Jake

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jul 19, 2013 -> 12:54 PM) Obama: "Trayvon Martin could've been me 35 years ago." Countdown to exploding heads in 3... 2... Obama was a rapper?

Yeah I'm still going with Miggy. Not Tulo, as he's a higher injury risk than pitchers are

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jul 19, 2013 -> 11:06 AM) And apparently they(and you) seem happy with the status quo. I want the Bulls to win it all, not "be good enough to compete and maybe pull it out if certain other players get injured and our players dont get injured" It isnt sensationalist to want the Bulls to be better. If I were to say anything was sensationalist, i would say it was your opinion of Nate Robinson I'm just not convinced that one playoff series in 2011 was enough to evaluate the potential of this team, which is better than it was in 2011.

Yes, that is The Game. That email made my day thinking of all the angry white folks that wouldn't recognize The Game and assume all black people look similar enough that the young Trayvon could turn into The Game.

QUOTE (MexSoxFan#1 @ Jul 19, 2013 -> 10:46 AM) NSIS Anyways, Carlos is Spanish for Charles. LOL that was my first thought too when someone said Charles was Carlos's brother. I suppose I'll name my kids John, Juan, Jean...

My dad got this in a chain email from conservative buddy: LIBERAL MEDIA!!!

If I don't think about the price and don't have to deal with customer service (and I don't think I ever have), AT&T is great. Best or close to the best coverage with the fastest LTE in many markets.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jul 19, 2013 -> 07:32 AM) Not wanting to stay the same doesnt mean I want the Bulls to get worse. I want the front office to get creative and stop saying "We really like our core." My non-sensationalist revision would be, "some folks in here would rather risk getting worse by making a splash than staying the same. Others of us (and apparently the FO) would rather wait for the move(s) that make us better beyond a shadow of a doubt."

QUOTE (DirtySox @ Jul 19, 2013 -> 10:22 AM) From BP's Eyewitness Accounts: http://bbp.cx/a/21255#hawkins Yikes - but of course, it sounds like they are saying he was never a good prospect in the first place so I guess we can just sit on our hands.

QUOTE (beck72 @ Jul 19, 2013 -> 07:43 AM) I absolutely believe LA would trade Pederson to fill holes they have. They have 3 untraceable OFers in Kemp, Crawford and Ethier to go with Puig. Whether the sox have what they need... Yet Pederson would be a guy to build around for the sox. This looks a lot like those guys to me...

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 19, 2013 -> 10:33 AM) Not a single person in that group I'd trade Sale for straight-up. You can sign me up for Miggy

He teased that there wouldn't be many pitchers in top 15 due to injury risk

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Jul 18, 2013 -> 10:19 PM) My point was simply that other teams, when told a legit star wants to be traded to them, hear the opening demand and then force a much worse trade down the throat of the other team. Except that's the exception when you think it ought to be the rule. We just don't know how many times teams unsuccessfully force bad deals down others' throats.

Sounds like they are already getting more than he's worth

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Jul 18, 2013 -> 09:36 PM) That would be making a move just to make a move. Awful trade. I think that's what a lot of the folks in here want. They'd rather get worse than stay the same

Walker is what I'd call a disappointment, but not a bust yet. He was raw for his age and should have been playing in A-ball this year. We tend to push guys to age-appropriate levels even when their production hasn't merited it and he is a case of that. Eventually he'll make it to AAA and we won't be able to push him too fast anymore. Look for him to figure out AAA after two or three seasons ala Jordan Danks. Also, go Wilkins!

I've found being active makes me feel more accountable to my diet. You feel like you don't want to "waste" a workout by eating like s***. On the flip side, calorie destructing workouts allow you a bit more leeway.

Working in some of your favorite foods is good for the mind. A few things to think about: -when you work them in, if you can, just make it an allotted part of your daily intake. Even if you normally don't count calories, think about how big that snack was and if you can salvage your day's intake by behaving the rest of the day. If you know you're going to have a big dinner out with friends, try to really cut back on your intake earlier in the day. Have man's lightest salad for lunch. -Try not to do too much back and forth between "perfect" eating and binging. A lot of people that get ambitious about dieting get a very unhealthy relationship with food where they can't stop once they let the floodgates open on cheat foods. It's not good for you and it can easily lead to an eating disorder. I've been there. -This was/is the hardest thing for me, but learn to distinguish hunger from cravings. You're dealing with cravings and understandably so. They aren't evil in and of themselves. However, you need to be able to form a habit of (usually) ignoring your cravings and instead waiting for hunger. There is research that shows people that eat when they are hungry and only when they are hungry have better physique outcomes than people who are on strict, counting-based regimens. The reason "just eat when you're hungry" sounds crazy is because if you're anything like me, we begin to interpret our cravings as hunger...and cravings happen a lot! (Mentally) healthy dieting is balancing act. If you've ever been fat, your body's signaling systems are virtually permanently rewired to make you want to get fat again. Your emotional desire to lose weight can lead your good intentions to turn into perpetual unhappiness or eating disorders. Try to take it seriously...without taking it too seriously

