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QUOTE (Marty34 @ Jan 22, 2014 -> 10:58 AM) Back end of the rotation could be ugly. I wouldn't mind them taking a chance on Jimenez as he'll be cheaper due to draft pick compensation, just turned 30, and has the stuff to be a front-of-the-rotation guy. I don't think he;s going to be as affordable as we all hope.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 22, 2014 -> 10:45 AM) We have to dump an IF too. Possibly two. Yeah I agree with wite that Semien and Davidson can start in AAA. If they force their way onto the roster, a DFA of Keppinger wouldn't be impossible. I mean, for all of our talk about how much payroll space the Sox can use on FAs, we haven't really considered that eating ~$8m to lose Keppinger probably wouldn't kill us. What I really DON'T want is De Aza or Viciedo as 4th OFs. They both should have some actual trade value now, but a half season of part-time play will only negate that. I think the time to move one of them is now.

We gotta move an OF, ideally for a C. If not a C, then best prospect available. That's all though. None of this Matt Garza garbage

The thing about Quintana is that is very likely at his absolute peak. He's already gained velocity and his control is his best attribute, so if he's going to regress at all, its' almost certainly going to be downward. Best case scenario for him is maintain.

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Jan 20, 2014 -> 04:08 PM) Once I was part of a marching band. We wore these really cool wristbands. A long, narrow band of cloud was above us. Doors are banded with iron to make them stronger, but the marching band is stronger than those doors. Oh and there was a band of caribou. Hope I don't get banned! (I found 8 different definitions for band and used as many as I could) If we get Tanaka and thus remember this thread fondly, this is a good POTY candidate

QUOTE (timbo @ Jan 19, 2014 -> 11:52 AM) How do they make sense ? Win-now, rapidly aging core, weak rotation, lots of money.

I'm still predicting NYY. It makes the most baseball sense, and if they're willing to spend $115m, why not $130m? I mean it isn't like they don't HAVE the money. If they're going to blow the luxury tax away at all, why be outbid by $10-15m?

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jan 17, 2014 -> 04:01 PM) Exactly. This is why guys like Granderson and Ethier make no sense for the White Sox. Even if they are 3 win players and you are only paying them $8 mill a year (they obviously cost more than that), that is only an improvement from context-neutral 75 wins to 78 wins. What the hell good does that do? That's why I really didn't like that move for the Mets. However, if you are an 86 win team, and you can bring in a 2 WAR player who will be replacing a -1 WAR player, that's essentially 3 additional wins, and it pushes you to 89 wins, which is almost always a playoff birth. You also see teams taking a discount and paying for production upfront in exchange for an inflated, backloaded contract and paying extra for a worse product. Then they rinse, lather, and repeat. The OTHER thing about this is actually the financial situation, which is a topic brought up by Baseball Between the Numbers (which, while dated, is still an excellent read). It basically states that the difference in monetary value between wins 76 and 80 is next to nothing, but the distance between 86 and 88 is very large. So, if you are close, it makes sense to buy, buy, buy. Unfortunately, teams so often overestimate themselves and you see situations like the 2007-08 Mariners. You must be patient and know for certain what your talent level is. The Pirates, more than anybody else in baseball, have figured this out and have been overly conservative, and it's paying dividends for them now. I'll just second that Baseball Between the Numbers is awesome -- one of my favorite reads of all-time. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in learning more about sabermetrics if only for the incredibly complete primer on the use of linear weights to measure run values, which is an incredibly important concept for today's stats.

