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QUOTE (kitekrazy @ Apr 29, 2013 -> 12:49 PM) Part of the problem is drafting by who are their agents. Better players will get better agents. The strength is pitching but it doesn't seem to last long. Coop's results are not long term. The last time I seen Sale pitch makes me wonder if he will have arm problems from throwing junk instead of a fastball. I did not see a pitch clock past 92. Nearly all pitchers lose velocity every year. It's a highly pronounced trend that velocity peaks in the early twenties. Presumably, a lot of that is due to time and wear, but a lot of it is also due to trading power for command. Coop is famous, specifically, for taking guys with good stuff and giving them enough command to be effective. Naturally, those types of changes are bound to cause loss in velocity, but they are also the difference between wildness and effectiveness. http://cdn.fangraphs.com/blogs/wp-content/...Curves_All1.png

No. We were good under Walker, sucked under Walker, were good under Manto, and now we suck under Manto.

Is that Quintana? He looks weird without his wings.

This is a good flyer. He's bound to be as good as Danks/Tekotte but is right-handed.

QUOTE (hammerhead johnson @ Apr 29, 2013 -> 01:23 PM) Courtney Hawkins has his strikeout percentage up to 55%. There have been 8 games where he had 3 or more strikeouts, and his season just started on April 5. Our top prospect, correct? Lovely. Guys is f*cking April, he's 19, and he's among the youngest guys at his level.

Good work

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Apr 26, 2013 -> 09:02 AM) Fun with numbers.... Adam Dunn's BABIP is .095 right now. LESS than 1 of every 10 balls he puts in to play are resulting in a hit. Wow. That's crazy.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Apr 26, 2013 -> 03:21 PM) I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to get players to be more patient. Of course, there should be a restriction as to how much it's done. You don't want to end up with a bunch of Adam Dunn's with no power on your team. But when you look at guys like Alexei Ramirez or Dayan Viciedo, they need to learn how to be more patient and they need that to be a constant idea in their head early in their minor league careers. In fact, I'd say there are a lot more impatient players in baseball today than patient ones, which is why those who can get on base are so sought after. Yeah, I think most of the arguments on TV miss the main benefit of patience/plate discipline. The pundits tend to argue the value (or lack of value) of a walk, and/or the value of OBP. But the real reason patience is important is because you are better of only swinging at good pitches. If you swing at bad pitches, two things happen: (1) you tend to get out, either via K or weak contact, and (2) pitchers never throw you good pitches, because they don't need to do so. If you are patient and willing to take a walk, you force the pitcher to choose between throwing you good pitches to hit or sending to to first base (which may not be ideal for a big hitter, but it is certainly better than making an out). So through patience, a hitter is really establishing a zone for himself. A hitter is forcing a pitcher to give him something to hit. To me, the perfect case study for this is Paul Konerko. He has unquestionably lost bat speed, but has avoided steep decline by becoming a better, more disciplined hitter. He has to cheat on a fastball, but that's fine because he forces a pitcher to give him one. If you don't, he takes his base, or, if cornered, pokes one to right field. I don't want Adam Dunn to GET walks, necessarily, I want him to ACCEPT walks so that he spends more time mashing fastballs for dingers -- or if the pitcher decides to pitch around him -- standing on first for Paulie. When Harold Reynolds and Tom Verducci says good hitters should expand the zone to put the ball in play, I'm just baffled. Yeah, sure, we want our best hitters to swing at bad pitches. Let's help the pitcher out. I don't know why it doesn't make intuitive sense to prefer your hitter being on first to him being out.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Apr 26, 2013 -> 02:04 PM) Yeah, but coaches and managers use advanced stats to develop players differently and to employ strategy differently...look at Oakland and Boston for instance, I have heard that organizationally, they started pounding it in to the heads of their minor leaguers to look at more pitches. That absolutely changes how players play. Yeah, that's an instance where the organization discovered that they valued OBP. They almost certainly arrived at that conclusion through the use of sabermetrics, but that isn't any different than the Twins or Phillies ramming bunting and aggressive baserunning into the head of their minor leaguers. In both cases, the team could be right or wrong and a player could thrive or fail, but organizational development philosophy was not something borne from sabermetrics. If Hawk is afraid of players becoming robots, maybe the true culprit is not letting their personal styles thrive. You can point to guys like Daric Barton as casualties of passivity as an approach, but you can point to guys like David Ortiz as casualties of the "Twins Way" too. Just so you know (since we probably agree with each other on most of this already), I was making my point in response to Hawk's "robot ballplayer" argument and Hawk's "sabermetrics get people fired" argument.

Players don't create advanced stats or traditional stats. Player just f***ing play and we use advanced stats to understand their performance better.

QUOTE (IlliniKrush @ Apr 26, 2013 -> 12:24 AM) Hawk definitely still uses a typewriter. Haha no way, he talks about his MLB At Bat sponsored iPad every game.

