Eminor3rd

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 5, 2015 -> 09:38 AM) I do agree with the idea that firing the manager would have made it much easier to bring back the same squad. Now the pressure rests squarely on Rick Hahn's shoulders because he has made the clear statement that the manager was not the problem. If it wasn't the manager, then it was the players. Right -- if nothing changes at this point, Rick Hahn will have some proverbial "splaining" to do. QUOTE (flavum @ Oct 5, 2015 -> 09:39 AM) If the option is- same team with Ventura, or same team with a new manager that they carefully interviewed and made a more informed decision, yes I would take a new manager. Sure, but that's the point: "same team" should not be in the cards. That's the variable we should be focused on. SS2k5 make a good point that by retaining RV, Hahn is signalling that the players need to change. He's placed the flashlight on the correct problem, now he has to step up and fix it.

QUOTE (flavum @ Oct 5, 2015 -> 09:25 AM) Not denying that in a vacuum it's hard to quantify what a manager brings. But when you take everything into consideration from the lack of experience when he was hired, and sloppy, under-performing teams over the last few years, the right baseball move would have to make a change. And it has nothing to do with appeasing fans. 29 other teams probably would have made a change today because that's how it goes. The bolded is exactly what I mean. "That's how it goes." It's just a way to kick the can down the road. Would you be happy if the Sox ran out the same team under a different manager in 2016?

QUOTE (flavum @ Oct 5, 2015 -> 09:14 AM) Well then. They should probably give the entire coaching staff a 3-year extension today. Can't have a manager with lame duck status, after all. The point is "who cares"? I'm not saying that any of them deserve an extension or to be fired or whatever, but just that none of it will actually solve anything. If the Sox suck again next year, it won't be because of Robin Ventura. It'll be because they didn't get a real 3B or catcher, or because they gave LaRoche/Garcia another 500 PA each. If the Sox make coaching changes, fine. But we should stop treating the status of the manager like it's an actual bellwether for our team's performance. It's symbolic, at best.

MLB teams use coaching firings as misdirections. They fire your manager to appease the mob, despite the fact that there's tons of evidence -- observational, anecdotal, sabermetric, and otherwise -- that suggests that the manager has very little, if anything, to do with how well the team performs. Why are you all playing into this? If you want to hold the White Sox accountable for losing, do it by asking why we have Avisail Garcia. Do it by pointing out that there were signs that Adam LaRoche or Alexei Ramirez would fall off a cliff. The players are the ones that are failing. Changing managers will do nothing to help your team, so stop letting the media and PR department "satisfy" you with manager-personnel decisions.

QUOTE (nitetrain8601 @ Sep 27, 2015 -> 11:27 PM) The argument I'm making isn't is he worth his contract. He is, and I'm happy with him as an individual player. At the same time, the overall hitting on this team sucks. He's been playing CF and pretty good at it. I think he's peaked, you maybe don't. I'd trade him unless the Sox plan on bringing in a lot more legitimate players with him which it doesn't sound like they plan on doing. You trade him for a position of need. That's what you do in all trades. Seriously, you trade something to get something. I would love to trade Danks and turn him into Trout, but that ain't happening. Instead, you can trade Eaton for someone in the infield (hell, you need all positions but one). That's just one idea. His defense has gone down. His average and OBP have gone down. He k's more. You have more or less seen the best of him. Not saying his peak won't last longer than a year or 3. I'm just saying I don't think he's going to improve dramatically anywhere. The notion that Adam Eaton isn't worth his contract is patently false. The past two seasons, Adam Eaton has produced roughly 3 fWAR each. On the free agent market, teams have been paying roughly $7m per fWAR per season. That would make Adam Eaton free agent value about $21m per season, while he is guaranteed an average of $4.7m per season over the next five years. That, obviously, leaves a TON of roomto decline and still produce a ton of surplus value. You can make the argument that his skillset is one that is not rewarded on the open market in proportion with its overall value, but there's just no way that a "speed/defense/OBP skillset discount" even approaches enough to make Eaton not worth his current contract. It seems to be a somewhat widely held myth that Eaton's offense has declined this year. His average and OBP have dropped slightly, but his SLG has increased just as much, and the result is essentially the same output: 115 wRC+ this year vs. 117 wRC+ last year -- both numbers comfortably above league average, and putting him in the same neigborhood as Ian Kinsler, Joc Pederson, Mookie Betts, Nolan Arenado, Jason Heyward, and Todd Frazier among others. Eaton is 56th in the entire MLB among qualified hitters, in fact. Moving Eaton would create a huge hole, and one that you would NOT be able to fill without absorbing a MUCH larger contract.

The bar for WC contention, every year, is simply a timely six-week stretch of hot baseball. The scorched-Earth rebuild is a relic of the past, friends, at least as long as the current playoff structure/CBA holds.