QUOTE (bulokis @ Jan 17, 2014 -> 04:14 PM) If the cubs dont sign him this weekend, Hahn will probably announce it during soxfest. The deadline for Tanaka is around the soxfest days! Nah, they'll want to announce it beforehand to increase Soxfest attendence, methinks.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jan 17, 2014 -> 03:26 PM) I'm beginning to expect Tanaka to sign with the White Sox. To expound, the Sox frankly need a guy like Tanaka just as much if not moreso than a team like the Yankees. Yes, they have a young, rebuilding team, but other than Sale, they have no one in the same stratosphere as Tanaka. The team has improved quite a bit this year and frankly, with luck, could be in the playoff chase with that pitching staff. The Yankees are old and they are going to have to go through a transitional/rebuilding phase shortly, even if it's only this year and maybe next. The Cubs have done very, very little to actually improve the roster this winter and in fact their financial situation will get worse after this year, while the Sox' gets better. I think even with Tanaka, they're 2+ years away. I'm not going to be shocked/sad/surprised/whatever if he signs elsewhere, even the Cubs, but I think the Sox are the favorites at this point. I disagree strongly that the WS need him more than the Yankees. The fact that the Yankees are old means that they are at a much greater risk of falling into a lengthy rebuilding period if they don't put young, ML-ready core pieces in place soon. SP also just happens to be the weakest part of their franchise, from top to bottom. This just so happens to be the strongest part of the WS franchise, from top to bottom. The Yankees have WAY more to lose by not signing Tanaka. And, luxury tax or not, they have much more spending power and were just gifted ~$25m of ARod's money from Bud Selig.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jan 17, 2014 -> 03:25 PM) One thing that comes up on a regular basis is "this guy has to produce x to be worth $y." While this is technically true, I don't believe we should look at it like that. What you want to see is a x as low as possible with y as high as possible. Assigning actual values to WAR like that is, to me, inherently wrong. Yes, $6-7 mil is the going rate for 1 WAR on the open market, but if you sign someone to that, you should try and get better value because there are teams paying guys $15 million who are doing absolutely nothing because it's a bad contract. Those numbers get so high not because every team is paying $7 million for each individual win but because there are bad and good contracts out there cancelling each other out and tugging that value either way (which is usually up). If you are the GM, you want to bring in guys that are good and will help you win. The Rangers are probably going to regret the Choo signing in 5 years, but in the meantime, he is going to help them out tremendously and could even help them win a World Series. So, when talking about Tanaka making $20 million, or $120 million over the duration, yes he will technically need to accrue about 20 WAR over the duration of that contract (3.33 WAR per year), but you don't sign him to be a #3-4 starter. You sign him to be a 5-6 WAR starter, an ace. Whenever I think of market-rate WAR dollars, I'm using it as a watermark for downside. However, that only really makes sense in a vacuum. Depending on each team's place on the win curve, it could make sense for them to purchase "additional wins" at market rate or even substantially above market rate to push them over the edge.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jan 17, 2014 -> 03:15 PM) That is cool. We actually do that for our top 25...a few of us submit our top 30 prospects and we combine them. Getting the site's top 10 list would be cool though too. It's also funny how similar they are. Either we as a board develop favorites and biases towards prospects and we're totally off, we pay too much attention to numbers and not enough to tools, or we are more dialed in than so called experts. There probably is a good deal of groupthink going on, but we also mostly consume info from the same sources haha

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Jan 16, 2014 -> 08:43 AM) A composite ranking so far from 16 responses. I assigned #1=10 points down to #10=1 point. For consistency's sake, I want ahead and assigned Abreu as #1 to the couple of people who didn't think he was a prospect and bumped everybody else down one notch, because he technically qualifies as a prospect and I think we all agree he should be #1. 1. Abreu 160 points 2. E Johnson 139 points 3. Davidson 129 points 4. Semien 98 points 5. Hawkins 84 points 6. Anderson 82 points 7. Beck 54 points 8. Danish 37 points 9. M Johnson 35 points 10. Webb 22 points 11. Sanchez 17 points 12. Thompson 13 points 13. Barnum 4 points 14. May 3 points 15. Bassitt 2 points T-16. Snodgrezz/Zapata 1 point Good idea. You know, it would be cool to have a section of the site that listed our top prospects lists. It could include the FS list and a 'crowdsourced' one like this.

QUOTE (Al Lopez's Ghost @ Jan 17, 2014 -> 02:49 PM) We had no problems of this nature with Shingo SHINGO!

QUOTE (southside hitman @ Jan 17, 2014 -> 12:03 PM) I loved the Dunn signing LOVED it. I did, I did.

One of the things that makes this fun is that the Cubs, Mariners, and Yankees are all under various amounts of pressure to make this move. Tanaka's lack of communication/fickleness HAS to be driving them insane. The WS, on the other hand, don't NEED him at all, and are almost certainly much more comfortable being patient.

Guys, we have too many OF right now. Ethier was in the realm of possibilities before the Eaton deal, but it would be insane right now. We are currently experiencing a roster crunch. He's a platoon OF who would be a DH in our current situation. We have two DHs already, and a third (Viciedo) that may be on the way. All of this is not to mention the money and the completely divergent philosophical direction Hahn would have to take to consider Ethier. At this point, Ethier may be literally one of the worst possible acquisitions the WS could make.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 17, 2014 -> 10:37 AM) I know the Mariners have Japanese ownership and have wooed Japanese players in the past, but if I had to bet about being unprepared, my money is on Jack Z. I agree here. Seems he's fired most of the people that were there for his other big signings, too.

