Eminor3rd

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ Sep 9, 2014 -> 04:19 PM) God we have to rehash this again. There's nothing wrong with gambling. Gambling is done every day. You gamble that you won't get killed everytime you get in your automobile and drive around, but you wear a seatbelt and try to drive a safe car with an airbag as added protection to better your odds. Trading prospects for proven players, as a rule, is gambling with the odds overwhelmingly in your favor. The fact that Kenny's good moves is a long list while his bad moves are a shorter list full of easily identifiable moves is an example of this. You can't be a GM without taking risks, without gambling. Of course you have to gamble. But you do NOT have to take a bad gamble, where the odds are currently against you and you have reason to believe those same odds will improve in the near future.

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ Sep 9, 2014 -> 04:08 PM) 1) How do you KNOW Shields is a bad deal? 2) If you KNOW this, please let me know what crystal ball you are using and where I can find it. 3) Please then let me use that crystal ball, or at least use it for me and tell me who you KNOW is not going to be a bad deal? None of us KNOW anything. We can only ASSUME. Shields is a good bet to be able to pitch well alter into his career. Granted, I wouldn't be in a rush to throw 5 years at him at any amount, but the reality is this: -If you want a good player you should be prepared to overpay -in free agency you overpay via money and potentially a draft pick (2nd rounder in our case) -through trade you overpay via minor league talent I would much rather keep the talent, or do like what the Cubs said they would do re: additions, i.e. use one or the other, not both (why they didn't give up money AND talent for Hamels). Shields or someone else can come via payroll room, and so what if we overpay a few million? If it means the difference between exciting baseball and s***ty baseball, and it means the difference between keeping our minor leaguers or trading them, go for it. One thing I loved about KW is that he wasn't afraid to make a bad deal. He made logical moves for the most part which is why most of them turned out well. He made some bad moves too, took on some bad deals & gave up Gio, but he wasn't afraid to f*** it up. If you're afraid to deal and only want the most ideal trades & best contracts possible then good luck ever getting better, because trying to do that without taking a risk is impossible. Because he's 33, his velocity has been on the decline, his strikeouts have been on the decline, and his WHIP has been on the rise. He is a textbook bad contract. I'm not saying he won't be useful next year, but he will not be useful for much longer than that, and you're going to give up a draft pick. If you do that, you need to be sure that your window is now.

Between the two of you, we may set a Soxtalk record for "line breaks on a single page"

If you want to sign a bad deal like Shields, you have to have a better plan offensively than "Avisail Garcia might realize his potential." Abreu isn't enough on his own, and all of our other best hitters fall into the category of "ehhh he might not be horrible given his position."

QUOTE (thxfrthmmrs @ Sep 9, 2014 -> 12:47 PM) The payroll was around $85 mil this year, as the BR figures does not include the contracts traded away. The Sox will spend money to bring the payroll back up to around that range, we just don't know which direction they want to go with this, i.e. buying low on Masterson and others or bring in James Shields Ah, thxfrthclrfctn

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Sep 9, 2014 -> 01:33 PM) OK, but that seems to be a different issue. One one hand, you are saying that a replacement level 1B hits better than a replacement level SS, so a 1B needs a better wRC+ than the SS in order to generate the same amount of value. Yet on the other hand, the baseline for defensive runs saved is being adjusted because an average SS saves more runs on defense than an average 1B. It seems like the 1B is getting dinged twice for the same issue. I'm not familiar enough with how positional adjustment factors into DRS to argue otherwise. I would agree that, on the surface, it makes no sense to make an adjustment for a counting at any point but the final stage. But does WAR use DRS? I know fWAR uses UZR.

If there's nothing good to buy, I wouldn't assume the payroll will reach 90m. It was 64m this year. It'll go up for sure.

