Greg Hibbard

QUOTE (WCSox @ Jul 28, 2009 -> 02:55 PM) Huh? Alexei is a full 5 years older than Beckham. And didn't he play pro ball in Cuba? I meant MLB experience. Yes, he's older obviously.

I think there's prospects like Josh Fields and Mike Caruso where they excel in aspects of their games, and you hope they can sustain themselves on their strengths, and then there's prospects like Frank Thomas and Mags Ordonez, where you realize quickly that they are above average to elite players at several aspects of this game and sit back and let em play. I think there's no reason to believe at this point Beckham doesn't fall into an area where he's much closer to the latter category. It would be one thing if his numbers were propped up by a huge amount of homers (like fields), or if he was taking advantages of intangibles, or some unlikely streak, but he's hitting to all fields, drawing walks, hitting for power, and showing good instincts. I'm not saying he's a hall of famer, but I think at this point the kid is a major league player and a very good one at that. Plus, Ramirez, in terms of experience is only a little bit older than Beckham...

I trust Beckham can handle anything we throw at him, at this point. The kid has shown he can handle pressure well. Until he slumps, I don't see a reason not to give him more and more responsibility until he shows signs of it affecting his batting average.

AJ seemingly swings at more first pitches than anyone else in our lineup. I always thought for that reason he was a terrible choice for a 2 hitter.

I know we don't want to throw too much at the rookie, but he seems much better suited to the 2-hole than Lexi, who has had a lot of trouble taking pitches at times. Beckham is more versatile and can draw the walk. beckham walks every 9 pas, ramirez every 13 pas.

The truth of the matter is that the team needs more offensive versatility, in my opinion. I think the more versatile young core and pitching staff is actually fine now. However, going forward we cannot continue to have 4 slow, plodding sluggers in the heart of the lineup, right or left handed. When they are hot, they are seemingly all hot, but lately it's either hot or cold, particularly because we are seemingly so dependent on the home run to score. check this out: http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/team/_/sort/doubles/order/true http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/team/_/sort/triples/order/true we are 28th in doubles and 25th in triples of all MLB teams. As you might expect, we are 5th in homers of all MLB teams. However, in the AL, we are just 9th in runs scored out of 14 teams, 9th in batting average, 8th in OBP and 9th in OPS. The truth is that homers just aren't scoring enough runs for us, and we need to make a change where we reconfigure away from having so many slower dh's on the team. We need to jettison either Thome or Dye after this season and bring in a more versatile .280ish hitter who can split the gaps and run at least a little, hopefully a lot to leg out some triples.

QUOTE (santo=dorf @ Jul 25, 2009 -> 10:43 AM) How many times did Thome not making an out extend the inning in which a run scored (not including Thome's run like you said)? I.E. Thome walking with two outs allows Konerko to single in the guy who was moved to second. Do people really want the Carl Everett route of not walking too much resulting in a whopping 87 RBI's out of the #3 spot? Frank Thoams was still a very effective DH when he was batting 30-50 points below his career average. Well that's all included in the second analysis I did. Thome's walked 11 times to eventually score himself, and 10 times to eventually score someone else (out of 59 total walks). Obviously, on friday both of his walks were with 2 outs and led to nada. It's that kind of statistic that I think may really be more meaningless to this team. Thome's walks with two outs overstate his OBP and thus overstate his value, when only 4/22 times have they resulted in either him scoring, a pinch runner scoring (the milwaukee game), or a runner on ahead of him scoring. So he walks the most with 2 outs, and usually the least happens. I don't want the Carl Everett route - I want people to recognize that versatility has value, and with Thome we have absolutely no versatility. I'd rather have a guy we could DH that could also play the field, could run a bit, and could also maybe hit some more singles and doubles at the expense of maybe not walking quite as much. Like I hinted at earlier, Thome seems feast or famine. One day we have 2 huge bombs and 7 RBI, and then we get a four-five game drought - in which he might draw a walk per game, but does not score or score anyone else, which keeps his stat line looking good. The OBP is impressive, especially considering his age, but I fear the top of his value is .260/.400/.500/.900 and to have that line with 17 bombs while only scoring 42 runs for the team seems a little bewildering, until you realize he's got almost absolutely no way of ever being on second or third base for the hitters behind him. One of the box scores I checked out even had Paulie doubling after a two-out Thome walk, which of course Jim was incapable of scoring on and eventually stranded.

this is where a walk from thome would be awesome

Wise is officially my favorite .202 player of all time.

QUOTE (santo=dorf @ Jul 24, 2009 -> 09:36 AM) Walk > not making an out. It's as simple as that. No, it's not that simple. Yes, of course walking is better than making an out, but I think everyone would agree that getting on base is only as valuable as how often it generates runs for you, and Thome's high OBP/OPS is misleading in terms of his Runs Created. It means nothing to your team if you take 20 two-out walks and are consistently stranded at first base because a) you can't run B) the offense behind you doesn't typically hit safely twice in a row. My entire point was to say that of the 150 points that are boosting his OBP/OPS, more than 2/3rds of the time, they are just sort of meaningless boosters, such as a two out bases empty walk. Check out the box scores - that happened probably 20 times. I'd almost rather have a guy who hits .300 and has a .350 OBP, especially if he's far more proficient at hitting doubles and can steal a base. Thome's MO is homer, walk, strikeout or occasionally lucky single through the shift. I don't think anyone would want to mess with the lineup this year, especially while everyone's running about as well as expected, but going forward, we do NOT need three slow dhs on this team and Thome is on schedule for the most precipitous decline even if he can be gotten for cheap.

Moose Skowren on the radio is absolutely brutal. I have no idea what the hell is going on from one moment to the next.

