Eminor3rd

There's just no way Porcello doesn't win it with that record.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Sep 13, 2016 -> 05:51 AM) Player A Age 27 550 Career PA's .737 OPS 95 wRC+ 14.3 UZR/150 1.2 fWAR Player B Age 26.5 2,417 Career PA's .723 OPS 91 wRC+ -7.7 UZR/150 0.8 fWAR Those are only 2016 stats and the UZR/150 values are for 2B only. Regardless, I'll easily take player A as my starting 2B over player B. Not only has Saladino been far more productive this year due to his defense, he's also a less developed player and has room for growth despite being slightly older than Lawrie. I'm certain that with a full year of regular playing time his BB rate would increase (look at his minor league numbers) and he could become a 3 WAR 2B. Factor in the team control and there really is no argument for starting Lawrie over Saladino. So you posted their ages and career PA, and then immediately put their 2016 numbers below them? For anyone who is justifiably confused, Lawrie's career wRC+ is 100, and Saladino's is 80. And that is why Lawrie will get the first chance to start over Saladino.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Sep 12, 2016 -> 11:31 PM) Get rid of Lawrie. Case closed. I guess everybody devalues Saladino cause of where he was chosen in the draft. Sorry, stat nerds (I say that lovingly) and draftniks ... the eye test is all that matters on Saladino. Sox are too dumb to play him, however. Sox scouts and front office and coaching staff is a fricking joke. This is your worst post in a while.

All the best

QUOTE (kwill @ Aug 31, 2016 -> 01:30 PM) Hey guys, Thanks so much for the information. It is super interesting. I think it would be hard for me to go to games in the minors. It seems like individual success is way more important than any kind of team success. Our average fan could hardly care less whether or not the teams wins. Our season-ticket holders do, though, but they also really latch onto specific players and root them on/hope they succeed at higher levels. There's no question that, from the affiliate end, they only really care about individual success. But you wouldn't be able to tell by watching what's on the field. The coaches and players treat it like it's the only baseball happening; they see winning as part of the training process.

NSS is right on all of that. I work for a Yankees affiliate; we're basically a contractor for the NYY. Our job is, essentially, to put on a game around their players. That includes ticket sales, concessions, stadium operations, gameday operations, etc. All of the operations staff are on our payroll, but all the players, coaches, trainers, and clubbies are on their payroll. The NYY have small ownership stake in us, but the operation is run by a private group that owns nearly all of it. Our GM is responsible for "baseball operations," which is mostly stuff like transportation and lodging for the players, dealing with umpires, and managing facility compliance. For example, the outfield grass must maintain a certain level of "brightness" when the lights are on at night, measured in footcandles. The league and/or the Yankees send guys to check up on that type of stuff from time to time. Player movement is (as mentioned above) entirely out of our hands, but TBH, it's just an operational afterthought for our GM. We all want our team to win because we work here, but our on-field success has next to no impact on attendance, and playoff games are generally not well attended anywhere in the MiLB. We started of our season 14-4, and then our five best position players got called up and we immediately started losing games. That was a bummer, but it didn't really make our GM's job any harder.

QUOTE (bmags @ Aug 31, 2016 -> 09:43 AM) Disagree. Hamels fell down last night. Q will reign. C Y Y O QUINTANA N G - C - - Y - - Y - - O - QUINTANA - N - - G -

QUOTE (harkness @ Aug 29, 2016 -> 06:48 PM) sigh... jose.... Awful at bat

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Aug 29, 2016 -> 05:29 PM) Yeah, I guess we should celebrate Mylan and the $600 Epipen not being the sponsors. Although, if the amount they ponied up was double what Guaranteed Rate was forking out, I'm sure we would be attempting to rationalize that as well... That has absolutely nothing to do with CEOs not doing work.

