.

I'd like heads to roll in Illinois for not building their own website. What the f***? I'm probably going to vote for Rutherford in the upcoming election. I've met him about 10 times, a really good guy. He's from my hometown. I don't necessarily find him to be a policy match made in heaven, but I think he's a guy interested in governing and improving people's lives. Also, check out how Romneycare enrollment went: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkbl...ill-be-similar/ Even with a f***ed up website, enrollment was going to be concentrated in the final months

QUOTE (greg775 @ Nov 1, 2013 -> 02:34 PM) I'd trade Beckham, Santiago and Keppinger to the Royals for Giovatella and Moustakas who have been busts and see if our new hitting coach can help fix 'em. We give away the best three players in that deal

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Nov 1, 2013 -> 07:34 PM) 3B has been a wasteland ever since Crede's back went out and Uribe left after 2008 as well. Mark Teahen, Morel, Orlando Hudson, Keppinger, etc. As far as CF, well, we know that the Sox haven't found a permanent answer since the Rowand trade...not that trading for Thome was bad, it's just that Brian Anderson never developed, they traded away Chris Young...and we know all about the long list of players like Mackowiak and Darin Erstad that they stuck out there. Later on, you have the Nick Swisher disaster...which forced more players who were spare parts into the position, like Wise. But yeah, along with catcher now being a huge organizational-wide issue, 3B and CF/leadoff are probably the two biggest issues that KW failed to figure out a solution to. Our CF/leadoff hitter has been one of our team's best players for three seasons in a row

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 1, 2013 -> 09:39 AM) Isn't Ron Paul notorious for taking every deduction he could possibly find a way for himself to take while simultaneously arguing for getting rid of the same deductions? Ron Paul also tried to get the UN to intervene in confiscating RonPaul.com and RonPaul.org from his fans. He lost the case, while his own sites smeared him, but they continue to support him. I thought that was an especially fun/weird case.

I have some qualms with FIP, though I still prefer it to ERA if I have to choose one. FG has a very good discussion somewhere about why they dislike ERA and it is certainly compelling. I think FIP will sometimes consistently deviate from a pitcher's ERA over the course of years and I'd like to find a way to remedy that - some pitchers actually pitch differently in a different situation; advanced statistics are essentially predicated on the idea that one event doesn't influence another. The timing of the strikeout or walk is essentially irrelevant to FIP. We can think of lots of pitchers that are more or less likely to walk/strikeout batters depending on the situation. Some (Javy) habitually get worse in bunches, others (Nolan Ryan, Brian Wilson) respond positively to their own poor play

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Nov 1, 2013 -> 12:21 PM) I don't know why people aren't surprised. He hasn't played team basketball in some time (and exhibitions aren't necessarily great indicators). This shouldn't really surprise anyone and with time he'll become a much better facilitator and this offense will start to look a heck of a lot better (and more efficient). If you told me several months ago that he'd struggle out the gate, I wouldn't be surprised. It's surprising that he looked so sharp in the preseason and looks this way now QUOTE (ZoomSlowik @ Nov 1, 2013 -> 12:30 PM) Rose, relatively easily unless you're talking fantasy basketball. Curry is an amazing shooter, but he has several flaws. He's not a big threat on the drive, he's a pretty mediocre ball-handler/passer and he's a bad defender. He's SOOOO good at shooting that he can cover up most of that, but Rose is going to have a bigger impact with a league average cast around him. If salaries count though, I'd be more inclined to take Curry. Rose would cost you $19.5 mil a year for the next 4, Curry is only going to cost you $11 mil a year. That's a pretty sizeable difference if you're trying to put together a contender. So, the alternate question. Is there some roster configuration that would make Steph the better fit?

I should point out, in regards to that list of leaders in fWAR, a just as important group of players are those not listed. The White Sox are remarkably good at not having highly negative value pitchers. We pull them out of the rotation before they really cause them damage, we keep our guys healthy to keep random call-ups out the rotation.

The responsible parties

You are starting a new franchise in Seattle. The NBA, in a strange move, says you can choose one of two players as your franchise cornerstone whose salary won't count against your cap. You can have Derrick Rose or Stephen Curry. You're an expansion team, so you don't have any existing pieces to consider in your choice. Who do you choose?

Very unsavory and we're all bound to lose