chitownsportsfan

Ben Grieve's best years are way, way behind him. There are reasons these guys aren't signed to major league contracts, and Grieve is no exception. As to the thought that Grieve could play CF in case Anderson fails, what gives you that idea? He's been a corner outfielder/DH his whole career. I don't see him covering the gaps in center at age 30 when he's never done it over the course of a MLB season. This is really an "eh" invite. No reason to get mad or excited, just "eh". You look at his career line: .269 .367 .442 and say "hey, not too bad". But then you consider that he's 30, hasn't had over 300 PA since 2002 and he plays positions on the wrong side of the defensive spectrum and you go "hmm". His last "full" season was 2002: .251 .353 .432 He's better than TIMO that is for sure, than again, Borchard is better than TIMO. Point is, Grieve is an average bench player with a slight, slight, slight, chance to somehow recreate his years before the big drop in 2002. I doubt he makes the roster though. The Sox are just too deep this year. I wouldn't be surprised is he catches on with someone by the end of the year.

LOL kyle, I was kinda wondering where that Kerry Wood thing came from. Out of left field I guess.

Quizas. Pues, yo pienso no.

Another thing that pisses me off about this article is how casually Neyer throws out second order wins without any real explanation--not even a link. I realize that not everyone needs to know exactly how the formula is derived and why it works how it works; however, If you're going to use an advanced stat and use it as your main premise, why not explain it? Is he afraid that like many of us have pointed out, 2nd order wins has its flaws, flaws that fellow sabermetricians and Soxtalkers alike have pointed out?

Yea, which is why trying to use second order wins last season as a predictor of future success is counter-productive. Why doesn't Neyer just use the Zips projections as a measure of how teams will do? Those are flawed as hell too, but at least they admit it's only a rough judge, at least they have the updated rosters.

I couldn't agree more jphat. Why try to fit a square peg into a round whole? Let Uribe be the defensive god and streaky power hitter that he is--don't try and make him a OBP machine at the top of the order. I hate to mention that Cubs, but what they did to Corey Patterson by trying to bat him leadoff is a great example of a club asking a guy to do something any sane observer would say is crazy.

I really hope Uribe doesn't bat second. I'm sorry, but his OBP is terrible for a number 2 hitter. We need someone to get on base with the big boppers coming up, not someone swinging at everything and getting himself out. I love Uribe, I just would love him more in the 8 hole. IMO, the best move would be to leave Gooch at number 2 and just not ask him to give himself up so damn much. But knowing Ozzie, that has about zero change of happening.

The problem is that guys like Neyer ruin the reputations of sabermetric writers and the discipline itself. Baseball Prospectus and Rob are both too arrogant. If you want the stats without the attitude, I strongly encourage you to check out The Hardball Times and The USS Mariner blog. http://www.ussmariner.com/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/

Yea, Rob Neyer is not at the top of my list of sabermetrics writers. Give me Studes and Bill James. Studes is probably my favorite right now. He seems to like writing about the White Sox, and he loves to explain the math stuff in a way that the amateur can get. And, as Studes concluded, at some point in the season, usually June, the actual record is more important than the Pythagorean record. I agree with your point about blowouts RME to an extent. I mean, isn't "blowing people out" a sign of a dominant team? I agree though that the formula is skewed towards rewarding run producing and not run stopping.

No way the Twins win more games than the Indians in 2006. Put me on the record as saying that. This may bite me in the ass, but screw it.

hehe, clogging the bases!

This was already posted in the thread about the Phil Rogers article on ESPN.com

Well, I think the Central's top 3 teams can go toe to toe with the AL East's and AL West's teams. Detroit should be better, as should the Royals. The Central is no longer a division of the Twinkies and a bunch of also-rans. It's possibly the best division in the American League next year.

Here is the formula for 2nd order wins, also called ""Pythagenport": X = 1.5log(RPG) + .45 The model was devised by Clay Davenport. Don't ask me how he came up with that formula. I maxed out in math freshman year calc in college. I did a couple quick Google searches on 2nd order wins and found some pretty interesting stuff. In particular, the Hardball Times examined the White Sox' success in June and had the following conclusion to make: "I would answer that during a season the Pythagorean formula does a good job of predicting which teams will likely stay in the race for the duration, but as we get into June, the number of games a team will win is equally or better predicted by their actual winning percentage at that time." http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/...-the-white-sox/ This sort of sabermetrics stuff is way beyond basics like OPS and DIPS, it's more intersting, but I find it kind of hard to get into the hard-core calculations these guys are making. Still, I think it's folley on Neyer's part to use only second order wins when trying to figure out who's due to repeat and who's due to fall. Team's rosters are just too different from year to year. And his "regression to the mean" means little without looking further into the individual player's statistics and if they are repeatable. The Sox were great in 1 run games last year--and that is why the Pythagoreans don't like the Sox. No evidence points to this being a repeatable stat(winning close games) , but I know some work is being done by The Hardball Times with teams that have great bullpens and their record in close games. I think they concluded that it sure doesn't hurt, and probably helps. I wouldn't get too worked up about this stuff guys. Neyer is just doing his job. It's the middle of winter, all this stuff needs to be taken with a grain of salt. We will know more about the Sox and Indians after May than any of last years statistics could tell us--no matter how much Neyer wants to believe last years Pythagoreans.

