JUSTgottaBELIEVE

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Aug 10, 2014 -> 12:17 PM) Of course, Ken Rosenthal had no clue about any of the big trades that happened in July, so not sure if I would trust that information or not. I would. Soler has the same agent as Jose Abreu and Abreu has the same clause in his contract

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Aug 10, 2014 -> 11:45 AM) 14:$2M, 15:$2M, 16:$3M, 17:$3M, 18:$4M, 19:$4M, 20:$4M Jorge Soler's contract. Likely to replace Alexei Ramirez's first deal, Chris Sale/Jose Quintana or Steve Trout's first 3 years as the friendliest contract in MLB. The last three years of Mike Trout's new deal, $100 million, or $33.33 million per season. Except for this... http://www.sbnation.com/2012/6/11/3078976/...ontract-opt-out

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Aug 9, 2014 -> 06:33 PM) 10 strikeouts in 23 AB's for Baez, 43.4% OTOH, a .957 OPS with 5 RBI's with 4 of his 5 hits for XB, which is basically what Leury Garcia has given us for an entire season. Alcantara with a 705 OPS but stellar defense, especially considering he mostly played IF up until recently. Baez has 6 hits out of the 13 balls he's put in play. Pretty sure that's unsustainable. No walks in 23 at bats. All 3 homers in coors against the worst pitching staff in baseball. I wouldn't get too excited about that .957 OPS because it's only headed down from here. And Alcantara is the 2013 version of jordan danks, sweet. Let's see how these guys' numbers translate at the mlb level over 200+ at bats before getting too excited. Possibly this is just the first chapter in the development of the best offense in baseball but I'm skeptical. Oh yea and their pitching still sucks. Thought I'd go ahead and reiterate that small piece of information.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Aug 9, 2014 -> 01:59 PM) What players in the majors WOULDN'T a package of Castro or Russell (let's say Russell for argument's sake), Almora and/or McKinney, Vogelbach and Schwarber get you? Maybe Pierce Johnson or CJ Edwards if the other team is balking or wants a pitcher. That's four former 1st round draft picks that are "expendable" and don't force you to trade Baez/Soler/Bryant. Right now, they're getting plenty out of Coghlan, so it's not imperative that they add another outfielder when they have Alcantara and either Baez or Bryant who could possibly be shifted to LF/RF, not to mention Soler. That still leaves you: Coghlan LF/RF Alcantara CF Soler LF/RF Sweeney 3B Bryant SS Castro or Russell 2B Baez 1B Rizzo C ???? You are assuming all those prospects turn out. The royals were thinking the same thing a few years back. I don't think hosmer, starling, moustakas, etc. are helping the royals much this year.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 9, 2014 -> 02:00 PM) Just to note, from the White Sox's side I wouldn't do either of those. I know. I was being cub friendly to make a point.

That's a great stat because it once again highlights how valuable jose is to this team. If he's not hitting, we ain't winning. Hence, it's no coincidence the sox have a terrible record this year on Saturdays

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Aug 9, 2014 -> 11:24 AM) And the White Sox still have two huge holes in their rotation, even under the assumption that Rodon starts out as a 3. The ONLY player they have to use as trade bait with any value to the rest of MLB is Alexei Ramirez, who just so happens to be our best defender, when we have one of the five worst defenses in baseball. Besides, the easy rebuttal to that is the Braves winning only once in 14 years with all that Cy Young pitching, or the A's and the Twins. I'm not comparing the sox to cubs. I'm talking strictly about the cubs. And regarding the braves, A's, and twins, they never had the offense to compliment the pitching. Like I said, you need both to win. Not that you need a 95 Indians offense or a 95 braves pitching staff but generally speaking you need to be very good on both sides of the ball to win the world series. Of course there are exceptions, but more often than not, the team that is balanced both offensively and defensively wins the World Series. Relying too much on either offense or defense is a recipe for failure in the playoffs because as soon as that one side of the ball struggles you need the other to pick up the slack to get through a 7 game series. When was the last time a team won the World Series while being in the bottom third in runs allowed in their league? To get that pitching they are either spending big money (which is a big question mark right now) or trading away their offensive prospects. What would it take to get a guy like Chris Sale in a trade? Russell and Baez maybe? Well there goes 40% of their big time offensive prospects just to get an ace. How about rodon and Quintana? Soler and bryant? It's not easy to build a strong staff without spending money on big time free agents (Lester, scherzer, etc). Until they get the pitching, they aren't winning the World Series. That's not jealousy or envy or anything of the sorts. It's just a fact.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Aug 9, 2014 -> 09:25 AM) OTOH, Darwin Barney's low 600's OPS was so boring and predictable (offensively AND defensively) in the same way a Gordon Beckham season is... No Cubs' fan wants to watch that, anymore than Sox fans want to continue watching Dunn/Beckham/DeAza/Konerko. No one expected Barney to be an all star, they do with Baez. Main reason sox fans have been riding gordon so hard. No one expected an average 2b, they expected Dustin pedroia. Cubs fans going to get pretty impatient if he hits .220 with 25 hr and 200 strikeouts the next 3 years. Even with all this potential offense, where's the frontline pitching needed to win? Best lineup in modern day baseball, 95 Indians, couldn't even win the World Series. 2 hof (thome and Murray), 1 would be hof if not for peds (manny), best hitter in the game that year (belle), and 8 guys that were all stars at some point in that era. All world pitching (braves starting staff) beat the all world offense. Goes without saying that you need both to win