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ Aug 27, 2016 -> 12:01 PM) Well now I am really confused because I trusted the WAR stats Chitown used but now looked it up myself and Fangraphs has Frazier at a 1.2 WAR and Baseball Ref has him at 2.2 WAR. 2015 Frazier 4.5, 2014 4.8, 2013 3.1, 2012 2.6 all per Fangraphs. Baseball Reference is more generous with WAR and just by a casual glance it appears to be wide differences in defensive WAR where Abreu is hurt very badly by the Fangraphs d WAR but not so much by the Baseball Ref. . I think I prefer Baseball Ref. just because defensive evaluations seem to matter way too much on Fangraphs. Of course they calculate WAR differently in other areas too so it's possible I am making a generalization about things I'm ignorant on. I don't think anyone here expected the worst WAR in Fraziers last 5 years. I often have pointed out how the Sox keep acquiring NL players whose stats drop once they get to the AL and I have said they need to start acquiring more AL players and have often been called out on it. But the facts speak for themselves at least for the Sox. And no one bring up Eaton because he didn't have a history of stats of the NL. Until there is some standardized way for calculate WAR I will remain skeptical of it's use. It isn't so much that the defense matters MORE on FanGraphs, it's that each site uses an entirely different defensive statistic to measure defensive contribution. Generally speaking, FanGraphs tends to favor statistics that "strip outside factors" to productivity, which theoretically gets more to the core of a player's "skill," at least to the extent that it is demonstrated in a particular season. The downside to this is that it leaves some rare, outlier-type skills out of the equation, simply because we can't be totally sure they're present. BR tends to prefer a more complete model, but wraps in a bunch of stuff that isn't predictive and it much more affected by luck. This gives you a more total look at what a player did, but the numbers are far less stable, and so it would be much easier to over or undervalue a player's true talent from season to season. The differences in the models are MUCH more pronounced on the pitching side, though.

QUOTE (NCsoxfan @ Aug 27, 2016 -> 04:40 PM) Not sure if I'm reading this correctly, but Anderson has the second highest BABIP among all shortstops. Now I realize he strikes out a lot and doesn't walk much, but that's an encouraging sign if he can even get a little more plate discipline. Eh, I think it's actually a bad sign. Yes, speedy contact guys tend to run higher BABIPs than average, but literally no one in the live ball era has ever sustained .375. His elevated BABIP is more likely a sign pointing to near-term regression than it is a sign pointing to long-term success.

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ Aug 27, 2016 -> 09:40 AM) Do you even listen to what you just wrote because it's insane and nothing against you at all. You're trying to explain it to me and I greatly appreciate it. But what you just basically told me is a part time , injured catcher like Alex Avila ( all things being equal and in abstract ??? lost me there ) , I'd rather have him than Abreu ?? No , just no I wouldn't not even close. I mean WAR assigns each position on the field some kind of importance level right ? 1st base is at the bottom of the important positions where its crucial to have a very good defender, correct ?So how can being a bad 1st baseman hurt soooo much as to relegate Abreu to barely above league average as a player or is it barely above league average for a 1st baseman ? Because if its as a player how can you tell me with a straight face no less, all things being equal and in the abstract of course, that a platooned, injured, does nothing offensively but take walks, approx 150 AB's but good defensive catcher is worth more (?) than your full time ,2nd in RBI, 2nd in batting average , 2nd in doubles, 1st in OPS, approx 520 AB but bad defense 1st basemen ? I mean you do understand what I am saying right ? People assign money values to these WAR numbers right ? $7/8M per 1 WAR is standard now right ? Would you pay a part time catcher who gets 25-30% of the AB's of Abreu and offensively does nothing but take walks more than Abreu ? Would you be OK with just letting Abreu walk after this year like we all will be with letting Avila walk ? I don't ask all these silly questions to put you on the spot. I'm just really really trying to understand these WAR evaluations. I don't want to be a dinosaur and it's not as easy as understanding the traditional baseball stats. All of a sudden a light hitting defensive whiz like Heyward gets a huge contract based on these evaluations now and even at the age he got the contract his defensive whizardry wouldn't really last all that long,3 /4 years tops and he'll be mostly considered a middle of the pack RF once he losses some range. The thing is, I could never understand the Heyward hype that led to a contract like that from a traditionalists view. Traditionally offense has always been worth more and probably much more than defense.Good offense can probably be maintained for a longer period of time. Good offense puts you in the Hall of Fame . Does anyone think Heyward is a future HOF guy ? Yet he is given a HOF contract. Smething is wrong or agents are behind the creation of WAR . I say that jokingly of course but come on now something is way out of whack here. You're forgetting about positional adjustment, for one. Fangraphs lumps that in with defense, which leads a lot of people to be confused. You're not comparing Abreu's hitting versus Navarro's hitting -- you're comparing Abreu's value as it relates to other first baseman against Navarro's value as it relates to other catchers. Also, the "WAR is a counting stat" thing is critical. No, you wouldn't rather have Navarro than Abreu because Navarro has more WAR this year any more than you'd rather have Frazier than Donaldson because Frazier has more homeruns this year. But even that doesn't mean Navarro can't have been more valuable than Abreu over the course of a few months. Drawing sweeping conclusions from partial season counting-stat data is dumb and wrong regardless of which stats you use. If you're going to do that, it isn't the stats' fault. Forget about the dollar-value thing. People misuse that CONSTANTLY. All it was ever supposed to do is form a baseline for a specific year's market values during free agency. It was NEVER, expressly nor implied, supposed to be able to actually put a dollar value on a win for a team. There are WAY too many constantly changing variables (unique to each team and season) to be able to do that. But people constantly reference market norms for $/WAR from like 2012 to try to decide whether or not a slumping player is worth his contract going forward and other ridiculous stuff. Even professional writers do it, and it's sad.

