Eminor3rd

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 6, 2013 -> 03:07 PM) Would you do Santiago for him? I would.

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playe...&position=C Not sure about sequencing at all, of course, but it's interesting that he actually takes fewer pitches in the zone than league average -- the trouble is that he makes much less contact on those pitches than average. He also swings at a ton more pitches out of the zone of course.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Sep 6, 2013 -> 02:01 PM) Yep, players have a tendency to spike. You'd think if he were still using - considering the tests in the minors are just as hard, if not harder - he'd have an OPS better than .550. Guys get hot. The best thing to do would be to hope that he can pick it up and continue. This ^ It's much more likely that he just played way over his head for a bit and the Sox tried to catch lightning in a bottle than it is he has been on steroids. He was all but a lost cause before it, remember, so it makes sense the Sox would promote him to see if he could stay afloat. It's not like Flowers was making a case otherwise.

It's not about how long it'll take, it's about how there's nothing to gain from winning a bunch of games. Seriously, unless some of these hitters have epiphanies about their approaches, they're probably better off eating s*** all month so there's a chance they'll actually be open to changing next year. If Garcia keeps accidentally getting hits by swinging at garbage and it wins us some games, we're worse off all around. So I'll revise my position. If we get a s*** draft pick because our core players actually turn developmental corners, I'll be thrilled. Be if we lose position because Viciedo closes his eyes and runs into 5 or 6 off of some BS minor league roster expansion pitcher, it sucks for everyone.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Sep 6, 2013 -> 01:31 PM) I have no problem upgrading from either of them. Thinking about those two just makes McCann sound like a better idea. I would hate it if he had to be a C the whole time, but assuming Konerko retires soon and Dunn walks after next year, signing McCann sound like a great move for 2015/2016 even. And the meatballs would be satisfied during 2014.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Sep 6, 2013 -> 12:01 PM) At $13 mill a year, I'd have no problem with Pence either. He still has one of the ugliest swings I've ever seen in my life, but it's obviously pretty effective given that he hits the ball 5 miles At his best, he's basically good Alex Rios. He's a final piece to a competitive team, not a guy the White Sox bring in for 2014 unless they singed three other big free agents already. EDIT: yes, "singed." They literally need to set three other free agents on fire in order to make Pence a good idea. lol.

Ewwww Hunter Pence?

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Sep 6, 2013 -> 01:22 AM) Gatewood is the name I keep paying attention to. Obviously Beede is going to be a very high pick too, but I really hope we go position player with our first 2-3 picks. We seem to be stocking pitchers. Best player available is fine with me, no matter who it is.

Sounds like a typical Jon Morosi scoop on the surgery.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Sep 5, 2013 -> 03:50 PM) I would guess so too. I mean, in 2003, Vlad had an O-Swing of 34.8% and an O-Contact of 58.3% (while also Z-Swing and Contact at about 83% and 87%) and he walked at 13.5% and struck out at 11.3%. The strikeouts can be explained, but if he were swinging at 1/3 of all balls and putting those in play every 3/5 times, it'd seem to be essentially impossible for him to walk at 13.5%, no?. Yeah, I would think that would have to be the case. I wonder how many pitches he saw. I'd guess he had a ton of long at bats where he fouled several pitches off before eventually getting a walk.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Sep 5, 2013 -> 02:54 PM) Is contact considered just hitting a ball, or hitting it in fair territory? That's a good question, not sure. The definition isn't too clear: "Z-Contact% - Percentage of times a batter makes contact with the ball when swinging at pitches thrown inside the strike zone (PITCHf/x)" If I had to guess, I'd say it does include foul balls.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Sep 5, 2013 -> 02:45 PM) Unless he turns into Vlad...then he can swing at whatever the hell he wants Exactly -- a ton of bombs But that's sort of the thing. Vlad swung at everything, but he also HIT everything. You know what his career K rate was? 10.9%! And even he walked at a career 8.1%. And that's because HIS zone contact rate was 89%, compared to Garcia's 70-something. Vlad was freak because he had a legendary hit tool. Garcia has like a 40 grade hit tool. Man, Vlad was cool as hell.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 5, 2013 -> 02:32 PM) If that is/was the case, it really is not better than Ozzie sabotoging 2011 to show KW's failure. Agreed

