OmarComing25

QUOTE (Brian @ Sep 9, 2015 -> 01:57 PM) Anyone else but Lester have post season experience? I don't really think that matters. The Royals were a hair from winning it all last year and they lacked post-season experience.

As much as I don't like the Cubs it's hard to deny this potentially makes for an exciting finish in the NLC division race.

I guess it's "Chicago teams pound on teams in Missouri" week. Too bad ours won't have much impact.

I'm all for a high draft pick, but if we win this month because the young guys look really good, then I'll take the wins.

I don't think it's out of the question to expect better numbers from Sale, Quintana, and Rodon next year (at least in ERA, though we may have to shore up the outfield defense to do that), and EJ wouldn't have to do much to replace or outperform Samardzija's production. The offense is a bit trickier to project, as we saw some guys regress hard from 2014, but in the cases of Alexei and LaRoche they're old so we might not be able to expect a lot of positive regression from them next year. If we can somehow find an upgrade for 3B or RF without giving up significant parts of the future I'd be down for rolling with what we've got in 2016 while looking towards 2017-2018 to really contend when some of the prospects are ready and money has come off the books. We still look like a .500ish team, and if a few things break right we could contend next year while still keeping the future intact.

QUOTE (Lip Man 1 @ Sep 9, 2015 -> 09:28 AM) Stats don't lie but people do and as stated can twist them into whatever they choose to make of them. To me baseball is more than a game of numbers and all you have to do is look at the boneheaded plays Ramirez has made over the years (including his 360 spin this year in Toronto which was very humorous) to see he checks out of games on a regular basis, can't hit in cold weather and always seems to have some sort of issue impacting his performance. Again with respect, I've seen enough of him and it's time to move on. Mark He's been bad this year but you're implying he's been bad his whole tenure here, which I don't understand. Yeah he makes the occasional boneheaded play, but he also makes a lot of great plays (again, not as much this season, but he's overall been great with the glove). If you look around baseball, it's full of very light-hitting shortstops, so by that measure his bat since 2008 has been just fine for the position. I think it's time to move on as well but you're really selling Alexei short here if you think his time with the White Sox has been a disappointment. There have been very few AL shortstops who were better in that time span (really only Andrus and Aybar and maybe Peralta have a claim to be better).

QUOTE (Joshua Strong @ Sep 9, 2015 -> 01:15 AM) To have him healthy going into next year. Hahn said that his innings are precious resource as far as this year is concerned and that they wanted to keep an eye on them. Minors and majors combined, he's at 135I to 140? Plus what is he pitching for, not like the Sox are contending. If we want him to pitch 200 innings next year we should not shut him down yet.

QUOTE (AustinIllini @ Sep 8, 2015 -> 09:52 PM) I rest my case. Good god man you could not be more condescending if you tried. What a shock that a White Sox fan enjoys watching White Sox games more than another team. So should we all just be in a constant state of misery like you?

QUOTE (AustinIllini @ Sep 8, 2015 -> 08:49 PM) Your inability to accept reality does you no credit. Any other organization would fire all these parts. So people who disagree with your extreme pessimism are just refusing to accept "reality"? Pessimism doesn't always equal "realism", nor does it mean your opinion is somehow more valid or correct, yet in your posts it seems like you think this is the case.

QUOTE (Mike F. @ Sep 8, 2015 -> 04:13 PM) Greinke? What? You think the Sox are going to sign him? Even if we did, he's not starting Opening Day over Sale.

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Sep 8, 2015 -> 04:08 PM) I think Greinke may get the start for Opening Day. We'll see. And you can't possibly map out 32 starts right now. Things change. Also, I'm not really worried about Sale vs. the Twins. The Indians owned him in 2013 even more than the Twins did this year and have done little against him in the two years since (including yesterday).

