Greg Hibbard

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 5, 2011 -> 07:52 AM) I don't think anyone's assigned the "Most" blame to the easily replaceable guy. You say that like this site hasn't come down hard on Pierre, Dunn, Rios constantly. If Ozzie Guillen is losing games and his team isn't responding to him, then he shouldn't be here. There are decisions Guillen has made that other managers would not have made that are directly responsible for wins (sticking with Pierre when everyone wanted his head, and then he hits three GW hits) I'm having trouble identifying a single example in which Adam Dunn won this team a game.

So we're assigning the most blame to what's most easily replaceable? Oh, I see.

Why not pick 9 games where Dunn struck out with men on Why not pick 9 games that Rios went 0 for 4 Why not pick 9 games that Pierre sucked Why not pick 9 games that the bullpen blew in April Why not pick 9 games that were lost to injury lots of ways to blame everyone for this season

After the last three weeks, I finally think Ozzie needs to go, regardless of this season's outcome. The distraction is just too much. I'll stop short of name-calling out of respect for what he has provided this organization.

We had a very vague comment from Mark Teahen that turned into an umpteen page thread about Oney's subsequent twitter-tirades. Now, we have a stickied response from a player's wife regarding derogatory comments made by Oney. I believe that positive things came out of that thread, and I think Lauren Teahen has shown herself to be a strong, dynamic woman who won't take any s*** (good for you). However, there's a larger lesson in this. Can the focus on Oney Guillen please end? When we talk about Oney Guillen, he is the only one who wins. He is obviously not in this thing for anything but attention. He has added nothing of anything value to this organization from a baseball standpoint. He is a truly pathetic excuse for an adult. However, we are fanning the flames. If we all truly believe that this organization needs to get back to having two eyes on the baseball field, let's have the fans here at soxtalk lead by example. We are renowned as some of the most knowledgeable and passionate fans in baseball. Let's add to that reputation, rather than the reputation a lot of other organizations have.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jul 30, 2011 -> 11:21 AM) 7-29 isn't quite 14-2 To put that in perspective, the Red Sox would have to go 5-15 over the next 2-3 seasons head-to-head to equal our level of ineptitude in the face of the Amazon River Contagion/Quarantine Team. Most White Sox fans probably don't even realize our streak vs. the Red Sox is that good, but they have no trouble reciting by memory how terrible we are vs. the Twins. I know you think they are different. The Red Sox are a much better team than the Twins, and it's very surprising we've had that level of success over 16 games vs. them.

The White Sox have apparently won 7 in a row against the red sox and 14/16...certainly an anomalous streak when it comes to head to head play not unlike that Twins/Sox stretch?

The fact of the matter is that Sox ticket prices (and really, all ticket prices in baseball) have gone up so severely with respect to inflation over the past 20 years. I have an Lower Box opening day ticket from 1991; face value was just $13.00. Even if we take into account inflation, that ticket would be worth $22.37 in today's prices. Nowadays, you can't get a lower box seat for less than $40-$50, and in many cases it's more like $60-$80. It is absolutely absurd for baseball to continue to charge these rates and not expect families to not be able to attend in an economy like this. I get that salaries spiraled out of control similarly, but the fans are the ones paying for all this. It is absolutely unreasonable to believe $200-$500 is a reasonable amount of money for any middle class family to spend on an afternoon's worth of entertainment.

