OmarComing25

QUOTE (fathom @ Sep 30, 2015 -> 09:45 AM) How about just a positive WAR player A 0.0 WAR player would be the second best OF on the team this year.

Ortiz's stats the last two seasons: 2014: 142G, 518AB, 35HR, 104RBI, 75BB, 95K, .355OBP 2015: 142G, 518AB, 36HR, 104RBI, 75BB, 95K, .355OBP

I know at this point the difference between pick 8 and pick 9 (or 11 and 12) is essentially meaningless, but then I go back to the last couple drafts and if we were just one spot higher in both we miss out on both guys we wanted.

QUOTE (EvilJester99 @ Sep 30, 2015 -> 07:07 AM) Avi has struggled.. but to me he isn't the biggest issue on this team yet most are so down on him as if he is the cause of the Sox sucking so hard. He has the third lowest fWAR in all of baseball, that isn't a big issue?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 30, 2015 -> 09:11 AM) Forget it, he's rolling. I don't think I've ever read a positive post from him.

QUOTE (Mike F. @ Sep 30, 2015 -> 07:29 AM) The funny thing is that people would love him if he put up those offensive numbers at second or third base instead of right field. I'd try and convert him to an infielder honestly. His defense couldn't be any worse than it is now. The average MLB 2B has an OPS of .708. The average MLB 3B has an OPS of .754. Avi has put up an OPS of below .600 in three of the last four months. His offense would be pretty bad even at second base.

QUOTE (Hatchetman @ Sep 29, 2015 -> 02:26 PM) Pay top $$ for stars, not replaceable bums. Laroche? GMAFB. A decent organization signs guys like that off the street! Just checked the thread where we signed LaRoche and only a couple posters were against the move at the time, and even those posters thought the worst case scenario was a 1 WAR type season. But now everyone is coming out of the woodwork saying they knew he was a bum all along. There was risk due to his age of course, but there are still plenty of old guys doing well this year (A-Rod, Beltran, Burnett, etc.), the problem was we were screwed if he didn't perform because of our other holes. The good news is he's only here one more season and his contract is far from top $$. It was a relatively low risk move that didn't work out. He wasn't blocking anyone, and if we hadn't decided to try and compete this year 2016 probably wasn't going to have high expectations either.

QUOTE (IowaSoxFan @ Sep 29, 2015 -> 01:13 PM) I dont think you would want a free agent to fill in the final hole in the rotation. At this point the team is still likely to be third in the division next year if not worse and one FA starter isn't going to make the difference. I would rather use Beck in the rotation to start the season and go from there when either Montas or Danish are ready. Save money in FA and use it in signing some of the young Cubans coming over. Using a stop-gap free agent SP for a year or two until the younger guys are ready isn't really a bad idea. Wouldn't cost that much money, and if he performs well he becomes a trade asset at the deadline if you fall out of contention.

QUOTE (IowaSoxFan @ Sep 29, 2015 -> 12:02 PM) This team is not likely to be much better next year, move Eaton while he has value, you can platoon Shuck and Thompson out there for the year. I think Anderson ends up in CF anyway so they might as well clear the spot while Eaton's value is high. Moving Eaton would only make sense if you could somehow fill two holes with him. Otherwise you're just opening up a new hole to fill another. I don't think the first scenario is at all likely.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Sep 29, 2015 -> 12:59 PM) Did they retool after '13 spiraled away when they brought in Abreu, Eaton, Davidson and Garcia. It seems like they brought in a lot of young guys with the hopes they would become mainstays. Maybe they jumped the gun this past offseason, but that can be attributed to KW not Rick Hahn. This is a good point. A lot of people seem to think the Sox are afraid of rebuilding, but 2014 was pretty clearly a rebuilding year. With all the money coming off the books they decided to take a shot and it blew up in their faces.

QUOTE (almagest @ Sep 29, 2015 -> 11:34 AM) Sure, but I don't know if there's ever been a concrete example of steroids helping pitchers as much as they helped hitters. I feel like the extremely offense-heavy nature of the era backs that up. You could argue they helped pitchers more, as a big thing steroids do is help you recover more quickly, which is obviously huge for pitchers.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 29, 2015 -> 11:09 AM) Cubs fans going to games allowed them to sign Lester during a rebuild. Their going to games has literally allowed them to put a better team on the field. Give credit to the Tribune for doing a hell of a marketing job when they bought the team. They helped create the mystique that surrounds Wrigley Field and the franchise itself.

QUOTE (Hatchetman @ Sep 29, 2015 -> 11:01 AM) The team has won 90 games only 6 times in the 35 years JR's been in charge. In those years it takes everybody by surprise and its all over before they realize what happened. Then its back to mediocrity. 2006 was probably the one year it wasn't a surprise.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Sep 29, 2015 -> 10:29 AM) Flowers is top 5 in the league in pitch framing. Along with past White Sox targets, Miguel Montero, Jason Castro, and Yasmani Grandal That's not factored into the defensive metrics though.

QUOTE (bjm676 @ Sep 29, 2015 -> 10:07 AM) I keep thinking that the Cubs would be a good trade partner this offseason. Sox has surplus of pitching (Beck, Danish, etc.) Cubs have surplus of infielders. Trade pitching to Cubs for Baez or Castro or even LaStella. Cubs don't need pitching, they'll sign one of the top SP this offseason and then Hendricks and Hammel will be their #4/#5, why do they need pitching?

