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QUOTE (ptatc @ Aug 19, 2013 -> 09:25 PM) Considering that's what we base a good or bad season on and who goes to the playoffs, I would agree it's the most important. That has nothing to do with it being "the only stat that matters." How are you going to analyze player performance? How easy would it be to put together a winning team if you ignored every stat except wins and losses? I've said it a million times -- statistics exist to answer specific questions. If you insist on ignoring their intended uses, you shouldn't be surprised that they aren't that useful for you. But you should also not be surprised that others are finding them extremely useful -- to answering specific questions.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Aug 19, 2013 -> 06:32 PM) My post was a bit sarcastic, I do enjoy the new stats, I just find it annoying that the first response to a post about Sale's WAR is "No, that one sucks, don't use it!" How are you supposed to have a good discussion about player value if that's the first thing that pops up? Ahhh. Yeah I see what you mean. Pitching is tough. It's so hard to separate defense from the equation.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Aug 19, 2013 -> 05:59 PM) Well until these geniuses get together and create one standard WAR stat then I say they both suck. Suck at what? They are designed to answer specific questions. And they are questions that "traditional" stats don't have an equivalent for. If all versions of WAR suck, then what is the "correct" way to compare individual player performance on both sides of the diamond while controlling for team context? WWHRD (What would Harold Reynolds do?) The answer to WWHRD, as far as I can tell, is argue about it and never come to a consensus. If that's as far as you want to be able to take it, then fine. But what's wrong with trying to find answers to interesting and useful questions about baseball? Well he strikes out too much, well he doesn't walk enough, well his defense good enough to justify his bat, blah blah. Well don't you want to actually try to find out? This post probably reads jerkier than I want it to. I'm sorry if that's the case.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Aug 19, 2013 -> 05:20 PM) You know it's a great stat when everybody calculates it differently. They don't though. They are different numbers and you should decide to like or hate them based on their own merits. It makes no sense to say fWAR sucks because bWAR sucks, for example.

QUOTE (IlliniKrush @ Aug 19, 2013 -> 05:34 PM) I don't care about this WAR garbage, I just look at his W/L record, tells you all you need to know. - Hawk Harrleson Right except it absolutely doesn't, lol. It tells you which teams have played the best relative to the ones they've played against. If that's the question you're asking, then yes, it tells you all you need to know.

QUOTE (TaylorStSox @ Aug 19, 2013 -> 05:03 PM) A "replacement player" is worth 0 wins right? A player like Chris Sale is going to guarantee you at least 10 wins by dominating games. No. a replacement player is worth 0 wins above replacement. because he's a replacement player. A team full of replacement players is expected to win like 40-something games.

QUOTE (TaylorStSox @ Aug 19, 2013 -> 04:35 PM) Starting pitcher WAR doesn't make sense to me. A true ace is going to guarantee anywhere from 10-15 wins even on a bad team. You're looking at it wrong. It isn't saying Sale is only worth 6 wins, it's saying he's worth 6 wins ABOVE REPLACEMENT. So it's really 6 wins above what a guy like, say, Dylan Axelrod would contribute.

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Aug 19, 2013 -> 04:43 PM) When Ben Zobrist ranks as one of the best players in baseball, you know it's a flawed system. I've heard they are going to combine in to one exact calculation at some point, but it hasn't happened yet that I know of. The only flaw I've seen w/ fWAR is that they sometimes favor defense too heavily, but overall everyone seems to agree fWAR is overall far superior than bWAR, which, OF COURSE is the on ESPN cites, so people often discredit WAR all together once they see the funky things like Ben Zobrist being an MVP candidate. Yeah, I'm actually not that familiar with the differences when it comes to position players. I just know that the primary difference for pitcher's is that fWAR uses DIPS theory and rWAR/bWAR use earned runs, which is the basically the same thing as using wins and losses -- bWAR ends up telling you more "what happened while the pitcher was on the mound" whereas fWAR tells you "what the pitcher absolutely contributed on his own." There definitely appears to be something missing from the fWAR equation, namely a pitcher's ability to consistently suppress home runs relative to other hits, but fWAR is conservative in that it would rather miss assigning some credit to a pitcher than definiftely assign too much credit for the sake of completeness. Which, I think makes sense -- it allows you the flexibility of assigning your own value to the things that the math hasn't been able to nail down. it allows you to be subjective about the subjective things, whereas bWAR attempts to weigh factors that no one has been able to accurately weigh.

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Aug 19, 2013 -> 04:34 PM) No he's not, STOP using bWAR. Agreed here. fWAR is best for starting pitchers, IMO. I'm not sure I like it for relievers, but at least it takes leverage index into account.

QUOTE (TaylorStSox @ Aug 19, 2013 -> 04:35 PM) A true ace is going to guarantee anywhere from 10-15 wins even on a bad team. Based on what?

NOTABLE: according to Pitch F/X, Garcia's O-Swing since the trade is at just 27%, which is a touch better than league average (29.6%) and a billion times better than his previous ML career average (37%). I do not know if this is sustainable BUT this is an example of a successful major league hitting approach. His walk rates are ~5% where they always were, but it's fine because he's being selective in the pitches he swings at. Please, keep this up!

