Eminor3rd

QUOTE (ChiSox59 @ Sep 2, 2015 -> 09:27 AM) Quintana is better than about half the guys on that list. If he spent the last 4 years on the Cardinals, he'd be widely considered one of the top 5 pitchers in the game. What? Which guys?

I mean. Ok, this might sound callous, but: Who cares? The guy was born 126 years ago, before cars were invented. He retired before electricity was common in homes. He died before polio was cured. Does the sixth generation of his family really need this? How can we possibly have evidence to overturn anything from that long ago? Is anyone not over this?

Hahn basically said nothing at all.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Aug 31, 2015 -> 07:25 AM) Nothing will happen. Robertson will be the White Sox closer next year. This. He's more valuable than his contract to the Sox, but the Yankees don't need him enough to give up talent. So Cashman will offer some garbage and to take the contract, but the Sox won't do it, so he'll be pulled back.

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ Aug 28, 2015 -> 05:22 PM) I really hate responding to you because you are so smart and I am an ignoramus. What I mean is do normal baseball fans these days even know what you're saying ? My guess there's not too many who can explain the theory of being replacement level, which is the easier of the things you are trying to say. Now I know some might think they know what it is but couldn't quite put it into words if you asked them without looking it up 1st. Bat is one standard deviation below league average and glove one below legendary bad ? Let me look all that up on the back of todays modern baseball card, or let some announcers on baseball telecasts explain it to me . Oh wait pretty much the only place you find this stuff is online or in some level of math class I never got to or forgot long ago. You may very well be right about Avi but by traditional numbers Alexei, LaRoche , Flowers have been worse right ? I can't understand why then a MLB organization with reems and reems of all this wonderful new data can play all 4 of those guys full time . Maybe I'm wrong and I'm sure there will be others to say they understand most advanced stats but I still believe there is a wide gap between a regular baseball explanation for why Avi is so bad and the advanced metrics explanation .At least half the people who read what you said can't explain in more simple terms. And I actually think it's more than 50% and there are more highly educated young men on Soxtalk than your average fan. I'm a dinosaur I know but when people used to talk baseball they didn't need a chalk board with a lot of x's on it with derivatives and 5 syllable mathematical terms. Baseball used to unite the classes , unite the young and the old, now its just one more thing that divides us. I'm really NOT trying to be an asshole and I'm not trying to talk down my nose. What you said is EXACTLY my point actually -- if you only look at his average and his RBIs, it seems like he's just mediocre. But when you actually quantify how bad his defense is, look at how hard it is for him to get on base, and then compare him to other players in RF, he looks so so so much worse than just mediocre. I'm not pointing it out to be a troll, I'm pointing it out because it isn't obvious unless you take a deeper look, and I know not everyone gives a s*** about this stuff to take that deeper look. And that's actually one of the biggest differences from the sabermetric perspective and the traditional one: looking at players in a context that makes more sense. Yes, LaRoche/Flowers/Alexei have been worse hitters on a raw level, but when you compare Flowers/Alexei to what you can realistically expect from guys at their positions, they don't look any worse than Avi (LaRoche has no such excuse). The reason I always end up posting this type of stuff isn't because I'm smart, it's because I'm willing to waste more of my time reading about all this type of stuff than the average fan. It doesn't make me cool, it makes me a f***ing geek.

