OmarComing25

QUOTE (shysocks @ Sep 3, 2015 -> 03:48 PM) Our offense is middle-of-the-pack in terms of K rate. Same against lefties. I don't think Sale would be more likely to strike out 17 White Sox than most other teams. Yeah we're 19th in strikeouts and 8th in the AL (that is, 18 offenses have struck out more than us), there's no reason to think Sale would strike out more White Sox hitters than normal.

I really want to see Sale face our offense now (not on another team, just hypothetically), I wonder how he would do.

QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Sep 3, 2015 -> 02:37 PM) Indians got exposed pretty quick in that wild card game. I think they were like 15-4 against the SOX. It was ridiculous. It was actually 17-2, just laughably bad.

The good news is that Johnson won't have to do much to be an improvement over Samardzija next season.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 3, 2015 -> 12:55 PM) His FIP is 4.08, his ERA 4.85. I have watched most of the games. I don't think defense costs him 3/4 of a run per 9 innings, over the number errors do, which is already built into his ERA, unless they want to set up in the seats. Although that is still a HR. FIP not matching ERA is not 100% defense related, some general luck is factored in there as well. Like it or not it's a way better predictor of future performance than ERA is. But if you want batted ball data taken into account, use SIERA instead, which is an even better predictor than FIP. Samardzija's FIP since the trade deadline is 5.34 anyway, it's not like the advanced stats have liked him much either.

QUOTE (tpezz27 @ Sep 3, 2015 -> 12:31 PM) Out of the 86 qualified pitchers who have thrown enough innings, Quintana is 61st in whip, and 85th out of 86 in hits allowed. Only Samardzija has allowed more hits then him....I just don't see him being anywhere near "ace" material, aces just don't get hit that hard. And comparing his value to Sale's is laughable. He's 17th among pitchers in fWAR this year, and 12th since the start of 2013. His BABIP this season is .343, second highest in baseball. He's been pretty unlucky there. If you don't like FIP then he's 25th in SIERA, which takes into account batted ball data. If you look at his batted ball profile, he's giving up the weakest contact of his career. His value is a lot closer to Sale's than you think.

So happy that this story is finally done with, dumbest sports "controversy" I've ever heard about. I couldn't care less whether the footballs were deflated or not.

QUOTE (flavum @ Sep 3, 2015 -> 10:55 AM) KC series: Danks - Medlen Quintana - Duffy Johnson - Cueto Maybe a Saturday win, but probably not. Danks always does well against KC though.

I know Greinke has the miniscule ERA but Kershaw deserves the Cy Young over him, and IMO it's not even close. 35 swing and misses tonight, that's insane.

Man when did half the posts on this board just become complaining?

Yes we used to be pretty horrible at drafting and scouting, but IMO they've had very solid drafts the last few years since Hahn took over, it will be a few more years before we can really evaluate them. Also continuing to pick pitchers is not really a problem. It's what the Sox do well and if you end up with too much pitching then you can just trade it for hitting. It's not a big deal.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 2, 2015 -> 08:22 PM) I bet the Dodgers will total that for 2. Is one of those 2 going to be Greinke? I don't really see them shelling out that much for a guy who will be 32 next season. There's also pretty much no chance he gets anywhere close to a 1.60 ERA again, he's been insanely lucky with both BABIP and LOB%, with both marks being significantly off his career averages.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Sep 2, 2015 -> 08:11 PM) By the way, let's hope the Twins don't put out a "Twins' Way" notebook on how they go about beating up Chris Sale pretty consistently. Never would have thought Sano (coming off the injury) would be the one who delivered on all the hype and more compared to Buxton...but it just goes to show how much love there is for five-tool players and how often we end up disappointed when they fail to meet their projections. It's early though, for every 50 Cameron Maybins or Kenny Williams, Jr., there's usually one Trout or Harper. I'm really not worried about Sale with the Twins. It's not like they owned him in the past. In 2013 the Indians kicked the s*** out of Sale (22 ER in 23 innings), but since then Sale has had ERAs of 2.18 and 1.80 against them the last two seasons.