If you trade your above average players that are locked up to team-friendly, sub-market, pre-free agency extensions, you will ALWAYS be rebuilding.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 24, 2015 -> 12:32 PM) One caveat: If the White Sox thought there was a >50% chance Sale was traded during the offseason then shutting him down would be the correct move. Unless some teams are balking because they thought another shutdown was evidence of an injury or that he could simply never handle 200 innings. But yeah, risks on both sides of the coin there.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Sep 24, 2015 -> 12:05 PM) I wanted Zapata, but we know how that worked out. Thanks, Adolfo. Srsly. I mean come on, we could have been chanting VIVA ZAPATA for years.

QUOTE (SCCWS @ Sep 24, 2015 -> 12:23 PM) I think offense is the top priority. The defense has been much better w the addition of S&S in the infield. In fact, I think Alexei has played better defense sine they arrived as well. But the problem is S&S are poor offensively. So I think they leave Sanchez where he is and go out and get some offense on 3rd. They also need to add an OF bat who can also field. I would think Q could bring back a quality 3B and OF in a trade. I don't think it's one or the other specifically -- I think it's making sure every player is contributing to at least ONE. We have had entirely too many players that are negatives on BOTH sides of the ball this year.

QUOTE (Lip Man 1 @ Sep 24, 2015 -> 10:52 AM) On paper the moves the Sox made were well regarded by baseball people (not just fans) across the board. SOMETHING happens when those guys put on the uniform however and this has been happening for years...you can go all the way back to David Wells. There is something about the front office / culture of the franchise that is at least in some way responsible for this happening. Until that changes, until new people are brought in to the front office and individuals are held accountable for results by their jobs being on the line, you are going to see more of this stuff happening. The Sox have a historical baseline long enough now to tell me it's chronic under the individuals responsible for running the franchise. Just my thoughts. Mark I would disagree that everyone thought the moves were good -- there were a lot of writers on the sabermetric side that saw it as lipstick on a pig, that the product still wasn't good enough to justify the investment. What I think we need to avoid, as fans, is the trap that what happened was what was ALWAYS going to happen -- the idea that a perfect plan equals perfect results. If you played this season out again, it wouldn't end the same way. It's possible to have a team that is perfectly capable of winning, but just doesn't. MOST teams fail. If we think the FO needs to be axed after a few consecutive bad years, than we must think that half or more of all the FOs also need to be axed. This is a game where it's really difficult to get to the top. Failing to do it doesn't necessarily mean you're on the wrong track. The Sox have had four of the 15 worst player performances in the majors this year by fWAR -- Adam LaRoche, Avisail Garcia, Alexei Ramirez, and Melky Cabrera. Had those four even turned in career average seasons, the Sox would most likely be a WC team. Of course things are going to go wrong, but was it not fair to project average performances for them? Was there a problem in the process there? Unless you think there were OBVIOUS signs of impending decline that the Sox missed, the answer is no. They were all coming of decent to good seasons. It just didn't work out; the players failed. On some level, it happens to every team except one every year.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 24, 2015 -> 11:18 AM) While that's true, if Chris Sale is going to get hurt during his last 14 innings this season because he's overworked, then he'll never be able to be a full time starter. What are we going to do to avoid that next year if he can't get to 200 innings this year? Go back to the "one start off per month" rule? Shut him down every July so that he has enough left in the tank to pitch down the stretch? Limit him to 180 innings just in case this org ever reaches the playoffs again? I can't find any way to make that make sense to me. I agree -- at some point, he's going to have to do it so that we know he CAN do it again. Conditioning is everything.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Sep 24, 2015 -> 10:39 AM) If Walsh didn't throw his arm out placing the team on his back, I have no doubt he'd have gone down as a GOAT pitcher. Let's not pretend like he wasn't sheer dominance for a few seasons. Yeah, I didn't mean to make it sound like Walsh sucked (though I know I did with the "Sox weak history of dominant players" line), I was really trying to bring up the era difference more than anything.

QUOTE (lasttriptotulsa @ Sep 24, 2015 -> 10:10 AM) And this is what I don't like. Sale is harder to hit by who? Players today or players in Walsh's era? If you say Walsh's era, well that's obvious. You can't give pitchers 100 years of science and technology to use to advance themselves but not hitters. This is why you can't compare eras. You can only compare a player in relation to his peers. And in Walsh's era, he was every bit as dominant as Chris Sale. I understand the difficulties with it, but that's exactly what I'm trying to do -- it's AN age-old question: are the athletes today better than the athletes of yesterday. I contend yes, but there are many that disagree.