Jesus

The "great stuff funky delivery don't care" thing worked great with Sale but... well, they can't all be zingers.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Aug 11, 2016 -> 09:34 AM) ...what if Justin Morneau IS his son? #mindblown

QUOTE (GreenSox @ Aug 10, 2016 -> 06:09 PM) Why not? He's an average player and Saladino's just as good. Lawrie is a rent himself. Trade from excess. Even the disappointing version of Lawrie hits significantly better than Saladino.

This is a guy who simply may not be worth the baggage.

QUOTE (captain54 @ Aug 10, 2016 -> 12:41 PM) Of course it was. The discussion is concerning Robertsons performance vs value. You switched it up completely and brought up an entirely different issue involving Sale and the torn up uni's and missing a couple of starts. This is hilarious. You guys are pretty forgiving when it comes to someone else not getting value for their $$$. My guess is that if it was coming out of your pocket, or you were somehow accountable, you'd be taking a walk over to the dark side with all the irrational ranters, whiners, moaners and chronically unsatisfied Do you join hands and sing "Kumbaya" when you take your car in for a $5 k engine rebuild, and you break down not 20 minutes out of the shop, in rush hour on the Kennedy, bumper to bumper, in 95 degree temps? Are you seriously evaluating a reliever's performance based on the amount of "pitcher wins" he adds or subtracts to from Chris Sale's total? Because that would be total nonsense, and Quinarvy's post is simply stating that.

Carlos Gomez:

QUOTE (FT35 @ Aug 8, 2016 -> 08:12 AM) Soooooo....lemme get this straight...we need LaRoche's son to be gone...but now we need Abreu's son to be here all the time!? Maybe he's the missing leader on this team now that Drake is gone!? What a circus! Do other teams go through what we go through!?!?!??!?! Um, no?

QUOTE (bmags @ Aug 4, 2016 -> 03:43 PM) Is Tim Anderson ok? X-ray negative.

That might have been the best throw of Saltalamacchia's entire career.

QUOTE (chisoxt @ Aug 4, 2016 -> 12:50 PM) I agree. Also, why doesn't Navarez get more playing time? Frankly, in limited play, he looks better than Navarro. Is this another manifestation of Robin's stubbornness? This late in the season, I imagine it has something to do with the pitchers being comfortable with Navarro.

Wtf is wrong with Hawk? He's like not paying attention or something.

QUOTE (shakes @ Aug 2, 2016 -> 09:59 AM) Well, Abreu's trend unfortunately is very far from his 5.3 war his rookie year, which was nearly cut in half last year and it's hard to guarantee a bounce back, he hasn't shown the ability to adjust to the adjustments the league is making to him. http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2016/6/6/11863...e-sox-struggles As far as Frazier goes, his WAR is being dragged down by his defense which fluctuates year to year, and generally doesn't get better as you age. His offensive numbers are down, while his OPS+, wOBA, WRC+, are all lower than career averages, but they are not career worst and are not far below his career averages. His BB% and ISO are actually career highs, as is his K%. It is a career low for BABIP, which gives you some hope, but the rest of the numbers don't tell me he's just automatically jumping back to a 4.5+ WAR player. It looks to me like another guy the Sox acquired who is having a more difficult than normal time switching leagues. For Rodon, I hope he continues to grow as a pitcher, but for now he needs to continue his growth and actually reach a 3+ WAR season before I just count it as automatic. I just really don't believe any of those changes should be the plan to get back into contention. They're certainly not enough, you're right. But it's halfway, I think, which is close enough to want to go into the winter with your options open. I mean, if I found out that there were good offers on the table for all the guys they might have moved yesterday, I wouldn't be taking this position. And maybe that "chain of command problem" tweet is evidence that's the case. But if we can assume that Hahn didn't get great offers, I think it's easy to see why he didn't pull any triggers. That's really all I'm trying to say. That we have no significant pending free agents makes it a different situation than usual.