I think people are really overreacting to this. I just don't see a way to avoid things like this - it IS interesting, seeing a picture of him on the cover makes me want to read the article. It doesn't make me or any other sane person think that he is cool. Detailing things about him that seemed good or dignified doesn't redeem his actions and I don't think anyone could really in good conscience take any other message away from it. An extremely small group of contrarians on the internet isn't going to change my viewpoint on that. Nobody of sound mind wants to be a killer, wants to go to prison forever, and wants the infamy. People that want the infamy aren't going to be emboldened by this any more than they are by the intensive study of people like Hitler. Deconstructing it, wondering what drives a person to this, wondering what things we could have done to prevent it, etc. just seems like a part of the process of dealing with a tragedy like this and not an unimportant one. People have gone crazy about different things that are speculated as causes in the article (by people being interviewed). Does anyone really think federal immigration policy CAUSED this? Probably not. Might it have been some part of the disillusionment with the USA? Yep, could possibly be. And if the policy is bad, maybe we should fix it. This is not to say the American government treated Jahar and his family poorly, but asking the question isn't out of line. We're not going to let Jahar off the hook and say, "sorry, we were mean, you were justified." That doesn't mean we can't learn from this. I don't know if it's an awesome article, but putting a picture of the guy on the cover is simply not a big deal to me. Detailing how surprising his turn to terrorism was is not a problem for me. These should be topics of public conversation and you shouldn't be villified for trying to explore it from a point of view other than "he is the worst person ever, case closed, nothing to see here." The picture on the cover does exactly what it should do. Part of the intrigue of the story is that he doesn't fit the public imagination's idea of a terrorist. He doesn't look like Osama Bin Laden. He didn't act like Osama Bin Laden. In the end, they went for similar causes. How? Why? Can we learn from it? The other parts have been well-reported. We saw the live coverage of his arrest. We've seen the picture of him on the ground being arrested. We know all about the attacks and the carnage. I'm guessing we will continue to learn more and more about the victims as well. There was no more famous image from the events than the image of Carlos Arredondo in a cowboy hat leading an injured runner to safety. To me, wondering about Jahar doesn't diminish the victims or the attacks nor does it make Jahar a hero. The reason we care about Jahar and are so dismayed by his ability to fool even his closest friends is because it harmed US. Our kinship with the killed and injured fuels our interest.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 07:46 PM) No but if you say X performance is worth 5 wins above a replacement, and Y performance is worth 5 wins above a replacement, their perforances should be similar. I know the most deserving team doesn't always win, but over a course of the current 95 or so to 162, it does tend to even out. You win some you should lose, you lose some you should win. WAR is obviously flawed. WAR suggests 8 teams have played worse than the White Sox so far this year. And Cleveland, a team that is way in front of the Sox has an identical team WAR. If Chris Sale has a deservingly high WAR because he gets no runs support, the fact that no runs are being scored, should lower the other WARS accordingly. It is a fun nimber, and I will continue to look at it,but it's actual accuracy has to be questioned. Read those articles (including the one linked that talks about the White Sox). WAR and like-minded statistics assume a luck-less environment. The easy way to think about this is if you win every third game 10-0 but lose the other two 5-4, your team will look like a damn good team statistically because it outscores its opponents by so much. Unfortunately, your results will be bad. Fortunately, baseball runs are not scored in such a non-normal distribution. When metrics like these vary from the records, there is usually one of two things at play: 1. Luck has been on a team's side. A team with a negative run differential but good record, for instance, usually is just lucky. If they are lucky, a given team's fall is likely to begin on any given day. Their fall isn't necessarily going to be as UNlucky as their lucky run is, but it would be most likely to occur in a way commensurate with how the advanced metrics thought they would play. So if Cleveland has been lucky and is in truth the 20th best team in MLB, the most likely result of their season is not the 20th best overall record. The good luck already happened and in real life, bad luck doesn't automatically catch up immediately. What is likely is that they will have the 20th best record from now till the end of the season, provided they make no changes to the team. Adding or subtracting players can change that calculus. 2. The other possibility is things like coaching. A good manager (and this is the hardest thing to measure empirically) can influence how timely the runs a team scores are. Advanced metrics basically assume that you'll score clutch runs at an average rate and un-clutch runs at an average rate. A good coach may be able to motivate or otherwise influence his team to perform better at clutch time than other times. Statistically, this would basically mean that the team's runs are being used more efficiently than average. It is easy to confuse this with luck! The White Sox article suggests that our over-performance of projections has to do with more than luck -- in large part, it can be chalked up to tremendous health. We have begun to believe that this tremendous health is a product of the White Sox and not just the players. Some combination of Kenny Williams, Rick Hahn, Don Cooper, and Herm Schneider have led to our players (and pitchers especially) to be far healthier than what could otherwise be predicted. On its face, this would make the White Sox look lucky when in fact they've had a relatively unpredictable factor contributing to their success. This is particularly true when a player outperforms his previous health when he comes here, since projection systems can only guess about player health based on that player's own track record of health.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 07:30 PM) Again -- it comes down to using a stat to answer the question it was meant to answer. All linear weights-based metrics, including WAR, are designed to make a descriptive, context-neutral evaluation of performance so as to be able to compare such performances across different situations (players, leagues, eras, strategies, etc.) It is essentially using math to find an ultimate common denominator. What WAR does is tell you how many wins would be created by a performance in an entirely average chain of events. This never actually occurs, but it's useful because now we can make comparisons. Projections seek to do the same thing -- describe the average outcome. What those standings say is this: "Here is what actually happened and here is what the player's performances should have produced on average . It essentially is what happened versus what the teams "earned." Then, they take it one step further and say "if the players continue to play as they have, their results should regress toward what their performance 'earns,' and they should end up closer to this " If you think these projections are claiming to be a crystal ball, you are mistaken, and you should read these articles (one of them involving the White Sox even!) by old Dave Cameron: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/of-projecti...nd-predictions/ http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-differe...nd-projections/ Anyone who has watched or played sports knows that the winner is often not the most deserving or most talented -- that is, I believe, at the very core of what makes sports interesting -- and these types of standings strive to give us a deeper look at team performance by not just showing us the winners, but also showing us who has "played the best." It's interesting information for fans like all of us, who tend to spend a ton of time picking apart every aspect of our team and its plight. Great post. A very lucid explanation of what these statistics are all about.

