michelangelosmonkey

I'll take it. Idiotic defending Lopez hours before he's going to face this Twins lineup. The Twins are going to make a lot of 5th starters look like...well...5th starters

I just did a search of AL pitchers that threw more than 20 starts last year and of all the AL pitchers Reylo was the 5th youngest (Gio is younger, Cease is younger but didn't qualify...man our future is so bright). Of all the 20 start pitchers, in his terrible year, Reylo had the 43 highest WAR. There are LOTS of terrible fourth and fifth starters....there were more than 80 starters in the AL with at least a dozen starts that had a negative WAR. Reylo is not one of them. At his worst he's one of the best bad pitchers out there...and young with a upside. OK I'm done...he's getting shelled today but there's reason for hope.

Ok now I'm down the rabbit hole. Last year...Reylo's terrible year...he was 34th in the AL for highest percent of quality starts at 45%. Blake Snell was less likely than Reylo to have a quality start. To suggest that a fifth starter can't be bad 1/3 of his starts? I think almost no 5th starters WEREN'T bad in 1/3 of their starts....and when Reylo was good he was very good.

Yeah...I think it's fair to be worried about today. This Twins offense is really good...and Lopez gives up lots of fly balls and homers...except when he's dominant which he CAN be. I don't think Maeda can be dominant...I think the Sox score 5 today and its up to Lopez to stop them from getting five. If Lopez can be good? The ceiling for this team is otherworldly.

Just checking...in 2018 he gave up 2 or fewer runs in 20 of his 32 starts. Difference between last year and 2018 is he had more terrible starts last year. Doesn't that seem like a thing that coaching can fix?

In his ten best starts last year Lopez was 8-0 with a 0.80 ERA, struck out 11 per 9 and 3 1/2 to 1 strikeout to walk ratio. That's not a single fluky start...that's a third of the season. And Lopez the year before, at 24, was pretty good with sub 4 ERA in 32 starts. There is something there. To say he can't put it all together is just too pessimistic. Fulmer basically strung together nothing so to say he just needed to put it together was too optimistic.

A fifth starter that has very good stuff 2/3 of the time? I don't think any pitcher has his best stuff 100% of the time. 1/3 is too much...and as I stated earlier I was ready to give up on him...but he's only 26 and its not impossible for him to get better. I mean he HAS the stuff. He just needs to be more consistent. We were all ready to give up on Giolito last year in April.

So I was looking at it. Are we too hard on Lopez? He had 33 starts last year and 10 were terrible...as I mentioned earlier a 14 ERA in those starts. In his other 23 starts he had a 3.3 ERA and 3 to 1 walks to strikeouts. So 2/3 of the time he was a very good pitcher and 1/3 of the time he was the worst pitcher in the history of baseball. If he is the good Lopez he is way better than Maeda ever was.

I love that. He's only 26 and often with young guys it is how they look when they are good. He had ten starts last year where he allowed one run or less. 7 starts where he had 8 strikeouts or more. He was really good when he was good. Problem is he had ten starts where he pitched 44 innings and gave up 70 runs (14 ERA). Can't give up on a guy who pitched a complete game one hitter with 11 strikeouts in September against a Cleveland team in the playoff hunt. Please Lopez. Please

I'm not sure who saw Maeda "beasting" with the Twins. His career ERA outside of Dodger stadium is 4.50 (1.25 higher than at home). And his career OPS-against on the road was .715...and that includes the nearly 10% hitters that he faced were pitchers. He's 32 so he's not getting better. There's a reason Twins got him from the Dodgers for nothing with the Dodgers paying almost all his salary. That said...Lopez against this Twins team is scary. He has the stuff to shut them down but 8 runs seems more likely. I think I lost most of my belief in Lopez last year. Even my normal optimistic player evaluation has a hard time thinking Lopez isn't just a slightly better Carson Fulmer...great ability but can't control it.

Absurd? Are you drunk? Abreu's career OPS is higher than EE, he is four years younger and he's not coming off a broken wrist. I mean it's fine to say that you like EE over Abreu but my position is "wildly unreasonable, illogical, or inappropriate" (Definition of absurd) ??????

I think that's fair. It never hurts to have good players around. The roster expanded to 26 this year ( I mean before the world fell apart) and having a third catcher like Collins spend most of his time tutoring under Grandal, pinch hitting and starting once a week made ok sense. It just depends on what you thought this team was going in. I kind of liked the idea of having Robert, Madrigal, Collins, Jimenez, Cease, Kopech etal all having a learn-together kind of competitive year with 2021 be the break out year. But I think management sensed they could make noise this year...and really if EE has an .880 OPS and leads them to the playoffs? I'm cheering as loudly as you.

Abreu is 4 years younger and not coming off a broken wrist. I'd bet on Abreu.

It wasn't an unreasonable gamble by the Sox. It is inarguable that EE has been great the last eight years. I think the point is that old hitters have the end come on suddenly. We've seen several Sox prospects with wrist injuries take a year to regain their strength and they were kids. I think there is as good a chance that Collins with his elite batting eye becomes a great hitter as there is that EE continues to be a good hitter. One gamble costs you $12 million the other costs nothing. One gamble, if it pays off, has big impact for Sox in 2021-2025 the other has nothing. I know what gamble I'm taking.