QUOTE (shysocks @ Aug 5, 2014 -> 10:32 AM) Alexei Ramirez and Tyler Flowers have been vastly better. Dunn has been better. That's six spots in the lineup that are better than last season. You also have to consider that we're getting at-bats from Abreu instead of Paul Konerko's corpse, so while Abreu is a massive improvement, the level of production he is replacing was miserable. And that's exactly why we need the metrics. I'm not saying they are perfect, but Jake and others have done a beautiful job of explaining their value. They help measure something that is otherwise fuzzy. They tell you something, which is exactly what good stats should do. Why? Have you watched every inning they've played? I know I haven't. All I know is that Beltre gets more press for his glove - largely because of his bat. Which, again, is why the stats are useful. We can see that, hey, even though he doesn't get the same level of attention, Polanco has played the field pretty well. I'll give you ramirez but how has Dunn been vastly better this year? And flowers has improved his average but power numbers haven't improved. I wouldn't say he is vastly better. As we have seen over the past week, if abreu isn't driving in runs this entire offense is lifeless. He is was what makes this thing go. Without him, they are easily in the bottom third in runs scored and bottom 5 in record again even with the "vast" improvement of everyone else in the lineup. Regarding defensive metrics, yes they give you an idea of whether a guy is a good defender or not but my problem is the use of them as the end all be all. If they aren't perfect then they shouldn't be used as a large component in everyone's favorite modern age statistic - WAR. When people start using WAR as the single most important metric when evaluating trades, players's worth, etc. that's where I have an issue. Alex Gordon has the third highest WAR of position players this year, that's comical. Is he the third most valuable player in baseball this year? If you went by WAR, the answer is yes but I would love to hear an argument from anyone on this board that justifies this rank. Again, he's a LF, not a SS, 2b, or C, he's a LF!

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Aug 5, 2014 -> 01:27 PM) This cracks me up. How many innings have you watched of those guys over the past few years? So the measure of a good metric is "does it confirm what I already think"? I've seen enough of Beltre playing against the sox over the last few years to know he's a damn good defensive 3b. I saw enough of polanco when he was with the tigers and I can't imagine he's gotten better the last 4 years now that he's 38 years old turning 39 in 2 months. I'm not saying polanco is bad defensively, hell he's own gold gloves, but no way he's better than Beltre in my eyes

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Aug 8, 2014 -> 10:27 PM) Minor league totals, 88 BB's and 350 K's in 1212 AB's. That's around 27% In 600 AB's, it would be 175ish, and that's not adjusting for the major league level pitching, so that would put him around 200-225 K's. You'd like to see a power hitter at BB/2K or BB/3K, ideally. http://www.thebaseballcube.com/players/pro...p?P=javier-baez Adam dunn struck out in 22.4% of his minor league ABs. Yea, big league pitching is much tougher...I wouldn't be surprised if that 27% turns into 35% in the bigs

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Aug 8, 2014 -> 04:18 PM) So far the K rate is 25%. Of course, the OPS is 1.188. He'll need 150 at-bats before any conclusions can begin to be drawn about his readiness. Even then, some will argue he's facing some AAA/AA call-ups for non-contending teams in September. Up to 37% now. He's going to make a run at Flowers' 38% this year. No walks in 19 ABs. He better slug .450+, otherwise I foresee Cubs' fans getting fed up with his act rather quickly. Even at .475, he's going to have a tough time posting an OPS of better than .800 because I don't see him putting together an OBP of greater than .325 (I'd say he's closer to .280-.300, at least for the next few years)

Adam Rosales OWNS Chris Sale. I asked him about this last night and he said he just sees him well. Interestingly enough he also said that a pitcher that he really struggles against and hates facing is John Danks. Now that's ironic.