I'll still be shocked if the Yankees don't get him. It just makes too much sense for them. As far as the bad meeting -- Cashman is the longest tenured GM in baseball and I doubt he's the type to show up completely unprepared. But who knows

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jan 16, 2014 -> 01:44 PM) Pretty sure this is the homer he's talking about Your browser does not support iframes. Didn't he say it left a scar on the scoreboard though?

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 17, 2014 -> 09:33 AM) I don't think so. I think they are going to their limits to land him. They have been in on guys like Soler even Fukudome they offered more money than the Cubs. 25 year old, potential ace, all it costs you is money is exactly what rebuilding teams with not a lot of future contract committments should be looking for. If, and it is a huge if this guy is as good as hoped, and say the Sox draft Hoffman #3. Rondon is compared to David Price, and I read 2 scouting reports that say Hoffman can get to that level of effectiveness. These are all ifs that couldn't be any bigger, but if they all remained healthy, you are looking at Sale, Tanaka, Hoffman, Quintana, Johnson or whomever else for a long stretch. That is 1990s-2000s Atlanta Braves. If any of the young offensive players reaches their potential, it would be a team that would be expected to make the playoffs year in and year out for quite a while. 1990s Braves?

QUOTE (robinventura23 @ Jan 16, 2014 -> 04:58 PM) How does one calculate WAR? I'm sure it's not as simple as calculating .AVG or OBP. Is there a formula one uses? 1. Assign linear weight values to events. These are calculated by breaking down each event into the average amount of runs that it leads to, based on base/out states. There are measured in runs: http://www.fangraphs.com/guts.aspx?type=cn 2. Add up all the "runs created" and "runs prevented." 3. Add or subtract runs based on positional adjustment: http://www.fangraphs.com/library/misc/war/...nal-adjustment/ 4. Assign one "win" per every ten runs, based on early pythagorean research that shows a strong correlation between team wins and every ten runs a team scores more than it allows. 5. Deduct value for replacement level: http://www.fangraphs.com/library/misc/war/replacement-level/

QUOTE (bmags @ Jan 16, 2014 -> 02:24 PM) Jays, eh? Didn't know they were in on it. The Jays have a reputation of being more secretive than the CIA though. So much so that some think it's actually a detriment to fans. The thing with them is you just never know what they are doing until they do it.

Another way to think about bWAR vs. fWAR: bWAR prioritizes completeness fWAR prioritizes accuracy fWAR includes only components that "we" are most confident are both precise and accurate. If there's a subject with which no one has been able to find strong correlations to suggest properly isolated variables, fWAR just leaves it out (for example, the effect of defense in pitching performance). In this way, fWAR is saying, "there are some important things going on that we cannot include in this number, but we have most of it in this number, and we are extremely confident that everything we are including is right on the money." bWAR operates under the assumption that if WAR doesn't include every measurable thing on the field, it isn't a useful statistic. So it gives pitchers credit for ERA rather than DIPS numbers, for example. In doing so, it comes up with a value that includes every possible thing a player adds, but it also includes a lot of noise in the calculations, so it's more realistic to expect the bWAR number to assign positive or negative credit improperly. For example, a pitcher may get more bWAR that really should be considered benefit from playing in front of an excellent defense or benefiting from a lot of batted ball luck. This can be problematic because players are more likely to have outlier seasons that don't predict future performance. The difference between these metrics are most pronounced on the pitching side, as isolating and measuring defense remains a much more difficult problem than with offense. The truth is, of course, somewhere in the middle. But the midpoint is different for different types of players. Currently, fWAR and bWAR represent the best we can do while erring on either side of the priorities listed above.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jan 16, 2014 -> 10:49 AM) So a catcher essentially has a 2.5 WAR head start over a 1st baseman? (Assuming 162 games, which obviously catchers dont play) That's true in a sense, but that's the wrong way to look at it. The positional adjustments are a way to create a common denominator so that you can have a quantitative way to judge player value across separate roles. The idea is that when a team makes an acquisition, it is replacing an incumbent player, whether that's a current major leaguer or a "replacement" level player available in AAA. X number of offensive value added needs to be compared to the alternative -- since C is a much more demanding defensive position than 1B, the pool of players that can play C effectively is smaller. Since the pool of players is smaller, average offensive performance is lower. Therefore, a given stat line is more valuable coming from C as opposed to 1B because the difference between that level of production and what else is available is much larger. If you could have a player that hit .300/.400/.500, but had to choose if he was a C or a 1B, you would choose C because you will presumably have to choose a lesser player to fill the other position, and a replacement level 1B hits much better than a replacement level C. So your overall production is higher with the good hitting C, thus the positional adjustment in value.