Greg Hibbard

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Jul 23, 2008 -> 04:09 PM) Yeah they won today... so let's not worry about it. yep - no point in discussing anything as long as they won today mods, plz shut the whole board down k thx

in GIDP. No other team is even frickin close to 7 players of the top 64, obviously I can't recall how many times this season I've said "please strike out so you don't GIDP" unf***ingreal

Seriously I want Cox at least answering for himself in the locker room after this game. That was one of the most bone-headed decisions I've ever seen in a baseball game

QUOTE (Gregory Pratt @ Jul 16, 2008 -> 01:54 PM) The bold is false. False from Lefty Gomez to Whitey Ford, from Bob Gibson to Juan Marichal, from Chief Bender to Don Drysdale, Candy Cummings Catfish Hunter to Mordecai Brown to Jim Bunning to Jack Chesbro to Stan Coveleski. And that's just off the top of my head. Hell, a few of these guys have less than 200 wins. As for Andy Pettitte, he is not particularly deserving if the standard is true greatness that very few have ever reached, like Ruth or Walter Johnson, but that is not the standard nor has it ever been since the first election. If you want proof of pitchers who do not belong in the Hall but made it anyway because they were Yankees in the playoffs and very good then you can look at Gomez and Ford. For what it's worth, Pettitte wouldn't be the worst Hall of Famer but that is neither here nor there at the moment. People seem to believe that you have to win 300 and strikeout 3000 or something but that simply is not true. Hmm you are very correct sir. I've always been told you had to have 300 wins to get in, and assumed it was true given four man rotations in the 70s and pitchers having 33+ decisions a year.

QUOTE (whitesoxfan99 @ Jul 16, 2008 -> 01:43 PM) Pedro is a stone cold lock for the hall of fame. Best pitcher of this generation. Arguably the best of all time I pretty much agree he's one of the best, but Santana has been as dominant over the last five years as Pedro was from 1997-2002.

QUOTE (Gregory Pratt @ Jul 16, 2008 -> 01:23 PM) I mean, it doesn't take 300 wins to make the Hall of Fame. Andy Pettitte, for instance, is going to go in eventually, if not as a voters' choice then by the veteran's committee in several decades. Why? He's money in the postseason and a big-name ballplayer from this era. Buehrle has a good chance of getting in some day, but he has to keep his ERA below a certain mark -- 3.8? -- and have a lot of really good years for a lot of years. But the whole point is that so far it DOES take 300 wins, at least at this point, to get into the hall...and I'd be surprised if they dipped lower than 250 as a benchmark... Pettitte is not a hall of fame pitcher IMO. He has a career 1.35 WHIP, and the 200+ wins he does have are mostly because he almost exclusively played on excellent teams. He was never particularly dominant, just very good. On the Yankees he mostly had an ERA in the low 4's - while winning 17-19 games per season because they scored 6+ runs a game for him.