QUOTE (greg775 @ Sep 5, 2013 -> 02:26 PM) I know he's not still a Sox. Didn't write that correctly. He had to be the dumbest player alive thinking he was a power hitter. Also Erstad. Sox have had some really bad players. They ought to have Viciedo just have a drill where somebody pitches to him and he has to take every single pitch to learn how to draw a walk. He has so much talent and he still has not emerged as a threat. Yeah, maybe they could pull a page out of the Hawk Harrelson book and institute a fine for every swinging strike he takes above the letters. Or if the Player's Association won't allow the fine, they could get Ramon Troncoso to peg him with a water balloon every time. That would be doubly effective because then Robin wouldn't be tempted to use him since he won't be sitting in the bullpen!

QUOTE (Jose Paniagua @ Sep 5, 2013 -> 02:21 PM) I kind of took it like Kotsay was the rope that KW was happy to let Ozzie hang himself with. Maybe too black & white of a read on that, but Thome was slated to come back super cheap.......so the whole thing just seems to be missing certain elements. Ozzie publicly said his #1 request that year was to have Kotsay back. I dont know that he insisted Kotsay get an every day role, but he insisted that he at least come back (after having had a nice stretch after being traded from Sox to Sox months prior) That really was a completely boneheaded move. It was so dumb that there almost HAD to be some weird crap going on behind the scenes.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Sep 5, 2013 -> 02:18 PM) No, we already have Gillaspie and Keppinger and Lillibridge, a skinny guy who decided it was best to be a power hitter. Sox have had a ton of bad players on the roster of late, not just Ozzies. Lillibridge is on like this third team since leaving the White Sox lol. But your point is true. He have Neifi Perez's except they are bad at defense too haha

QUOTE (Jake @ Sep 5, 2013 -> 01:43 PM) The 24-5 numbers are fine, by the way. That's what he is going to be. Right, generally speaking, it's pointless to will him into being anything but a high K/low BB guy, but you gotta hit a tons of bombs to make 24/5 work with a .300ish BABIP. And it's not because walks are good or K's are bad, but because they are by products of an approach. It's not that we want him to walk, it's that we want him to take bad pitches and swing at good ones.

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Sep 5, 2013 -> 12:51 PM) Garcia has now stepped up to the plate 100 times in a White Sox uniform. He is hitting .344. Unfortunately he is also striking out 24% of the time while only walking 5% of it. And therein lies the issue. If you look at his plate discipline numbers, you see that he is swinging at substantially more pitches out of the zone than league average (38% to 26%) and also making singinficantly LESS contact than average on pitches in the zone (79% to 87%). These number are all approximately in line with his career number with Detroit. Don't misunderstand -- by no means am I giving up on Garcia. I'm just pointing out that he has not actually turned any kind of corner with us, he's just getting really lucky on his batted balls.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 5, 2013 -> 12:15 PM) The stronger you are, the more sustainable that is because OF's have to play deeper. QUOTE (TaylorStSox @ Sep 5, 2013 -> 12:18 PM) To add to that, when you're as strong as Garcia, those shanks go over infielders heads. Not to the tune of a .448 BABIP, my friends. I don't like it any more than you guys do, but he is making bad contact on too many bad pitches that he should be taking.

