caulfield12

QUOTE (BearSox @ May 16, 2009 -> 01:47 AM) Harper isn't a senior until 2011. I don't think we want to lose in 2010, too, just to get Harper.

Andruw Jones WAS a good outfielder before he gained about 50 pounds. I could care less what UZR or Zone Rating or any of that stuff says. It's one tool to use, but it's probably 33% accurate at best. I've had Major League Baseball Extra Innings package for most of that time and I've watched 60-120 Twins games every season when Hunter was in his prime. I'll rely on what I've watched over some stat geek who created a stat largely so he could get a job for a major league baseball team because he wasn't a good enough player probably to even get to the minor leagues. I'll let others decide...who here thinks that Aaron Rowand was a better defensive CFer than Torii Hunter from 2002-2004? This should be interesting. Don't be confused...UZR is a very flawed statistic for several reasons. Most importantly, it can vary DRASTICALLY from year to year. Jeter's UZR 2 years ago was -40, I believe. I'll take that cue to point out the other major flaw: the "zones" aren't as neat and specific as one might think. For example, defensivley a CF usually shifts fairly far toward left field for a righty pull hitter, in which case a line drive to right center is his "responsibility" that goes for a double or triple. Also, a CF in one year may have an abnormally large # of fly balls to his zones. Whereas a similar CF may have more line drives that will sail to one spot (the same spot that the lazy fly ball lands for CF #1) or flares that don't stay up long enough (whereas CF #1 may enjoy more air time on those balls). Parks, pitching staff, bad luck..it's all hard to factor in... Hence Jeter's defense got magically alot worse with a poor 3B, and magically alot better with A-Rod at 3B, who has more range and first step quickness than most 3B's. Another example: Check out Tejada's #'s after Chavez was no longer playing with him. Not to mention there so many other factors that one defensive stat can not account for : outs by virtue of a throw, bases saved by a player NOT taking an extra based due to reputation, etc. That being said, over the course of 3-5 years, UZR should balance out and make those things becomes less of a factor. This is why defense is so hard to quantify. Someone needs to mention this to "I Love Wang".... First of all, it is impossible to judge defense with numbers, unlike judging offense (a-la... batting average). There are TOO MANY HUMAN FACTORS involved to put numbers up against, to have a "rating" defensively. I also think there are way too many people married to the "numbers". The best defensive rating system, by far and away, is.... MY EYES! Watching things like body movements, footwork, and shoulder positioning help me determine who is capable of playing their position properly. I learned some of these defensive dynamics from a friend of mine that was scout for the Rockies. So I rely on what I see on the field, not on a calculator. And the thing that gets me, if this UZR was so great, how come the best rated players aren't walking away with the Gold Glove awards? For instance, I think 3 years ago, Jay Payton was the top rated centerfielder... Whoa!!! And now, Aaron Rowand, although I think he is a nice player, certainly to me, is not better than Jones, Hunter, Edmonds, or Logan (defensively). Are the numbers seeing something that the voters are not? Are the voters making the wrong choices on purpose? A lot of the defensive 'rankings' are also a matter of opinion. People think that Timo Perez was a good outfielder with a strong arm. I thought the opposite, just from watching him. The only thing he did well was get the ball away quickly. Bad jumps and very poor footwork. Another guy is people think is really good, but I think otherwise, is Garret Anderson. If you watch this guy enough, you will see that his jumps are below average and he NEVER throws the ball on target. This to me makes him a below average outfielder. Now, do I want him in my lineup? Sure do, his bat more than makes up for his lack of defense. But on the whole, that is what needs to be measured more than anything. Is the balance of the player worth having him in the lineup? If his bad defense is determined to be hurting the team more than his offense is helping, and the Yankees are caught in that predicament right now. Let's take a look at Bernie. If his production was, say, that of 2000 or 2001 (in that time frame +/- a year or 2) with 30 HR's and 110 RBI's, we may not be looking so hard for a centerfielder. But because Bernie's offense is no longer offsetting his defense, well, the hunt is on. from a nyfans.com thread

Great, Beckham and Allen are out there trying to help the groundscrew get the trap over the field because the umpires waited too long...I'm sure KW wil enjoying hearing how his top prospect was out there doing that with an abdominal strain!!!

