Willard Decker

QUOTE (ZoomSlowik @ Feb 7, 2014 -> 08:20 PM) I don't get why they would want to do it. What benefit does the league get from pushing it to 2 years in college? So now you're giving the NCAA two years of superstar players when teams would draft the guy out of high school if they could? I get not wanting to scout high school players, but I just don't see the point in forcing dominant freshmen to stay another year. The only argument I could see is more development, but 99% of guys aren't "ready" for the NBA when they come out regardless of when they come out and guys that stay an extra year frequently see their stock drop. I could also see that creating a ton of eligibility issues for guys that barely get in as it is. It will also cause guys to look at the D-League and Europe as alternatives. Oh, and to answer your question, I would guess it comes up the next time they have to negotiate a CBA with the players. It sounds like they're trying to encourage more student-athletes to finish their degrees and assume that if potential draft-picks are forced to attend school for two years that some of them will forgo the draft long enough to graduate. It's not a bad thing for a student-athlete to stay in college for three or four years- Damian Lillard and Victor Oladipo finished their degrees- but I wonder if the problem is not so much the NCAA's academic requirements but how collegiate athletes are evaluated. Potential lottery-picks are treated like new cars in that their value depreciates as soon as they've played their first game, as scouts being dissecting everything that's wrong with them as though said flaws weren't evident previously. Players feel pressured to enter the draft as soon as possible because they're concerned that protracted evaluation by NBA scouts will only hamper their draft position. Perhaps the NBA needs to revisit its methods of player evaluation before making any adjustments to the age-limit. --Captain Decker

New NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is mulling an increase in the league's age-limit for entry into the NBA Draft from nineteen to twenty. I don't doubt he's serious about making the change- it's been hinted at for a while- but when does he plan for the change to take effect (assuming it's approved)? It would seem unlikely to affect anyone considering this summer's draft but could affect future student-athletes. --Captain Decker

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 7, 2014 -> 04:46 PM) Wow. I am shocked to be honest. Not me. I think Rodriguez sees the writing on the wall and realizes he's not likely to see his suspension reduced. QUOTE (Jake @ Feb 7, 2014 -> 04:53 PM) I think he dropped the charges so that the arbitrator's findings didn't go public. Which makes me wonder what Major League Baseball has on him. That he would drop his lawsuit suggests he knew he wasn't going to win the case, so MLB must have fairly significant evidence of his culpability that justifies his suspension. --Captain Decker

Dodgers Consider Puig for Lead-Off Spot Puig has a high OBP but doesn't walk much. On the other hand, his splits against left- and right-handed pitchers are much more encouraging than Carl Crawford's. --Captain Decker

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Feb 6, 2014 -> 08:35 PM) Lee and Bout ruled out. Not necessarily a bad thing, as it leaves more shot-attempts for Curry. --Captain Decker

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Feb 6, 2014 -> 07:50 PM) I hope so. I want him, Gordon and Chris Walker from Florida. That would be nasty. I've yet to see Walker play. But Wiggins and Gordon should certainly compete. Meanwhile, Adam Silver's first week as NBA Commissioner just became more interesting. --Captain Decker

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Feb 6, 2014 -> 07:38 PM) George, Wall, Ross, Barnes, Lillard, and McLemore. I wonder if we'll see Andrew Wiggins in the contest next season. --Captain Decker

Pittsburgh Pirates legend Ralph Kiner has died at the age of ninety one. Thoughts and prayers to his family and friends. --Captain Decker

QUOTE (hi8is @ Feb 5, 2014 -> 09:58 PM) Welcome to Soxtalk Good Sir. Your little signing call overcomes my eyeballs whenever scrolling through threads now. It makes me want to smash daisy petals and vomit carebears. On another note - Do Captains poop? Is it possible to vomit stuffed bears? And yes, captains poop as much as anyone else. --Captain Decker

QUOTE (Tex @ Feb 5, 2014 -> 09:07 PM) Well played Capt'n Thank you. In any case, I agree with you. --Captain Decker

QUOTE (whitesoxfan99 @ Feb 5, 2014 -> 07:47 PM) How has Mike Brown not been fired yet? Firing Mike Brown isn't the solution: he was never the problem. Cleveland has made numerous mistakes evaluating players they've selected in the NBA Draft, obtained via free-agency or acquired by other means. Kyrie Irving was an excellent choice, but the selections of Waiters, Thompson, Zeller and Bennett have set an already-struggling franchise back by several seasons. Bennett has played better of late but has struggled mightily and is on pace to have the worst season of any player selected first overall in the NBA Draft. Cleveland is projected to have the eighth selection of the 2014 NBA Draft and will likely miss out on Embiid, Parker, Wiggins or Randle. Even Dante Exum and Marcus Smart would be unavailable from that position, leaving the Cavaliers in the position of settling for Rodney Hood or Gary Harris. --Captain Decker

