OmarComing25

We get it, the Royals put the ball in play. You don't have to spend 90% of the airtime talking about it.

QUOTE (CWSpalehoseCWS @ Oct 31, 2015 -> 02:46 PM) Even if he was to leave the Royals, why would he have any desire to come to the Sox? I know money talks, but between the Royals, the Cubs, and the Sox, which team would you be more compelled to sign with from an organization standpoint? Money wins out 99% of the time.

LaRoche wasn't really a high K guy, to say he was similar to Dunn in that regard is just false. LaRoche's career K% is 22% which is slightly below average, and in 2014 his K% was just 18.4%, well below anything Dunn ever put up. Yeah I know he struckout a lot this year but that was unusual for him. Also I'm not ready to write him off for 2016 yet. Even Dunn was able to bounce back after his historically bad 2011 to make the All-Star team the next year, and LaRoche has a pretty good track record, I don't think he just completely lost all his ability to hit. My expectations aren't exactly high for him especially given his age, but I wouldn't expect him to be nearly as bad as he was in 2015 either, especially if Robin limits his ABs against LHP which I think he will, like he did with Conor this year before we finally pulled the plug on him.

I'm still very skeptical that teams are going to offer more or less based on a small handful of games in the playoffs. I don't think it'll make much of a noticeable difference at all.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Oct 30, 2015 -> 09:43 PM) It's so funny because when they win, they brag about what great fans they are. These fans are brutal. Any loss regular season or postseason and they consider the offending players total bums. It's classic inning by inning game by game. They despise Ventura right now and love Cueto. A few days ago they wanted to run Cueto out of town. They were praising Rios the other day; now they want his head on a platter. Basically KC thought it was over at 2-0 forgetting home field means a lot this time of year. This series is going 7 obviously. Sounds like every fanbase ever.

Hard pass on Wieters at both the years and the price, especially if we have to give up a pick. His career OPS+ is 100, he's 25th in wRC+ among catchers since he debuted, he's not particularly great at pitch framing either. He throws out runners really well, and I don't know how well he calls a game, but I'm not really seeing the appeal.

QUOTE (sin city sox fan @ Oct 29, 2015 -> 01:02 PM) If you take out all the earned runs he gave up all season, his ERA is 0.00......not too shabby!! It's not really cherry-picking if 1 out of 53 appearances makes your numbers look much worse than they really were, and his ERA and FIP even with that appearance weren't that bad anyway. It's not like I took out 10 appearances.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Oct 29, 2015 -> 12:32 PM) Yay a new scapegoat Does anyone really know the assistant hitting coaches well enough to complain about them?

QUOTE (SoxPride18 @ Oct 29, 2015 -> 11:13 AM) At the All Star break, Jennings had an ERA of 7.83. He lowered that to 3.99 with a FIP of 3.47. He gave up 8 ER in the 2nd half of the season. You definitely keep him. If you take out his 6 ER in 0.2 innings against the Reds, his ERA for the rest of the season was 3.07. Definitely worth keeping around.

QUOTE (Jerksticks @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 09:03 PM) Haha OP i'm an idiot- sorry for the SS post. I think the only reason Montas was brought up to the big leagues was to beef up his value. I think the Sox put him in the pen to highlight his fastball amd mask his longevity issues- but now I bet plenty of GMs are salivating over that build and velocity. Methinks the Sox see something with him that is no bueno. He gone. They didn't just stick him in the bullpen though, he started a couple games. And it's still way too early to write off any future with him as a SP. He's clearly an unfinished product right now.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 29, 2015 -> 09:00 AM) This is getting ridiculous. +1000 He was probably joking, but sometimes it's really hard to tell.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 29, 2015 -> 06:34 AM) Not sure if it's been mentioned here, but that was the first time in degrom's career that he didn't get a single saying and miss. He got 3 swing and misses in his 94 pitches, not zero. Still very impressive by the Royals. Mets only had 3 swing and misses against Cueto too in his 122 pitches. In total, there was only 9 swing and misses in the entire game. Pretty crazy.

Wouldn't be surprised to see Cueto do well tonight, considering he's back facing the NL again.

QUOTE (spiderman @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 07:12 PM) Quintana is the wildcard, but it's a highly safe assumption that Chris Sale, Carlos Rodon and John Danks will be in the rotation. Erik Johnson enters camp (or the off-season) as the favorite to fill out the rotation assuming no trades. Quintana could be seen as the quickest way to filling 2 holes on offense; he has been a #2-#3 type of quality starter now for about 3 seasons, and has a team friendly contract for another 3-4 seasons. This should result, if traded, in 2 high end prospects coming back, and we know the White Sox are looking for MLB ready type of talent. With holes at C, 3B, and potential area's of concern at SS, 2B,and DH (although it's fair to assume that La Roche, Sanchez and probably Ramirez enter next year as significant contributors). They shouldn't limit any trade return to specific positions outside of maybe 1B, so they could add 2 higher end prospects this way. They could also keep Quintana and move Johnson; obviously the return will pale in return, but they could get a usable player in return while ensuring the rotation (top end) stays a strength. In either case, move a starting pitcher is the best bet for young offensive talent, and it's hard to expect that the White Sox will be major players again in free agency to fill these holes. This will never stop bugging me, especially when said by White Sox fans, who should know better than anyone. By any metric you want to use, Quintana has been a top 15-20 starter in the MLB for the past 3 seasons. Far better than #3 quality.