Brian Anderson might actually be more valuable in terms of trade value than Josh Fields...

Restovich isn't a long-term prospect, either. Barons game heading to the top of the 10th. Jordan Danks is coming up huge/clutch in his first week of Barons play.

Twins choke away the win in NY, as Nathan blows a 4-2 lead. They always seem to struggle in NYC. Matsui and Swisher failed by Melky Cabrera came up with a two out single to score the final two runs with the bases loaded. CLE blew their huge lead at TB as well. Indians' bullpen is worse than our offense, if that's humanly possible. CLE has now officially blown a 7-0 lead. BJ Upton gets his first homer of the season, walkoff against former Sox 05 pitcher Luis Vizcaino. Good thing we didn't pick him up! The biggest problem we have is that DJ Carrasco and Broadway will go on the DL soon with how many innings they're pitching.

Great comeback...CJ missed a homer by five feet by Danks came through with a little flipper that fell in with two outs and a 3-2 count. Bringing in RHP. Need to get Tyler Flowers out of his slump soon.

QUOTE (qwerty @ May 15, 2009 -> 05:19 PM) The bold is entirely false. There is nothing clear about it. The second line is essentially as false as the first. The third line baffles me because it just is not a fact, and by the third line i mean saying rowand wasn't a better defender during ''hunter's'' prime. You do not believe in metrics and go strickly with what you see with your eyes. Others may reply to me with '' well you are only looking at metrics''. This would be the furthest from the case. I go with visual, factual, and knowledge... combined. Then, and only then, is when i base my decision. Basic fact: Since we're all White Sox fans, it's impossible to be objective about "our" players. We tend to either deify them or crucify them more than we should. They are never as good OR as bad as we think usually. I've watched almost as many Twins games as White Sox games over the last 5-6 seasons and there's no way Rowand was better than Hunter in CF from 2002-2004. The reason Aaron Rowand had to dive for so many balls is he took bad routes or misjudged a lot of balls. He's not nearly the defender Anderson is (not talking about their arms) in terms of jumps, instincts, routes, proper technique...Anderson is clearly better. I never say anything good about Brian Anderson as a hitter, but Rowand's not even in his class. Not to mention that I don't give extra points for crashing into wallks or playing so recklessly that he ends up hurting his team by having to go onto the disabled list.

QUOTE (Reddy @ May 15, 2009 -> 06:46 PM) this is close to one of the most ridiculous posts i've ever read. Obviously I was being sarcastic. Sorry, should have put it in teal. Rongey said on the postgame show that Walker's basic premise was that the mechanical changes in the hitters happened during the offseason and that it was VERY VERY difficult to make any adjustments with the hitters during the course of the season. He cited the examples of Thome and Konerko last year...that Walker knew what was wrong with their swings, hands, balance, stride, etc., but that it was a year-long battle to get them both out of bad mechanics. Hawk's favorite phrase, "muscle memory," also comes to mind. Essentially, the argument was that Tiger Woods can watch someone with a horrible gold swing and tell him points A, B, C of what is wrong with the swing mechanics, but that it's very hard to correct them, because it's almost like starting over from scratch and totally building up your swing from ZERO, deconstructing a swing. For instance, you watch Alexei and Konerko tonight, they had swings (homer and single to RF) where they had almost no extra hand movement or hitch in their swings. Simple to see and diagnose, hard to "fine tune" during the season, when baseball is 90% mental and confidence.

I don't think we even need a hitting coach. We need a team psychologist more, because improving the thinking of Floyd and Contreras would help more than anything a hitting coach could do. I think you could take any of the moderators here and put them with the 2006 White Sox team and there wouldn't have been any difference in terms of offensive output...just like you could take a mod and make them coach of the Fab Five Michigan or even the UNLV teams earlier and there wouldn't be anything more than a negligible difference in the final results.