I think people need to take into account matchup problems and variance. The Twins match up very well against a listless, light-hitting Sox lineup, because they are built to play close games in an NL style. They can run all over a poor-throwing catcher like AJ. The Twins get crushed when they play teams that are capable of putting up a 5 spot in an inning. The Sox haven't been capable of doing that all season because they consistently have at least 3 major holes in their lineup. The Royals are more of an enigma. Certainly the Sox should be beating them. Should the Sox be 6-1 against Cleveland? I dunno. Cleveland's been doing pretty well against other teams. Should we be 3-0 @ boston? No way. Every year it's the same story. "We SHOULD beat ______ " or "We can beat ______ but not ________ " or "We can beat the bad teams but not the good teams", or "We only beat the NL" or "We can't beat the NL". Every year, you beat some teams you shouldn't, and you lose to others you should pummel. It tends to even out over 162 games and give an accurate depiction for how good of a team you have. Right now, we are a .500 team. We have played very mediocre baseball, and we have a record to illustrate that.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 26, 2011 -> 10:25 AM) The answer should always be yes. It should be, but many people hate this gm and/or manager so much that I wouldn't put it past them to want them to fail.

I think the better question is "do you want this team/manager/gm to win"

I'll go a step further and say that tonight's game is the most important game of the season.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Jul 20, 2011 -> 01:23 PM) Even with JP's supposed 'hot' streak, he's still dead last among everyday LFs in wOBA and wRC+. What about over the last 300 PAs? Yes, he had an abysmal April.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Jul 20, 2011 -> 01:16 PM) And still under .500 on the season so who cares what these teams have done since May 6th, that's just a random date to throw out there to make this team look better than they are. You're right about one thing, the Sox will be within 5 games probably all the way until the end but they wont win this division. Should they? Absolutely. Will they? Nope, not happening. It's not a random date. It's a segment of the most recent 64 games in which the Sox have basically done better or as well as any other team in their division. For the first 33 they did worse than anyone in baseball, and if anything, that's what will cost them. It's interesting, because if you just flip 3 key losses to wins (one game at min, one game vs. min, one game vs. kc) this team looks unstoppable in anyone's eyes since May 6. Instead, I feel as though a 3 game difference over 64 games turns them from "unstoppable" to "complete dogs***" in many people's eyes.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Jul 20, 2011 -> 01:13 PM) I wish you were my father. You might be the most optimistic person I know. I'm not that optimistic. I wish people didn't have this tremendous double-standard when evaluating Central teams. I've seen quite a lot of "Cleveland's just winning the right way, it's their year" WTF? their record is s*** since their 20-8 start There's not a good team in this division. However, we're the most talented and we have the best rotation.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Jul 20, 2011 -> 01:05 PM) An extra basehit of any kind is out of the question. He has two triples this month and one this week. Really?

It's amazing to me that people can look at this team, a team that's 8 over at 36-28 since May 6th, despite playing like s*** offensively, and say 'no chance, they don't have it' and then not evaluate MIN, CLE and DET the same way. Cleveland is 30-35 since then. Detroit is 36-27 since then, a half game better than the Sox. Minnesota is 33-33 since then. Nobody "has it". Nobody is running away with this thing. The Sox will be within 5 games all season. It is right there if they can ever wake up and take it.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 20, 2011 -> 11:19 AM) .710 OPS, 71% on stolen bases. Yeah, that's irreplaceable. I'm not sure why you would evaluate a leadoff hitter by emphasizing a statistic that equates his slugging with his on base percentage when one is clearly more important than the other within the scope of our offense.

.291/.359/.351/.710 with 10/14 sb since May 1st when are people finally going to admit Ozzie might have been right about something

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jul 13, 2011 -> 12:09 PM) But you can't just pretend the Twins didn't win 4/5 from 2002-2004/2006, either. And thus the double-standard continues. 2005 was eons ago for the White Sox organization when it comes to describing Guillen and Williams, but those 4/5 are recent enough to be included in evaluating Gardenhire and his organization. How bout this - why don't we apply the same microscope to both?

Milkman - just one question. Should Gardenhire be fired if the Twins win the division and get swept?

