caulfield12

LOL. We have no idea what will happen with anyone on the White Sox. Therefore, really no point for uninformed, "non-professional" pseudo-experts to even bother expressing their opinions. Just let KW handle everything and park your butt in a seat, or not, depending on your preference.

And the Reds probably even wished they had kept Cameron longer...he matured into an All-Star player with the Mariners, EVENTUALLY. Or could use the example of David Ortiz in Minnesota.

QUOTE (flavum @ Apr 26, 2012 -> 07:25 PM) Didn't realize Birmingham had a night game... http://www.milb.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?s...biraax_monaax_2 Mitchell is 5-5 today, but I won't say anything more than that. Can't get too excited. Quintana good so far. After watching Beckham, Morel and Viciedo the last 2-3 weeks, we HAVE to have SOMETHING to get excited about, besides Phil's no-hitter. Phegley's start in AAA has been a pleasant surprise as well.

QUOTE (fathom @ Apr 26, 2012 -> 09:19 PM) Was Wilder responsible for signing Rienzo? Can't find it, but it (the signing) happened in 2006, so one would have to guess yes is the answer....since he was part of Silverio, Anderson Gomes and Paulo Orlando too, no way he wasn't intimately involved in all these transactions. Jose Martinez was signed out of Venezuela (being Carlos' son helped surely)....same year. Signed by: Amador Arias/Dave Wilder.

20,266 for a game against the BOSTON RED SOX? Brooks Boyer has to be thanking his lucky stars it wasn't in the high teens or it would SEEM even worse. Still a bit of a surprising number. What will be the reason this time, the NFL draft? Premium/dynamic pricing? The Bulls are playing? The Red Sox fans are aggravated with Valentine and John Henry? Bad weather? School's still in session. The way we lost the game yesterday afternoon has demoralized fans? After the way Boston played earlier this week in Minnesota, you'd have thought they would get a few of their casual/bandwagon fans back again...and Humber was coming off a perfect game and it was his first home appearance after that.

QUOTE (jeffro2525 @ Apr 26, 2012 -> 10:03 PM) I hate Mike Aviles...always have. Except if he was playing 3B or 2B for the White Sox, then he'd be hitting .171 with Escobar-esque power. What was the announced attendance?

Greg...because our offense is just an average or slightly below (depending on Dunn/Rios) American League offense. Did you really expect to blow out the Red Sox 3/4 games? If you want to complain about something, it shouldn't be the way we've played Boston and New York this decade.

Guess Dayan read this thread before the game. I'm guessing after tonight his career MLB totals will be not so far off from that 727 OPS line Balta quoted. He has 9 homers in 262 career at-bats, so you can double that for a (once again) conservative estimate of 18 homers in a season. (This is where iamshack will say he can't do that playing everyday against RHP and LHP). 24 doubles to go with those 18 homers. Not great stats, but clearly not "team-killing" or "offense-killing" like Beckham or Morel. You also have to consider much of that was accomplished at the major league level when he was only 21 years old. An average of around .260-.270. But, by all mean, let's trade him for Boston's current equivalent of Josh Reddick...since Crawford might miss a significant period of the season and Ross/McDonald/Sweeney/Byrd still is going to come up short offensively over the long haul.

They should really give Stewart an extended chance tonight to (fight to) keep his place on the roster. If he gets tattoed this time out, send him back to Charlotte.

Nothing like putting on a good show for the home crowd, lol. More Red Sox or White Sox fans there? Might as well let Dayan/Morel/Gordon get their work in...

Sole possession of first place (for a matter of hours, lol) and we're already trading half of our starters, or releasing them. One thing's for sure, a Zach Stewart sighting is very likely this game given Humber's pitch count already. 65 pitches and counting, only 7 outs. He had 7 outs in 15-20 pitches last time out. This game always had the feel of a trap for Humber after facing the M's substandard line-up, especially with the Red Sox finally hitting their stride in Minnesota.