QUOTE (lasttriptotulsa @ Sep 24, 2015 -> 10:10 AM) Yes the Sox history of high end pitching has been weak alright. The guy who's record Sale is about to break only has the lowest career ERA of all time while sporting a very comparable FIP- over his prime as Sale has. It was a completely different era with two completely different styles of baseball being played. Trying to compare the two is pretty absurd. Walsh pitched at a time when some batters might strikeout 15-20 times in a season. Now anything under 100 is considered pretty acceptable. This has as much to do with the batters and the style of play as it does your perceived lack of domination from the pitchers. The fact that this record has stood so long has very little to do with a Sox lack of high end pitching. Walsh's record is the 65th highest single season total post 1900. Of the 64 ahead of him, 27 of those seasons are held by Randy Johnson, Nolan Ryan, Sandy Koufax, Steve Carlton and Roger Clemens. Bert Blyleven who is 5th all time in strikeouts had a career high of 258. 269 strikeouts is a high total and a pretty damn tough record to beat. Again, I'd reiterate -- were the batters striking out less because they felt like striking out less, or were the pitchers not throwing stuff that was hard to hit? A little of both, sure, but what evidence is there to suggest one over the other? When it comes to the pitchers, I'd posit that merely the fact that they were throwing 400-500 innings is evidence that they were throwing lesser stuff. Sale couldn't do what he does and throw 400 innings, obviously. When it comes to the hitters, the best evidence for a contact-oriented approach would be fewer HRs hit overall, but at the same time, the SLG rates weren't nearly as far removed in say, 1917, than they are today. Guys were also running higher BABIPs consistently. I said in my original post that the old guys were just as VALUABLE in context, but I stand by my original point that Chris Sale is way harder to hit.

QUOTE (3GamesToLove @ Sep 24, 2015 -> 09:59 AM) Most of this is accurate, but let's not pretend that the changing approaches by batters is a huge factor in rising strikeout rates. Also, please note the team single season strikeout records...very few of them are deadball era guys, despite the fact that those were the guys who compiled crazy innings totals. This isn't an indictment on Sox pitching history in particular, just a reflection of the changing nature of the game. It's a chicken and egg thing though: is it the hitters that have changed their approaches, or is it the pitchers that have improved? The answer is almost always "both," but I'd posit that it's more the pitchers than the hitters, or at least that much of the change in the hitters' approaches was DRIVEN by improved pitching; that it has become necessary to maximize impact upon contact at the cost of accepting more strikeouts,

This is one of the most interesting instances of rate stats vs counting stats, IMO. It also should absolutely put to rest the idea that old-timey pitchers were as dominating as today's aces. The Hawks of the world can claim that these guys were throwing "as hard as anyone" and that they just didn't have radar guns, but there's just no way that's true. Now, the old-timey aces very well may have been just as VALUABLE as today's ace because of the massive disparity in workload, but it seems too obvious to me that they made a clear tradeoff to prioritize innings over dominance. And there can't be much question who would would be superior on a per-batter basis. That Sale is on the verge of overcoming an old-timey COUNTING stat record is, IMO, as indicative of how insanely dominant he is as well as it is indicative of how relatively weak the Sox history of high-end pitching is. After all, it SHOULD be impossible to break a counting record like that despite throwing less than HALF the innings.

The armchair GM in me can see the benefit to considering this line of thought. The other armchair GM in me would NEVER make this trade from the Dodgers perspective, because it's a MASSIVE risk to take in order to acquire something I already have more of than most teams -- elite front end pitching. The fan in me would absolutely hate not having Sale anymore. The fan in me would hate even more the idea of someone ELSE having Sale. I don't want to do it. The answer is no. Now go to your room and finish your homework.

I am coming out of the bushes to make this gamethread because I will be enjoying this fantastic pitching match-up from a luxury box at Yankee Stadium and I could not resist the opportunity to gloat about it. I would love nothing more than to bask in the anger of those around me as our Sox play spoiler behind our dominating, enviable ace. I shall endeavor to post lineups when said lineups become available to post. As usual, I forgot to put the date in the thread title. If a moderator would be so kind to rectify this, I would be grateful for minutes on end. If not, none of us will lose any sleep.

QUOTE (3GamesToLove @ Sep 23, 2015 -> 10:14 AM) It is a little odd that if you want to be a major league manager, you start by coaching and managing in the minors. If you want to be a major league player, you start by playing in the minors. If you want to be a major league GM, though, you're probably not going to be starting out as a minor league GM. I completely understand why (future GMs are in baseball ops/player development positions throughout the organization), but from the outside it seems strange. It makes more sense if you focus on who is employing who -- Players, managers, coaches, training staff, are all employed by the Major League organization. The GM of the milb team is emplyoed by... the owner of the milb team. The affiliates are (mostly) independent businesses that are contracted by the MLB teams to provide a playing environment for their players. The milb team is a third party. The milb GM doesn't "work for" the MLB affiliate.

Nice!

You don't have to be overhyping Trayce Thompson to choose him in this context.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 22, 2015 -> 02:07 PM) The post I quoted described him as "one of the bright spots this season" and said that the White Sox basically got what they paid for from him. Oh Jesus, it does, doesn't it?

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ Sep 21, 2015 -> 04:10 PM) I don't think he's tipping hit pitches so much as leaving hanging breaking balls over the middle of the plate.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 22, 2015 -> 10:17 AM) Since we're in a thread on Viciedo, it's worth noting that I'm still amazed at how many people are genuinely ok with Melky producing basically Dayan Viciedo's 2012 and 2013 numbers while being paid $13 million for it. Who are these people?