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ Sep 9, 2014 -> 11:58 AM) A couple thoughts on the Danks stuff... 1) It makes no sense to "replace" Danks with someone earning salary, it makes sense to replace Danks with Rodon who is earning the minimum. It also makes sense to replace Carroll with Noesi. The $$$ spent would need to go to a rotation upgrade at the #2 slot otherwise there's really no reason to spend it (might as well trade for a prospect/project with ability & throw him out there). Our future rotation should be: Sale-RHP-Quintana-Noesi-Rodon, and Noesi can't be that 2. We're not going to run out a 4 or especially 5 lefty rotation, s***, remember the uproar over Axelrod takign the 5th spot from Santiago? We're not doing 4 lefties, we are having 3. 2) A lot of what has been suggested here about another righty is crap, i.e. throwing money at Brandon McCarthy and the handful of innings he may pitch. I'm not sure why so many people like that idea anyway. But if you add a Shields or something along those lines, an actual #2/#3 quality starter, you are upgrading the rotation as a whole, not just replacing Danks. You would be upgrading every spot 3-5, making Q a 3 and Noesi a 4 and Rodon a 5, while getting your L-R balance. The other ideas like trading for Homer Bailey if possible, signing Latos, etc. these are a lot better than McCarthy. We need a #2 not a #4/#5 if we want to try to win anything. 3) Danks (and here we go back to the same thing I tried to get people to understand with Dunn) is guaranteed IIRC $28.5M combined over the next 2 seasons. The Sox are *obligated* to pay him, but they are not *obligated* to pitch him 150+IP during those 2 seasons. They can really do anything they want with him as long as he gets paid. So, if you can move him to another team and get that club to take on maybe $12-16M of that obligation ($6M-$8M per over 2 seasons) then you are just clearing money out, which would be wise for us. I really hope we don't go through the Dunn s*** again with Danks, but if there is even a *hint* around ST of a better pitcher/pitching prospect having to start in Charlotte or the bullpen to "work on something" so we can run Danks out there, it'll be pretty obvious what is going on. And at that point, in a sane world, if the Sox can't find any salary relief then he just goes to the pen like IIRC both Odalis & Oliver Perez had to do in recent years as lefties signed to big deals. My guess: the Sox will be whiners abotu Danks, not move him over the offseason, and Rodon will start in the pen for "innings concerns" as a means of trying to build Danks trade value for July. Which is bulls***, but I'd put good odds on that. 4) Danks reportedly received interest from the Yanks and Marlins so maybe they would hvae some level of interest. In a more radical idea, I think the perfect fit might be the Houston Astros. Not only is Danks a Texas native who came up through the Rangers system, he's also a perfect candidate for their "piggy back" system they seem to be trying to bring up to the Majors. Danks isn't much of a "durability" starter anymore, but he can definitely give you 5 innings. Also the Astros are stupid. So would they take on Danks at $6M per or so? If they would then we'd have more cash available, and even if we had to go back to the same 5th starter clusterf*** we had this year, at least there is a chance we'd pick up another project like Noesi was and have some shot at greater future value than what Danks provides. 5) Lastly the money again - we really need to stop acting like babies about this stuff. All the Sox want to do is act like babies about playing s***ty players on s***ty deals instead of paying them to go elsewhere.... well look around the league, just about every team with anything resembling a competitive payroll has to deal with this stuff at least once every few years. Bad contracts are an inescapable economic reality of the game of baseball, might as well get used to it and make performance-based decisions instead of "woe is me" emotionally charged baby whiner decisions. Even if some team offers to take Danks at $5M per for 2015-16 then you save $10M and open up a rotation slot for someone with a shot to be better. Paying Danks just to be bad accomplishes nothing, and no matter whether Danks is our #5 or Scott Carroll/heap of garbage is our #5 we're not going to be winning anything anyway. A lot of this makes a ton of sense and a lot of this is completely bonkers and makes me shake my head ("smh"). You are my favorite caricature on this board, TUC. My favorite part: "In a more radical idea, I think the perfect fit might be the Houston Astros. Not only is Danks a Texas native who came up through the Rangers system, he's also a perfect candidate for their "piggy back" system they seem to be trying to bring up to the Majors. Danks isn't much of a "durability" starter anymore, but he can definitely give you 5 innings. Also the Astros are stupid."

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Sep 9, 2014 -> 12:48 PM) OK, but I guess my point is that nobody is ever going to put Abreu at SS, so saying that Andrelton would save 60 more runs than Abreu at SS is really meaningless. If you replaced both players with guys who were replacement level players at those positions, there is not going to be a 60 run swing between the two teams. Teams allow an average of 665 runs per year. I think that article stated that 86% of run prevention is pitching and 14% is defense, so defenses are responsible for allowing 93 runs per year as a team. No single player is 60 runs better defensively than another player. Something is out of whack, here. I just haven't taken the time to figure out exactly what that is. The idea of positional adjustment is for an objective frame of reference for comparison. Without it, it's difficult to lend context to the difference between a SS with a 98 wRC+ and a 1B with a 112 wRC+. Which is better for your team? The answer is, of course, that it depends on who you're replacing. If you had to go with a run of the mill replacement at each position, the position adjustment give you a common denominator of pure production. A replacement level 1B is a better hitter than a replacement level SS, so a good hitting SS's production plays up more than a good hitting 1B's does.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Sep 9, 2014 -> 11:23 AM) It was up to date. They update it in real-time actually. I was looking at it last night at the end of the game, assuming it was up to date. It had his game scores listed, but still said 89. Must just be a short delay.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 8, 2014 -> 12:27 PM) Why WAR doesn't always add up. http://sports.yahoo.com/news/10-degrees--w...-030133203.html Dave Cameron's response to the article, complete with massive comment thread: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/a-discussio...-improving-war/

QUOTE (chw42 @ Sep 9, 2014 -> 09:47 AM) He was at 89 yesterday, the two homer game brought him up a bit. I Think Eminor3rd was using yesterday's numbers. Whoops. yeah, thanks

QUOTE (shysocks @ Sep 9, 2014 -> 08:57 AM) Prophetic. That's a mischaracterization - it looks like you're including any catchers with any plate appearances at all, in which case he is 30th out of 97. And there are guys ahead of him with 15, 20, 40 games played. The league wRC+ for catchers is 94. Flowers now sits at 96. That doesn't hit me as substantially below average. Ah, it must not have updated last night's yet -- he was sitting at 89 yesterday.

