thxfrthmmrs

Trivia question, which threw the hardest in 2014, Quintana, Danks or Penny?

f*** CUTLER YOU PIECE OF s***. I am tired of his dumb ass padding stats every single game in garbage time!! Lost by 0.8 points in the semi's after that last second touchdown to Jeffery. Just go away you f***ing piece of s***, you still suck ass when it actually matters

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Dec 15, 2014 -> 07:00 PM) I'm not talking about WAR, I'm talking about the top projection systems and what they say about players. If you add up WAR and guess records, you're going to be way off. Everyone agrees with this. To which I said in the other post how these projection systems are extremely conservative and projects the most likely outcome, but rarely predicts well with breakout seasons. I believe the Sox will have more players who are positive outliers compared to the projections. I wasn't advocating to look at WAR to predict team record, but I believe it's a good indicator of team success. And FWIW, the average variance of last season's record for all teams compared to team WAR total is 4.3 wins, which might be better than some of the beat writers' projections.

We will win anywhere from 0-162 games, possibly somewhere in between, definitely not towards the extreme.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 15, 2014 -> 04:06 PM) I plotted this up at the end of last season. If your team was in the range of 40 WAR you were extremely likely to be a playoff team. If your team was in the range of 20 WAR you were about the worst in the league. I did as well. I like WAR as a rating system, but I take these WAR projections with a huge grain of salt. Having WAR in the 40 range would mean you're an 88 + win team, and in the 20's says you'll win around 70 games. FWIW Sox ended up with 24 WARs last year, and they end up winning 73 games, so I think it's a pretty good indicator.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Dec 15, 2014 -> 02:36 PM) Exactly, and that's why it makes sense to use the aggregate as a frame of reference rather than get caught up in the specifics. That's what math is really good at: macro-level trends. At the end of the year, you'll be able to go through and find all kinds of outlier players that the system missed on, but as a whole, it's going to be pretty damn accurate. It's a macro-level frame of reference, based on the most likely outcome, but I wouldn't call it pretty damn accurate. It's accurate in the sense that the system will produce 1,000 WARs in a season, and there will be a large subset of players producing around their most likely outcome, but like you mention there will be outliers, and major ones at that, it happens more than the system would expect to. Every year, there are a fair number of likes of Ben Zobrist, Josh Donaldson, Josh Harrison, Michael Brantley, Corey Kluber that comes along and completely skews the curve, and Clayton Kershaw or Mike Trout have that potential to beat their projection by a lot, even though they are projected to be amongst the best. The projection system lacks the visibility to see those breakouts. At the end of the year, the difference in total WAR value between the best team and the worst team will be a lot greater than 10, because the number of minor/major positive outliers on a team does not equal to its minor/major negative outliers. I think the Sox would be one of those teams that will have more positive outliers than negative ones.

QUOTE (Jake @ Dec 15, 2014 -> 01:06 PM) They don't do that because the effects of doing things like that are repeatedly tested and never show an effect. If it does, it is so infrequently that it can't be distinguished from random chance. The only thing about those acquisitions that makes us better is that those players are better than the ones they are replacing. The would you want to elaborate on the phenomenon when great setup men are put into the closer position they fail miserably? Or do you subscribe to Billy Beane's theory that closers are the same as any other reliever pitchers? I don't think projections take into these elements because they can't, as they would project 7th inning stats the same way they would project 9th inning stats.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 15, 2014 -> 12:09 PM) The team has not ignored defense, that's an overstatement. Cabrera is a large defensive upgrade over Viciedo, LaRoche is a good defensive 1B who will play there some of the time, and a guy like Brantly is better than Phegley can provide (and better pitcher handling than a young Nieto). So there have been upgrades. I'd also suggest that 2B is an open question - Sanchez would be better than Beckham was I think, but Johnson would be a downgrade. So that is an unknown. Also worth noting - Abreu looked a lot better as the year went on, and Gillaspie has improved a little in my view. Flowers has improved quite a lot. So even in static positions there have been some positive trends that look good. The glaring defensive holes now are 3B and RF. I just don't see any other major defensive holes now. That doesn't seem that bad. I don't really agree with this. To say someone is an upgrade over Viciedo defensively isn't saying anything at all. While better than Viciedo, Melky is still a huge liability rather than an asset defensively. What you are saying here is I don't want the worst, but having anything better than the worst is acceptable. IMO defense takes talent more than anything, especially if we look at UZR which factors in range heavily. A player like say Conor Gillaspie could improve their fundamentals, make smarter throws in certain situations, or play the bunt better, but his range or his arm will never improve, which I think are the keys for a good defensive player. You generally don't see players with terrible UZR for most of their career suddenly becoming good defensive players over time, there could be an outlier season here and there, but that's usually not the case. FWIW, Gillaspie went from -2.9 UZR to -8.1 last year, my bet is he won't do much better this year. Out all positions you mentioned, I think improvement will most likely come from catcher position, as fundamentals, knowledge, and arm plays a huge factor, and I think Tyler does have what it takes to be a good defensive catcher. 1B should be an improvement, but it won't have significant impact on overall team defense. The 35 year old LaRoche has the reputation, but he's declining every year. Avi keeps on rounding out in RF, I don't think you could expect much improvement from him in terms of range and defensive runs saved. On top of that, we all saw Alexei losing a step last season. To sum it up, we have huge liabilities at LF, RF, and 3B; what is now league average defense at SS and 1B. 2B, CF, and C are the only positions we can expect good defense out of. I think collectively this is still one of the worst defensive teams in the league.

