Balta1701

Bah, some of the best rookies turn out to be nothing and some of the best players in baseball struggle as rookies. His bat could be excellent and he could still struggle next year and be so bad that he winds up back in Charlotte midseason replaced by Hamilton, and that wouldn’t necessarily mean his career was on an odd path. But the white Sox can’t afford him to have any issues, which is the problem.

Texans have the 7-8 Jaguars who are leading their division next week and the 4-12-1 Colts in week 17. Bears have the 7-8 Lions who are 1 game out of a playoff spot and the Vikings who have a playoff spot clinched but who are currently 1 game ahead of the 49ers for the 2 seed.

There is not a single defensive play on there? Did you go back to talking about a different subject?

This is the stuff we old dudes first used when we were trying to figure out how to express defensive performance in some terms that can be quantified.

You’re taking it as those these are statcast stats. If those are available for minor leaguers I don’t know where to get them. This is literally “number of balls fielded divided by number of innings times 9”. That’s something that is available to everyone and that I can compare from one level to another. Other things do influence it, but a major portion of that is correlated to a guys actual range in the OF, so even for minor leaguers where I don’t know how to look up statcast numbers I can look this up readily and get moderately useful information about his range.

If a team is truly wildly overpaying for a closer I’d imagine the Guardians would get in on that action.

While it’s not perfect for reasons I will note, we do have one way of estimating his range, his RF - range factor, the number of balls he gets to over 9 innings. This is not a true modern stat but it does allow some comparisons. For example, when Robert came up, he was at 2.8 (I’m being lazy and not doing the last significant figure). Last year when he was no longer an elite fielder he was down to 2.4. Aaron Judge played some CF as a fill in last year. He was at 2.3. He was at 2.1 when he played the corner spot. Andrew Vaughn last year was at 1.8. Now, fewer balls go to the corner than to CF, so you can’t compare exactly from one position to another but we can tell that’s bad because we saw Vaughn last year. Colas last year was at 2-2.1 in his time in CF and 1.9-2 when he played RF. When Garcia was in CF for the 2020 Brewers, his was 1.7. Now for all the caveats. This is not a statcast number, more things can affect it than just a guys range. A team that gives up more fly balls will push this higher, more strikeouts and ground balls will push it lower. Defensive positioning will affect it and so poor coaches can push it downwards. Maybe the White Sox had ground ball pitchers at multiple levels and bad coaches and bad scouting. However, that number was pretty consistent across multiple levels, which would argue that it’s difficult to be dominated by pitching or coaching. This also doesn’t take into account throwing arm, and it doesn’t take into account how many errors the guy makes, all of which affect his total defense. If his number was 2.9, I’d be giving all the same caveats but also saying he may have the tools of an elite OF. But it’s at the other end, so again given all those caveats, but this doesn’t suggest he’s likely to be a very good CF. Likely he’s got more range than Vaughn and maybe a strong throwing arm makes him a really good RF, but for what I have to work with, this suggests he would not be a guy we want to rely on in CF. Maybe he can be an emergency CF and play there a couple games when Robert is out and Sheets is the only backup OF on the roster, but this suggests using him there long term during a Robert injury could be a bad strategy.

The other possibility is that they aren’t willing to do that until they move payroll somewhere else and that’s why we heard another surge of Hendriks talk this week.

Not saying they won’t or can’t, but it is worth noting that doing so may well push their payroll higher than last year (Duvall almost certainly).

We heard that Avisail Garcia could play CF and Andrew Vaughn could play LF from the same team sources. There should be more skepticism here.

The best answer is maybe? Right now if Robert went down for a stretch, presumably you have a 4 man outfield of Hamilton/Reyes/Colas/Benintendi and you figure out based on matchups. Not sure if Colas is survivable there, you can probably live with Benintendi there for a few games but nothing more. No that doesn’t feel like a championship plan.

What’s sorta ironic is that if he didn’t think this organization was terribly run to the point that getting be away from them is worth millions of dollars to them, AJ Pollock would actually have made sense.

I don’t know if they’re going to go with the replacements they signed, but I’d say that someone who can legitimately fill in as a CF would be quite important as well. Not only do you have to assume Robert will miss some time, but boy it would be nice to be proactive in resting him rather than playing him every day until he winds up with a grade 2 sprain.

How dare you guys suggest that Kimbrel is anything other than the best reliever in baseball. Nothing I said in the last year was more outrageous than that.

You’ll be in the Finger Lakes area of upstate New York. Tons of parks and outdoor spots, lots of waterfalls. Within driving distance of a neat glass museum in Corning NY, could drive to the Poconos or Syracuse or the lakefront.

Worth noting that on his Twitter feed she shared a made up George Soros quote about controlling people as bravely telling the truth, and the White Sox owner who just got a humanitarian award might now be the sort who takes kindly to antisemitic Twitter rumor mongering.

I don’t think they’re going to risk everything else they’re trying to do for this. Isn’t Cohen also trying to get a gambling license with considerable competition, meaning he needs politicians on his side? https://nypost.com/2022/12/19/mets-owner-steve-cohen-seeks-queens-input-while-eyeing-casino-bid/amp/

Yes, but it does not make the pitcher go away if we do it.

Kasper and DJ have a decent set of discussions but I do miss the modern perspective of Benetti. One thing I’ve noticed with Kasper though is he still announces like he’s on TV. He won’t give all the details about a play as though I just watched it, but since it’s radio I didn’t see anything, so I wind up waiting for them to double back and reexplain it or trying to check Gameday to figure it out. This happens fairly regularly.

All your 1b are belong to the Outfield.

The Mets do have a surplus of shortstops...

Go for it then. Is "Eloy + Hendriks for Alvarez" a deal you think is fair to the Mets? Tell me why. I think it's insanely overvaluing White Sox players.

What awful overpay trades have they made? C'mon folks. If they were willing to move both those guys, they can get WAY better. Eloy + Hendriks alone doesn't get you Alvarez, it doesn't even get you in the ballpark, and no their GM isn't an idiot.

No, but people started with the "adding Eloy is an overpay" and "Maybe if they dropped McNeil it would be fair" stuff and that is way way way way way way way way way way way overvaluing White Sox players.