Here's something else to chew on - Johan Santana is the same age as Buehrle and has 12 less wins. Even if he wins 20 games per season over the next 7 seasons, he's STILL short of 250. In fact, there aren't many active starting pitchers around Buehrle's age that have comparable win/ERA totals. http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/W_active.shtml notables: 1. Greg Maddux (42) 350 wins - hall of famer 2. Tom Glavine* (42) 305 wins - hall of famer 3. Randy Johnson* (44) 290 wins - hall of famer 4. Mike Mussina (39) 261 wins - probably a hall of famer 5. Jamie Moyer* (45) 238 wins - no 6. Kenny Rogers* (43) 216 wins - maybe in the country music hall of fame Curt Schilling (41) 216 wins - wow is this enough wins? I would've thought he had more. 8. Pedro Martinez (36) 212 wins - too injury prone to end up with enough wins? 9. Andy Pettitte* (36) 211 wins - no 10. John Smoltz (41) 210 wins - yes, because of his saves too 11. Tim Wakefield (41) 174 wins - no 12. Bartolo Colon (35) 150 wins - ha 13. Aaron Sele (38) 148 wins - no 14. Tim Hudson (32) 144 wins - potentially 15. Livan Hernandez (33) 143 wins - no Steve Trachsel (37) 143 wins - hell no 17. Kevin Millwood (33) 139 wins - no 18. Tom Gordon (40) 138 wins - no 19. Woody Williams (41) 132 wins - no 20. Jon Lieber (38) 131 wins - no 21. Jason Schmidt (35) 128 wins - no 22. Esteban Loaiza (36) 126 wins - no 23. Hideo Nomo (39) 123 wins - no Jeff Suppan (33) 123 wins - no, but who knew he had this many wins 25. Roy Halladay (31) 122 wins - potentially yes, if he doesn't get injured Javier Vazquez (31) 122 wins - probably way too inconsistent to last 27. Matt Morris (33) 121 wins - no 28. Derek Lowe (35) 119 wins - no Roy Oswalt (30) 119 wins - potentially yes 30. Freddy Garcia (33) 117 wins - LOLZ Chan Ho Park (35) 117 wins - LOLZ part II Barry Zito* (30) 117 wins - LOLZ part III - apparently 117 is the funny number 33. Mark Buehrle* (29) 113 wins - see above discussion 34. Russ Ortiz (34) 110 wins - no 35. C.C. Sabathia* (27) 108 wins - potentially 36. Mark Mulder* (30) 103 wins - no 37. Kelvim Escobar (32) 101 wins - no Johan Santana* (29) 101 wins - obv has the potential 39. Paul Byrd (37) 100 - no Chris Carpenter (33) 100 - no Shawn Estes* (35) 100 wins - no Jon Garland (28) 100 wins - hmmmm lol 43. Jarrod Washburn* (33) 97 wins - no 44. Darren Oliver* (37) 96 wins - no 45. Brett Tomko (35) 95 wins - no 46. Brad Penny (30) 93 wins - no Jeff Weaver (31) 93 wins - no 48. Carlos Zambrano (27) 92 wins - has the potential 49. Orlando Hernandez (42) 90 wins - no 50. Miguel Batista (37) 88 wins - no 51. Matt Clement (33) 87 wins - no Eric Milton* (32) 87 wins - no Sidney Ponson (31) 87 wins - no 54. Josh Beckett (28) 86 wins - potentially 55. John Lackey (29) 85 wins - no 56. Ramon Ortiz (35) 84 wins - no Julian Tavarez (35) 84 wins - no Randy Wolf* (31) 84 wins - no 59. Ted Lilly* (32) 83 wins - no Jake Peavy (27) 83 wins - has the potential So there's your top 60 active leaders, the ones in bold are the potential hall of famers from Buehrle's age range. There's only 11 candidates bolded from the ages of 27-33

QUOTE (Vance Law @ Jul 15, 2008 -> 08:16 PM) Yes comparison. Buehrle would need to become Moyer to have any shot at the Hall. Soft-tossing lefty who stays around well into his 40s. No, there really is no comparison. Moyer was always a mediocre pitcher who relied on longevity and junk balls. Buehrle is much more comparable to Greg Maddux in style and composition. Buehrle isn't even 30 yet and has 113 wins. Assuming he gets 4 more wins this season (which is a pretty safe assumption) he'll have 117 wins before the age of 30. Considering Mark is remarkably durable and reasonably consistent, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to think he'll have 100 more wins over the next 7 years (14 per year) That would put him at 217 at the age of 37. Assuming that 250 is the new hall benchmark, I don't see where "well into his forties" comes into play when by the age of 40 at 14 per season he'd be past 250...

So the stats of Konerko's past 70 games mean more to you than the 1500 games of his career? I don't get it - this guy is the definition of a high-variance hitter and in every year but one in his career he's averaged out over the course of a season to be well above average. The season that he's injured suddenly he's totally worthless and has absolutely no future. Seriously, take a step back and think about this for a second. It makes very little sense to abandon Konerko at this point. Three weeks from now, sure.