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 19, 2013 -> 12:39 PM) League average with the bat though would be one of the best run-producing shortstops in the league. Alexei is about 10th in MLB in OPS at the shortstop position. Right, but this is in response to him as a cornerstone of the offense, or as someone put it "our most consistent hitter all year long." It's an 84 wRC+. It is nice out of the SS position but it is not a substantial part of a core offense.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Aug 19, 2013 -> 11:29 AM) What took him so long? Hawk Harrelson, I mean Ken Harrelson, has said he has the power to hit it out to any field. That ridiculous shift would be on every single at bat and yet he'd still strike out or ground out or pop out into the shift. Fixed. It was never about his power, it was about his hit tool. If Dunn or his coaches felt there were legitimate questions about his ability to control the bat against pitches that are harder to hit, there would be a real risk of even moire strikeouts with even less power. Based on this, it sounds like the coaches thought he could do it but Dunn wasn't so sure. Nice that it's working

QUOTE (oldsox @ Aug 19, 2013 -> 11:29 AM) Defensive stats are very subjective. Official Scorers have their own agenda. Happened lat night. A one hopper hit to Pedroia, he muffed it, they gave the guy a hit because they wanted to keep Pedroia's error total down. Alexei would have gotten an error on same play. That's one of the chief benefits of UZR -- it's calculated based on BIS records about the location of plays being made or not made.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Aug 18, 2013 -> 11:30 AM) We should all definitely want the Sox to lose, but not at the expense of development. This season is a sunk cost in terms of winning, but some good can still come of it if the young guys can continue to learn and start connecting the dots. I'd love to get the #2 pick, but if a guy like Garcia or Viciedo goes on a tear and prevents that from happening I'll be even happier. Hopefully the bullpen and poor fundamentals will lose us a lot of games going forward though. THIS If we end up winning a bunch of games in September because our young players start taking legitimate strides forward in their development, then we'll take it. But the important thing here is that the WINS aren't what we need right now. We need the kids to have good numbers themselves. They don't need to lead to wins this year, those wins do us no good. So you can watch games and be really invested in the performance of the players but still shrug your shoulders when the team loses anyway.

QUOTE (scs787 @ Aug 19, 2013 -> 10:23 AM) What are your guys thoughts on "buying low" on Headley? I'm not sure if it would cost Q or Santiago but if it did would you do that? If he returns to his 2012 numbers that would go a long way towards contending. Would be great, but I don't think they'd sell low.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 19, 2013 -> 07:50 AM) Except in 2012, that wasn't the case with him. He finally cleaned up so many of those stupid, easy mistakes last year. That's the thing -- guys can have good years and bad years defensively just like they can at the plate. He's not as good as he was in 2012 and not as bad as he's been this year. He's a defensive asset at the end of the day, but he's an aging one with no surplus value on his contract. Useful for a contender, not useful for us.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Aug 19, 2013 -> 12:57 AM) Lexi has been miserable defensively this season, right? He's only getting older. Not as bad as everyone thinks. He's still a +5 defender per UZR. He's made more errors this year but he still has great range. It's easy to take that for granted, I think.

QUOTE (SoxPride18 @ Aug 18, 2013 -> 05:18 PM) LOL seriously? He's been the most consistent hitter all year on this team. .289/.312/.376 for a n 84 wRC+. Consistent? Perhaps, but consistently 16% below league average. Now, that doesn't mean he's not a solid player. If he plays the defense he's capable of, he's a 3 win guy, but it's not because of his bat. He's 32 and being paid market value, and we have a glut of MI prospects in AA/AAA that are going to need to get some consistent ABs as soon as next year. We've seen his best, and given we're the third worst team in baseball, we just aren't going to gain much paying him to play a little worse each year.

QUOTE (hi8is @ Aug 18, 2013 -> 07:14 PM) What do you guys think about trading Danks and taking a flyer on Josh Johnson for a 1 year to see if we could turn him around? How are you going to trade Danks?

QUOTE (greg775 @ Aug 18, 2013 -> 11:16 PM) Addison Reed is so good on a bad team that it's scary. He's our team MVP by far, even ahead of Sale IMO. See greg, these are the posts that make everyone think you're a troll.

QUOTE (Jerksticks @ Aug 16, 2013 -> 05:34 PM) This looks like what we currently have. Haha I was going to say the same thing.

QUOTE (Hawkfan @ Aug 16, 2013 -> 12:50 PM) I'd like to see the sox hang on to him. I don't think he's done yet, and I'm unsure how everyone else has come to this conclusion. Well, mostly it's that he's 38, had several nagging injuries surface, and is in the midst of what is BY FAR the worst season of his career. The only season that came close to this bad was 2003. The difference between this time and then is that he is old now. On top of that, the guy has been hinting at retiring for years. He almost retired before he signed the contract he's currently on. He's got nothing left to prove -- he's not going to reach 500 homers, he's got his championship, and this team isn't likely to be a contender for the next couple years. It's a good time to hang them up. I'd much rather see it now than have him turn into an embarrassment like Griffey did.

Marc Hulet @ FanGraphs: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/prospect-st...cott-snodgress/

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Aug 16, 2013 -> 08:10 AM) You spelled Troncoso wrong Probably more realistic if they alternate anyway, I suppose.