I think our best possible infield (defensively) would be Ramirez at SS, Nix at 2B and Beckham at 3B.

Hunter was better than Rowand (clearly) until about 3 years ago. They're probably even now, although age is catching a bit with Rowand as well. Anderson's better than Rowand or Hunter, but neither Rowand nor Anderson are/were better than Hunter in his prime on turf.

It seems (from listening to many of the games) he has a really strong arm (I know he threw a runner out at 2nd last night and the same runner didn't try to go 1st to 3rd on a single the next time around)...but not the kind of speed or agility for CF. Of course, expecting someone like Gartrell or Shelby to put up a 850 OPS at a corner OF spot would REALLY be pushing it. We'd have to get some stolen bases (Shelby) and also power from Flowers, plus some unexpected pop from Beckham/Nix/Getz/Ramirez up the middle to compensate for offense we might lose playing Jordan Danks and either a Gartrell or Shelby in the same outfield.

http://thesportseconomist.com/2005/05/mone...win-fallacy.htm Things like this have been done many times before...the problem is that Oakland A's, Twins or Rays usually "win" this competition, but they're not necessarily successful in terms of winning playoff series or getting to the World Series. GM's like Epstein, Cashman, Minaya, Lynch, etc., will never have a chance because they HAVE to win and they have the budgets to be competitive every year, so they really could care less about cost per win, the only thing is the bottom line of winning the the World Series or not.

Discuss our 25 year-old Barons outfielder. Is this season an anomaly? Who do you think from the Birmingham roster is more likely to stick with the White Sox in the future (of the non Top 10 types), Gartrell or Retherford? Cook? What is his biggest weakness besides average speed and strikeouts? Would anyone feel confident if they knew that Shelby or Gartrell would be the starting LFer or RFer for the White Sox in 2010 or 2011? That Retherford might be the starting 3B in 2010 or 2011?

All teams have that "cost/benefit" analysis way of looking at their rosters. Some use VORP and mix it in with salary to get an "overall efficiency" factor for any given player. A perfect example of this is Wilson Betemit versus Juan Uribe. We didn't have anyone (maybe it's Nix now) who could play 3B, SS and 2B AND hit just a little bit. Lillibridge can't hit, Betemit can't field. So the question is do you go with Juan Uribe at $3.6 million or Wilson Betemit at $1.3 million. Personally, with how our pitching has been, I would rather have Uribe's defensive abilities and occasional power (he's also sure to get runners in from 3rd with less than 2 outs, a big weakness for the Sox) than a player in Betemit who's not being used correctly and is a defensively liability at any position on the field. One of the keys to making the playoffs last season was having an experienced/veteran bench player like Uribe to fill the void when Crede went down. Our bench this year is the worst it has been in many years. Before, we had Ozuna, who could give you a spark offensively and play adequate defense. I'll give Nix the benefit of the doubt that he can replace Uribe, though. That's turning out to be a pretty astute pick-up by KW, because if Fields fails to make it, Nix will be the first player they turn to. I'm not sure Ozzie will be able to trust Betemit's defense at 3B, although a platoon of Nix/Betemit might be the best overall option offensively.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 15, 2009 -> 12:01 PM) The good news is the Sox don't have to be all that good to compete in their division. The problem I have with the offseason is it went entirely away from the gunslinger mentality KW loves to hear people refer to the way he goes about things. There's going conservative and there's the way the White Sox handled last offseason. I just wish the team wouldn't have been satisfied with trying to compete, but trying to blow away the rest of the AL Central. There were plenty of good players available at discounted prices and short term commitments. With all the money coming off the books after this season, it really wouldn't have been nearly the gamble giving Hunter or Fukudome 5 years just one year earlier would have been. We should be fine if we can get a corner OF, DH (if we don't keep Dye) and solidify the starting rotation. It's much easier to pay for an Abreu or Dunn than it is to find a CF like Danks who can lead off and also play very good defense. So we're saving a ton of money there if Danks works out, and there's a good feeling about him within the organization. There was an opportunity to blow away everyone in the division by adding Crisp and Edwin Jackson, and it didn't happen...but there's no team that can run off a 10 game winning streak, so KW still has a chance to fix this season, if he so chooses. Or he can do something that's nearly impossible for him, sit on his hands and neither be a buyer NOR seller and ride out the season with the idea of fielding a much better, more interesting and younger team for 2010.

