Dam8610

Well hopefully we'll have a new owner in the very near future and our front office won't be forced into stupid trades by "financial constraints".

Who cares?

No, they wouldn't have. I've long felt that players with Dunning's profile have been undervalued in the scouting world, and it looks like he's showing why. There was a wide variety of opinion on him. Those who would've dragged him are the ones who were happy about the trade. Those of us who were upset about the trade wouldn't have dragged him. You're never going to make everyone happy because opinions vary widely. Exactly, buying Bauer and keeping Dunning seems like the smarter play than trading 6 years of Dunning for 1 year of Lynn. Did then, still does now.

But his ceiling is a 3 starter!

36% K rate in college? Pass. How's Jeren Kendall doing these days?

They went cheap on every hole except closer.

I'm bored so I'll give this a go. The first thing to understand is that fWAR is not tracking everything. Rather, fWAR is the coming together of several other tracking statistics to quantify the player's overall performance and its relative value to the team in an easily articulable number that most baseball fans understand, namely "How many wins was [insert player here] worth to his team?" That may seem like an impossible task on its face, however, statistical modeling has shown us that the results that happen on the field correlate to an expected value of runs produced, and that a certain number of runs produced is equivalent to a win produced. Some of the math has already been referenced here, so I'm not going to get into the details, but the importance of this point is that the numbers from fWAR do not represent "someone else's opinion" but an objective calculation of a player's relative value based on concepts that have met the rigorous standards of mathematical proof. Having studied mathematics myself, I know how rigorous those standards are, they make a prosecuting attorney's job in a murder case look easy. Once we've established that fWAR is an objective measure, the next question is: what is fWAR measuring, exactly? I gave a rather simplistic definition earlier, but more context is needed. The name gives this context: fWAR stands for fangraphs Wins Above Replacement, which means that the value being measured is relative to a replacement player. This is where fWAR (and bWAR, because both use the same baseline for WAR) get into some assumptions that have certainly held up mathematically over time, but they are still assumptions, not proven, and therefore up for debate, though the evidence in their favor is strong. The theory behind this is that if a player gets hurt, that player must be replaced, and the type of player available to replace that player would not be a league average player, but a "replacement level" player, someone who is a free agent or currently on your AAA roster who will likely perform well below league average. Thus, the numbers that Fangraphs and Baseball Reference have agreed on are that they will assume that a team full of replacement players will produce a .294 winning percentage, or an average of 47.7 wins, leaving 1,000 WAR over 2,430 MLB games to be earned by the 780 players on MLB rosters at any given moment. Mathematical regression has shown these assumptions to be valid season after season, but that could change in the future. These 1,000 fWAR are currently divided up as 570 fWAR allocated to position players and 430 fWAR allocated to pitchers. Again, these allocations are supported by mathematical regression, but are subject to change in the future. The existence of a finite amount of fWAR per season can bring understanding to certain concepts like a player having a negative fWAR and illuminates the excellence of certain performances, such as Mike Trout accounting for ~1% of all fWAR in baseball for several years of his career. Finally some things to keep in mind. Regarding relative value, fWAR is most appropriately viewed through the lens of ranges as opposed to exacts. For example, if Player A produces 4.4 fWAR and Player B produces 4.1 fWAR, they effectively produced the same value. If Player C produces 7.6 fWAR, we can conclude that Player C produced a great deal more value than Player A or Player B. That being the case, the question then becomes what's the demarcation point? The answer to that typically lies in the eye of the beholder, but 0.5 fWAR and 1.0 fWAR are good and fairly common ones, meaning one person could look at 0.5 fWAR as separating one player from another in value, where another could look at 1.0 fWAR as separating one player from another. Also, remember fWAR is a counting stat, akin to HR and RBI. This means the more opportunities a player has in a given season, the more likely they are to have a higher fWAR. This is why it is difficult for relievers and utility players to put up high fWAR totals, they don't get nearly as many opportunities as starting position players and starting pitchers. Thus, it is not likely the best measure of relative value of a utility player or reliever, whereas it is possibly the best measure of relative value of a starting position player or starting pitcher, and certainly is the quickest and most easily understandable measure of relative value of those players, hence the popularity it has enjoyed in the analytics community for some time now. I hope this met the objective of "Please try and explain in a clear non-condescending manner as I am sure many would like a better grasp of this subject." If I wasn't clear, please ask any question, though I don't know that I'll have the answer, and if I was somehow condescending, that was not my intent.

