Eminor3rd

QUOTE (BigEdWalsh @ Sep 26, 2013 -> 02:08 PM) I like how you came up with the grades and as far as Keppinger goes, that's exactly what I was talking about. Because of those months where he hit .300 or better, he does not deserve an F. I think too many here on Soxtalk are blinded by their hatred for him. I'm blinded by his stat line: .253/.283/.317, 59 wRC+, -4.9 defensive runs, -3.7 UBR, -1.6 fWAR. I mean, holy s***.

Can't see any way Keppinger isn't an F, considering he was the least valuable player in the entire AL by fWAR.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 03:14 PM) You would say that. It's only appropriate that his name got me a consolation game finish.

QUOTE (knightni @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 11:30 AM) Too friendly for an ogre. More like a baseball incubus. Incubus should have been his nickname

Lyle Mouton! Ron Karkovice! Matt Thornton!

QUOTE (knightni @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 07:28 AM) Alex Rios appears to be some kind of unlucky charm. He succeeds individually while sucking the winning out of the ball club. He's a warlock! His magic is based on absorbing the life force of his teammates!

QUOTE (Soxfest @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 09:30 AM) Hell no! Why not? It would be an incentive based deal, so you could cut him in the Spring if he looked horrible, and relying on him as a 5th starter would allow us to deal a good pitcher (or two!) for ML offensive talent. Sign me up for Floyd on a 1yr/~$2m guarantee with ~$4m in incentives based on IP

QUOTE (Jake @ Sep 24, 2013 -> 04:48 PM) You must not remember the departure and return and departure of Angel Sanchez Ahh yes. You're right. I didn't remember that. I don't think there was even a yawn at that one.

Largest collective yawn in Soxtalk history?

Wow, what a disaster he has turned out to be.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Sep 14, 2013 -> 05:50 PM) Forced to use a pin or password because of work email.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Sep 22, 2013 -> 11:43 PM) Why does Robin all of a sudden want to manage forever? If his stance has completely changed, my guess is he'll sign that multi-year extension if it's offered again this offseason. If we suck defensively and on the basepaths again next year, Robin should be on the hotseat. He probably won't be, though, cause Sox are not going to be in the news much next season if we are out of it in May. My guess is attendance also will take a big hit this time if we suck a second consecutive season. p.s. To those of you who get mad when I bring up how expensive it is to go to a game, the current edition of ESPN the Mag has an article on best/worst franchises. The BEST FRANCHISES currently (Memphis Grizzlies is No. 1) are ones with very cheap season ticket prices and food prices. ESPN said surveys say AFFORDABILITY is huge now with fans. Fans don't want to be robbed at their sports venues. Finally, I'll be at the United Center this year to watch Duke play Kansas in men's college basketball and Kentucky play Michigan State. I have to drive a car to the United Center and not take public transportation. Do you think a.) I'll be mugged or b.) my car will be damaged/stolen? I have to stay a while after the game waiting for a friend who works at the UC. Will I be mugged going back to my vehicle? Thank u for all the answers. Do you typically get mugged in parking lots of major sports venues? If so, maybe it has to do with what you're wearing or saying.

I hope every team loses all the games

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Sep 23, 2013 -> 11:54 AM) Relevant http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-quality...-cy-young-race/ The more I think about it, the more I really think Sale deserves to win the Cy Young this year. I think there are a bunch of guys lumped at the top. Sale should be top 3, but I won't feel ripped off when he doesn't win it. I just hope he land sin the the top 5 somewhere so people will think to look at his numbers.

It almost makes TOO much sense for them to dump Victor, move Miggy to DH, and hand Castellanos the 3B job. I bet the Orioles would bite on Victor if they paid half his salary.

If the Sox take care of their own s***, the Tigers won't matter. Players don't have the careers they're supposed to as often as you think. Guys break out randomly and they decline sharply when something goes wrong. The Sox are in LAST PLACE. We need to get good, not worry about Detroit getting bad.

Oh. Sorry

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 20, 2013 -> 12:31 PM) Luck had nothing to do with this year. Timely injuries, horrible defense, and even worse baserunning are the big problem. Right, so from a front office/roster building perspective, luck had EVERYTHING to do with it.

