4/29 - SOX @ MIN, 7:10 CT, WCIU

[almagest]

Ah the ol 2 game sample, nice work. Continue to not make a point and post out of emotion of a loss instead of actual facts.

 

Why do you even bother? One look at the replies in this thread shows that you're not getting well thought-out replies. You're getting kneejerk reactions about how Thome "f***ing sucks" because he hit a ground ball with 2 out and a man on first or whatever.

 

That being said, we still need to find a way to score more than 1 run in games like this. Bonser was getting a pretty large plate, had good offspeed stuff, and was throwing strikes. But he wasn't untouchable. We had some really BAD at-bats tonight.

[iamshack]

We all are.

 

However, there are ways to "shake the team up" without actually making it worse. I just can't stand the Jerry Owens argument for the lead off spot. Whats funny about all of this is the reason most are saying Swisher isn't a real lead off hitter is because Thome and Kong haven't been themselves at the plate this season. If they were driving our 1-2 in, Swisher wouldn't be an issue to people(he shouldn't be to begin with).

 

 

The number one goal for a leadoff hitter is to get on base. There is no getting around it. Swisher does that better than anyone else the Sox could put in the leadoff spot. Case closed.

 

My question, Tony, is whether putting someone at the leadoff spot that gets on base the most frequently is more important than putting the "optimal" batting order out there. I'm not suggesting Jerry Owens, but to me, the ultimate questions are these:

 

"Does placing OC in the leadoff spot (and obviously someone else in the second slot, my pick being Swisher) make the lineup better even though you may have a player with a lesser OBP leading off? Would Swisher be a better hitter in the second slot than in the leadoff slot?"

 

I tried to raise this point in my post on talkchicagosports. I'd love to get some responses.

[lostfan]

HAHAHA you are awful. Constantly choking huh? We are 5th in the MLB in avg with runners in scoring position. SLG .498 with them in scoring position leading the MLB. WHERE IS THE CHOKING???

Mmkay. Point that one thing out and ignore everything else.

 

Why does the offense disappear? Seriously. It shows up, all at once, then just completely goes away.

Edited April 30, 2008 by lostfan

[Frankensteiner]

The Sox do one of 4 things:

 

i) Get runners on base and fail to score

 

ii) Fail to score

 

iii) Score off HRs

 

iv) Score off other team's errors

 

I am amazed how this team can hit this poorly. We hit poorly last season, and yeah had a lot of crappy players too, but plenty of regulars (Konerko, Dye, AJ) had s***ty seasons. When is Greg Walker going to be held accountable for this shameful, selfish, piss-poor hitting approach? It's happening year after year.

 

Other than Carlos Quentin through his 1/6th of a season, can you guys think of another player who has come here and actually hit better than in his previous destinations? The only other I can think of is Dye in 2006.

[almagest]

Unlike many other statistics, a player's OPS does not have a simple intrinsic meaning, despite its usefulness as a comparative statistic.

 

One fault of OPS is that it weighs on-base average and slugging percentage equally, although on-base average correlates better with scoring runs. Magnifying this fault is that the numerical parts of OPS are not themselves typically equal (league-average slugging percentages are usually 75-100 points higher than league-average on-base percentages).

 

 

someone else's "opinion" about OPS averages.

 

Okay, so tell us a better metric for evaluating offensive production. You must have one, since you seem to know for sure that OPS isn't that useful.

[southsideirish71]

I'm a big believer in having a prototypical leadoff hitter to win in baseball. You have to be able to manufacture runs, and this team is incapable to that.

 

I am a bigger believe in OBP for the leadoff hitter, and outside of the 3-4-5 having guys who can hit line drives and hit gap to gap.

 

Your bantam weight track star make get a few goofy calls to Rongey about team speed, but it does nothing to improve the team. This is not the NL or 1956.

 

 

 

[iamshack]

Okay, so tell us a better metric for evaluating offensive production. You must have one, since you seem to know for sure that OPS isn't that useful.

 

Well, to be fair, DBAHO has been advocating one the past few weeks (can't remember the name) that more evenly weighs OBP with slugging.

[RockRaines]

Mmkay. Point that one thing out and ignore everything else.

 

Why does the offense disappear? Seriously. It shows up, all at once, then just completely goes away.

Point what out? You said we are constantly choking with RISP which couldnt be more wrong. We were in this game from first pitch to last out even with their guy pitching way over his head and us missing HR's by inches. We had bad at bats, Gavin didnt have his best stuff and I never felt like we were out of the game and I dont think the team did either. Every time this team loses its the same crap over and over, fire this guy, bring this guy up, bench f***ing Thome, all ridiculous awful emotionally crappy posts. This team is a good team, they were beat tonight, but not by much. its going to happen people, get over it.

