Greg Hibbard

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 4, 2010 -> 12:23 PM) From a purely baseball standpoint based entirely on his numbers and ignoring marketing/revenue/fans good will...he's probably been overpaid by a couple million dollars per year. Think of it this way...if you had predicted that 1 Konerko would be hurt most of 2007 and his numbers would take a giant nose-dive, and 2. The housing market was going to implode and make a large dent in sports revenues in the 2008-2009 offseasons, you'd judge that Konerko probably was overpaid in 3 of the 5 years of that deal. On the other hand, I don't see how you can be really that angry with the deal. It seems on any team right now, you need to have at least a selection of veteran players who are paid somewhat above value...with the sole goal of filling in holes that develop if you fail to draft someone to fill that hole or if the guy you have drafted busts. Compare it to our CF slot the last 4 years...Since 2006, that's been a black hole of offense. To get offense there, we've had to sacrifice defense. Finally, we've put someone there who can both hit and field, but we're paying what is likely a premium price for it. Our 1b slot seems likely to have been a similar hole the last 4 years if we didn't have PK14 there. Oh sure, we could have put Gload there or signed someone or made a trade, but none of those are really appealing options, and the 1b we've brought up through the minors in that time haven't really reached the big leagues yet (Allen, Carter) even though they were traded off. This post sums up exactly why I think it's an interesting debate. I don't know how you can be angry with Paulie essentially missing 30 games over 4+ years of the deal due to injury, when his BA, OBA and OPS are right in line with his career stats. Essentially, he gave you what you expected him to, on average. And yet, it does seem like he's overpaid, for some reason.

Obviously, Konerko has been on such a hot tear (maybe the hottest month of his career?) that it seems as though he's primed for at least a decent year, barring a Dye-esque fade into oblivion. Hopefully. his stats over the life of his current contract: AB 2183 H 599 BA .274 OBA .357 SLG .505 OPS .862 HR 128 (34 per 162 games played) BB 279 (75 per 162 games played) 2B 117 (31 per 162 games played) I'd love to pick the forum's brain on what kind of value everyone thinks the Sox got out of him for his $60 million deal, in both of these two scenarios: 1) Konerko has a good-great year with .280+/40+ HR (and ends with an .855-.860+ OPS over the life of the deal) 2) Konerko fades a bit and has something like a .260/30-35 HR year (and ends around a .840-.850 OPS over the life of the deal)

Most important: at least splitting those two game series with each of the two teams ahead of them, because each game has an effective two game swing 2nd most important: at least staying within 5-6 games of the leaders 3rd most important: at least staying within a couple to a few games below .500 My own opinion: this 14 game stretch could completely define the season if it's either 9-5 or better or 5-9 or worse.

oh is this gonna be one of those "tip your cap" games if so, hopefully we can set some sort of record for consecutive easy grounders to third

QUOTE (Jenksy Cat @ Apr 26, 2010 -> 09:27 AM) But that argument is still sketchy. Of course PK/TCQ hit well when they are hitting HR's. Hitting HR's is usually an indicator of doing at least something right in the box, I wouldn't expect a .150 hitting TCQ to be hitting bombs left and right. It all comes down to this really: if you honestly believe Alexei, AJ, Pierre, TCQ, and Beckham are going to hit ~.200 for the season, then theres nothing to convince you otherwise. But if you realize that these guys are all healthy, not coming off the juice, and are not old (save for AJ) yet...they will eventually get around their career numbers in which case you just hope the 4 guys actually hitting remain hot. I don't believe those five are going to stay that cold all season. However, to be fair, we have basically one good full season each upon which we are projecting success for Q, Beckham and Ramirez. I also don't believe Jones and Konerko will continue to hit 300 points above their career OPS and Teahen will continue to hit 150 above his.

I'm already sensing I'm gonna get roasted for this entire seires of posts, but I guess I am being pretty nebulous about "approach" It would seem as if based on their stats, Quentin and Konerko are the types of guys who go real well as long as they are hitting a lot of homers, and who really don't if they aren't. Relying on that as a significant part of a 2010 team approach to our offense seems dubious at best. Jones seems to be this way too, especially at this point in his career - 2005-2007 (which were decent-good years for him - including that 51 homer season) his BABIP was in the .240-.264 range. I shudder to think what his results will be when he can't hit 10 homers a month. Additionally, it would seem as though a couple of our contact hitters are lost up there, i.e. their head is just nowhere near where it needs to be. I guess that's more of an individual approach. This is more frightening to me, because so many of them seem to have the exact same illness that no one can effectively diagnose other than "they'll come out of it based on career numbers". How do you explain a 2003 Konerko with this sentiment in mind? So if 1/3rd of our lineup is great as long as its hitting homers (jones, quentin, konerko) if 1/3rd of our lineup is great as long as they are making contact (pierre, beckham, rios) and 1/3rd of our lineup is filled with question marks nobody seems to have good answers to (ramirez and pierzynski are going inexplicably really bad, teahen going well but is a huge question mark longterm) I'm trying to figure out over a baseball season exactly how this lineup, seemingly hanging on by a thread, clicks over an extended period of time. Maybe I just have unrealistic expectations. I was extremely afraid that as constructed, the team was offensively thin and one-dimensional. It seems even more that way looking at the stats. It's sad, because I think this team is exactly one impact bat away from being a true contender.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 25, 2010 -> 09:30 PM) And we could easily be 15-4 if our hitters had been even near their career norms. God people, enjoy yourselves when times are good. And we could be 4-15 or 8-11 or 11-8 or 15-4 if our hitters were hitting the cover off the ball and our pitching staff was pitching about as bad as imaginable. Literally any alternate universe could yield any result. So what? I'm glad we got the wins. If it's the powder keg that lights off a season full of memories, I will gladly eat crow. I think the point stands that we won despite a continued s***ty approach to offense that has been generally proven to be utterly unsustainable in terms of long term success. It's unimaginable, but our dependence on the home run in terms of winning is seemingly worse than ever. For those who think I'm being too pessimistic, if we had lost two of three close well-played games featuring a more varied offensive approach I probably would have felt better about turning this thing around over the course of the season. I'm trying not to be results-oriented because in the short term, results are all over the map. In the long run, our offense, if the overall approach is left unchanged, will not succeed.