QUOTE (Texsox @ May 15, 2009 -> 11:50 AM) We are stuck as well, but with flea market finds. It would be interesting if there was a cost/productivity stat that could be developed. KW could make an argument that he has viable back-up options at every position on the team 3B: Betemit, Nix, Getz, Viciedo, Retherford SS: Nix, Beckham, Lillibridge (try not to laugh), Torres 2B: Nix, Beckham, Lillibridge, Retherford 1B: Betemit, Allen/Viciedo C: Lucy, Flowers DH: Flowers/Allen/Viciedo The two weaknesses on this team are obvious, going forward. The outfield might need two replacements (Anderson, Dye) and the starting rotation. Assuming Jordan Danks is ticketed for CF and leadoff that leaves LF, assuming Quentin is moved. For LF, we have Viciedo, John Shelby, Gartrell and/or trade/FA. For bullpen, Santeliz, Omogrosso and Nunez. But Poreda is really the only one projected to have a chance to be a legit starter in the big leagues. So looking for starters and LF (preferably a power-hitting LH like Dunn with better defensive ability) are the two areas of priority. Or we could leave Quentin in LF and find a RH. Or keep Dye for a lesser amount of money as the full-time DH...but then we really HAVE to get a LH power hitter for the outfield, with Thome gone.

They would much rather have Nix, who any team in baseball could have claimed last year. Nix is as good defensively as Lillibridge and has the 2nd best RH swing on the team right now.

Torii Hunter would have been a huge mistake at anything over $10 million per year for 3 years. He'd already lost a couple of steps defensively, and his numbers offensively aren't overwhelming. He's very, very streaky and he strikes out way too much. It would have been great to see him beating the Twins after so many plays (running over Jamie Burke, robbing Carlos Lee, etc.) against us in a Twins' uniform, but we're really fortunate not to have been stuck with Fukudome, Rowand or Hunter.

QUOTE (Texsox @ May 15, 2009 -> 10:54 AM) Doesn't basketball have a salary cap? I'm not certain it is fair to compare MLB and the NBA. Plus, I was just thinking the NBA has smaller rosters and without the extensive farm system. I'm not certain how much that comes into play. The finance guys have left the discussion, but it would seem that it is easier to make money in the NBA and the hardest in baseball. I'd rank it NFL > NBA > MLB > NHL MLB has been much more profitable than the NBA over the last decade. Not even close. In terms of year-to-year profitability as well as franchise appreciation.

The problem is that the White Sox seem to treat Chicago like an inelastic market and they can just charge almost any price they want to because 80% of their annual attendance theoretically comes from people who would almost pay anything to watch White Sox baseball, at least that must be the thinking. What I don't get is how teams like the Dodgers and Angels have much more affordable ticket prices, concessions, parking, etc. Last time I checked, LA was a significantly more expensive cost-of-living market than Chicago. With this team, it seems like we'll be in the mix for most of the year, but it doesn't have any identity at all for the fans. We were a great home team last year. This feels like one of those seasons (with the economy being what it is) that the fans will be a bit pessimistic and wait as long as possible before they commit to coming out and supporting the team. Last year, in the beginning, you felt that the team might be good because of the starting pitching, the bullpen and the way they played at home. Then it gets back to the old argument...you don't want to go through another 72-90 season, but if it gives you another Beckham in the draft, might it be worth it? Especially with some of the small-market teams perhaps shying away from some of the Top 10 picks in 2010 because of affordability, it gives the White Sox a chance to get a franchise player even better than Beckham. Hopefully a college pitcher that could make an immediate impact, because pitching will be the most expensive cost to replace. But the cost of that 72-90 would be a loss of around 20-30% of the season ticket base...and theoretically they wouldn't do anything SIGNIFICANT to improve the team (OF/starting pitcher) through free agency but marketing the Birmingham team as the future and hoping the excitement of the arrival of 6-7 new players at one time would be enough to keep the season ticket holders around. I'd guess they would hold off on CF if Danks continues to impress, but that the pitching staff would be the area they'd have to improve. And it's area where we haven't spent since David Wells in free agency, but the Homer Bailey's of the world will be even more difficult to pry away. Personally, I'd rather have lower ticket prices, but I can also understand why they wanted to "lock" in those revenues for 09. The only question is what financial shape we'll be in for 2010. Going from $115 million to $65 million would be pretty astounding, but it's quite possible.