One thing these computer based projections don't account for simply adding stabilizers like Robertson and Duke at the end of bullpen will take away pressure from guys like Petricka, Putnam, Guerra and Webb. If we are only asking them to pitch the 6/7/8 instead of high leverage 8th and 9th, it would put them in a better position to succeed as well. 3 of those guys have a big fastball, they just didn't command it well last year. Taking pressure off them would certainly help. But yea, 2 WAR for this bullpen grossly under-projecting.

QUOTE (Reddy @ Dec 15, 2014 -> 09:27 AM) Steamer has projected regression in seemingly everyone this year regardless of team. Bizarre, since in the past it was a pretty optimistic projection system IIRC Projections on stats maybe, but projections based on WARs were never optimistic, as the number of WARs are capped for an MLB season.

There are 1000 WARs for an MLB season and these projections tries to distribute it evenly across all players and prevent outliers as much as possible, hence you have cases where both Kershaw and Sale are project for less than 5.0 WAR. The WAR projections are based on the average of all outcomes I believe, and you rarely see any fluke or breakout seasons from these projections. I expect a couple of breakout seasons from Avi, Eaton, and even Abreu with better conditioning under his belt. Samardzija should also be due for a good year in his contract year. Those alone would push us over 33 WARs and make us a .500 at least.

The bigger concern is rushing him before he's ready. He was good last season but obviously still need to refine his command. You don't want to rush his development just to fill a hole on the big league team.

It's his throwing arm. I've read that recovery should be a bit quicker than for pitchers. But since he's not used to making throws from 3B in the past, I'd would assume it would impact him to some extent. Ptact can provide a better answer for us.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 14, 2014 -> 01:08 PM) "Primary backup infielder" wouldn't be a problem role for Saladino, even if he hit poorly, defense and flexibility would be tolerable. The problem is that we still have those couple guys with major platoon splits - LaRoche and Gillaspie, where you'd want the guy on the bench to be more than a backup. How does TJS Impact his ability to not only play, but to learn 3B? He's only played a total of 3 games there in the minors. In that role, he'd be asked to play there against most LH SP's. The bigger elephant in the room is he most likely won't be ready by ST.

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ Dec 14, 2014 -> 12:34 PM) It's better than a line of .150 .250. 350. .450 . Beside 2nd base is now the Sox biggest area of concern in the lineup. Doesn't hurt to have more competition to push the youngsters to play their best. Sanchez is really sucking in the winter league after his winter league play last year propelled him into a good season in the minors which led to his call up. I don't mind bring Beckham back as a reserve at all, but if we are starting him over Gillaspie for whatever reason, I think that's bad news for us. To the pro-Saladino crowd, I like him as much as the next guy and I was hoping he gets called up last September before he got hurt. But if we are penciling in a guy who's coming off TJS and never played in the majors before as our primary backup infielder, we are digging a big hole for ourselves.

Yes. I saw that. That's 28 at bats.

If you want to find some cutesy way to look at splits so be it, but Beckham's struggle at the plate wasn't impacted by the position he played.

QUOTE (Brian @ Dec 14, 2014 -> 11:58 AM) Its cute that people on Twitter think the Sox and Cubs' off-seasons are comparable. That so called GM over at ESPN gave Cubs the highest off season grade all teams, factoring in the Maddon acquisition of course. Sox came in second with a solid A, but that was pre-Melk Man.

Wow really? How does Beckham playing at 2B possibly have that much effect on his hitting? It's also irrelevant because he was a much better hitter earlier in his career, when he was playing 3B, but not so much recently.

Does Lowrie still play 2B, let alone 6.0 UZR? We don't have $8 mil to throw at a backup infielder at this point, especially not with Danks and Tank still on the roster.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Dec 14, 2014 -> 10:10 AM) I think his arm and shoulder issues are forcing them to convert him. Who knows though, maybe Coop finds a delivery flaw and works it out, maybe he throws one pitch and TJS I thought his arm issues were pre 2013. Wasn't awareness that the conversion to reliever was more than mere ineffectiveness as a starter.

QUOTE (WKamm @ Dec 14, 2014 -> 07:07 AM) After they signed a cheater? Hell, no!!!! If you don't like the players on the team, maybe you should stop watching the team on TV altogether. Using the PED card as reason not to go to a game is kind of baffling.

A part of me still want the Sox to give Ynoa a shot at starting. He was really good as a starter in 2013 in A ball, and didn't exactly light the world on fire as a reliever last year. Hate to see a "once in a generation" pitcher end up being a reliever without getting another shot with the new team.

QUOTE (bear_brian @ Dec 14, 2014 -> 09:39 AM) Where are you getting that number from? I have them at about $110M right now. http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/CH...-salaries.shtml Counting the remaining roster slots as pre-arbitration salaries, and $1 million for Paulie every year until 2020. It should $115 million instead. I forgot Robertson earns $10 mil this year instead of $11.5 mil, and now that Melky should earn $14 instead $15 mil a year. The number could be a bit lower if Melky's deal is backloaded as well.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Dec 14, 2014 -> 02:20 AM) Duke - $5 million Samardzija - $10 million Robertson - $11.5 million Cabrera - $14.5 million LaRoche $12.5 million $53.5 million. We had $48.5 million committed at the start of the off-season. Add all of this on and we'll be at $100 million. This isn't all that surprising, since a lot of teams are over the $100 million mark. I think we still have room for some improvement. With arbitrations and pre-arb salaries we're at $118 million with not much of a bench. If we can dump Viceido for quality bullpen arm and or defensive infield glove and prospects I'd be even more happy.