QUOTE (Jake @ Aug 4, 2014 -> 04:38 PM) Generally speaking, it's far easier to find a good 1B than good 3B. The best 3B in FA this past offseason was Juan Uribe. The year before that it was some combo of Eric Chavez/Jeff Keppinger. The year before that, you had one good player - Aramis Ramirez. For 1B, several solid guys became available - Mike Napoli, James Loney, Justin Morneau. The year before that - Nick Swisher, Mike Napoli, Adam LaRoche. The year before that - Albert Pujols and Prince Fielder. With that said, it is harder to find a guy who is good at multiple things than good at one thing. Great at one thing? Always difficult. The whole point of this process, though, is there is no requirement for an amazing hitter. This entire discussion is about the fact that you can quantifiably reproduce the run value of a great bat by being an all-around good player. There's nothing magical about a great hitter that makes the hitters around them better. Who has Abreu turned into a good hitter this year? What about Barry Bonds? The only guy I can see him seemingly having an effect on was Rich Aurilia in the 72 home run year, though Aurilia played far worse the years before and after in the same spot in the batting order, so that seems dubious. There is a lot of research on protection that shows that, over many many years of baseball, protection is never measurable beyond the extent to which you would expect random variation in performance. While a great hitter is always better than not a great one, a good hitter that is a good fielder is usually better to have than a great hitter who can't field. The more a guy's game is focused on a single thing, the more that single thing can make his value disappear entirely. Compared to last year, Donaldson is having a bad year at the plate. However, because he's an excellent fielder and decently quick on the basepaths, he's still having one of the best years in the game. I understand what you are saying in theory, but how do you explain the huge jump in offense for the White Sox this season? As I mentioned before Eaton and an improved Conor have been a boost but we have also seen a decrease in production from other guys as well to temper the Eaton/Conor boost. Take away Abreu and I would wager we are somewhere in the bottom third again in runs scored. That's just one guy making that kind of difference. I don't think one guy can make that much of a difference on defense (with catcher maybe being the one exception). I do undersell defensive metrics for a number of reasons. Outside of errors, putouts, assists, etc. they aren't tangible. I don't always see a 3B get to a grounder that another 3B would not have. It's not always obvious. I see when a guy hits a homer and knocks in three runs. Also, I feel like there's a lot of gray and fluff in the defensive numbers. I have a hard time believing that Placido Polanco has a UZR/150 of 9.9 while Adrian Beltre is at 8.4 since 2010. Does anyone really believe that Polanco has been a better defensive 3B than Beltre over the last 4 years? For these reasons, I have a hard time putting defense at the same value as offense

QUOTE (Jake @ Aug 4, 2014 -> 03:58 PM) Advanced statistics make baseball better. They help to eliminate gut reactions and misguided assumptions over small sample sizes. It helps us to value different aspects of the game properly. Bill James always says that a statistic is no good if it doesn't surprise you. That's because a given statistic is supposed to tell you something you don't already know. We know Abreu is good. We know he's been phenomenal at the plate. We don't know how to properly value his contributions in comparison with other players that play other positions. To ask whether, based on this season's WAR, you'd trade for someone, is a misuse. It's not a projection - it's a measure. WAR is a way to look at players' contributions and separate them from context so you can make valid comparisons. A guy like Donaldson plays different competition, in different places, with different people batting around him, and at a different position. WAR is a way to look back and disentangle all those confounding factors. When I'm deciding between Abreu and Donaldson, there are several concerns for both players. Abreu, being new, has considerable upside that we just don't know about yet. Could he play even better than this? There's reason to believe so. However, given his newness to the league, maybe he could get dramatically worse. Look at the way Yoenis Cespedes's production fell off after his first year. At 27, Abreu can't punt too many years solving his sophomore slump. He also plays first base, meaning a down year at the plate means he'll be simply valueless. Donaldson plays a more valuable position and defends it extremely well - we have three years of sample size to back up his defense. His year last year, with a 7.7 WAR, is probably better than any year Abreu will ever have. However, he is a year older than Abreu. He's also a guy who wasn't worth a s*** until he was about 27. While "fluke" might not be the right word, there is reason to step back when a guy blooms this late and wonder what's going on. He was never an impressive upper-level MiLB player until he was 26 over 50-some games in AAA. Seems like a candidate for regression, if not a guy who might be thriving only under a particular coach or whatever is going on. So no, I wouldn't pull of that particular deal, money aside. We effectively have a prospect in Abreu, which I think makes him worth the gamble that his position or lack of experience could make us lose the deal. To me, it's a simple question. Who is harder to replace? Isn't WAR all about replacement value after all? In my opinion, it's always harder to find the star offensive player, the guy that makes everyone else in the lineup better (ala Miggy, prime Pujols, Bonds, Big Hurt), than a guy like Donaldson who is very good at everything but not great at any one thing.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Aug 4, 2014 -> 01:45 PM) Of course it's a flawed statistic, but no statistic is perfect. It's also difficult to just assume that teams are going to remain the same record wise. The Sox I think would be - they could simply move Gillaspie over to 1B and they'd be sitting right around their same mark - but the A's then have to do something with Moss or Abreu and find a 3B, which cuts 5 positional runs from either's value due to the positional adjustment made in WAR. I strongly disagree that the Sox would have the same record with Donaldson instead of Abreu