QUOTE (Jerksticks @ Sep 2, 2015 -> 06:30 PM) I watched one of those painful Kap & Haugh cubs deep-throating videos on CSN and they were saying if the cubs extend Arrieta & sign Price they will end up shelling out almost a half billion for 3 arms. Incredible. And they aren't young dudes. I kind of hope they do sign Price because that might actually close their window, financially speaking. 4 years from now they could be in some real financial trouble unless they get all Dodgersy. It would certainly make things tough when their position players are ready to be paid. Putting all that money into pitchers over 30 does not seem like a good idea, but if it brings them a title it'll probably be worth it.

https://twitter.com/iamjoonlee/status/638850904083595264 Montage of Hanley Ramirez's "defense" in LF this year.

Hammel has pitched more than 5.2 innings in a start only once in his last 9 starts. With Lester being shaky every other start and Hendricks being bad the last 5 weeks or so, that rotation suddenly looks very vulnerable.

So in other words nothing we didn't know already.

QUOTE (SexiAlexei @ Sep 2, 2015 -> 04:08 PM) I heard this interview. It was on Waddle and Silvy. Arrieta said some guy messaged him saying he didn't get a no-no because Castro's error should have been ruled a hit. Arrieta claims he thought he clicked to reply just to this one guy, and didn't realize it was going out to everyone. That makes a lot more sense than him calling out Castro.

QUOTE (Harry Chappas @ Sep 2, 2015 -> 04:10 PM) The SCORE uses a term called bum slayer for guys like Joakim Noah but isn't that exactly what the cubs are? That lineup beats bad pitching but gets handled rather easily by good pitching. I guess maybe that is all of baseball who knows. I'm thinking it's the strikeouts. When I have some time later I'll look closer to see how high strikeout offenses have fared against good pitching, I would think they're more susceptible to being put down.

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Sep 2, 2015 -> 01:27 PM) Come on... you can't call these guys "solid" and whatnot when they've barely played. I'll give you Iglesias, Holt, and probably Bogaerts. The rest are overrated. What's wrong with Betts? He's put up 3.4 fWAR and 4.1 bWAR this year, has a .771 OPS at the age of 22, is a solid defender and rates very well on the basepaths.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 2, 2015 -> 11:05 AM) Part of his ERA problem was having zero spring training. Using his higher than normal ERA as a defensive failure is incorrect IMO. He has had his games where he has been ripped very hard. I'm not saying it's all defense, but when all your starting pitchers have a pretty big gap between their FIP and ERA, there's clearly something there. If you look closer, all the pitchers on our team that are significantly underperforming their FIPs have higher flyball rates with the exception of Dan Jennings. The guys who have bigger groundball rates (mostly the bullpen pitchers) either have smaller gaps or are outperforming their FIPs. Our infield defense has overall been OK, and much better since Saladino came up. Our outfield defense has been really awful, so it makes sense that our pitchers that have higher flyball rates are getting burned a lot more by our horrible defenders in the outfield (and bad defense in the outfield means almost every extra hit given up is going for extra bases). When it's consistent across multiple pitchers on the same team, then it's clearly a trend. Also, it's not like Sale has established a career trend where he's consistently underperformed his peripherals. So I'm not saying his higher than usual ERA is 100% on the defense, but they've definitely been a big culprit here.

I think this is the year that has soured me a bit on ERA. Sale is on pace to easily have the worst ERA of his career, but by pretty much any other metric he's having easily the best year of his career. Strikeouts are way up, walks are down, and if you look at his batted ball profile he's easily giving up the weakest contact of his career this year. Career-best FIP and SIERA, and he's throwing a lot more innings/start this season too. Problem is his .321 BABIP, which is significantly higher than his career average. Quintana also has a crazy high BABIP (.343, second highest in the majors after Gio Gonzalez), yet according to his batted ball profile he's also giving up the weakest contact of his career.

So Sale and Quintana this year both have BABIPs significantly higher than last year, but I looked up their batted ball data and they've actually given up weaker contact this year. I don't get it.

It's funny because while this is looking to easily be the worst ERA of his career this year, it's also going to be easily the best FIP of his career too.

If he really does mean Castro that is pretty bizarre. Why would you publicly call him out on Twitter?