walk #12 - walked and scored walk #13 - walked, was pinch run for, pinch runner scored walk #14 - stranded at third after leadoff walk, flyout, subsequent walk, a throwing error moving him to third, and then two popouts. Not sure if speed impacted this one but given the description I doubt it. walk #15 - walked, was stranded at third after a couple of fcs (bases were constantly loaded with speedy Thome ahead of him) walk #16 - walked with 2 outs, JD strikes out. walk #17 - walked, was pinch run for (anderson), two more walks, ozuna GIDPs with the bases loaded to end the game (this was that toronto game) walk #18 - two out walk, JD makes third out (AGAIN) should I keep going or are we getting the picture this "clogging up the basepaths" argument is sort of bulls*** in my opinion

looking at the play by play for each result of Konerko's first eleven walks of the season, there's absolutely no impact that his speed has on the result. In most cases, the player behind him made the third out of the inning (usually JD). He only scored 1 time out of the first eleven, but in all cases this wasn't the result of him being slow. If anything I challenge you to find an instance where Konerko walked and hindered the team somehow due to his speed.

QUOTE (shipps @ Jul 11, 2008 -> 01:44 PM) PK is the slowest individual in baseball.I cant think of anyone even close to him.EDIT:I dont know how you got me completely bashing PK but its your fault Hibbard. Ok but honestly how does this impact his ability to run from first to second on a single to right? Is he being thrown out by the right fielder? No, obviously not. Plenty of guys (Matt Stairs, Frank Thomas, I could name about 50 others) are station to station on the basepaths - but we don't reduce the value of their offensive statistics because they're slow. Why the double standard? Konerko isn't THAT much slower. How many times has he been thrown out at home this season from second on a single? Let's take this box score for example, the second game of the season. Konerko is 0 for 1 with 3 BBs. This is honestly just the first game I clicked on, I'll look at more right now. http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/playbyplay?gameId=280402105 In the second inning, any other station to station ballplayer (like the aforementioned examples) would've played out in an identical fashion. Obviously anyone who goes from first to third might have scored, but that's not Paul's game nor the players like Paul (who nobody discriminates against their OPS for their speed). In the 4th, Konerko walks with 2 outs and then JD grounds out. In the 8th, Konerko walks with 2 outs to load the bases and then JD strikes out.

QUOTE (shipps @ Jul 11, 2008 -> 01:31 PM) Iam strictly talking about 07' to 08'.First off its not exactly the top 25% of all hitters in OPS it would be closer to the top 35 to 40%.Secondly you just cant take Konerko's OPS numbers as seriously because he is even worse than a station to station guy,he is not productive when he gets on base and he clogs them up more than anything.You might as well throw OPS out the window with him IMO. so what you're basically saying is it's Paul's fault the hitters behind him don't drive him in. Ok. Paul is no more a liability on the basepaths than any numbers of slow fatasses in the league such as Jason Giambi or anyone else.

QUOTE (shipps @ Jul 11, 2008 -> 12:55 PM) Thats all fine and dandy but those stats dont indicate how many times you and I both yelled "f***ing Konerko!Cant come through again!",for the past year and a half.And you know its true. First of all, I'll be the first to say Konerko has been very frustrating this season, which is why I did a lot of analysis to see if I thought he's worth keeping because my knee jerk reaction was also to make a change. However, last season - he was about 10th or 11th on the list of things I was most frustrated by. In fact, I can't say I was particularly bothered by his production last season, even though I know it took somewhat of a hit. I was much more focused on the lack of an overall direction for this organization in general. In 2007, his .841 OPS puts him 62nd out of 216 MLB hitters with 400 or more plate appearances. That puts him basically in the top 25% of all hitters - in what we're considering a "down" year. And the reason why we're considering it a "down year" is because the previous 2 seasons, Konerko's OPS was in the top 27 of all of baseball both seasons (again, min 400 plate appearances) - in the top 12% of all hitters. In 2004 he was 33rd in OPS with the same constraints - again in the top 15 percentile. That's a pretty f***ing awesome four year run. Over the four year period 2004-2007, you'd be hardpressed to find a more productive hitter. Certainly Pujols and ARod, possibly Bonds...but who else? I can think of maybe 4 or 5 hitters who had similar or better cumulative stats in terms of OPS, total homers and RBI. And yet 65 games in, playing almost all the games through a hand injury, people want to CUT or TRADE this guy? Unbelievable.