QUOTE (Jake @ Aug 4, 2014 -> 01:13 PM) So there's two things making Donaldson seem more valuable. First is the defense, like we covered. A third baseman has much more control of run prevention - kind of. A really bad defensive 1B will have more negative value than anybody, because they can screw up just about every infield out. However, each play is measured against the "average" defender. The "average" 1B makes almost all the same plays that a great one does. That's not nearly as true of 3B and really not true of OF. Next is how good hitters are at a given position. The average 1B this year has a 111 wRC+ (was 110 last year). The average 3B this year is 101 wRC+ (was 97 last year). While in the recent past LF was a place to stash your guys with barely better than 1B defensive ability to get their bat in the lineup (average LF batter was as high as 110 wRC+ in early 2000s), today it's a place where the average LF bat is just an average bat (100 wRC+ this year, 99 last). On a side note, it interests me how poor the average DH is this year - 101 wRC+ compared to 110 wRC+ last year and a peak 120 wRC+ in 2002. So even disregarding how good he defends his position, Abreu is graded on a curve. wRC+ presumes that 100 is average. However, 111 is average for 1B. 101 is average at 3B. That means the expectation for Abreu's offense is 10% higher than a 3B and LF. 25% higher than SS! Another way to think about it is to look at it from the perspective of the non-1B. Look at Derek Jeter. His career WAR is 74.3. He's also a career negative value defensively as a shortstop, where usually bad shortstops end up with positive values just because of the position's difficulty. He has a career 120 wRC+. If you took away the positional adjustment to the way we look at his offense, or changed his defensive position to 1B, he's a slightly enhanced Paul Konerko, meaning Jeter becomes more of a 40-45 WAR player. That means not a Hall of Famer. Should Jeter be a Hall of Famer? The answer hinges on whether you think players should be graded on a curve based on their defensive position. would you trade abreu for donaldson (money aside)?

QUOTE (lasttriptotulsa @ Aug 4, 2014 -> 12:32 PM) Another thing to remember is that WAR is essence a counting stat. It accumulates as the season goes. Abreu spent 15 days on the DL costing him 13 or 14 games played. None of those other three have been on the DL this year. If Abreu had not gotten injured and played those games missed around the same level as the rest of the season, his WAR would be around 4.5. And as Wite said, those other three are plus defenders at more defensive minded positions than first base. That's the big difference. It's not that Abreu is necessarily a bad defender, but he is in a sense penalized for playing 1B from the get go. I don't see how LF (Gordon) is a more defensive-minded position than 1B? Guys are moved out to LF to hide because they can stick (similar to 1B). If we were talking CF, SS, or C then that's a different animal altogether. None of these guys play a premium defensive position in my mind (3B is probably the closest out of the three)

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Aug 4, 2014 -> 12:17 PM) Josh Donaldson, Jason Heyward, and Alex Gordon all play semi-premium to premium defensive positions and they play it incredibly well while being fairly to very productive hitters to boot. It's not flawed whatsoever. In theory, yes, the White Sox are only 4 games better. Much of that depends upon context, which WAR removes from the equation. Still, I feel the difference between 54-58 and 50-62 is incredibly signficant. I don't see any earth shattering offensive numbers from gordon this season. In fact, his numbers are very average for a LF. Yes, he plays a great defensive OF but give me the guy with the 200+ higher OPS over the great defensive outfielder any day. Would you trade Abreu right now for any of those guys? To me, Abreu is much harder to replace than any of those guys and isn't that what WAR ultimately measures? How else can anyone explain the improvement in the White Sox offense from #29 in runs scored last year to #7 this year? Adding Eaton and a better season from Conor has certainly helped but the '13 club also had a productive Rios/Garcia and De Aza.

how flawed is WAR when Abreu is at 4.0 and guys like Josh Donaldson, Jason Heyward, and Alex Gordon are 4.5+? I realize Abreu is hurt by his baserunning/defense but his offense is SO much better than those three guys that there's no way their baserunning/defense superiority should overcome Abreu's immense run producing capabilities. Are the White Sox really only 4 wins better with Abreu rather than a guy like Garrett Jones playing 1B?