"How can a team get a W if the pitcher can't get his W, Brian?" LOL

Two of these threads on the front page at the same time!

QUOTE (bbilek1 @ Apr 25, 2013 -> 02:46 PM) Adrian Gonzalez is by no means in the same category as Ethier and Crawford. A virtual lock for 155+ games and 100+ RBIs. Lifetime line: .295/.372/.507 and he is a gold glove fielder. You don't want to be in a position for paying a guy for what he was, you want to pay him for what he IS and WILL BE. He gets paid too much to be the 3-4 WAR guy of 2012, and the fact that that is post-shoulder surgery makes me afraid that he won't ever be the same. Plus he's getting older.

Ethier would be bad news. He's entering decline and is already a platoon hitter who is bad on defense. If you guys hate Dunn, I don't know why you'd want Ethier, who is more expensive and under contract longer.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Apr 25, 2013 -> 12:10 PM) Yes, but league average is well over a .179 batting average, which is what Adam is sporting in a White Sox uniform. I know. I was just pointing out that the .307 number was unremarkable. It seemed like you were speculating that he stays where he does in the order because he does more than average damage when he makes contact. And that may be true, it just isn't because of his league-average BABIP.

This is the problem. A strong, negative opinion without ever lifting a finger to understand it. Literally judging a book by its cover.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Apr 25, 2013 -> 10:51 AM) I guess it also depends to what extent you want to declare something as sabermetrics anymore and which is traditional. Hawk trashes sabermetrics but he uses OBP, which has been tracked forever but was only given the name and used by sabermeticians in like the 70s and 80s. Personally, I don't even consider OBP/SLG/OPS to be saber stats any more, but that was how they originated. In 15-20 years, we may not be talking about UZR/150 as a saber stat either. More and more, you see that sabermetric websites focus so much more on pitch location and angle and the repeatability of mechanics, and they can look at that from release points of the baseball by pitchers and graph them out to figure this out. Agreed. Sabermetrics is really about the idea of advancing our understanding of baseball through the quantifiable measurement. The irony in the "saber vs. old school" debates on TV is that both sides are arguing with numbers.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Apr 25, 2013 -> 10:07 AM) You find it ironic that when data is questioned by someone, that person is labeled as being dumb? No, I think you missed my point. Questioning is FANTASTIC, and it is at the very core of the objectivity that sabermetrics promote. Being dismissive without questioning is the problem. People like Hawk are dismissive, and probably so are the majority of anti-data people. I have no problem with questioning and disagreeing with interpretations of data and/or the quality of data. I have a huge problem with the attitude that it's all "nerd garbage" and that it's wrong because it you (the proverbial you) don't consider it interesting to understand.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Apr 25, 2013 -> 10:44 AM) Tell that guy to get off my f***ing TV. You and the guy with the pink Cubs hat at Wrigley can go away forever. But whose seat will Southpaw take to do the wavey arm thing in the third inning?

QUOTE (Hawkfan @ Apr 25, 2013 -> 08:27 AM) Scored Scout seats at work. They better win if I'm missing the draft. If you'd rather watch the draft, I'll gladly take those seats off your hands

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Apr 25, 2013 -> 09:46 AM) If Dunn returns to his 2012 form and a couple guys get back from injuries, the offense should be good enough to win. They were 4th in the AL in runs last season. I do agree, I don't know why Dunn is batting 3rd, 4th or 5th. I didn't understand it in 2011 or 2012. I guess the thinking is trying to have as many on base as possible when he bats in the event he doesn't strike out. When he doesn't strike out, Dunn is a .307 hitter during his White Sox career. Just FYI because it gives context: league average BABIP is pretty much always around .300. So, you would expect nearly all hitters to be +/- 15 points from there in a given season.

It's ironic that those claiming that sabermetrics exude "elitism" tend to be the same people that refuse to even try to understand them because it goes against their "traditional" ways. Ignoring the possibility of progress for nothing but the sake of tradition is about as elitist as it gets. I've pissed some people off on this board regarding the subject of sabermetrics before, but when I get worked up and vitriolic it is NEVER because people disagree with a sabermetric claim or don't concern themselves with the subject -- it is when people vehemently denounce it without even attempting to understand it. That's the kind of BS attitude that fosters an "us vs. them" s***-show in the first place. This isn't people being elitist, this is people being overly defensive on both sides. There's no magic answer to most baseball questions, sabermetric or not. You can disagree all you want and I'll respect it. But your claim deserves no respect if you are making it without bothering to be informed. That is the problem with Hawk's opinions -- they are all rooted in a bias he created when someone made him feel threatened. That's the immaturity that most of the most public voices on BOTH sides of the "debate" have shown, from my observations.

And the streak begins.

QUOTE (fathom @ Apr 24, 2013 -> 03:14 PM) The only way you do that is if you have zero intention on bringing Beckham back next season. Yeah, especially as well as he hit before he got hurt.