White Sox gonna White Sox.

https://theathletic.com/2353214/2021/01/28/rosenthal-cardinals-rockies-in-discussions-on-nolan-arenado-trade?source=user-shared-article

I fucking hate the Padres. That is all.

1) You're making the argument for signing Bauer for me. Everything you mentioned in this point is a great reason to sign Bauer and bring more long term stability to the rotation. 2) That kind of thinking will lose you a World Series in today's game. Get 4 SP and have the depth to rest and replace as needed. Also getting Bauer makes the Top 3 better. 3) The character risk thing is overblown and at the very least far outweighed by his talent. It's not about "right away", it's about the cost of replacing all the talent that would be gone at the end of 2023. Or are we just tearing it all down at the end of 2023?

That's a great reason to not trade the farm for Castillo. The point I was making is that if the Sox have the money in the budget to trade the farm for Castillo and pay to replace that talent, then they have the money to sign Bauer and should just do that and keep their talent.

1) So? What hole would there be at that point? Also, minor acquisitions would still be possible. 2) So is not having enough starting pitching in the playoffs. A 5 year deal for Bauer gives the White Sox his age 30-34 seasons, which is a good chance of not experiencing any decline barring injury. 3) He's not getting that anywhere. He'll get over it.

That's disappointing, as the prices thrown out for him seemed a lot more reasonable than anything else discussed this offseason.

It's funny to me how all these anti-Bauer people who use his 2019 against him and don't want to count his 2020 also want to give up the farm for Luis Castillo, a pitcher for whom the best argument for giving up the farm is his 2020. So 2020 counts for Castillo, but not Bauer? Why not just give up money for Bauer and keep all the talent in house?

What happened to the Musgrove rumors? Musgrove for Steiver and Thompson sounds pretty good.

I don't care if he's the best pitcher in baseball, he only has 3 years of control. Giving up pieces that are supposed to be key pieces of your rebuild for pieces that will be in a different uniform in very short order is a great way to shorten your contention window. Huh? WAY too much for the Sox to give up. If that's the price, stay out. 3 years of control. He's gone in 2023, likely right when Andrew Vaughn would be winning MVP for the Reds.

That would be incomprehensibly stupid.

It seems like the Red Sox could use a high upside starter and the White Sox could use a high upside corner OF who has the ability to play RF, as well as an extra bat until Vaughn is ready. Both are former top prospects who had a promising 2018 and have declined ever since. Both are good change of scenery candidates. It seems like a good fit. It won't happen, but I think it would be a good move from which both teams would have a decent chance of benefitting.

I feel like Benintendi for Lopez makes too much sense.

Interestingly his xFIP was roughly the same for both seasons, and suggest that the 2020 results are the ones to be trusted.

4 WAR is worth $36 million per year and players are rarely paid at the market WAR rate because contracts are typically longer to spread out the payment. The Padres don't necessarily want Manny Machado's age 33-36 seasons, but they're willing to pay $30 million AAV for them to get his age 26-32 seasons. I don't see him getting that much, but that tells me that a 5/150 deal is right in the range he might end up taking. I wonder if he would take 5/$150 with a team option for $30 million and a $10 million buyout making it either 5/$160 or 6/$180. Considering the market for his services seems to be small, that might be a deal that gets it done.

You just stated why fWAR is better for these conversations. I don't care how Bauer performed for the Reds or Indians, I care how he would likely perform for the White Sox for the next 5 or 6 years were he to sign here. As you stated, fWAR is the much more useful tool for that conversation.

This is exactly why I prefer fWAR for pitchers, because it seems arbitrary to reward or punish a pitcher for the defense and bullpen they have to deal with. Also, you're crazy if you think that 213 innings of basically a league average pitcher isn't worth 3 WAR. There's value in the ability of a starter to take that volume of a workload and provide even league average performance because it takes stress off of your bullpen. What's his ask? At 5/$150 if he produces 20 WAR over the life of the contract (which would be under what I'd expect), it's a $30 million surplus value contract assuming the price of WAR doesn't go up during that period.

The whole reason the WAR argument came up was the "overpaid #3 starter" comment. Hopefully whomever believed that has been illuminated to the contrary.