QUOTE (JoshPR @ Aug 3, 2014 -> 05:40 PM) Wait , wasn't it your pretty stats who said that? I think sabermetrics post moneyball has gone too far. There are fans out there now that think they would be able to build a team/manage a team based on numbers alone. Yes numbers are important but so is having a feel for the game and knowing your players. Even if a guys "periphial" numbers look good, sometimes it's clear they just don't pass the eye test. Belisario has been one of those guys that just hasn't passed the eye test all year regardless of what the advance metrics were saying.

I'd say Flowers is seeing the ball well right now

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Aug 1, 2014 -> 01:21 PM) I played a lot of baseball, all the way through American Legion, and I'm NOT arguing that you don't feel better sometimes than others. I AM arguing that we cannot predict the length and continuation of these "hot streaks." They have random lengths and random endings. So it doesn't help us to say "call him up while he's hot" because it's just as likley that his hotness would end that very day as it is that it would continue for one day or two days or three days. Similarly, you could call a guy up when he's cold and he could start a hot streak the very next day. If you do truly CHANGE something, it isn't a hot streak, it's a breakout; a revelation. And you've set a new level of performance and will now have hot and cold streaks based on that new level. We can't really tell the difference by reading box scores -- we need the coaching staff to say "Yes, I told him to change his approach. He has now succeeded in that and is seeing succes as a result. He is ready to take this approach to the next level." We'll agree to disagree because while you might not be able to predict the length of hot streaks, I do think there is a greater probability of a minor league callup experiencing immediate success at the major league level if he is coming in hot and confidence is high compared to struggling and confidence low.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Aug 1, 2014 -> 09:01 AM) I'm not saying Marcus doesn't have anything left to learn, I'm just saying that him having a hot ten days is not the sign that he's ready. I think there's something to his confidence maybe being up if he's called up when he's hot, but the problem with "when he's seeing the ball well" is that guys are in that mode until they suddenly aren't, and there's just no way to tell when that will stop. It's literally no more likely a "hot" guy will get a hit in his next at bat than a "cold" guy, assuming of course that you control for talent. Now, if a guy has suddenly mastered something he's been working on, an improvement at the plate can be a by-product of course, but that's what you need the evaluators for, because they know what he's trying to do and they'll know why he's successful or not. Simply that he's been "seeing the ball well" doesn't translate even from day to day, let alone from league to league. Next time he gets hot though, I don't think there's any way we will be able to tell if it's because of a mechanical or approach tweak. We just have to trust the staff. Anybody that's played the game beyond little league would disagree with this. Seriously. The mental/confidence aspect of hitting is huge. When you're going well and confidence level is high, you truly are seeing the ball better. When I was in a funk, I knew I wasn't seeing the ball well and more often than not knew I was in for a rough game at the plate. I often knew this during BP prior to the game. The mental component of this game is very important, especially when it comes to hitting. Just take a look at Flowers right now. Sometimes you change one thing (start wearing glasses), have success, and you start to attribute this change to your success (increased confidence) even if it didn't. Now maybe the glasses really have improved his vision and his success is a direct result of this physical change but more than likely it just comes down to his increased confidence level resulting from the success he experienced when he started wearing the glasses. I think we would all agree that there is a greater probability Flowers gets a hit in his next at-bat today than any at-bat in June or the first week in July. It sounds silly but there's a reason hitting is so cyclical and guys often experience extended hot/cold stretches. This isn't coincidence or as simple as saying his BABIP is unusually high/low through these stretches. The numbers guys like to think it is but typically there is a reason for stretches in which a hitter experiences a low/high BABIP and it's not just a matter of luck.

I should probably be more descriptive than the 30 mile radius parameter since technically parts of NWI are just within 30 miles of the loop. I guess 30 mile radius west and north of the loop and 15 mile radius south of it would work. that would make for a reasonable commute to both downtown as well as the northwest burbs for my wife