QUOTE (hi8is @ Sep 8, 2014 -> 11:48 PM) Whining sounds a hell of a lot different than, "damn it." However, if you want to play the name game... I can go down that road. There's a lot of anger boiling in me at the moment, so... Let me remain calm, request you shut your almighty mouth, and just leave it at that. Poop

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Sep 9, 2014 -> 01:16 AM) http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/batting/_/pos.../true/minpa/300 Who's going to improve on Flowers from all those catchers (and might legitimately be available)? Sure, Russell Martin, but there will be 10-12 teams after him. Then you've got names like Ruiz (too old for our window), Gattis (too expensive in terms of talent to acquire and so-so defense), etc. Flowers is out OPS-ing Jason Castro and that's yet another case of why would you give up something significant like Tim Anderson/Montas/Danish to acquire what might not even be an upgrade? QUOTE (greg775 @ Sep 8, 2014 -> 10:10 PM) Isn't catcher a black hole all over baseball now? Fathom's point might have been that considering the crap at catcher throughout baseball, Tyler actually may be acceptable. At least he battles. Like I said I hope he flips off all fans, including me. You can tell he's a competitor. He probably actually gets the most out of his ability unlike guys like DeAza, Viciedo, etc. Well, Flowers is ranked 30th among catchers in the MLB in wRC+ (more accurate, league adjusted version of OPS). So, he's still substantially below average, no matter what you think of catcher offense. I'm not trying to crap on the guy -- I give him credit for turning into a decent backup -- but he still represents the most obvious spot in the lineup (along with Viciedo) to try to get a guy who is average or better.

QUOTE (fathom @ Sep 8, 2014 -> 09:51 PM) Flowers has gone out and earned the starting spot for next year. I have never been his biggest fan, but it's hard to argue against him when compared to starting catchers around the league. Idk. I mean if you look at the line, it still isn't really starting caliber. .241/.298/.382 (89 wRC+) might not KILL you at C, but it's still a hole that should be upgraded. ANd it's coming with a .352 BABIP, which would be normal-ish if not for that insane 900-BABIP April he had.

Tyler the Enigma strikes yet again.

Someone teach me to like Avisail Garcia. I really want to.

Jonah Keri on the White Sox as a 2015 "sleeper": http://grantland.com/the-triangle/mlb-the-...kees-white-sox/

QUOTE (kitekrazy @ Aug 30, 2014 -> 04:00 PM) Two too many in my world. In the entire system? We have three semi-legitimate 1B prospects across five levels of affiliated baseball, and that's two too many? You krazy, kitekrazy!

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Sep 7, 2014 -> 12:27 PM) So, who gets the title of Tank Commander this year? Last year it was Ax. Scotty Carroll

QUOTE (greg775 @ Sep 5, 2014 -> 11:36 PM) If he's got a fractured hand, there's really no reason to play any more. The Royals likely will be playing for keeps that series and it's stupid for Paulie to risk hurting it more. Sure if he's healthy it'd be nice to play all four games and see if he can hit a homer on his final at bat. But why risk it? I guess if he wants to risk it, it's his body. But with this being a terrible team going nowhere and no reason to play, I'd just retire now if I was Paulie. You're right, I'd rather he rest up and be 100% for Spring Training next year.

QUOTE (lasttriptotulsa @ Sep 5, 2014 -> 03:08 PM) I can buy this. I just think he would be a good guy to look into. We can buy low and it won't cost a draft pick because I can't imagine they will make him a QO. The guy is still uber talented and in 2013 was on pace for a 6 fWAR season before his injury. I think you buy low, if you can, and hope he returns to that type of player. Now if somebody wants to pay him $15 million per, it won't be and shouldn't be the Sox. Oh, defintely. I'm not saying he doesn't make sense theoretically. In fact, in a way, he makes perfect sense if we treat as something of a buy-low change of scenery candidate. I'm with you there for sure.

Victor Martinez is at the age and level of fragility that when he begins to decline, it will likely be a very sharp, immediate dropoff. Someone is going to pay him coming off a year that he isn't likely to repeat even if he stays completely healthy. And it's gonna cost a draft pick, and it's going to sacrifice flexibility on the bench. He fits somewhere that he can be the final piece. If we're spending money, we need to be shopping for building blocks. He's good, but it's just not the right move for us at this juncture.

I need to work on making up some flyers to campaign for Russell Martin. Does anyone realize how good he's been hitting? 2014 batting line: .288/.408/.415, 8 HR, (139 wRC+) on an elevated but not unreasonable .339 BABIP And did I mention he's an elite defender? He's on his second consecutive 4 fWAR season. His wRC+ could regress but 40 points and he'd still be great for us. He's going to cost more than most of us think, but he is the perfect target for this team. I hereby proclaim 2015 the YEAR OF MARTIN! WITNESS!