Fine, iamshack. Can you name any time in recent MLB history an organization's top hitting prospect (or one year removed, after his rookie status is used up) has been traded in April or May of the following year? Yeah, we get it. You don't want him to end up like Brandon Wood, Casey Kotchmann or Dallas McPherson. The problem is that, as Fathom pointed out earlier, his development and "breakthrough" as a major league player is worth a lot more to the White Sox in the next two seaons than any other team in the majors. Not just for KW's job, because you can guarantee a trade of Viciedo would result in 1,000 daggers from the media calling for Williams' head, yes? It's because we're not going to receive a comparable impact bat anywhere close to the major leagues. Just because we took Joe Borchard and turned him into Matt Thornton doesn't mean it's easy to replicate that trade. The minor league bats we would get would be Trayce Thompson or below equivalents (if we were lucky), all 2-3 years away from the majors and none satisfying the fans' bloodlust to be in "win now" mode and screw having patience with any young player who doesn't become an All-Star in his first or second season. Look at all the patience they've shown with Gordon Beckham. Morel has gotten many more AB's than Viciedo, as well. We can't afford to have more than one of those three guys fail if we realistically want to compete going forward, because JR's not going to just open up the pursestrings again based on pure faith.

Because Crede and Rowand, both older and more experienced players, especially Rowand, tore up the major leagues the first time they played for the White Sox. Not. It took both of them 2-3 seasons to establish themselves as regulars, and it wasn't until they were actually given an opportunity to play everyday that this happened. The "win now" mentality is the same one that now has us trading Dayan Viciedo after just 50 AB's when his career MLB OPS is around 700 before the age of 23.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/_/id/30103/dayan-viciedo Look at his career stats, all major league games. .697 OPS, most would probably agree that's the VERY BOTTOM, the floor. That's only 30 points off the MLB averages that Balta quoted for the position. And, he didn't even learn how to start taking walks until last year at AAA. Now he's gotten away from that again, but it's only 50 at-bats we're looking at folks. In some ways, he's become too passive and not aggressive like when he first came up in 2010...hearing mixed messages perhaps about patience vs. taking the first hittable pitch and ripping it (see AJ Pierzynski). He's probably not going to be a 30 homer hitter, but 18-24 homers is clearly a rational expectation. The RBI numbers are skewed low, but you have to look at where he's been hitting in the major league line-up at that time. Now iamshack will probably argue that Ozzie protected him and gave him the most favorable match-ups and that those numbers are skewed up, but we'll never find out if he doesn't play a full season. We have NO OTHER young hitters that can be impact bats, he's cost-affordable, so someone who's only 30 points below the AVERAGE MLB LFer at age 23 seems like someone you'd want to hold onto. But that's just me.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Apr 26, 2012 -> 01:41 PM) A 3-4 month stretch. The same 3-4 months that Gordon Beckham had in 2009? Okay Marty/Cowley, who's the originator of finding "undervalued" players at positions where you can get bargain-basement deals, such as 1B/DH/LF/RF? We'd all agree it might be Mr. Billy Beane. And what did he do, since learning that all those years of signing a CoCo Crisp here or trading for a Willingham (who's raking for the Twins) there don't work so well if you want a real superstar slugging presence in a huge stadium where flyballs go to die on cold April evenings? He went out and spent $45 million for four years on Yoenis Cespedes and took a flyer on Manny Ramirez. That's how easy it is to find those types of bats... Why did 29 other teams pass on Cespedes? Why did the Mariners give up their best young pitcher in Pineda and another fine prospect in Jose Campos for Montero? Because there's a HUGE premium on young "impact" bats in the major leagues. And because the last "impact" bat they felt was a sure thing in Justin Smoak-o-Motive didn't turn out to be such a sure thing. Look at Brandon Belt in SF, Chris Davis, how long it has taken for him to develop as a hitter....how difficult it has been for the Rangers to find a slugging 1B since the Cubs traded them Rafael Palmeiro, etc. There are only a few Hosmers out there, and even Eric wasn't a certified All-Star last year right off the bat. Very solid, patience for a young hitter that's unusual, but not GREAT numbers when you stack them up with the Konerkos/Gonzalezes/Pujoles/Texeiras/etc.

If Viciedo struggles all season long, though....Mitchell's really the first/best/only internal candidate to replace him in 2013. It's going to be a great rush he's going to have to put on to get there, but it's not impossible if he can keep progressing.