QUOTE (Tex @ Feb 5, 2014 -> 08:34 PM) It's a chicken and egg argument. I agree that one of the (probably) unintended consequences of a statistical analysis of baseball players is they can be used to "sell and player". At the extreme, in my old guy opinion, is rejecting the idea that the players around you, the locker room, the coaching, are somehow not important. Some people seem to believe that if every player just focused on producing the best stats possible for himself that a team can be successful. That rejects a whole theory of sports and what it teaches us about character, sacrifice, team play, cooperation, etc. teIam? The pragmatist in the room would argue that there is in win. --Captain Decker

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Feb 5, 2014 -> 06:47 PM) Who would use a single piece of info to measure effectiveness? --Captain Abreu The same people who believe that home runs are more important than any other baseball statistic. --Captain Decker

QUOTE (ptatc @ Feb 5, 2014 -> 06:10 PM) That's not bad, sounds like an aberration that one pitcher having that will cause the entire team to go to the post season but it's worth keeping an eye on. Wainwright had 19 wins, Scherzer had 21, Hershaw 16, Price 10 and Haren 10. I'm not really sure it's a real accurate measure of wins. One would have to look at statistics from additional seasons to discern if there's a pattern. It's not hard to believe that teams having the best pitchers win consistently, but deciding a pitcher's worth based on a single statistical measure is shortsighted. The K/BB ratio is helpful in analyzing trends, particularly when evaluating power pitchers. But I hesitate to use only a single piece of information to gauge a player's effectiveness. --Captain Decker

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Feb 5, 2014 -> 06:04 PM) Bryce Harper is 100x more the "Face of MLB" than Konerko is. Same with Kershaw. If I cared enough for vote, I'd be voting for Kershaw. I've no problem with Kershaw winning the voting as he's earned the respect of everyone in and around the game of baseball. Bryce Harper has the talent of Ken Griffey Jr. and the maturity of Royce Clayton. --Captain Decker

QUOTE (ptatc @ Feb 5, 2014 -> 05:46 PM) Show me how the K/BB is correlated to wins. My review of 2013 statistics from Baseball Reference shows that of the ten pitchers who finished with the highest K/BB ratio, four (Wainwright, Price, Kershaw and Scherzer) played on teams that reached the postseason. A fifth (Haren) was a member of a team with a winning record during the regular season. I don't know if these findings support or refute his argument. What I would be interested in seeing is if the teams with the highest K/BB ratio finished with winning records or postseason berths. --Captain Decker

QUOTE (ptatc @ Feb 5, 2014 -> 05:04 PM) old guy rant/ I know I'm old but I really don't like this idea. Too many sports are becoming obsessed with the individual athlete and not the team. I know it helps the average fan become interested and identify with them (again hero worship of athletes is a bad thing IMHO). However, I prefer the promotion of the team not the individual. I root for the game of baseball and the White Sox not an individual on the team. Now that I think about it, this is the problem I have with too many of the "advanced stats." They were created so the player could get paid through arbitration to show that even if the team did poorly, I deserve more money. Pitchers worry more about a quality start or the K/BB ratio instead of focusing on the team win. Interesting that this just occurred to me. Thanks for starting the thread. /old guy rant I agree and admit that I don't know a solution to the problem. It's been suggested that contracts include incentives and bonuses tried to wins as opposed to individual statistics, but that arrangement comes with problems as well. How does a particular team deal with a player whose team reached the World Series if said player was acquired at the trade-deadline and played in only a fraction of his new team's games? QUOTE (Feeky Magee @ Feb 5, 2014 -> 05:30 PM) young guy polite reply/ The pitcher concentrating on his K/BB ratio will help his team to have a better chance of winning /young guy polite reply In theory. The problem with K/BB ratio is that it says nothing about a pitcher's ability to retire hitters without striking them out. It also favors pitchers who rely on power pitches designed to make hitters swing and miss instead of hitting groundballs or popups that are easy to field and unlikely to advance base-runners. Strikeouts are preferred because they prevent men on base from advancing or scoring, but a groundball pitcher who induces double-plays at a high rate can be an effective starting pitcher and deserving of a long-term contract. --Captain Decker

Joey Votto gets a bye in the first round because he won the competition last year, but that doesn't explain why Ortiz also gets a pass. Are they giving him the benefit of the doubt because the Red Sox won the World Series? --Captain Decker