QUOTE (SCCWS @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 06:39 PM) Good move by the Sox taking a chance on him. But I assume a bunch of teams passed on him dropping him down to Sox. Those teams don't have the track record we do with pitchers though.

Have to agree that we might overrate our SP depth. And I'm as excited about Rodon as anybody but with his control issues we should be careful before penciling him in as a top of the rotation guy for the future, a lot could still go wrong. This next year will tell us a lot about what we have (see if August/September Rodon is more like the Rodon we can expect than the first-half Rodon, see if EJ can get out ML-caliber hitters, see if Danish can improve his stock his 2nd go-around in AA, see if Fulmer is as ML-ready as we hope, see if Adams can take the next step, see if Montas has any future as a SP). To me, a possible Quintana trade might make more sense at the end of 2016 when we have more information about these guys.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 11:23 AM) Not surprising. I wanted Hector Olivera, too. Moncada was always going to be unrealistic. That book's on my reading list. Seems the Dodgers are really hitting the pitching market and realize paying Greinke even with his smooth, repeatable delivery into his late 30's isn't very wise even for a $300 million payroll team. Interested to see how much Greinke gets paid this offseason. Given his age though I think he'll easily be the worst contract handed out this year when it's all said and done.

I went to two playoff games that year, the drop third strike game and Game 2 of the World Series. I don't think I could have picked two better home games to go to. Crowd was louder after Konerko's grand slam than it was after Podsednik's walkoff. Also, when Crede hit the game-winning double the stadium was completely silent until the ball hit the wall, then it was complete bedlam. Good times. Was only 15 when it happened.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Oct 24, 2015 -> 05:23 PM) So is momentum, keep/ing the line moving and clutch...but try to convince players and managers these concepts don't exist and are just random statistical anomalies or white noise. It's not that those concepts don't exist or have zero importance (mainly talking about experience and momentum here, still skeptical that clutch is a thing) but their importance pales in comparison to pretty much everything else, so they're not really worth giving much attention to.

QUOTE (Soxfan90 @ Oct 24, 2015 -> 03:35 PM) I could care less. I think it's the Royals year, though. Last year got them the experience they need to pull this off. Nothing is ever so overrated as experience in my opinion, especially in baseball. If Lester had shut down the comeback last year, I think the Royals would have almost the exact same chance of hitting that Mets' rotation as they do right now.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Oct 24, 2015 -> 02:04 PM) I had to blink three times to confirm this wasn't a caulfield post. Why are you undervaluing Jose Quintana so much? He was 14th in pitching WAR this year, has a strong track record, & is under contract for the next five seasons at $8M per. He's without question one of the most valuable SP assets in baseball. The fact that you think Theo wouldn't trade Javier Baez, a guy who hasn't proved anything in the majors and has a history of contact issues, straight up for Quintana is beyond mind boggling IMO. Are you actually suggesting Baez is the more valuable asset of the two? And are you actually suggesting they might not trade Scwarber or Baez for Sale? If so, wow is all I can say. I think the Tyson Ross to the Cubs deadline deal fell through this year because Theo was unwilling to include Baez. Q is better than Ross but Cubs might still balk at that trade even though Quintana at this point is much more valuable. I also wouldn't trade Q for Schwarber but I don't think the Cubs do that trade either. I really don't see us being a match.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Oct 24, 2015 -> 10:17 AM) It's Donaldson, Encarnacion, Bautista and Tulo, with Martin to a lesser extent. Those four are much better than any ind. hitter on KC, but Tor doesn't have guys like Perez and Gordon hitting 7th and 8th, either. Opposing pitchers can relax more with Collabello, Goins, Pillar and Revere. Toronto strikes out a lot more....the Royals thrive on making contact when they get in two strike situations. They also don't have as many basestealers, more station to station with exceptions in Revere, Pillar and Pompey. Losing Reyes hurt quite a bit in that category. Except KC doesn't do anything better offensively than Toronto except hit more triples and strike out a bit less (it's not like Toronto struck out that much either). Toronto had a better batting average, hit more doubles, hit way more homeruns, had a way better OBP, performed better with RISP, and while KC had slightly more stolen bases, Toronto led the majors in CS% and was fifth in baserunning value while the Royals were 19th. I don't care what they did in the small sample size that is the postseason, Escobar, Perez, and Rios are not good hitters, no pitcher is afraid of them. Unless you're ready to tell me that Daniel Murphy is now a power threat.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Oct 24, 2015 -> 08:24 AM) On one side, the Royals have homefield. They've got the balanced offense to manufacture runs instead of scoring in bunches. Teams like the Cubs or Blue Jays would be even more susceptible to dominant pitching. The Royals make a lot more contact and they have experience From lasy year as well. Basically, it will come down to the Royals' pen vs. the Mets' starters. Obviously the Royals have to start out 2-0 or 1-1 or they be in danger of getting blown out of the series early. Volquez, in particular, hasn't pitched well against the Mets in his career. Cueto's around a 4 ERA in 65 ip. Volquez is closer to 6. How was the Jays' offense not balanced? They were elite in literally every offensive category, including baserunning.

I like the Mets but there were a lot of people this year that acted like the top of the AL couldn't compete with the top of the NL, and I'm sick of the circlejerk. f*** the NL.

QUOTE (flavum @ Oct 24, 2015 -> 12:41 AM) f*** the NL. +1