Again, I'll take the wins. I can see positives - I'm psyched about Danks and particularly Garcia. This team is in big, big trouble offensively, especially when they go on the road to a bigger ballpark.

I can't recall a three game sweep on the winning side where the White Sox have looked worse. I'll take being 8-11, and I hope we can hang around .500 until we can get something fixed with this offense, but this is still a dreadful team with the bat. Homer or nothing. In any park like Comerica you might as well put a zero up on the board.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 22, 2010 -> 10:55 AM) I can't believe how many people feel this team is "irrelevant", "done", "sucks", or whatever adjective you want to use, yet are still here obsessing about it. Why waste your time? Because all of us have invested a lot of time and energy into this franchise, and such a reaction is perfectly natural. If we can't obsess here, then what's the point of message boards devoted to the fanaticism of a professional sports team?

remember when Oakland used to leadoff Hatteberg? Those were the days.

4/20. Danks vs. Price. You couldn't script it any better than that LOL.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Apr 19, 2010 -> 03:43 PM) And the other common factors were how good the 2005 and 2008 bullpens were...that's one of the underestimated areas, but there's always a correlation. Remember all the problems auditioning about 10-15 LHR in spring training, and NONE of them worked out, except Javier Lopez, who we traded to the Red Sox for some reason? I'm sure along with overall team ERA, you'll see an inverse relationship (is that the right term, lol?) with the bullpen results (and lack thereof) for 2005-2009. In 2008, if my math is correct, the Sox's starters ERA and bullpen ERA were nearly identical (4.08 and 4.01 respectively)

Year/Team BABIP/Home Run Total/Runs Scored/Team ERA/Win Total 2009/.285/184/724/4.14/79 2008/.281/235/811/4.06/89 2007/.278/190/693/4.77/72 (not surprising) 2006/.305/236/868/4.61/90 2005/.285/200/741/3.61/99 I think this pretty much tells the whole story. In 2008 and 2009 they had similar team ERA, but hit so many more homers in 2008 that it essentially gave them 10 more wins. In 2005, the team pitched its ass off and it's the only way it was able to ultimately compensate for its corpseball alter-ego. So, either we have to hit 200+ jacks or pitch to a 3.5 ERA all season.

They will definitely trend back to a more realistic number, but the real question is whether having one of the worst BABIP's has affected our win total in 2007, 2008 and 2009.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Apr 19, 2010 -> 02:36 PM) Pods overachieved last year, his career BABIP was .322 heading into last year and he overachieved it by nearly 19 points. You simply can't make player decisions based on BABIP. It's not a stat that's a deciding factor for much of anything. It just tells you what type of hitter the player is and sometimes, how lucky or unlucky he was due to sample size disparity. The point is that his CAREER babip is .322.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Apr 19, 2010 -> 01:45 PM) This would seem pretty obvious. This team is built around power. Power hitters usually have very low BABIPs since they hit more fly balls than anything else and fly balls are the least likely to yield a hit other than a home run. You'd think so, but I'll bet there are also a few low BABIP players who just hit a ton of weak grounders. here's an example http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playe...amp;position=OF here's another example of a guy maybe we made the wrong decision with in the offseason, based on his BABIP http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playe...amp;position=OF

http://www.southsidesox.com/2010/4/19/1430141/babip-math I looked for this elsewhere (sorry if I missed it), and was originally going to post this in the catch all, but I think it's just too big of an issue and deserves its own thread, especially since the article seems to indicate it's a 3+ year ongoing thing. When identifying offensive players, the article would seem to suggest that we are overlooking BABIP in favor of oversimplifying our needs based on stats like OPS. Since 2007, we have been near last in the category of BABIP, and the article further suggests that it's not possible that we are just "unlucky" over the course of three seasons, that's there's basically a 3% chance that living outside of the norm can be atributed to "luck". The poster child for a stat like this is Paul Konerko, whose career BABIP is .281. The league average BABIP is between .290 and .300. This is a guy who hits enough home runs, certainly has a high enough OBA, and seems to have a batting average and slg about where it should be. However, he's apparently not hitting enough "plain old hits" and that's what the white sox need more of. http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playe...amp;position=1B Surprisingly, Carlos Quentin also has an extremely low BABIP over the course of his career thus far, despite a fine OPS. http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playe...amp;position=OF Ironically, a guy like Alex Rios will allegedly help us in our cause (he has a way above average career BABIP).

we might give up 30 today

for the record, whenever the first "IN OR OUT???" thread is posted, put me down for OUT. This team is just so far away on so many levels.

as of first pitch today, 2nd best in home runs in the AL, 2nd to last in AVG. 20% of our hits have been home runs.

How are we on Inherited Runners Scored?

I have a road grey Josh Fields #22 jersey.

It is amazing to me that this team 3-5 with a team OPS under .700.

might as well have some fun with this lineup.