What's the best team in our division? The Detroit Tigers. What are they averaging in terms of runs per game? 3.3. How many times have they scored more than 5 runs? ONCE. They have Avila, Austin Jackson (playing very well this year), Cabrera, Fielder, Boesch, Peralta, Delmon Young, Raburn...on paper, coming into the year, a consensus TOP 3 offensive line-up in the American League, right? They're in the process of possibly losing yet another game to the Mariners at home. What does all this mean? It's early. And that line-up probably misses one single element, Victor Martinez, more than anyone ever could have ever realized. And it's probably still going to come down to pitching and clutch hitting, as it did with the Tigers when they were superhot the final 2 months of 2011.

But what's the point? Viciedo's value is not much higher around baseball AT THIS EXACT MOMENT than Gordon Beckham or Brent Morel. He was never a consensus Top 25 player, like a Brandon Wood. Did you notice how badly Mike Moustakas looked with the Royals for MOST of his rookie season? We should have this debate about Viciedo every game he struggles...? We don't have a single hitter in the minors under age 25 capable of putting up the numbers Dayan could put up. We're not going to be able to trade Dayan for Carlos Quentin 2 because young hitters like that are being WAY overvalued by opposing GM's. Just look at the crazy bidding wars for Cespedes and Jorge Soler, for example. Everyone says how easy it is to find slugging corner outfielders or 1B/DH types but it's JUST NOT THAT EASY or every team in baseball would be stocked with sluggers at LF/RF/3B/1B/DH. That's just not the case in baseball anymore. No team in baseball can say that. Even the Rangers have Mitch Moreland playing regularly, and he's never going to be confused with Dayan Viciedo's talent upside. If we could play Lillibridge in LF or CF even, and acquire a nice 3b bat using Viciedo and Morel or others, I'd be perfectly content. Brent has one of the longest swings on our team currently. He's not an everyday player or the solution at either LF or 3B for a playoff-caliber team. He's a great supersub, he's versatile, until yesterday, he was a good pinch-runner. You can't win games at USCF with an outfield of Lillibridge/DeAza/Rios because you need to have at least one of those guys putting up an 850-900+ OPS, and none of those guys have come close to doing that recently for a FULL SEASON of play. Sure, Brent can be part of a platoon, but he's NOT an everyday player. Trading Morel gets us nowhere for 2013 unless you think Saladino's going to be ready to take his place in the line-up in August/September...and is the long-term solution at that position, because Dallas McPherson or Tyler Kuhn certainly are not.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Apr 26, 2012 -> 12:08 PM) You've said this in like three different ways now... Can you either legitimately attempt to participate in an honest discussion about it or just stay out of it? Have you heard of someone who has an "in between bat" before? Have you noticed him lunging and jamming himself? Have you seen him hitting at the major league or minor league level last year when he was going good? The ball just jumps off his bat. So, at age 23, he's simply lost the ability to hit? His bat speed's suspect? Nonsense. Viciedo's fishing for pitches outside of the zone and not laying off high fastballs. He's also striking out on offspeed pitches, usually balls on the outside part of the plate. If you believe he won't ever get that fixed, then there's ZERO ZERO ZERO hope for Beckham and Morel, so we might as well trade them, too. Because we've only given Beckham 3+ years to find himself....but less than one month of at-bats (he's not even qualified for any league leader stats) allows us all to play Billy Beane or KW? Beckham, Morel and Viciedo are all showing signs of the same problem. They're late on the fastball, and out front or pulling off the offspeed stuff. They're off balance and out of rhythm, and get behind in counts quickly, just like Dunn did 90% of the time last year. When down to 2 strikes, they're expanding the zone and not eliminating the opposing pitcher's best pitch (usually a fastball), so they're either way behind on high fastballs or swinging hopelessly at outside breaking balls ala Juan Uribe or Alexei Ramirez when they're going bad.

I'm sure we could find numerous 10-15 game runs where Frank Thomas hit 0.150, had a "slider speed" bat, was popping everything up to 1B or RF and looked like a candidate for the waiver wire too. OBVIOUSLY, Viciedo won't be THAT good, but c'mon, this is ridiculous. If the White Sox actually let Dayan play at the major league level in June when he's 100% ready for bigs, confident and healthy...we wouldn't be going through this period right now with him, but Ozzie didn't want to play him since he was KW's stud prospect and letting Dunn and Pierre flail away all year long suited his agenda much more than anything which would have actually helped the team win last season when they needed a boost in the middle of the year without having the luxury of trading more prospects (non-existence) for young hitting. Ooops, we had the best young hitter in AAA and chose not to use him. And Viciedo's 2010 play with the White Sox at age 21 or 22 proves that he was just a fluke and sucks because...well, every minor league hitter KW's brought up has sucked, so why would Dayan be an exception?

