Jake

QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 27, 2015 -> 09:12 PM) It's amazing how poorly is walk numbers in the minors have translated to the majors I have to think that by now everything about his approach has changed, mentally and physically

Dan Hayes doesn't get paid to provide biting commentary on the White Sox, cut the guy some slack for Christ's sake

I've come to accept that Danks is not horrible, but is going to play at the absolute lowest level you'll tolerate from a regular starter. Now we don't have to tolerate it if we think we have a better option, but to speak generally I think he's a high 4s ERA guy that can eat up some innings but provide little value beyond reliably going out there every 5th day

I think there is not necessarily a clear dividing line of "good people" and "bad people" or criminals vs. non-criminals nor should there be. And there is also a vast spectrum of ability to make snap judgments, competence using a weapon, etc. When we hear about things like police violence, it is not always necessarily the issue that the cops in question are bad people, but that they made bad judgments (sometimes on bad premises) which had an irrevocable effect. Guns are really good at making temporary lapses have permanent consequences. See our suicide rates in the US for more details. Most wouldn't deny that there are specific situations in which a private citizen would be safer because they have a gun. After all, most of us know that the people who treasure their right to own a gun are not insane. There is a logical reason that is very compelling -> if I have a gun and someone tries to kill me, I have a weapon that is probably just as or more lethal than what my foe has. Others dwell on the "I need this to keep big government in check" argument, but I think that is not nearly as much of a driving force behind the sentiment. What I and many others would argue is that it is hard to use a gun effectively in self-defense, that even during justified self-defensive use there are serious risks to others, and that the individual need for a privately owned gun has on the whole created a far less safe environment due to how difficult it is to control who has those guns and what they do with them. Many others have rightly mentioned that there is basically no guarantee that a "good person" or non-criminal who buys a gun has any clue how to operate it, which is sad and should be seen by responsible gun owners as a serious threat to their own rights. And I don't want to neglect to mention that not all guns are the same. Lots of shotguns and rifles held by private citizens are a lot less likely to lead to harm for the general public than are lots of handguns. If everyone with a weapon had essentially no ability to conceal them just due to the sheer size, it'd be a lot easier to figure out who is dangerous. But as long as there are guns that more or less fit into a pants pocket or otherwise holstered out of sight, the "common" gun criminal will have a lot of success. Of course when we talk about the calculated mass shooting scenario, handguns would have their drawbacks for those kinds of perpetrators and thus we have things like assault weapons bans (which aren't inherently wrong, just fail to address the type of firearm used in most murders). Lastly I'm going to say again that we could have a much more sensible conversation about these issues if the federal government were allowed to fund/perform research on gun violence, but the insane fear of a gun registry has prevented that from happening. For something with so much import to our society, there is astonishingly little that we have clarified scientifically about what is going on. I'd be happy to live in a mostly gun-free society, but I understand that so long as I live in this society, there will probably be 300 million or more guns around. So from a pragmatic standpoint I'd love to know as much as I can about gun crime so I can think about what solutions can best make a dent in gun violence while giving as much freedom to own and use firearms as possible. We of course know that economic prosperity is a really good way to prevent it, which is why we have observed a downward trend in the problem over the years (that and the elimination of unleaded paint and better resources for family planning). We can do better, though.

There's something weird going on with Semien's defense this year, but I have no reason to believe he'd bad at 3B or 2B. He's definitely in one hell of a slump right now, though. We'll see where he is at the end of the year.

Flowers has certainly played about as badly as humanly possible, at least at the plate, for the past 2 or 3 weeks. Soto has been gradually getting more time and it's fair to keep ramping it up. Is anyone aware of whether there's a health concern keeping him from an everyday role?

Don't forget that the owner plays a role in the direction the FO takes. Kenny has said there were multiple times in the past 10 years that he has proposed tearing things down and was convinced/ordered by Reinsdorf to instead focus on short-term win-loss scenarios. I think the team's focus now is once again to avoid moves that are likely to have an adverse effect on our record that would extend into next season, but at the same time I think they want to avoid moves that will hurt us in the long term too. "Win more now and in the future" is an easier philosophy to talk about than to achieve of course, but the main way you would achieve this is to do a lot of standing pat when it comes to trades.

