Dominikk85

Hahn probably does believe in analytics but most coaches in the industry are still old school and they don't like taking orders, especially from nerds who didnt play pro ball. When you tell them to change they will tell you they played peo ball and always did it like that. If you have a large group of "we did like we always did" people and they are standing together this is hard to overcome in a company even for a ceo. If it is one or two you fire him but if it is the whole org that is like a living organism. You can still change that but that requires cleaning the entire house and that is painful and makes you hated. Hahn probably wants change but he doesn't want the big conflict, he wants to fire a few, hire a few new ones who are more progressive and hopes to create that change silently over a longer period but this doesn't really work. Sox generally seem to be a tenure org which means if you have a certain tenure and you prove to be reasonably competent you will get promoted. Also some guys probably have a direct thread to jerry and this hahn doesn't dare to touch them.

Vaughn has a quite high pull rate though which helps power but supresses BABIP. Abreu is more of an all fields hitter (39% pull) which means higher babips. I don't say vaughn will always be a 280 guy but if he stays at 45% pull his babip won't be that high. Konerko also was a flyball and pull hitter who tended to have babips in the 280s but still was a great player due to good walk rates, solid K rate and power. Will be interesting to see how vaughn develops. Will he become a konerko type hitter to maximize his power or more an all fields hitter with pop like abreu.

He has been quite solid so far. Just 15% Ks vs a healthy 12% walks hitting .278/.384/.449. The power hasn't been amazing with 6 homers (about 18 HR pace) but it was his first season and he probably was tired from a long college season. How do you like his first season? I think it was pretty solid. He didn't set the world on fire right away but really had no weakness in his profile, at least at those low levels which didn't challenge him. Regarding the power longenhagen did say that he doesn't have huge raw pop like a Pete Alonso or yordan Alvarez but easily enough to hit 30 bombs. I think there is a pretty good chance that he becomes a 280/360/500 hitter with 30-35 bombs which would be very good, essentially the same as abreu but with a little less average but more walks.

A HR is a HR but when projecting a player for a new contract or trade you might want to know how sustainable that is. Sure it is valuable to know a player hit 26 homers but if 12 of them barely cleared the wall and it was mostly to a short porch that doesn't exist in your stadium some regression might be coming and it is good to know that and don't pay that player as a 26 HR guy when he might be only an 18 hr guy in your park.

In the early days of sabermetrics teams did collect their own stats. They had guys charting pitches and batted ball locations. Now that is mostly automatized though.

They get most mlb data from mlb or stat orgs working for mlb (pitch fx, statcast, stat inc). Minor league parks probably have their own trackman systems. They are analysing those data o course using their own databases by they don't collect the raw data themselves anymore.

I actually do agree work ethic is somewhat of a trait that you are born with. Sure you can kick yourself in the butt to be a bit less lazy but there are just people who are super driven to improve and willing to sacrifice everything for this. In sports that applies too, we hear "he is so talented if he would only work harder" but this insane work ethic is actually part of that. Btw those insanely motivated people aren't always the most mentally healthy. Guys like michael Jordan or jimmy Connors were quite insane in what they did for winning from neglecting their families to doing questionable stuff on court but they did what it took. The more healthy approach is more balanced where you work somewhat hard (being lazy isnt good either) but also leave enough time otherwise but those people do not get to the very top, they just have a solid job like being a teacher and have a balance between job and everything else, which has a good floor but also a limited ceiling. Btw to bring that back to lisle I read that lisle put everything into his coaching career and that he even was like homeless for some time because he took unpaid or mini paid jobs to get into the business. Maybe that is why he self promotes a lot and has a quite big ego which helped him being good at his job but also rubs people the wrong way. Btw I do think something must have happened, if it was just performance related or just didn't work well for both parties he likely would have been let go in October like most coaches.

Btw won't capitalism die once all jobs are automated or outsourced? It is a great idea for like a phone company to build phones 100% automatically but who is going to buy the phones if 90% of the people have no job and income to consume?

Higher Minimum wages dont really cost jobs. That theory has existed a long time but in no country the installation of minimum wages increased unemployment. That is because companies who can rationalize away a 15 dollar job would do the same with a 7 dollar job if they could because why don't save 7 dollars? What does happen is that burger prizes go up if you raise salary. The only question is then if the people will still buy the more expensive burgers, if they don't that might lead to less jobs. Higher salaries don't lower margins but they might lower revenue if the higher prices make the market shrink.

I agree with that somewhat. Imo it is a bad development that simple clerks who make less than 50k per year are asked to do unpaid overtime because the company says the monthly salary covers that, imo that is exploitation. However leading executives who make more than 100k have chosen that path for themselves. They could have stayed at a lower position but they chose they wanted this. Those type of employees are no longer paid for doing 40 hours of good work, they are paid for results whatever that takes. So yes, I am against lower salary clerks having to do uncompensated overtime hours for more than a few weeks because the company is too greedy to hire extra guys to master the workload (unless it is an exceptional situation that is limited in time) but you can't expect to drop the pen at 5 every day if you are an executive. An executive must deliver results, nobody cares how hard or long he works.