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Sep 8, 2015 -> 03:59 PM) I don't get the appeal of Jason Heyward. He's going to be so overpaid, and he's not even that good. Young, above-average left-handed hitter, pretty good on the basepaths, and a premier defender at a spot where we are horrific defensively. He's pretty much good at all things where we're lacking.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Sep 8, 2015 -> 02:50 PM) What is that correlation amongst good and bad pitchers. I'd argue that a correlation would exist over longer periods of time. I don't have that data in front of me, but I bet if you asked pitchers if they pitch different with runners on, their answer would be yes. Whether that makes them better or worse, depends on the pitcher. How do they pitch from the stretch vs. windup...how do they leverage the additional focus with runners on....do they have a go to pitch that they can better leverage in those situations, etc. Let's look at Sale's performance with RISP 2015: .360 BABIP, 0.73 HR/9, 10% HR/FB, 22.8% Hard-hit%, 20.7% Soft-hit% 2014: .273 BABIP, 0.66 HR/9, 8.7% HR/FB, 19.3% Hard-hit%, 15.8% Soft-hit% 2013: .302 BABIP, 1.28 HR/9, 14.3% HR/FB, 29.5% Hard-hit%, 13.4% Soft-hit% 2012: .214 BABIP, 0.79 HR/9, 11.8% HR/FB, 25.2% Hard-hit%, 15.0% Soft-hit% Seems pretty random to me. Seems he gave up a lot of HR in 2013 due to a lot more hard-hit balls, but he gave up significantly harder contact in 2012 compared to 2015, yet his BABIP was 146 points lower. Now let's look at Danks. 2015: .307 BABIP, 0.92 HR/9, 9.1% HR/FB, 32.8% Hard-hit%, 21.1% Soft-hit% 2014: .296 BABIP, 0.18 HR/9, 1.7% HR/FB, 28.1% Hard-hit%, 19.4% Soft-hit% 2013: .256 BABIP, 2.08 HR/9, 22.2% HR/FB, 35.2 Hard-hit%, 14.8% Soft-hit% 2012: .280 BABIP, 0.56 HR/9, 7.7% HR/FB, 31.4% Hard-hit%, 17.7% Soft-hit% BABIP isn't quite as random as Sale's, but his homerun rates are extremely random. I included the batted-ball data to see if it could shed any light (even though they're still not very advanced), but it didn't really. There appears to be some correlation between Hard-hit% and home run rate here, but beyond that there's not a lot of consistency. Granted I only looked at 2 guys and 4 seasons of data, but this backs up the article.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Sep 8, 2015 -> 12:44 PM) That is a load of s***. You pitch different with runners on. It shouldn't count the same. A solo HR hurts less than a 3 run homer. To count them equal is just absurd. Ask any pitcher in the world and they will tell you they don't pitch the same with no one on vs. with runners on. http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/era-fip-a...tional-context/ There's an incredible amount of variance in pitcher performance with RISP, and almost no consistency from year-to-year. This is true for both hits given up and homerun rates. So pitchers do pitch a bit differently with runners on, but their performance in those situations is not consistent and is generally pretty random from year-to-year.

QUOTE (Brian @ Sep 8, 2015 -> 11:43 AM) It feels like the Cubs are the most dominant home team while they are mediocre on the road. Outside of yesterday. 43-28 at home, 36-29 on the road. Only 8 teams in the MLB have a winning road record, the Cubs are only behind the Rangers and Cardinals in road winning percentage. The Pirates, however, are 46-21 at home and only 35-34 on the road, so if they fall behind the Cubs that could be big. Still think it'll be mostly a toss-up no matter where they play it though.

Even though he gave up just 3 runs, I thought it was easily one of his worst starts of the season. He gave up three homers and the Indians hit a lot of line drives right at guys, and the defense made some nice plays behind him. Sale was pretty damn lucky he only had 3 ER at the end of the game.

QUOTE (Brian @ Sep 8, 2015 -> 07:06 AM) I'll take whoever has home field. The road team did win both Wildcard playoffs last year. I'm not sure homefield will make that much of a difference, coin-toss either way.

QUOTE (fathom @ Sep 7, 2015 -> 02:50 PM) I'm sure FIP will say it's a good start due to strikeouts, but Sale has been awful. Definitely time to maybe skip a start for him, as who cares about 300 strikeouts Nah he's given up 3 HRs, FIP is going to hammer him for this start.

Can we just bean Raburn every time he's up?

After seeing Sale get let down by the defense time and time again, he's actually getting the opposite effect today. Defense has probably saved a run or two.

God damn it Sale.

Bauer has absolutely no control today. 12 straight balls. Yikes.

Sale needs at least 12 Ks today in case Johnson steals a start from him if he wants to get to 300 for the year.

Nice inning.

Didn't realize we were the first team to sweep the Royals in KC this season. I was all aboard the draft-pick train but damn that series felt good. f*** it, keep it going.