Avisail is unfortunately deep in the territory of "unsustainable performance" based on his Pitch F/x and component stats. Ugh, I really hope his approach improves -- those shank singles aren't going to keep finding places to fall forever.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 4, 2013 -> 05:25 PM) Like I said I have no problem moving Alexei if the right deal comes along (personally I'd give Semien first shot at the SS spot) but I'm not going to take a poor deal for him until one of the young guys plays so well that I'm forced to move Alexei for them. Agreed. We did it! We have reached consensus after a series of about 10 posts! How many times does that happen on this board?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 4, 2013 -> 05:04 PM) He had about 30 games hitting 6-7-8 and had an OPS of about .690 in those 3 slots. He hit 75 games in the 2 hole with a .660 OPS but a similar batting average, so he was clearly putting the ball in play just about as much but he wasn't hitting for extra bases as much. It's hard to extract a true trend from the 100 at bats lower in the order, but the 0 HR in 335 PA's in the 2 hole compared with 4 HR in 250 PA's elsewhere in the lineup I think makes a pretty strong case. I agree with all of that too. I just still think that 4 HR/250 PA's combined with a .300ish OBP is still a defense first player. I think the team can get 80-85% of that production with similarly glovey/speedy Garcia, and by moving Ramirez/pitcher, can take step at finding the higher upside bat it really needs to get back to contention. Getting Garcia regular at bats also gives him a better chance to improve more quickly.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 4, 2013 -> 04:50 PM) The point there would be that Alexei could presumably continue to have that power stroke if he was hitting 7th, and there were some unique requirements of hitting in the 2 slot that were causing him to adjust his stroke. Right, I understand. What I'm saying is that even Alexei + power isn't good enough to bat in the middle of the order for a contender. He simply doesn't get on base enough. If he can hit 15 homers again, he's still only going to be about a 90 wRC+ because he makes too many outs (I'm basing this on what his batting lines were when he was hitting 15 homers a few years ago, since his OBPs have been remarkably consistent). A .270-.280 average is good an all, but it looks way worse next to a .300 OBP. But, maybe you're saying that putting him at #7 or whatever will still allow him to hit for more power and that it was the #2 hurting him more than the #3 spot helping him. That would make sense, but didn't he hit at the back of the order most of the first half of the season during his epic power outage?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 4, 2013 -> 04:39 PM) Some of that, we should note, seemed to be a direct consequence of him being put in the #2 slot in the batting order. How much it's hard to say, but when he got put in the 3 slot he suddenly found his power stroke again. That may be true, or it may not. Correlation does not necessarily imply causation. Still, even if it was absolutely true that he hits better and with more power from the #3 spot, do you really want to clog the 3 spot up with a ~90 wRC+ hitter? Alexei's bat, at its best, is good "for a shortstop," but it's still a below league average bat by a significant margin. He's an asset as a #7 hitter, but the fact that he's been a key run producer at #3 is just a testament to how completely impotent our offense is. Considering that Alexei is not likely to get any better, and that if he is, he needs to be our three hitter, there's just no argument I can think of that he should stand in the way of player development, because a team that relies on a 90 wRC+ for serious run production is not a team that will win many games.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 4, 2013 -> 04:18 PM) The problem is, this really isn't the case this year. His performance at the plate this year is better than last year and has gotten better as the season has gone on. (If a team really paid attention, the fact that he hit a ton more power as soon as he was out of the 2 hole should be really important too). Alexei's given every indication this season that he's going to age well, the only question is his level of focus on the field and whether or not he's on a team/has a manager that can help with that. I disagree with that premise. This year was better than last offensively, but that's just because last year was horrible. The fact is, this year is his second worst offensive season, and he's now two years removed from showing 10+ HR pop. He's never been able to duplicate his rookie year at the plate. Aging players tend to gain power and patience to compensate for their declining athleticism, but Alexei has been backwards: he's shown absolutely nothing to suggest he's becoming a smarter hitter, and has remained useful instead because he's retained his speed and improved his defense. Anything could happen, but if I was a betting man, I'd put my money on age sapping his legs before he has a late career hitting renaissance and learns to work himself into hitters' counts and allow him to increase his slugging.