EE is 37...coming off a year where he played 10 games the last two months of the regular season and was nearly worthless in the playoffs. It is just untrue that Collins hasn't come within 50 points of .875 OPS in the minors unless you mean last year in AAA where his .951 OPS was more than 50 points above .875...he was a top ten draft pick and had an OPS above 1.000 in his three years at Miami. I think it's fair to say at their peak career value Collins might never be the hitter that EE was. But we are talking about 20202 with an old man coming off a broken wrist versus a 25 year old player with maybe the best walk rate in the minors, that hit as well as Robert in AAA and and in his last two weeks of the 2019 put up a .960 OPS in the majors. There is just no way you can say with confidence that 2020EE>2020ZC.

I'm pretty sure about 14 months ago you would have had Giolito and Moncada on the top of the list of people saying they suck and will never amount to anything. I suppose its part of sports to jump into the debate and feel smart if the guy doesn't pan out. I just prefer the optimist route...and I feel like if Collins was a prospect for the White Sox...all else equal...in say 2004...we would have been SOOO excited about him. But because we have so much to be excited about Zack has become the poster boy for "can't hit, can't field, he'll never make it".

Why would you have such a pessimistic view on Zack Collins hitting? Granted his first sixty at bats in the majors were putrid with a .420 OPS...but his last forty at bats he had an .950 OPS...in Spring training this year he had a 1.200 OPS, at AAA last year he had a .950 OPS, in three years in College at Miami he had a 1.000+ OPS. You know who else missed fastballs? Babe Ruth. Come on...he's only 24 and there are LOTS of data points suggesting he could be an elite hitter.

I think after the 2000 season I felt like we were poised for a five year run of greatness. The team won 95 games and I think had the #1 rated minor league system that was filled with top pitching prospects...Kip Wells and Aaron Myette were top 30 prospects in all of baseball. Buehrle was 21. John Garland had started a dozen games at 20. Jon Rauch was top draft pick the year before was 6-11 and looked like the new Randy Johnson. I don't think I was every so excited about the next five years of the White Sox as I was that fall. I guess a cautionary tale about this team.

So you are taking anecdotal evidence (twitter) that 30 year olds are dying and then laying in wait for someone to disagree with you and insult them (tinfoil hats)?? What's the matter with having a reasoned argument? You make a claim that 3 out of 900 baseball players will be dead if they play baseball. Last week in all of America there were 4 men out of 35 million between 18-34 that died of Coronavirus (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#AgeAndSex) and only a few hundred since the outbreak...and your own link (to make this point) says you are 12 times more likely to die if you have an underlying condition. This thing is really awful disease for old people and people with underlying conditions. It is a bad flu for young people. The risk of death is not zero but for most baseball players it is very very close to zero. Give the players that data and let them chose for themselves. Its not idiotic to suggest that there are inherent dangers to living and just learning to deal with that risk is something we humans do every time we step in a car (WAY deadlier for males 18-34 than Covid-19).

If you want to argue that one or two coaches/owners/trainers will die per year...absolutely agree. It's just not them that are talking about their fear of playing again. As for "the infection rate could be 3%"? It could be 9%. Or 2% or 12%...we just don't know yet. The only certain number we know is the 400 dead between 20-34 in a potential pool of 30,000,000. Anyone that is turning down a million dollars given the known risks is either very wealthy or bad at math. Still we can agree that the owners are idiots. This is such a golden opportunity to win casual fans back to baseball. People are desperate to watch sports again...give the players a risk premium to play...and restart the game. They could recover that cost over time if they pick up 5% additional fans...instead they will all jump off the cliff together.

I am using the same site so I'm not sure where you get 800. There are 372 dead males between 25-34. There are 61 between 15 and 24. I split it in half because really...not many 15-19 year olds in MLB. So that cuts your rate down to .18 expected player deaths...or one player every five years. Though of course the rate would likely be much lower as most of the actually victims are not peak athletes. So one player every ten years? Twenty? Now if you want to close down my parents pickle ball game? I'm on board because they are both 90 and that is who Covid is killing.

No one knows. We do know how many died...400 out of a pool of 30,000,000 age equivalent people. And of the 400...how many had other medical issues? 399?

I appreciate you trying to explain to me what I believe and why I am stupid believing it. To clarify...Coronavirus has been running rampant in the country for months...and so far of 30,000,000 American men between 18-34...400 have died from the disease. But sure, if you want to believe that random, constantly monitored elite athletes will die at an astounding rate versus random average American male of the same age...it's a somewhat free country.

So your position is no baseball players are doing drugs because they have a contract?

I'm not including the women in that age range or deaths as there are no women MLB players. The figure is random 18-34 year old male in USA and one out of 75,000 of them have died from Coronavirus. I'm not sure why cases matter as to this point we know precisely the number of people that have died and have no idea of the total number of cases as the vast majority show no symptoms. Further...why would MLB players be MORE likely to get it and die than random American? Seems probably less likely given their peak fitness...and likely maximum testing and isolation procedures. So if you want to quibble and say it would be more like one player every 50 years...or 25 years...fine.