Yay, TFT. For real. Trayce Thompson is still more likely to be a bust than a productive ML player. It's just reality, though I hope he proves everyone wrong. That said, I don't think people here really understand how bad Avisail Garcia has been. We're not talking about a so-so Major Leaguer who just hasn't realized his upside -- we're talking about almost 1000 PA of SUBSTANTIALLY below replacement level. A league-average player is two wins ABOVE replacement level per season. Avi has literally played worse than what could be expected from a random AAA scrub in each of the four seasons he's touched the majors. The bat is about one standard deviation below league average, and the glove is about one standard deviation step from legendarily bad. Yes, he's got upside, and it certainly could all click one day. But he's got a LONG way to climb before he's even an average player, let alone any kind of star.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Aug 24, 2015 -> 02:37 PM) Quintana will be dealt. The problem is we usually trade or let go the wrong guy. Look at Santiago. Look at Mark Buehrle. Look at McCarthy before he got hurt. In the offseason maybe they could package Q and Danks and Micah, make somebody take Johnny's salary and we get one Puig and Ethier in return. I think the obvious trade is for Ethier and Puig. The question is what do we give up? I say Q, Danks and Micah. Hector Santiago was NOT the wrong guy. 2.91 ERA against a 4.12 FIP. There are guys that beat FIP, but they're guys that induce weak contact and limit homers. Hector Santiago and he's NOT one of them -- he's got an unrealistic 83% LOB rate and a .256 BABIP. Dude is going to come crashing down to Earth. Besides, who was the "right" guy to trade then? Which of our other pitchers would you have moved instead (that would have actually been enough to net Eaton)?

I'm not panicked about this signing for the same reason I didn't panic initially -- It's a two year deal and while it's for significant money, it's not for crippling money. LaRoche has been bad, but it's gonna be alright.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 21, 2015 -> 08:12 AM) I couldn't get past Carlos Quintana. lol same

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 20, 2015 -> 09:54 AM) I compiled the WAR stats for pitchers from Baseball-Reference to compare to fangraphs. B-R seems to me to underweight things like strikeouts in favor of overweighting what actually happens on the field whereas I've always felt that Fangraphs underestimates some things happening on the field in favor of value for pitching a lot of innings and piling up strikeouts - Fangraphs to me might underestimate the skill of creating weak contact or keeping the ball where your fielders are playing while B-R may overestimate it. Another way of putting it is that FanGraphs assumes the pitcher gets NONE of the credit for what happens wit the defense, and B-R assumes that the pitcher gets ALL of the credit. Both entities acknowledge that the truth is somewhere in the middle, but they don't agree on how to deal with the error. B-R thinks that your WAR isn't useful unless it's a complete answer, even if that means that there's significant error in the actual measurement. FanGraphs would rather give you an incomplete number and say "hey this doesn't tell the whole story, but what it DOES tell you is accurate" and then have you insert your own caveats for the rest. The "rest" essentially comes down to a pitcher's ability to induce weak contact and/or control where the ball lands. Most people (myself included) tend to favor the FG approach, and just acknowledge that there will be exceptions to the established norms.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 20, 2015 -> 11:53 AM) Jose Quintana was pictured rising over the Mexican volcano Popocatepetel earlier this week.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 20, 2015 -> 09:12 AM) This is the player we are talking about. http://streamable.com/oq6h?t=1.2

QUOTE (Vance Law @ Aug 19, 2015 -> 07:11 PM) Nope. He was an above average defensive shortstop 2 years ago and an acceptable one last year. There's little to suggest he couldn't handle third base. I'm not arguing that Hanley's without warts or even that this is the best solution. More arguing against dumb counterarguments at this point. With a team that has been deficient offensively and in need of upgrades at least somewhere, and with a glut of middle infield options under control, and with the virtual non-existence of catchers who can hit, so far I've seen the suggestion of no human who could/should play 3rd base for the White Sox in 2016 other than Tyler Saladino. Anybody who is smart and often has interesting things to say have any other possible thoughts? Eminor? Anyone? There's "can be" and there's "will be." He "can be" a decent defensive LF, but he isn't. It's mental.

QUOTE (Vance Law @ Aug 18, 2015 -> 01:12 PM) .907 OPS for 2013-2014. 8.4 fWAR in a season and a quarter (216 games) with decent defense all at shortstop. There is some price in $$ and prospects at which it is a good idea to acquire him. I don't know what that is. If not him, who, to improve at 3rd base? If not 3rd base, improvement from where? Throw infinity dollars at Matt Wieters and his 104 wRC+ (career 99 wRC+)? He got that fWAR by playing a passable SS. Whichever team he's playing for next year isn't getting that out of him.