I don't quite agree. Your job is to help your company with your work. Quality of work obviously is most important for this but public relations are increasingly important and you can hurt companies with public statements even if you do it as a private person. this especially applies if you are a high level employee, with a low level guy nobody cares but if a higher level manager says something it will fall back on the company. Just an example: just imagine a high level Nike manager says work is too expensive thus I would like slavery back. Now you could say this is his personal opinion but the public will read that is "Nike supports slavery" if Nike doesn't act against that and condemns his statement. Once you reach a certain level in a company hierarchy you stop being a private person when it's home time, you are basically asked to represent the company 24/7. If you are just a clerk this might be not so strict (but even then it could be if you do something terrible) but the higher you climb the more you are under the microscope. High level personnel is asked to at least not harm or maybe even positively represent the company in their free time and not just do a good job between 9 and 5.

Maybe it is that. Could be that lisle tangled with more old school coaches who didn't like to be told how to do their job by a rookie. Many baseball lifers have a big problem with guys like lisle, ochart or albert with no pro experience comining in and telling them how to do their job. Maybe in the sox org the traditionalists with tenure still have more power unlike the astros who fire old school coaches who don't comply. But then again maybe it was something else, I think this Johansen guy is still there so maybe it just didn't work with lisle. I read rumors his last college job didn't go well either, some of those "nerd coaches" are not easy to work with because they know that they are smart and let the old school guys feel it (kinda a bit arrogant sheldon cooper style, kyle boddy comes off like this too at least online).

"Latino" isn't really a race actually, Latin people can be black (african slaves), white (spanish colonialists) or native latin american or any mix of those. Most Cubans are actually african because cuba had slaves like the US. But I agree that the race comp thing is stupid (like any white tall guy who can shoot 3s is compared to Dirk Nowitzki or any fast athletic black guy to other fast black guys)

I agree. His plate discipline profile isn't that great but for a supposedly raw player he did perform a lot.

They have an "advisor" who essentially is an agent but can't be named that way.

I'm a bit concerned about this. A Bat with elite contact skill shouldn't swing and miss even if the swing gets long. A long swing will get exposed in the pros and sometimes (but not always) in top college division. In HS however even long swings with elite bat to ball skill should make plenty of contact. AJ reed has a long swing and he killed it in college and low minors then got exposed in high minors. Has great hit tool IF... sounds like a contradiction to me, truly elite hit tool kids even hit with bad swings in IS because they have a feel to square up the barrel. In the pros that gets exposed and needs to change of course.

Playing Reed was certainly hahns order though. The sox are not Playing to win anyway so the hope was if you let him play for a month without pressure to perform maybe he turns a corner and becomes a tradeable asset.defintely a good decision even it didn't work.

This sounds pretty alarming. Some balance isn't bad but it sounds like he is not really willing to learn. Kyle boddy said many managers and coaches delete emails by the analytics crew without reading it and then joke about this. It is all about what the front office tolerates. I think the sox are still in a "analytics is optional" stage. They are getting more of those progressive guys but the coaches and managers still can choose themselves how and if they want to use it. Houston on the other hand really enforced this and fired all the old school guys. Sox aren't there yet, they have smart analysts but it probably isn't enforced to use this top to bottom. Enforcing this is no easy job. Luhnow is hated in the industry and the easier way is to provide the analytics but make the usage optional in the hope that over time the employees learn to love this by themselves. Not as efficient though, albeit easier for organisational harmony and peace.

Well you would hope to draft a better player than fulmer 8th. Statistically a 5th to 8th pick should become about an annual 2 WAR player in their prime with maybe a 3 win season or two mixed in too.

I think 8th place should be almost fixed now. The top4 are clearly too bad and the reds, padres and rockies are clearly more talented than the Sox while the jays just play in an extremely tough division. Maybe they could catch the Mariners or pirates but I don't think so.

Dunn was great in his prime but those high K 3 true outcome type of hitters don't tend to age well as their contact ability is already fringy and there is not much room to go down.

Yes. Grandal is a year older so 4/60 next year would be like having signed 5/75 last year which he probably would have taken.

Well minor league pitching dev wasn't that great the last years. Almost everyone got hurt and the guys who did well all were already in AA-AAA so mostly developed by other clubs except for cease. After sale and quintana the sox didn't really develope another good starting pitcher from within (I'm talking guys who were drafted, intentionally signed or traded for while still in A ball, not AAA pitchers traded for like giolito, kopech, lopez) So I would prefer an external solution, not just promoting a minor league guy based on tenure and good standing in the franchise.

Batting average is a bad stat to judge a player but it isn't really right that BA doesn't matter. Sure it is better to hit 270 with 40 bombs than 300 with 6 but it doesn't have to be mutually exclusive. The very top hitters like trout, miggy, votto, jd Martinez, mookie Betts hit for average and power. BA isn't everything but if you look at mike trouts career his line is 306/419/582 with a 276 ISO and a 1001 ops. This means 306/419=73% of his obp are created by his BA while his slugging is about 50/50 power and average. The importance of power and walks have grown but still 60% of trouts value is from his ability to hit for average. Now there are a few guys like peak Adam Dunn who run astronomical walk and power to a good line despite below average hit tool but for the vast majority of hitters the hit tool is still the most important thing albeit you need power too of course in the modern game. But there are not many star players with a sub 50 hit tool albeit sub 50 power is rare too.

Little post about him and sox PD https://theathletic.com/1134546/2019/08/13/how-the-white-sox-implemented-a-new-data-driven-approach-in-the-low-minors/