QUOTE (kyyle23 @ May 13, 2009 -> 09:22 PM) JP Ricciardi/Adam Dunn, Jim Bowden while with the Nats and Cinci was pretty outspoken, Omar Minaya is a daily quote in any NY paper and save your "i was his biggest cheerleader" speech, you havent been on ST very long and you have already written three novels on KW and they have gradually turned on him, and now he has the biggest ego ever and kicked your dog. so GMAB back to you Oh, so now you think Dombrowski and Shapiro are part of the outspoken/too much facetime group too? Since when does facial recognition have anything to do with the issue? Plenty of GMs are unrecognizable to most of the public, they are front office people. That doesnt mean they dont talk to the papers and get their opinions out there He does have one of the biggest egos ever, so does Obama (who I voted for, before you accuse me of being anti-Obama and a socialist), but Obama's doesn't have any affect on attendance, future revenues, fan attitudes, etc. So I'll keep it short and simple: 1) KW is a good GM, in general 2) KW has done a good job rebuilding the farm system 3) Almost none of the players he has traded have had an impact elsewhere, with the exception of Frank Francisco and maybe Chris Young 4) KW really believes that he can see things no other scout in baseball can pick up...or he's the best "spin doctor" in the world...based on his belief in Colon, Contreras, Lillibridge, Miller, Fields, Ramirez, etc., coming into this season. 5) KW could care less what the fans think, even when he is wrong Do you really believe that he's the best GM in baseball and is beyond questioning, ever? However, I am very much elated to see that someone is keeping track of the general "tone and tenor" of my thousands of postings about KW.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 13, 2009 -> 08:27 PM) Exactly how many teams do you follow in depth to the point of reading their message boards, blogs, local newspapers, local programing etc to know how much their GMs are quoted? We know Kenny because we seek out all things of the Sox. Of course it seems like he talks a lot because that is what we are reading. Its like reading a liberal blog and wondering why Obama is always talking so much. I read the KC Star, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Plain Dealer, The Free Press and the 3 Chicago papers... One thousand people at the Mall of America could walk by Bill Smith and not recognize him. Dayton Moore, same thing. Williams, Dombrowski and Shapiro make more of an effort to get their face and quotes in the papers and especially in the national media.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 13, 2009 -> 07:50 PM) 2008 Buerhle ERA home 2.65 away 5.05 Contreras ERA home3.25 away 5.85 Floyd ERA home 3.55 away 4.18 Vazquez ERA home4.25 away 5.10 Danks ERA home3.66 away 2.92 Walker is more vilified, Cooper is more praised...both are somewhere in the middle. However, I would imagine if both of them were fired, Cooper would get more job offers. It's really hard to break down who should be better...because the White Sox invested a lot more of their money in the pitching staff in 05/06 than they did in their hitters...so does that mean Cooper was expected to have such a great pitching staff in 2005? Or that he did a bad job when they regressed the next year? Or simply that they were all stressed from the extra innings and playoff baseball and a falloff was unavoidable? Last year, our homefield advantage was one of the best in the league, I'm sure it really helped the pitchers despite pitching at USCF...like the playoff game against the Twins with Danks on the hill. That adrenaline kicking in and the 26th man affect has to help quite a bit, too.