QUOTE (shipps @ Jul 11, 2008 -> 12:40 PM) Disappointing shouldnt be in quotes because by his standards it WAS disappointing.Baseball is a patient sport that gives you many opportunities to get back on track so it stands out big time when you cant get your s*** together in a matter of a year and a half.Ask Richie Sexon. Konerko's OPS last year was .841 His OPS in 2000 - which many would categorize as a "good" season in which he hit .280 - was .844. His OPS in 2001 - another "good" season in which he hit over .290 - was .856 in 2002 - he batted .304 with an .857 OPS. Those are very comparable. If we can all agree that OPS is a pretty good measure of offensive production, last season the only difference was his average took somewhat of a hit compared to those other "good" seasons while his power numbers were up.

QUOTE (shipps @ Jul 11, 2008 -> 12:11 PM) For the record I just wanna say that Iam not saying the Sox should trade Konerko.But this mentality going around this team of totally dismissing bad performance because what they did two and three years ago drives me crazy.There should be some type of consequence for not doing your job,maybe you should sit for a game or a week.Put the players in that are going to get it done that day and stop nurturing their fragile egos. This guy just sat for 4 weeks. After a reasonable sample size of games after a long layoff (not 3), we can probably get a sense of whether or not this is rust or if he just doesn't have it right now. Probably after 10-12 games. Btw, this is not based on what he did 2-3 years ago. This is base on what this guy has done nearly every year over the last 8 years of his major league career. Even last year's "disappointing" .259 campaign was still a relatively productive season.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jul 11, 2008 -> 11:23 AM) If your OBP is in the low 300s and you're expected to produce RBI (which is a meaningless stat in and of itself, because even if you're slugging you need runners to bat in), you can't do that if your OBP is walk-driven as opposed to average-driven. If it was in the high 300s, approaching .400, I'd consider that acceptable because while you might not be hitting, you're keeping rallies going. Paulie isn't doing that right now. He's basically Juan Uribe right now, and while I don't condone the overreactions, I can totally understand the frustration. Ok, but he's NOT Juan Uribe. Uribe hits in the low 200s and has a mid 200s OBP, which is a significantly worse clip. That's a much worse player in my opinion. Paul's a very streaky player on the very low end of what we can expect production wise from him over a half of a season. Also, consider that he's a career .291 hitter in July, .297 in August and .305 in September. Granted, he's never dealt with injuries like this before, but typically as the weather heats up so does Paul. Like I said, I'd give him until July 25th to straighten it out and then bench him then.

I mean PK is hitting about as bad as he conceivably could over this much of the season, mostly through an injury, and taking all that into account he's still getting on base at a .320 clip. If anything, I think that says something good about him.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jul 11, 2008 -> 11:16 AM) There's nearly 100 points difference in batting average, and Ramirez is a much better defender at a more important position. Alexei is also not a 3-4-5 hitter, either. I realize that, but I don't think anyone in this thread has pointed out before that PK's OBP is really not that far away from a lot of other players on this team, which still gives him value in this lineup. Do we want him walking every at bat? Obviously not, but if he's getting on base at the same clip as a lot of our other players, I don't see how he's a total liability.

Btw - Konerko's OBP - .319 A. Ramirez's OBP - .326 think about it.

I half expected a loss going into last night. I agree with the sentiment that you're going to lose some road games, even to some bad teams. Also, given that the sox have been so damned hot recently, we were due for a loss like this. Remember, even 100 game winning teams lose 40 percent of their games. If we win 2/3 in texas I'd call the trip a total success. Bear in mind this team had a really prolonged road losing streak and it's not like that was going to just suddenly do a 180 - you don't win every game on the road. Most teams are just happy to approach .500.

I'd give him until that 7 game road trip through detroit and minnesota to straighten this out and then I'd bench him if he's still not performing - those 7 games are just too important to f*** around with.

twins have a brutal stretch in the second half where they play 23/29 on the road starting August 21st - featuring a 4 game set at tampa and a 10 game west coast swing including 4 games at LAA. If they go .500 during that stretch it will be a bloody miracle.

a split of the series with the tigs winning the first two would be just about perfect.

it's just hard to believe that even with the insane 18-1/19-3 what-have-you runs Min and Det had that we still have the best record over the last 50 games.