We have Jake Peavy, and he's a former Cy Young winner and paid like one, so we should trade every young player we have to compete this year. And then we'll lose him after this year, in which case Marty34 might acknowledge we're NOT in win-now mode any longer because our rotation no longer says we're competitive because it has Molina in it. And if Molina fails, that means KW should lose his job now. But putting Molina in the rotation will cause us to struggle for a couple of seasons, so we can't do that. So fire KW again because we don't have any major league-ready starters.

We're in first place. Trade the whole team. Punish them for playing better than expected by anyone but Marty34 and Cowley. Punish the entire pitching staff for Hector Santiago's ROOKIE mistakes. Because normally pitchers move all the way from A Ball to the majors in one full minor league season and just throw out an 85-90% save conversion percentage when they've never even been asked to close a game in the minors before. Sure, that sounds logical.

Yeah, because there are so many 23 year old hitters in baseball lighting up the major leagues right now. So, we take one of the few possible impact bats that's cost-controlled for the next few years...and play Jordan Danks or Conor Jackson or Brent Lillibridge? Wait. That Michell kid's going guns blazing'. Maybe we should promote him? Because then we'll have another struggling young hitter in the line-up we can trade at the June/July deadline. And maybe we should trade Santiago, because he's not fixable. And just waive Beckham and Morel, because we know they can't be fixed...and Alexei's overrated, so someone will give us their top two pitching prospects for him and replace him with Lillibridge or Escobar. Since we've pretty much never successfully identified any young hitter under 30 since Carlos Quentin in the last decade, we should be trusting KW to find MORE good/young hitting to build for the future. Ooops, we're in win-now mode. And that means KW fails if Molina and Zach Stewart fail to make it as starters. Oops. Maybe we actually are going to have to wait until the 40 or 54 game mark. Oops, no. Jeff Manto has said he's not concerned about anyone's average this year until the 250 or 300 at-bat mark. Hmmmm. Maybe, just maybe, we should look at Viciedo and Ramirez and their typical track records in April and relax a little bit.

But is Kila really ever going to be able to hit for enough power (he didn't in KC, a pretty big ballpark) or Oakland to get regular playing time? Granted, he's better than Brandon Allen, but HOW much better? Can they live with just 12-15 homers out of him....he'd have to hit a TON of doubles? He always reminds me of someone like James Loney...he's a great minor league hitter, but he's clearly stumbled at the big league level in his opportunities so far, at least.

That's what they have been saying for 3-4 years now in KC. First, it was wait for Gordon. Then, wait for Hosmer. Then, wait for Moustakas, etc. They have a pretty good core now, but Butler's getting to the point where he will be harder and harder to hold onto. A lot depend on how much Lorenzo Cain (injured now) and Escobar (I've always felt he was going to be too limited offensively) turn out. 2B is a mess and stop-gap, Chris Getz isn't the long-term solution, although he's been playing pretty well. The Salvador Perez injury really hurt them at the catching position, that was an area they thought they were going to be set for years...and still might be, but it's on a delayed schedule now. They clearly have some very good pieces now. Duffy has shown very good stuff, and they'll try to lock him up longer-term, too. Montgomery and Odorizzi are coming quick, also. It's all about starting pitching, although they have TONS of bullpen issues now too with Soria out for the year (probably his last season with KC), Broxton struggling mightily...Crow hasn't been as good as in the past, either. The Royals have always had issues filling those 3-4-5 spots in the rotation, and Hochevar's never quite become the ace they projected him to be. He's more like Gavin Floyd than a #1 or #2 so far. Then you've got all these fill-in pieces like Bruce Chen. Of course, Mendoza and Paulino are just so-so/MEHHHH pitchers. Jonathan Sanchez is a decent starter in the NL at the back of the rotation, but he's been really wild and inconsistent so far for KC. Ultimately, it has to be Hochevar, Duffy, Montgomery, Odorizzi and then you can have a Bruce Chen or journeyman type as your 5. Right now, Chen and Sanchez are two of their top 3, and that's just not going to work long-term.