QUOTE (LDF @ Jul 26, 2015 -> 05:41 PM) dfa in the off season? Well we are free to release him, but we have to pay him every cent that he would make if he were playing for us

There's just no point to a grand sell-off. Trading Samardzija, who is about to be a FA anyway, makes some sense. But otherwise the team is young, your best players are under team control for a long time, and you just want to see some of the young guys improve. There's no rebuild to do, you're rebuilding already.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jul 26, 2015 -> 11:47 AM) So when you go to Las Vegas, you would change your bet at the blackjack table based upon "feel" or "momentum"? I'm sure you would rather they stood pat and didn't trade Samardzija. On the other hand, I'm sure you're also waiting to defend the organization no matter who they get back in return via trade. Sure, we just scored 10 runs so things (for the moment, which lasts as long as today's starting pitcher) seem more optimistic, but the improvement of those guys doesn't take into account the fact that LaRoche and Garcia have pretty much disappeared. Are we really supposed to believe that Alexei has been psychologically affected so deeply by off field stuff and now he's miraculously back to the player he was in 2014 and will be able to sustain that for the next two months because he's been hot for a week or two? This isn't cards, this is baseball. It's not a coin flip every day you show up to the ballpark. You have to look at your team and decide if it's good enough that you expect to win a lot of games or if it's not good enough. The game is subject to random variation in many ways, but in the end the best team tends to win the game over time. The main judgment the Sox need to make is how good this team is and what they stand to gain by making any trades.

QUOTE (The Ginger Kid @ Jul 26, 2015 -> 04:37 PM) But Viciedo was just so bad. If he wasn't he'd be playing for someone in North America right now. As for Flowers, I just think you need to give more ABs to Soto. Especially coming off a night game. Unless there's some sort of paternal attachment with Rodon, I don't see why a guy who caught last night wasn't given a break today. Flowers isn't going to get any better getting fewer ABs, but we will do less damage. For the record, Viciedo is in AAA for the Oakland organization right now

QUOTE (OmarComing25 @ Jul 26, 2015 -> 02:31 PM) Fangraphs underestimates guys like Buehrle because he consistently outperforms his FIP due to his fielding and outstanding ability to hold runners on base. They recommend when looking at full career numbers for pitchers to use the RA9/WAR instead of the main one they show on the player pages.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 25, 2015 -> 11:33 AM) Which is odd though because if they're not factoring in BABIP it's hard to figure out how they come to the White Sox having such strong starters when our starters have given up 50 more earned runs than the A's. Fangraphs weights strikeouts a lot, they weight innings pitched a lot, so our guys do deserve to be up there, but man we're really, really outperforming our ERA on fWAR by a lot. The actual runs allowed aren't factored in. FIP is calculated solely from IP, BB, HBP, K, and HR allowed. The WAR calculation is a bit more complex. First of all, they have recently added ballpark adjustments since not every place a pitcher plays is equally easy to hit home runs in. And to convert FIP runs value (which is divorced from actual runs allowed) to wins, "run environment" is considered. That is, giving up X runs per Y innings is how likely to generate a win? In this sense, being an elite pitcher makes it easier to accumulate WAR because you require less run support to win, which is something included in the WAR calculation. Our staff is 2nd to last in the league in BIP-Wins, which is a fielding dependent metric that puts a value on how much BABIP has helped/hurt the pitcher. Some of this will be influenced by the pitcher but my opinion is that it has much more to do with the defense except in extreme cases. You can argue that ~33% of our pitching value over replacement is negated by the defense/BABIP. Interestingly, we are one of the best at LOB-Wins, which quantifies how much your pitchers benefit from stranding runners compared to average. This is another one that could be susceptible to luck, but other causes include holding runners on, catching basestealers, pitching better out of the stretch than others, and good use of relief pitchers. In the span of a season, FIP and its derived metrics are usually better predictors than ERA and its derived metrics. In the longer run, ERA-derived metrics are better descriptors of what happened in the past, though the Sox would be a case where it's going to be a bad measure no matter what because the terrible defense is held constant through the whole season.

QUOTE (Heads22 @ Jul 25, 2015 -> 11:04 AM) This includes a BABIP thats a chunk higher than everyone else thanks to us not playing defense the first third of the year. This is because BABIP has no role in FanGraphs' WAR calculation. It's based on FIP, a stat whose strength is ignoring bad BABIP luck/bad BABIP from bad fielding.

Also, I think the most practical gun regulation that could make a difference to the overall homicide rate, but probably not mass shootings, is putting restrictions on all transactions. We know that a huge portion of the guns used in crimes were purchased from private individuals, which conveniently is a method in many/most jurisdictions that requires no paperwork or oversight whatsoever. We like to talk about bad guys and good guys. Bad guys will get a gun on Craigslist or, more likely, just go to the shop with their friend or relative without a record and use them as a straw purchaser. There's a lot of mixed information about the exact sources of the guns used in crime and almost none that is up to date because the Republican Party has decided to disallow any federally-funded research on these topics. This is driven by the same fear that has so far prevented any sort of regulation in this area, which is that it will lead to a grand firearm registry which will somehow then lead to everyone losing their guns. I have to say, from a persuasion/communication standpoint, the gun registry boogeyman is especially brilliant. Things like prohibiting undocumented transfer of guns don't sound very unreasonable until you have been informed that this will facilitate a registry and that a registry will take your guns away. What we do know is that very few guns used in crimes are stolen, which at one point was assumed to be the prevailing source. In some areas, it seems that the main source is straw purchasers. In others, gun shows seem to reign supreme as a place for criminals to acquire weapons (sometimes still using straw buyers). What seems universal is that the vast, vast majority of guns used for criminal activity were originally purchased from a very small portion of FFLs (this includes gun shops and private individuals that sell guns bought from distributors/manufacturers). One study in the late 90s done by the government (once again, these studies are illegal now) found that 80% of dealers had never sold a weapon used for a crime and that half the guns use in crimes were sold by 1% of dealers. In some metros, one or two FFLs sold huge majorities of the weapons used illegally. The ATF was not allowed to do anything to these dealers or even share their names with the public. To my knowledge, the few legislative efforts to deal with "bad dealers" have all been rejected because gun registries.