Based on what I know about AAAA White Sox pitchers, Axelrod is due to throw a perfect game tonight.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Sep 20, 2013 -> 03:05 PM) This also brings about the idea of "clutch." In almost every circumstance, there is no such thing as "clutch." Guys will have "clutch" seasons but they will also have seasons where they are not "clutch," when in reality their numbers will not be signficantly different. Now, you can surely find areas where some guys are better or worse, but at the end of the day, Dunn's splits with RISP - .224/.395/.457/.852 - and with no one on base - .238/.345/.496/.842 . The other thing it brings up to me, and this was read in Baseball Between the Numbers, which is a BP book, is that Mike Redmond hit like .500 in his career against Tom Glavine. There are extreme sample size issues though, and while Redmond may have had a bead on Glavine, over time that would have evened out and Redmond only would have been a .300 hitter (or whatever) against Glavine in his career. When you hear people (Hawk) say "he sees him well, he's 4 for 9, 2 of those hits left the yard," you should say to yourself "that means absolutely nothing whatsoever because he could just as easily go 0 for his next 3 and suddenly he's not even hitting that well. These two were both way off topic, but they popped into my head right away. Yep. When SABR guys say "clutch" doesn't exist, they aren't saying that pressure and emotion are not parts of performance, they are simply saying that "clutch" does not exist as a predictive statistic. Largescale studies have shown, overwhelmingly, that no matter the particular "pressure" situation (i.e. versus a pitcher, in the ninth, RISP, playoffs, etc.), his career numbers are a better predictor for his future outcomes than his previous performance in similar situations. It's a matter of smaller sample data. Clutch is real, it just isn't something you can use to make roster decisions.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 20, 2013 -> 02:50 PM) I think this is also where the non-stat crowd gets some ammo. The same group of individual, high priced talent, has bombed for the second year in a row as a group. The problem might not be the individuals, but how they all fit together. The Sox have had the same thing happen over the years too. No doubt -- and that's a part of the job that AA has to do too. The due diligence about how the team will work together. It's just interesting that we never really get a large enough sample of a group of guys to be able to definitively tell if it is a chemistry issue or not, and so we have to rely on intuition both in building the team and evaluating the results. This is another factor that simply cannot be predicted reliably, though you can do better with intuition here than with something like event distribution. Very difficult to be a GM.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Sep 20, 2013 -> 01:24 PM) Why would you want to keep a player who nobody would offer anything of value for? Because unlike all those other teams, you have already committed $15m to him. That money is a sunk cost. That no other team wants him for $15m does not make him valueless. We don't want him at $15m either, but we already bought him at $15m. If you bought an expensive car, realized it wasn't worth it, but couldn't get anyone to buy it from you for enough that you could recoup your loss, would you give it away? Would you leave it in the garage and buy another car instead? No, because you still need to drive to work. The money you paid is gone, and the car is still your best way to get to work, even if you overspent on it. So until a better option for transportation presents itself, you drive the car.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Sep 20, 2013 -> 12:23 PM) My favorite story I've ever read was one where they took a league full of 30 completely average teams in every way - neutralizing for anything and everything - and they ran 1000 seasons worth of simulations. At the end of nearly every single one of those seasons, you had a fair number teams with 88-92 wins and a fair number of teams with 70-74 wins. The conclusion was that the only determining factor in all of those teams was merely luck. Not everything is that cut and dry in the majors today, but more of it is than people realize. I think, talent wise, this Sox team was probably about 79-81 wins coming into the year. Due to injury and trades, they are going to finish well below that 10 game threshold, but if they end up around 64 or 65 wins, it's going to end up right around that mark (Peavy is at 1.3 fWAR and Thornton at 0.3 fWAR in Boston, Rios is at 0.7 fWAR in Texas, and Gavin Floyd is typically a 2-4 fWAR pitcher who was out for the year and struggled previously due to injury). If the Sox make solid additions and are bold but smart with their offseason moves, I definitely think they can go into next year with a team that's got 85-87 win talent and then you hope you get the breaks from there. Yes, this is so important for everyone to understand. That was either in The Book or Baseball Between the Numbers, right? It's also critical for the anti-SABR crowd to understand what you mean when you say "luck" there -- it's not luck that determines those events on the field, it's a player's distribution of performances. From a front office perspective when trying to project how its team will perform, event distribution "acts as luck" because it cannot be reliably predicted. So he's not saying players just run out there flail around and get lucky or unlucky, just that where their successes or failures fall and how they coincide with those of their opponents is beyond the player's control. A .300 hitter will get the hit 3 out of ten times, but which three of those ten will be hits is effectively random when trying to make a projection over the course of a baseball season. Front offices need to be confident their team's talent is within those error bars, and then it's up to the players to go out and succeed. Run this season over again, and the Blue Jays and Red Sox might switch places. AA and his team put enough talent on the field to compete, that just just didn't compete. A lot of little things can ad up in one direction or the other over 162 games.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Sep 20, 2013 -> 11:35 AM) The Indians and Royals went into the year with plans of being "competitive." They are not going to win the Central, but both still have very legitimate chances at winning a Wild Card. They are also both set up to be (what I like to call) "BETTER" next year. That might not happen and they may fall back, but they have teams capable of winning 90 games in 2014. If the Sox go into next year with a goal of winning 85 games, you are looking at a team that's not going to win 85 games simply because of the nature of baseball is one of volatility and unpredictability. If they stay really healthy and their performance is up to par, they'd probably win 88 games, but if they suffer from injury and underperformers, they probably only win 75-78. That is the nature of the beast. Beyond that, at least an 85 win team is interesting for most of the year. As a fan, I prefer that than the POS the Sox ran out in June, July, and August. --- Regarding Dunn, he also has a tendency to hit balls a lot ways. Chicks still dig the long ball. You aren't getting anything valuable for him and, in fact, you'd probably still have to pick up $5-7 million MINIMUM just to get a team to take him on to save you some money. It's not smart business. This ^ You have to get within the error bars. 10 or so games will be decided purely by luck. If your true talent is 85 wins, you're in the race. And getting rid of Dunn makes no sense, Marty. If you could get something of value, you'd trade him, but you can't, so you have to use him. There's no argument for eating money to get rid of him other than tanking for more losses, which does not sit well the with fanbase, the league office, or the player's union. You can hate him, but there's no one better to replace him.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Sep 20, 2013 -> 10:56 AM) I can't believe only 5 picked under 500. Hindsight is 20/20, eh?