chitownsportsfan

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.

No, I'm not taking stats this semester. To respond to the question about contracts: I agree, Vasquez being under our control for more than this season is a bonus. I don't agree this is a reason KW won't trade him. Let me reason with you, I won't use any stats, since you seem to just reject them on sight. KW has shown a propensity for trading prospects this offseason in an attempt to "win now", i.e. in 2006, not 2007, 2008, etc. So, with that in mind, why wouldn't KW spin off Vasquez for Abreu if the Sox were scuffling because they couldn't score runs? What if Thome gets hurt? I mean, to say in a post that KW will never trade a player if idiotic. It doesn't take stats to figure that out. I called Jimh out on it. Besides, here is one stat you need to know regarding Vasquez: 12 million dollars a freaking season, or more than 10 times what Bmac will cost.

Hijack my butt. Just a well reasoned response (albeit sorta drunk) to someone claiming to have a devining rod into the mind of KW. I understand that SABR backlash, but for being buzzed only spelling "Vasquez" wrong once or twice can't be that hard of foul. At least I got those stats right! Besides, sabrmetrics are so much more relevant with a world series champ, it's like the intersection of theory and practice! In this case forcing SABR to re-evaluate the importance of defense and speed.

Hey, Jimh, did you talk to Kenny Williams last night when he was drunk? Did you visit the Oracle at Delphi? Since it's widely been acknowledged that the Sox are employing sabermetrics more than ever, lets take a look at Abreu and Vasquez and try and come to a logical conclusion regarding if "they will never trade Vasquez for Abreu". I won't go into why here, (try here: http://www.tangotiger.net/rc2.html") but OBP is the most important statistic for a hitter. It has been proven that getting on base is the single most important thing for a hitter to do as it produces the highest increase in expected runs. Moreso than average, moreso than slugging, moreso than OPS. Don't even mention RBI's please. Lets look at Abreu's OBP compared to the league average the past 3 years: .409--league: .334 .428 .343 .405 .349 Lets do some simple math to realize how much more valuable those percentages are. Compared to the avg MLB player, over 500 AB's a player with a .400 OBP will get on 200 times. A player with a .350 OBP will get on base 175 times. Now, suppose Jim Thome bats behind Abreu, he gets 25 more times to hit with a runner on. That is valuable. If look at Abreu's career statistics, they are quite good, wow, borderline HOF good. http://www.baseball-reference.com/a/abreubo01.shtml Moving on to Vasquez: the man is a victim of one stat he doesn't seem able to change: his G/F ratio. Vasquez has suffered mightily the past two seasons due to both bad luck and a bad G/F ratio. In MLB, fly balls go for homeruns roughtly 10 percent of the time. But the past two seasons fly balls became HR's 13 and 16 percent of the tiem for Vasquez. Before you hollar, "well isn't HR rate per fly something a pitcher can control?", let me point you here: http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/...eeks-ago/" But anyways, we all know flyballs go out at The Cell rather often, both empirically and through statistics, so when Vasques posts G/F ratio's like he has been, it's kinda scary: 2001 1.28 2002 0.94 2003 0.83 2004 0.85 2005 1.19 That aside, Javier is pretty damn good pitcher. His DIPS suggest he has been unlucky. It just scares me to see a fly ball picher at US Cellular. For these reasons, it wouldn't surprise me at all to see Vasquez in a package for Abreu.

The White Sox put the series away today 5-2 behind an 8 inning, 5 hit, 2 run performance from Jose Contreras. The Sox lost only two games all postseason, as the Marines and Angels were the only teams able to take a game from the Sox. Carl Everett finished the last two games an astouding 8-8, proving that even an old dinosaur can learn new tricks.

Yea, the hot stove is down to embers.

Thanks to Global Warming, winter and these mid 40's in January are going just fine. Yea, I got bored of stairing out the window about 3 minutes after game 4. Now I'm just waiting for spring impatiently. My Lions have sucked it up again, and the Bulls just aren't that exciting right now, call me back in March I guess.

I really don't think this is that bad that the Sox are going to have to bring one of these guys into be the LOOGY. I mean, one of them has to have put up decent enough career splits vs. Lefties to be a sufficient number 2lefty out of the 'pen. As long as Ozzie realizes that to be a LOOGY, you have to be able to get lefties out (and to only come in in "one out" situations!), none of these guys will have any significant impact on the season even if they perform at replacement level. The Bullpen might not be as good as last year, but than again the whole pitching staff figures to regress to the mean. But the offense is better, much better. That is the risk KW is taking, I figure it to be a good one.

I found it humorous, especially after I looked up Crosby's career OPS.

Dude, referencing BP for your argument, than arguing a player's defensive value is in "errors" is like being a SUV driving vegan: it's bonkers.

That's the thing about 3rd and 4th relievers: every year half of them "find their form" and half of them "lose their form". Middle relief guys like Marte are a dime a dozen (paging Cliff Politte and Dustin Hermanson), and getting rid of his high salary for Mackowiak was a coup for Kenny Williams and a good move for the Padres as well. Marte is a lefty, which raises his value somewhat, but the Sox already have Cotts and nobody should be paying an aging LOOGY with control problems 4 million a year, especially not a headcase that almost quit on the team. I bet Marte "finds his form" next year, and that will be fine with me. The Padres bullpen needed him much more than we did. The utility of the trade makes sense for both teams, as they needed a bullpen guy, we needed a versatile bench guy that provided some insurance in case Crede's back flairs up for a long stretch.

This forum is blowin up!

Alright, last question Rowand44, if I have anymore I'll take it to PM: Do you agree at all with sabermetrics?

I think it's generally assumed that Japan is the AAAA of baseball. Some have compared it to AAA+, meaning only slightly better than AAA. I have to agree with the more conservative estimate that Japan is just slightly above AAA. One reason more Japanese players don't come over is of course because the Japanese have estabilished the service rule and "bidding price" clause which discourages player movement.

What don't you like about them?

Yea, Jim Hendry is like the parent that buys his wild son an overpriced muscle car for his birthday only to see him crash it while the more efficient Honda sits in the garage. Fill in Hendry, Jaque Jones, Marquiss Grissom, and Dusty anywhere you want in the analogy. I suggest Hendry as parent, Dusty as son, and Jones and Grissom as the muscle car. I was going to suggest a cheap yet good youngster in the Cubs outfield for the Honda, but couldn't find one.