For DRS, we actually look much better, but still bad. We're 26th in the majors in defense by this metric, ahead of the Yankees and Mariners in the AL. Interestingly, our total DRS number this year (-21) is significantly better than last year's number (-41), despite Eaton being our worst defender this year (-14) and our best defender last year (+12). Going by this metric, it's easy to see where the improvements were made: Micah (-7 in just 33 games, yikes) Sanchez (+6) Gillaspie (-8) Saladino (+10 in just 61 games) Thompson (+2) For some reason DRS really loves Flowers (+14), though I'm not sure why.

Damn we really need to go maximum 3-6. The last series of the season is going to decide it between us and the Tigers.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 29, 2015 -> 09:12 AM) Out of curiosity, is there anyone out there who does defense number splits? What I would like to see is if, and by how much, Sox defensive metrics changed over the course of the season. Specifically as a couple of changes were made (benching Gillaspie, Sanchez replaces Johnson, improvements by Eaton and Alexei as the season went on) how much, or how little, the team defense improved. I know the season long ratings have us really low, but I wonder how much of that is from burying themselves with an awful start. Fangraphs doesn't let you do seasonal splits by UZR, but it does let you do it by the overall defensive number they have. Overall: April: -11.3 May: -13.0 June: -9.7 July: -8.0 August: -8.2 September: -12.8 OF: April: -5.4 May: -9.2 June: -7.5 July: -8.3 August: -8.7 September: -9.2 Fangraphs allows you to split by OF but not by IF, but it looks like the infield defense actually had positive numbers in July and August (just going by the difference between the two numbers), but fell off considerably in September. I'd be interested to see our DRS values, but by UZR we were still by far the worst defensive team in baseball in the 2nd half.

QUOTE (bmags @ Sep 29, 2015 -> 09:17 AM) Honestly I have zero belief that if the execs were to rate the top 20 pitchers in baseball that Quintana would make the list. Look at how he doesn't make the top 50 value pieces in baseball over and over. There is a global conspiracy to believe this great pitcher is great. Fangraphs had Quintana at #41 in their top 50 trade value column, and pretty much said 30-50 could be interchangeable without much argument.

QUOTE (fathom @ Sep 28, 2015 -> 09:54 PM) With how bad so many bullpens are, how did the Cubs get F. Rodney for nothing? Another career AL player now making it look easy in the NL Because Rodney was complete garbage with Seattle? He's pitched 10 innings for the Cubs, I wouldn't call him another AL-NL example just yet.

QUOTE (bjm676 @ Sep 28, 2015 -> 01:20 PM) The white sox are lucky with Quintana. Just like they were lucky to get Rodon and lucky that Sale turned into Chris Sale. when it comes to the Sox scouting and player development, they are more lucky that any of their drafted players turn into MLB caliber players. This is Kenny Williams and Buddy Bell we are talking about. No, the Sox may suck at player development but that is almost all on the position player side. They have a very good track record with pitchers, and the Sox deserve credit for it, just like they deserve blame on the lack of hitters that come through the system.

I know it's a bit early to think about, but say Arrieta has two more Cy Young caliber seasons in 2016 and 2017 and then hits free agency, where he'll be 32. What kind of contract does he get? Is there a team that would be willing to go 5 years/$150 million?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 26, 2015 -> 05:03 PM) See, this thinking drives me completely batty because this is the thinking of the White Sox front office and it's so much the thinking of a losing organization. All you've got is a list of "excuses" even if you don't want to call them that. "Oh if LaRoche had kept this up", "If Sale had kept this up", "we're so close we're right there". Every single losing organization can say stuff like that. They're still losing organizations. But you know what? The winning organizations could say that too, but they don't. Put the Cardinals in that same mode. How many excuses could the Cardinals make this season? "Wainright missed almost the whole year. Holliday, our best hitter, was out for more than 1/2 the year. Molina has hit the DL. Adams has missed most of the year. Peralta has put up a .626 OPS the 2nd half. Yadier Molina has a .660 OPS on the season - that's his worst in 5 years. I could keep going if I wanted. Winning organizations put together rosters that can take that. Losing organizations give a list of all the bad things that happened and pretend "oh if a few of those were different we'd be right there". Some things always go wrong! Especially if you're buying guys who are in their mid to late 30s. Play the excuse game the other way with the white sox and you can make them seem awfully lucky. In 2014, Abreu, Sale, Garcia, and Eaton all hit the DL. Nate Jones was out for the whole year. This year we've been remarkably healthy, out of that group the only thing resembling the DL was Sale missing 1 start. Eaton looked like an injury prone player last offseason and he's been almost 100% healthy. We've gotten great stints from Soto and Trayce Thompson that no one would have expected. How on Earth did the White Sox get that lucky? No one would have ever guessed all those positive things could happen. The Cardinals could make excuses like that. Their excuses put ours to shame if they wanted to make them. Instead they went out and won >62% of their games and put away the only division in baseball that has 3 playoff teams with little stress. That's the difference between a winning and a losing organization and we're the latter. First of all you're comparing us to the best organization in the MLB, yeah the Cardinals are very good at developing talent. Secondly, Nate Jones was hurt most of the year, as was Albers, and Sale got off to a rough start due to a lack of Spring Training, but I'll give you the breaks we've had on health. That's about it for breaks though. Literally everyone had a massive drop-off from 2014 except for Q, Eaton, Danks and a couple bullpen guys. I get there were risks of guys not repeating those years but there was a HUGE drop-off from almost all of them. Very few guys performed how they were projected to do, and the projections were pretty pessimistic as it was. I'm not trying to make excuses, I'm pointing out that the difference between the White Sox this year and contention is not as large as people are making it out to be. I still think 2016 should be a rebuilding year, and there's still a lot of work to do, I just don't see the reason for extreme pessimism like so many have here.

Meh, it's their first playoff birth in 7 years.

Danks has been very good against good teams this year (and last year too). It's the bad teams he sucks against.