[jasonxctf]

Okay, so tell us a better metric for evaluating offensive production. You must have one, since you seem to know for sure that OPS isn't that useful.

 

 

that was truly someone elses thoughts... many others believe that

 

Gross Production Average, a variation of OPS, but more accurate and easier to interpret. The exact formula is (OBP*1.8+SLG)/4, adjusted for ballpark factor. The scale of GPA is similar to BA: .200 is lousy, .265 is around average and .300 is a star. A simple formula for converting GPA to runs is PA*1.356*(GPA^1.77).

[lostfan]

Okay, so tell us a better metric for evaluating offensive production. You must have one, since you seem to know for sure that OPS isn't that useful.

Straw man. The post he made actually said "despite its usefulness." Nobody said OPS isn't that useful. However, the fact that the Sox rely on home runs so much partially explains why their OPS is high despite having a wildly incosistent offense.

[fathom]

Who cares if we have a speedy leadoff guy. We have a #2 hitter who can't do anything fundamentally right at the plate.

[iamshack]

Who cares if we have a speedy leadoff guy. We have a #2 hitter who can't do anything fundamentally right at the plate.

 

No one cares.

 

But is Swisher a better hitter batting somewhere else than he is batting first?

 

 

 

[lostfan]

Point what out? You said we are constantly choking with RISP which couldnt be more wrong. We were in this game from first pitch to last out even with their guy pitching way over his head and us missing HR's by inches. We had bad at bats, Gavin didnt have his best stuff and I never felt like we were out of the game and I dont think the team did either. Every time this team loses its the same crap over and over, fire this guy, bring this guy up, bench f***ing Thome, all ridiculous awful emotionally crappy posts. This team is a good team, they were beat tonight, but not by much. its going to happen people, get over it.

You didn't address a single thing I asked you besides pointing out that one thing I overreacted about (which I should have known better than to say, it's actually something of an anomaly that the averages go up with RISP for some reason).

 

The rest of your post is just a blast at me for being in this thread and saying something negative (however true, saying that the offense is inconsistent, has been for a while, and looks like it will continue to be and that's a problem) that doesn't apply to me so I'll just disregard it. Never once are you going to find me saying something like "trade Konerko" "Thome sucks" or "I hate you Dye." But whatever.

[jasonxctf]

i think the other concern here is how long will John Danks, Gavin Floyd and Jose Contreras be pitching the way they currently are?

[southsideirish71]

Point what out? You said we are constantly choking with RISP which couldnt be more wrong. We were in this game from first pitch to last out even with their guy pitching way over his head and us missing HR's by inches. We had bad at bats, Gavin didnt have his best stuff and I never felt like we were out of the game and I dont think the team did either. Every time this team loses its the same crap over and over, fire this guy, bring this guy up, bench f***ing Thome, all ridiculous awful emotionally crappy posts. This team is a good team, they were beat tonight, but not by much. its going to happen people, get over it.

 

I believe I have been the most consistent in my approach to this.

 

The team is okay from a personnel standpoint. They just need to learn how to hit gap to gap more. It has nothing to do with a leadoff speedy guy, nor does it have with a guys clutchness. We have pitchers who are pounding this team low and away. The way you pitch a pull power team. If our hitters would take the ball back up the middle early in the game, they would get more pitches to hit over the middle later as the pitcher would be forced to come back inside to reclaim the outer half. I dont want Thome to start to hit oppo. I want Cabrera and the rest of the supporting staff to do this. Having guys mindlessly launch popups trying to hit home runs is not going to work over the long season. Sure we with have the occasional bombs away game, but we will have a lot of 3 hit Cy "Insert Pitcher Here" efforts, with a lot of near almost home runs. The Cy Joe Mays attack.

 

 

 

[lostfan]

i think the other concern here is how long will John Danks, Gavin Floyd and Jose Contreras be pitching the way they currently are?

I don't see any reason to worry about that right now.

[almagest]

Straw man. The post he made actually said "despite its usefulness." Nobody said OPS isn't that useful. However, the fact that the Sox rely on home runs so much partially explains why their OPS is high despite having a wildly incosistent offense.

 

Straw man. The point of his post was to show that OPS isn't that useful, unless this is opposite world. I merely asked what was more useful. EqA is a good metric, but it's debatable as to whether it's more useful or not, since SLG has been shown to have a larger correlation to runs scored.

[iamshack]

That term is very subjective, so it's extremely difficult to argue what is the "optimal" lineup.