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Jul 12, 2011 -> 04:59 PM) You're way oversimplifying it, and I believe you know it. I'm saying that a division title for the Sox this year, which would almost certainly be a result of all of the teams being so bad that one just limps into the playoffs, would not be a sufficient reason to keep Ozzie around as I think he's proven himself to be ineffective and that he has lost the team already. Winning a division title would almost certainly guarantee him job security not only through 2012, but beyond. And let's not kid ourselves (I know, I know...the 2006 Cardinals), but this team will not do anything in the playoffs. I honestly and truly believe that this team is better off without Ozzie, and barely not losing the division at the cost of having to deal with him for another few years is not worth it. And with the Twins, I merely said that they have had a dynastic presence in this division. A playoff appearance (especially in this current division) isn't exactly meaningful, but a whole bunch in a nice cluster is definitely meaningful. You realize if the White Sox win the division this year, they will have exactly the same number of division titles as the Twins going back to 2005? The 2006, 2009 and 2010 Twin teams were all swept in the first round. The 2008 Sox, who probably "limped in the playoffs" by your accounts, won 1 more game than those three combined Twin teams did, and did it against the eventual AL champion. The Twin "dynasty" has 2 playoff game wins in their past 5 appearances. How meaningful can those appearances possibly be? Why are you assigning more weight to three zero-win playoff appearances in the past 7 years vs. 2 Sox teams that did better in the postseason?

The Bears had six division titles in seven years during the 80s, and I don't know if anyone would call them a "dynasty". The 49ers, Cowboys, Steelers...but not the Bears. They might have been the best defensive team ever, but certainly they were not a "dynasty".

Milkman, in the "end of Ozzie" thread you just argued that an '11 Sox division title is worthless in and of itself, and yet somehow in this thread Twins division titles are in and of themselves meaningful?

Bear with me here - I'm assuming Pierre can still run SOME. This is not a wild assumption, it does appear as though he had a bad April but is back to stealing bases at a reasonable % since then. Certainly he hasn't lost the ability to go 1st to 3rd. Also, this does not come from my recent need to over-defend Pierre's value to the team, but merely a curiosity about statistics. I've seen a lot of asides in threads recently mentioned upgrades to OPS by 100-200 points in using Viciedo over Pierre. Even if I assume that Viciedo will perform at the level he has previously, I think this overstates the replacement value of Viciedo. I think the slugging component of OPS is a misguided component in evaluating a leadoff hitter's worth, and so I think OPS is the wrong statistic to evaluate our leadoff hitter. I think a modified version of OPS might be ok, but the fact of the matter is that slugging has less to do with the leadoff hitter's traditional role than any other position in a lineup card. Sure, when you have Alfonso Soriano, or some other freakish home run-hitting guy leading off, it's ok to use OPS. However, when you have Scott Podsednik, Juan Pierre, or another little guy with no pop and some wheels, is OPS really telling us the whole story? Slugging is predicated on the concept of a home run, triple and double being worth four times, three times and twice as much respectively as a single. In other places, this has already been challenged ad nauseum, but I'd like to add an additional point. In the case of a slow hitter who can't run, its' is not too poor of an assumption to assume a home run is four times as valuable. There is no intangible way for Paul Konerko or Jim Thome to get from 1st base to 3rd on a single to right field. There is no way they will steal bases. They are not candidates for hit and runs. There is no way to distract the pitcher and maybe have a pickoff throw sail wide anyway. In the case of any leadoff hitter who can run, even a little, there is a component in their game that is not measured by OPS. For example, Juan stole 4 bases in May, with 1 CS. 3 of those SB were after singles and 1 was after a BB. Juan had 39 singles and walks combined in May. Slugging measured those exactly as 1 total base, and yet in 5 of those cases, Juan was actually standing on second base with no completed action from the player behind him. Is SLG then accurately measuring these events? Additionally, if a one-out single is hit into right field, while Paul Konerko might be held at 2nd, a speedy leadoff guy might make third and give the team an opportunity at a sac fly. What is the offensive worth of this? I think because of these factors, merely looking at a .650 or .675 or .700 OPS for a player like Pierre/Podsednik is a misuse of the statistic.