A movie theater is in so many ways an awful place for a shooting to happen and nobody should be able to say with a straight face that a gun carried for self-defense would be useful in that particular situation. Sight is terrible so seeing the gunman will be difficult. Combine the sight problem with the crowd issue and you are taking a huge risk by firing a weapon because there are so few situations in which you can be sure that your bullet will miss innocents if it misses the active shooter. Then we have the secondary issue in that any other heroes in the audience may struggle to figure out which person firing their gun should be trusted. As people start standing and firing their weapons in the crowd, how should everyone else evacuate without waking in front of one of the several active shooters? It's just a very vulnerable position. As for this particular situation, I have some hunch that it may not have been all that premeditated. We know the guy was a hardcore right-wing type, but I don't see how this would accomplish much of anything. He didn't seem to conduct himself like he had a plan. I wonder if this is a situation where this already unstable person heard some audience member make a comment or something and just lost his cool. In the excitement of the moment and in realizing what had been done, he killed himself rather than face the consequences, which is not all that uncommon in these situations.

I think the team has been very watchable for about 3 or 4 weeks. A few guys have played a little better and the most aggravating thing, the defense, has gotten better. I'm not sure even how much more value it has produced but they aren't making terrible mental mistakes anymore. I can watch the team pitch its ass off, have a couple good defenders, and a few young guys that I can hope to see do well every time they bat.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jul 23, 2015 -> 05:36 PM) He has done a much better job drafting (albeit in much more favorable circumstances in both draft rules and slots), but he certainly struck out on the Eaton/Davidson/Garcia evaluations I'd say he got Eaton right -- don't forget that Eaton has had wRC+ of 101, 124, and 126 in the months since his dreadful April and now carries a season number of 98. He's a really important part of our team now and going forward. Davidson certainly isn't some big win and doesn't look like it will ever be, but it's worth mentioning that Addison Reed is pitching in AAA. The person we sent away was not good, so that's important to consider. Hahn was correct to try to trade away Reed. At first I thought you were referring to Leury Garcia and I was going to say that it probably wasn't some "this is who we thought was their best" evaluation. But Avisail has been disappointing, especially in one crucial way IMO --> if they thought he was going to be a competent defender, it appears they were very, very wrong. Given where he is developmentally, he can only be successful in a very specific way, which is carrying a strong average with good power numbers. He will subtract value with his defense and he walks so little that he'll have to earn everything he gets at the plate.

FWIW, Yordano's FIP before being demoted was essentially the same as last year (which was good), suggesting there was probably a large luck factor in his failures this year. Inherited runners scoring in particular played a huge role in his ERA being high.

I just enjoy hearing the talking points. "This deal will stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons." "This deal ensures that Iran will have nuclear weapons." We refuse to publicly agree on the main aspect of the deal. If you believe everyone is speaking honestly, the sides have come to the opposite conclusion about it.

It did look a little odd.

Speaking of NWA, I have this fear that the upcoming movie is going to be another white savior film where these poor boys couldn't get anywhere without the amazing Paul Giamatti. Maybe I'm wrong, I haven't looked much into it.

I think that people saying he has upside has a lot to do with him having some power potential and being a .150-ish ISO player. I also think playing in Charlotte doesn't invalidate his production, we have stats that account for this. The raw number may not be that informative, but in general I think it's fair to be excited about and hope for some power numbers.

Kasich almost seems okay, but then I remember this. After refusing to debate his Democratic challenger in the last gubernatorial election, he eventually did agree to sit down with the editors of prominent newspapers for a sorta-kinda debate. In that pseudo-debate, Kasich played this fun game where he pretended he had never heard of the challenger and could neither see nor hear him. It resulted in exchanges like this: For a grown man to conduct himself that way mostly mystifies me but also tells me it's not someone I'm about to endorse as the "good" Republican candidate (nor would I be a big fan of a Democrat acting this way--I'm sure some have). We only get so many unguarded glimpses at these people and this one is particularly unflattering. I'm also no fan of the actual policy being discussed or the havoc Kasich has wreaked on public education in this state, but that's beside the point.

At the same time, author isn't really wiling to argue that Quintana is better than any three of the Mets, when in fact he has proven a ton more than any of them. Quintana's run over the past three years has been really good.