TaylorStSox

The Cell is a horrible park for a guy with Garcia's make up too.

QUOTE (southside hitman @ Jun 30, 2014 -> 07:33 PM) lol wut Garcia is naturally a fat guy. He's fat right now. He's a groundball hitter. He relies on speed. He has a flat swing and doesn't get much lift. It's a recipe for a bust. That's why the Tigers gave him up for a no bat SS.

QUOTE (oldsox @ Jun 30, 2014 -> 05:40 PM) Geez, the kid hit over .370 at two AAA spots last year and hit over .300 with Sox. I think that justifies giving him at least one full year before hitting the Sell Avisail Button, even if he only hits 15 Homers a year. Fat guys that rely on speed won't sustain that kind of average. Maybe he's Tony Gwynn though.

I'd be shocked if Garcia ever hit 30 HR's. He's strong enough but he'd need to revamp his entire swing. There's a reason the Tigers gave him up for a slick fielding/no bat SS. He's a Groundball hitter that relies on speed and has a body type that's going to make him struggle with weight. As others have noted, he's an awful defender too. I'd move him in a second.

QUOTE (Feeky Magee @ Jun 26, 2014 -> 12:01 AM) Hmm. His peripherals weren't awful, his sky-high ERA was due to a ton of his baserunners allowed ending up scoring, but yeah, hard to shed too many tears with that walk rate. Strange though because all the lefty relievers in Charlotte have control problems too, unless they bring up Surkamp, which is my tentative guess right now. I feel like you've never played or watched baseball before. Nothing personal, but I just get general disconnect. You excuse total awfulness with bizarre stats. Downs peripherals might have been decent, but the dude was awful. He was getting rocked. When you're a vet, there's no excuse; produce or gtfo.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 24, 2014 -> 02:28 PM) Given the choice I think Micah is probably the most likely option to be a major contributor out of that slot, but it is nice to have options since it's a good chance one, if not both of them will bust. I'm not sure about that. Semien has shown more power, patience and is a better defender. Johnson's speed might not translate either. His unorthodox lead off might be a gimmick that doesn't fool players at upper levels.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jun 22, 2014 -> 11:03 AM) If you want to take a SIERA for 13 innings this year, where he is getting knocked around, fine, but then stop giving us updates on how great Surkhamp is, because, well, he sucks. Yeah, but he has like a lot of k's and stuff.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jun 20, 2014 -> 03:41 PM) Epic post is epic. Also, though I am not the first to come to this conclusion, here are the pitching preferences as noted by yours truly. 1) A strikeout is the best guarantee for an out. 2) A walk is never an out. 3) If the batter hits it, you prefer it to be on the ground because it's almost never a home run and the batter will usually not advance beyond 1B. 4) A flyball is preferable to a line drive, but those can be dangerous. 5) You do not ever want to give up line drives. http://www.soxtalk.com/forums/index.php?sh...t&p=2935694 Epic post is epic? Who still talks like that?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 17, 2014 -> 10:31 PM) And that is why Tyler Flowers will be the White Sox starting C for the rest of the season, barring injury. No. The Sox like Flowers because he can call a game and works well with pitchers. That's far more important than his hitting. Neither Flowers nor Phegley are very good defensively. Actually, Phegley is pretty awful.

Part of the reason I'm not a big fan of Avi is his body type. He's going to fight to stay in shape throughout his career. Couple that with his reliance on speed, flat swing and propensity to beat balls in the ground and you have a recipe for a bust.

It's like I woke up and Soxtalk became "Who Gives A s***, USA?"

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jun 10, 2014 -> 10:47 AM) And even though Alex Rios had a worse OPS than Avisail Garcia, it still means a 3-4 swing in the standings over just 48 games, since the Cubs won 66? Wow. If Rios is so great that he can make up that much of a difference in the standings in 7 weeks, then why would they have traded him in the first place? What in the hell are you trying to say? Go to sleep or something.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jun 10, 2014 -> 10:41 AM) Gee, Alex Rios leaving for the Rangers automatically put us ahead of the Cubs in losses and got us Rodon, and it had nothing to do with Jake Peavy, or Matt Thornton...or any of about 15-25 other variables we could throw out there as the reason. That makes sense. He must have been THE reason. And because of all that money we saved not having to pay him, it's also the only reason we were able to free up money to sign Jose Abreu (as well as the signing bonus), even though we were willing to spend $140 million on Tanaka anyway. Seriously, do you also believe that?