Ok, I dug a little deeper: Lance Berkman - 23 of 69 walks (exactly 1/3rd) either generated a run for his team by scoring himself or another player. He is a very similar player to thome in that he has a .270ish average with a .400 OBP and virtually no speed. Gonna find one more example.

QUOTE (YASNY @ Jul 23, 2009 -> 12:17 PM) Over one third of his walks ... wait, let me rephrase that ... we have scored more than a run per every three walks Thome has gotten. I don't think that is over stating the value at all. In fact, I believe you are understating that value. 1/3rd sounds impressive because we are talking about baseball statistics where a third is usually impressive...however, we would need to examine other players' statistics similarly to get an idea as to how much we should expect from the average player, no?

QUOTE (YASNY @ Jul 23, 2009 -> 11:33 AM) How many guys did his walks push up on the bases that actually did score? GREAT point, actually. Here are games where this occured (Thome did not score on these walks himself, but they were "productive walks"): 4/13 Sox 10 Det 6, Thome walks with no outs in the 3rd inning to push up Fields and Quentin, who score on a double by konerko after a dye k (Thome is out on a subsequent FC to home) 5/10 Tex 7, Sox 1, Thome walks after Dye gets on base to push him to second. Konerko GIDPs, Dye to third who scores on a two out wild pitch. 5/26 Sox 4, LAA 2, Thome walks with one out pushing Alexei to second, he scores on a Konerko single. 6/6 Sox 4, Cle 2, Thome walks with one out and Pods already at third, which allows Konerko to hit him in on a sac fly. 6/8 Det 5, Sox 4, Thome walks with one out to push up Pods and Dye, setting up a sac fly with one out. 6/9 Det 7, Sox 6, Thome walks with the bases loaded to "drive" in a run. 6/14 Sox 5, Mil 4, Thome pinch walks the go-ahead run in the ninth inning to win the game for the sox (Clayton Richard pinch runs!) 6/29 Sox 6, Cle 3, Thome walks with nobody out to push up two runners who eventually score while Thome is out on an FC. 7/1 Sox 6, Cle 2, Thome walks with two outs to extend an inning and pushing Alexei up. Konerko doubles home Ramirez, Thome is thrown out at home on the same play. 7/11 Sox 8, Twins 7, Thome walks with one out to push Dye to second, who then scores on a Konerko single. Total of 10 more walks. So Thome's "productive/run scoring" walk total is now up to 21/57, which I think still indicates that the value his walks/OBP/OPS have to the team might be overstated. Interesting to note that when Thome has one of these productive walks that he doesn't score on, the Sox are 7-3 in those games.

Jim has great stats in terms of OBP and OPS, but consider this...out of his 57 walks this season, he's only scored on 11 of them. So, how valuable are his walks, really? I bring up this point because his batting average is pretty low these days, and I don't think with the way the team is constructed, him walking with say 2 outs is particularly advantageous to the club, because of his station to station nature as well as the station to station nature of the heart of the order. Sure, in the bottom of the eighth or ninth when we can pinch run, it's useful. If his batting average were a bit higher, I'd say go for it, but it's likely to regress further, even if he continues to take walks. The walks that are propping up his OPS just aren't that useful. His RBI+R are And I love this man and would love to keep him...but realistically we need to get out after 2009.

You have to be f***ing kidding me. How does Wise over Anderson make any goddamned sense.

QUOTE (ChiSox420* @ Jul 18, 2009 -> 05:14 PM) Ball 4... Strike 3!!!!!! Serious LOLs. Dick Stockton is the new Pat Summerall. "....Something happened..."

thread probably needs to get locked at this point before it gets ugly

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two MLB network commentators also picked the Sox to win the division in their personal predictions - was really surprised to see that given how little national respect we are usually given.

Getz's OBP is around .314. I see him topping out as a .280/.330 type of player.

This team is actually a lot better than I thought they would be. I figured they would either be about 42-46 or 41-47, about 5 games out, or really bad, but that was partly based on their 15-22 start and partly based on the preseason makeup of the team. I did not expect that they would be over .500, but I expected they would be better than they were at 15-22. It seems as though they rebounded from playing about as bad as they could as a group early in the season, culminating in the Toronto four game sweep. Floyd was awful (peaked at 7.71 ERA in his loss at Toronto), and a lot of people were slumping. The bottom of our order from 6-9 was routinely then sub-.230 hitters comprised of Ramirez, Fields, Nix, Lillibridge, Getz, Betimet. Obviously a couple of those have straightened themselves out. Even Dye and Pierzynski's averages were down to the .260s and .270s while Pods was hitting about .270. The only guy really hitting well early in the season was Paulie. We had Wise leading off for christ's sake for a couple games. Just check out those @ Toronto box scores, because the team has really changed in a lot of ways since then. Two players have given me hope, both short term and long: Beckham and Floyd. Floyd has settled in really nicely, and finally won me over despite his peripherals because he really is a battler. I've gained a lot of respect for him in particular. Beckham was a move that was utterly desperate, because we really had no choice, but we caught lightening in a bottle seemingly and I hope it works out. Either way, this team has become fun to watch again - because they are exciting. If we have 4 solid pitchers, and if Colon can fake it a la El Duque for the rest of the season, we should be in this thing and capable of finishing with 84ish wins. That honestly might be enough. More encouraging is that I think I'm finally seeing where the reshaping of this team is going longterm, and I like it. I'm in favor of standing pat because I want to keep and develop our young core as our sluggers age, and I don't want to give up anything in the minors for an aging player who is less versatile.

That surface has injured so many f***ing people needlessly, in both baseball and football games. I almost want to attend the implosion and cheer.

we just pitchensively indiffered that game.

getz defensively indiffered second.