QUOTE (Knackattack @ Aug 19, 2015 -> 03:01 PM) Some one posted that Flowers pitch framing turns like 1.89 balls into strikes per game and Soto's turns 1.09 balls into strikes. So you're playing Flowers for his pitch framing when he turns 1 extra ball a game into a fcking strike over Soto while Soto has a .818 OPS and 1.5 WAR for Flowers .608 OPS and -0.1 WAR. The problem with this is that there are a ton of independent variables NOT being controlled here. For example: who is pitching? How much credit does the pitcher get? Who is the umpire and what type of strikezone did that umpire have? Sale's control > Samardzija's control, so should Flowers get credit for Sale's ability to dot the corner, while Soto suffers from Samardzija's lack thereof? If the umpire is calling outside strikes one night and the pitcher notices it, proceeds to pound the area off the outside corner all night and gets rewarded, is it really the catcher framing? Or, perhaps better put, how MUCH of it is the catcher framing? This is a burdgeoning field for sabermetrics, but it's still very much the great frontier. The research so far has done a great job of quantifying the overall impact of a ball turned strike (and it's bigger than most previously expected), but we're almost literally still at square one when it comes to assigning credit for that impact.

Ruben Amaro was at our ballpark twice last week watching his nephew play. I should have asked him about Utley, lol.

http://bb_catchers.tripod.com/catchers/cera1.htm

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Aug 18, 2015 -> 08:46 AM) It's the recurring theme with every thread how so and so is so bad, yet if you get in a gamethread, if Joe Maddon is managing the Sox, they might be 80 games over .500 right now. I'm with you on the RV thing, but seriously why do you have to make EVERY thread into an argument about it?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 18, 2015 -> 09:17 AM) For the park he's playing in, his mid-.700s OPS wouldn't be particularly impressive for a DH. Upgrade from LaRoche but not saying much. The bat has been essentially league average so far (101 wRC+) and projects to be a bit better going forward (111 - 125 wRC+ depending on the system). If you thought what he's doing now is what he's going to do going forward, you;d be insane to acquire him. But yeah, a ~120 wRC+ isn't worth $20m per year anyway.

QUOTE (bmags @ Aug 18, 2015 -> 09:21 AM) For what? Why? Your whole stance is that they incorrectly accelerated a rebuild, and you are worried about an extra $7 million we are hamstrung by for one year? Your question is are we nervous about Shark accepting, but no, I would have no reservations about delivering a qualifying offer if the worst case scenario is getting a 200IP pitcher for 1 year, 17 million. I would be shocked if he didn't outperform this year, but even if he did, it has very little ramifications longterm with the exception of possibly/maybe creating a temporary surplus of pitching depth. If that's the worst case scenario, that is certainly worth extending with the hope fo getting a comp pick. It's unquestionable that we should give him the QO. If he accepts, fine. It's a one-year overpay, and we can trade him to get some of that back at the deadline. It would be no different than signing some bounce-back Jason Hammel pitcher and trying to trade him at the deadline.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Aug 17, 2015 -> 11:53 PM) Here's what Shark deserves: 9 to 10 million a year for 4 years. I'd say 3 years but in this day and age four years. Here's what he'll get: 17 to 24 million a year for 5-6 years. Good luck to the team that gives him that kind of dough. Given the relative glut of top-end pitchers available next year, and the fact that Samardzija is pitching like a 3/4 starter, I'd be shocked if he gets more than James Shields money at this point. That said, I don't want the Sox to give it to him anymore than I wanted the Sox to give it to James Shields last year.

Hanley is a DH. He's more than capable of playing a decent LF, he's not doing it because he doesn't give a s***. I don't see any reason to believe that would change if he was moved to 3B.

Advanced fielding stats currently take ab out three years of data before they are reliably predictive. Also, at least last year, there was significant disagreement between UZR and DRS, with the latter grading him out as above average. Right now, I think he most likely grades out as "just fine" defensively. He's not a problem out there, and he's hitting well, so we should just leave it alone.

Loved this signing. What a clunker.

THAT was GIFable