I really think you're placing too much importance on the last spot in the pen and the last spot for everyday players. Last year those roles were filled by Timo Perez and Marte/Viz--depending on who was throwing worse at the time. Timo's VORP was negative! As for Marte and Viz, I'm not sure their contributions were much more. Sure they pitched well during the playoffs and for parts of the season, but overall they weren't very good. The team still managed to win 99 games. I am all for bringing up a kid to see if he can pitch decent out of the pen. If he can't than KW makes a minor trade to get someone in. I mean, if Ozzie is looking at the 7th inning and assuming Hermie is healthy, it has to go something like this: Cotts, Politte Hermie McCarthy Jenks ? It doesn't seem likely that the last man in the bullpen will see much meaningful action, much like Viz and Marte.

I don't know. That seems like a pretty sizable difference to me. That is per position correct? So having 9 average defenders will leave something like 150 outs less than a team full of excellent defenders? A + - of 150 outs has pretty dramatic effects, over the course of season I would guess. On a side note, I just found this Balta about the issues we were discussing and THBT's attempts to mitigage it: That full article, a review of the THBT's 2005 annual, can be found here: http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/...ll_annual_2006/ It's a pretty good read in the dead middle of winter.

Those are fair enough points Balta, and I agree with all of them. It seems likely that someone could compile the percentages of the team away from the Cell and at the Cell, to see if the Cell is an "easier" ballpark to field at.

It's great that the sabermetric community is making a big push to delve deeper into defensive ratings and metrics. It's even better that these techniques proved what many of us suspected about the Sox's defense in 2005: that it was the best in baseball. What did Bill James say about hitters? Something about the difference between a .275 hitter and a .300 hitter is one hit every couple of weeks. Well, I think the same ignorance applies to watching fielders, was Pods that good, or was Ozzie some sort of positioning wizard where he put Pods in position to make plays before the ball was even hit? Imagine when that data becomes available how much more we'll be able to determine about individual fielders. I still contend that the best (and very simple) measure of a team's defense is their defensive efficiency. That is, the number of hit balls they turn into outs. By this metric, the Sox were number 2 in all of baseball behind only the A's by a couple of hundreths of a percent.

I'm afraid I don't get the chart, could you explain it please?

827 OPS in Japan? 29 Years old? Might as well keep Gload.

When comparing Anderson's and Borchard's lines please consider that Borchard plays a passable corner outfield while Anderson plays a very good CF. I mean, CF is probably the 3rd hardest position and LF and RF are two of the easiest along with 1B

I actually think he wrote the column in "green". The first time I read it I thought, "this guy is an idiot". The second and third time I read it I came to believe he is laying one big crap on the whole Cub franchise by pithely arguing every idiot Cub fans logic for the past 50 years. Of course, I could be wrong, but I honestly can't believe a "writer" could be that blindsided. The over-bearing tone of the article leads me to believe he was being sarcastic.

I completely agree with this. We can agree!

I suppose I took that out of context when I infered that it meant they would "never trade him". Still, when people write in all caps, I tend to think they are screaming. Did you write "never", of course not. But you did phrase your response in a) all caps, and B) a rhetorical and sarcastic question meant to belittle Vafan. Differences of opinion are fine with me, this place would be pretty boring if we all agreed with each other. This debate is helping me get through another boring winter without Sox baseball. I appreciate your passion and love for baseball and Sox. That said, I'm probably going to let this one go for now, I've already sunk too much energy in it. On a side note, I took "logic and reasoning" my sophomore spring of college, I got a "C-" and never looked back. The final question involved a proof in symbolic language over 20 steps long. I couldn't figure it out, probably why I got a "C-" in the class. I can't always "do the math" like the really hardcore stats guys, but like Michael Lewis quotes a baseball executive in Moneyball: I don't understand how to do a regression equation, but I can understand the implications.

You know the thing about 5th starters is: they just aren't that hard to find. So, say we lose Count to FA in 2007, we have the following pitchers to choose from: RHSP: Paul Wilson (Team Option) Wade Miller Tomo Ohka Ramon Ortiz Jason Johnson (Mutual Option) Gil Meche Joe Mays Byung-Hyun Kim (Team Option) Sidney Ponson Tony Armas Jr. Jose Contreras Kevin Jarvis Greg Maddux Brian Moehler Jason Schmidt Jeff Suppan Rick Helling Woody Williams Brad Radke Kerry Wood (Mutual Option) Mike Mussina (Team Option) Cory Lidle Kelvim Escobar Chan Ho Park Ryan Franklin Orlando Hernandez Jaret Wright (Team + Player Void options) Kip Wells Jason Marquis Vicente Padilla Adam Eaton Tim Wakefield (Annual Team Renew Option) LHSP: Ted Lilly Brian Anderson Mark Redman Shawn Estes Tom Glavine Kevin Appier Jamie Moyer Andy Pettitte Mark Mulder Barry Zito Doug Davis Randy Wolf Mark Buerhle (Team Option) David Wells Darrell May Eric Milton (Void Option) My personal recomendation would be to teach Neal Cotts another pitch and move him into the rotation: provided he has another "lights out" year in 2006. Still, there are plenty of names to choose from should Contreras walk. I understand that KW is "trying to build a dynasty", but that really says nothing in and of itself. If the marginal cost to retain Contreras is too high in 2006, than someone else comes in who KW believes can do the job. I don't believe Contreras has much trade value, unless a team becomes desperate at the last minute and doesn't give a crap (Yankees? Sawx? Mets? Dodgers? Cubs?) about money or next year. In my mind , I do think it's wise to plan years ahead as a GM, but immediate returns are always worth more than future returns. If the Sox need short-term solutions (more offense) in 2006, then long-term solutions (next year's pitching) should go out the window.