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jun 10, 2014 -> 10:24 AM) Which is kind of the point...there's no way to determine it. Or maybe it was not having Matt Thornton getting lit up like a Christmas tree? FWIW, Erik Johnson basically pitched as well as or better than Peavy down the stretch, etc. Seriously, do you have a point?

Still looking for a reason to buy a next gen console.

There's absolutely no proof that Rios ever had issues in the clubhouse or with teammates. In fact, he was usually one of the first players to congratulate his teammates in the dugout. The speculation is pure TMZ level bulls***. Garcia will be extremely lucky if he's ever as good as Alex Rios.

Nice play De Aza.

How the hell do they even keep stats on base running?

QUOTE (Feeky Magee @ Jun 9, 2014 -> 09:57 PM) De Aza graded positively as a baserunner in every year with the Sox. He's basically a break-even base stealer, and with his above-average speed, the number of times he goes from first to third etc. has outweighed the number of times he gets picked off at first or whatever, although the latter tends to stick in the memory more. He's graded positively every year on defence bar last year in CF, where he graded slightly negatively. I would say that via the eye test he was a reasonable centre-fielder for the most part, and is now a little above average LF. The problem with Alejandro is when he makes a mistake, it tends to be of the "HOLY SH*T DID HE JUST F*CKING DO THAT" variety. They stick in the memory and to me have resulted in some people underestimating his overall value. And yeah, Torii Hunter has been the worst defensive player in baseball this season. I can tell you that without having seen him in the stadium. De Aza might be the worst base runner I've ever seen. He's basically a faster Carlos Lee in the field and on the paths. He's f***ing atrocious. Stop listening to any stat that says otherwise and, for the love of God, don't use them in an argument.

You don't see Fatbrera look that bad very often.

QUOTE (Feeky Magee @ Jun 9, 2014 -> 09:43 PM) Have you seen Torii Hunter live this year? If not, are you therefore not in a position to say he's been bad defensively this year? I couldn't tell you if Hunter is good or bad defensively anymore. I thought he was always overrated though. Based at where he was at in his peak and the expected regression, I'd guess that he's pretty poor at this point in his career. Aren't you the same guy that thought ADA was a good defender and a good base runner?

QUOTE (Feeky Magee @ Jun 9, 2014 -> 09:37 PM) For evaluating a one-off play where no replay is shown, sure, it's not ideal. For evaluating over thousands of plays, it's easily enough, particularly when combined with studying defensive metrics. They're not ideal, but looking at them over a 3-year period is more than enough to accurately surmise whether a player is obviously good or obviously bad. Viciedo is obviously bad. After you have the opportunity to see a couple live games, you'll get it.

QUOTE (Feeky Magee @ Jun 9, 2014 -> 09:25 PM) Do you honestly think it's impossible to evaluate how good a defender a player is without seeing regular games in person? Absolutely, especially for outfielders. You just don't get a good enough perspective. You don't see plays develop. You don't see how players position themselves. You don't see their jumps. You see about 25% of the play on TV.

QUOTE (Feeky Magee @ Jun 9, 2014 -> 09:18 PM) No, I've never watched him play. This is my first White Sox game and there is an unfortunately large spider on my screen which is blocking right field. So you think you can make definitive judgements about outfielders based on what you see on TV? By that logic, you would have thought Jim Edmonds and Aaron Rowand were HOF calibre defenders.

QUOTE (Feeky Magee @ Jun 9, 2014 -> 09:15 PM) By that logic, are any of us here qualified to say anything about baseball ever? He's a really bad defender. It's kind of obvious. Have you ever watched him play?