QUOTE (hammerhead johnson @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 07:16 PM) Right. I don't even pay attention to catcher WAR. Ron Santo has a higher WAR (71) than any catcher in baseball history with the exception of Johnny Bench. Top 5 1. Johnny Bench 75 2. Pudge Rodriguez 70 3. Gary Carter 69 4. Carlton Fisk 69 5. Mike Piazza 64 Yeah, and all historical data on defenders is extremely limited. The implementation of UZR in 2002 makes everything a bit different and far more accurate than the TZ pre-2002. Catchers are even harder to measure without video-based data.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 07:14 PM) So the Sox team WAR is the same as Cleveland's. the Angels team WAR is ome of the best in baseball. There is reason to doubt WAR as a useful, accurate tool. I like to use it, but ii really is not consistent with the standings, and I know nothing is going to be perfect, but it is significantly off in many cases. If it simply predicted the standings, it wouldn't be useful. I just went over that. It is meant to be more useful than the standings - which is to say that WAR alone suggests that the Indians have really overachieved (does anyone disagree with this?) and the White Sox have underachieved (does anyone disagree with this?).

QUOTE (SoxPride18 @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 06:43 PM) Who cares if he doesn't strike out people? He has an ERA of just over 3 and has a whip of 1.3 which isn't that bad. As long as he gets people out, what's the problem? And I do agree that Ravelo that he can hit, I'm telling you guys, now that he's moved to 1B, doesn't for that much power but can hit for a very solid average reminds me of James Loney. Think of it in the same way we think of Courtney Hawkins. There are some aspects of his statistics like his HR total and OPS that might make you think he's doing just fine, but we know that a super-high K rate at that level means he'd be really f***ed as he moved up. Likewise, for a pitcher, a low K rate may not affect his overall results in A-ball but K rates almost always drop as players go up in level (at best, stay the same in most cases). Nobody in MLB is going to succeed with something like a 3 K/9 and very few succeed at 5 K/9. If we wanted a good A-ball pitcher, we wouldn't care about the peripherals. Unfortunately, the low k-rate suggests a deficiency in talent. Maybe there is an adjustment to approach or an additional pitch that can help, but as he is there is no way he can succeed.

QUOTE (Jake @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 06:57 PM) Current WAR totals by team More details, such as projected rest of season/end of season records based on sabermetrics Some highlights related to White Sox - it thinks we suck, as we do. Predicts a #5 draft pick at end of season. Predicts Twins will eventually finish last in AL Central, but we will not catch Royals for third. Thinks we'll play just under .500 ball in second half. This would adjust if players were traded.