 

I'm actually not sure how much of a difference that flip flop would make, but in theory the 1-2 currently in place is how I would keep it. Swisher gets on base better than most, and Cabrera can do the little things with the bat you want in the 2 hole. However, Cabrera and his situational hitting has been pretty disappointing to start the year, so thats something to question.

 

If you did want to shake things up, trying Quentin in one of the top 2 spots might be a decent experiment to play with. Thats one way a possible "shake up" could work to the Sox favor, but if I was the manager, aside from canning Walker( ) I would leave the order as is for the time being.

 

I tend to agree with you, but it just seems like Swisher is not comfortable right now. I think he was doing well at the beginning of the season because pitchers weren't exactly hitting their spots and he was walking like crazy, but lately, since they've been coming at him more, he seems to be in between trying to take everything and trying to be the hitter with gap power that he has been. I don't want Quentin leading off because he's been such a good run producer thus far, so that sort of leaves OC by default. Given the fact that he's just swinging at crap up there right now, putting him in the leadoff spot might make him take a bit of a more patient approach and settle him down a bit.

 

It's not optimal for a prototypical lineup, but I think it may be optimal for our lineup.

[lostfan]

Straw man. The point of his post was to show that OPS isn't that useful, unless this is opposite world. I merely asked what was more useful. EqA is a good metric, but it's debatable as to whether it's more useful or not, since SLG has been shown to have a larger correlation to runs scored.

I'm not really going to bother arguing semantics on what a straw man is or his reason for making that post, but OPS has its usefulness. It just has its limits, like any other stat. It's one part of a bigger picture.

 

GPA was being talked about not too long ago.

Edited April 30, 2008 by lostfan

[almagest]

I'm not really going to bother arguing semantics on what a straw man is or his reason for making that post, but OPS has its usefulness. It just has its limits, like any other stat. It's one part of a bigger picture.

 

GPA was being talked about not too long ago.

 

You make a semantic argument, you get one in return. And a strawman is a misrepresentation of someone's argument for the purpose of proving a point.

 

Anyway you look at it, OPS is one of the more useful metrics. More useful than batting average, that's for sure.

[southsideirish71]

You make a semantic argument, you get one in return. And a strawman is a misrepresentation of someone's argument for the purpose of proving a point.

 

Anyway you look at it, OPS is one of the more useful metrics. More useful than batting average, that's for sure.

 

Pitchers are attacking this team low and away to keep the ball from leaving the premises. So if they pound the zone ( not walk people), and spot low and away how exactly with the worst BA in baseball how exactly are we mounting an offense. Sonnenshine, Blackburn, Bonser are all examples of pitchers who pound the zone, spot low and away, and use their breaking pitch to offset the fastball. These are pitchers that will shut this team down because our lack of a hitting attack outside of the lift and pull lock and launch offense.

 

 

 

[lostfan]

Pitchers are attacking this team low and away to keep the ball from leaving the premises. So if they pound the zone ( not walk people), and spot low and away how exactly with the worst BA in baseball how exactly are we mounting an offense. Sonnenshine, Blackburn, Bonser are all examples of pitchers who pound the zone, spot low and away, and use their breaking pitch to offset the fastball. These are pitchers that will shut this team down because our lack of a hitting attack outside of the lift and pull lock and launch offense.

No. You're being irrational and overly emotional.

[greg775]

They just need to learn how to hit gap to gap more

 

I don't think our guys are capable of this. They won't hit it where it is pitched more often than not.

[almagest]

Pitchers are attacking this team low and away to keep the ball from leaving the premises. So if they pound the zone ( not walk people), and spot low and away how exactly with the worst BA in baseball how exactly are we mounting an offense. Sonnenshine, Blackburn, Bonser are all examples of pitchers who pound the zone, spot low and away, and use their breaking pitch to offset the fastball. These are pitchers that will shut this team down because our lack of a hitting attack outside of the lift and pull lock and launch offense.

 

Pretty sure pounding the strike zone, spotting pitches away, and changing speeds is a good recipe to get almost any major league hitter out. At least, that's what I've seen in watching countless games from all teams the past few years. But apparently the White Sox are the only team to struggle with this approach.

Edited April 30, 2008 by almagest

[joejoesox]

one thing i've seen our hitters do fairly consistently all year long, even into tonights game, is blast balls deeeeeeeeeeeeeep into the OF, if they aren't hit all the way out. imagine how many runs we would score on those deep-ass fly balls to the warning track if we had guys on base more? Dye, AJP and Thome (i think those were the ones) all did that tonight, except nobody was on base to advance

 

our big boppers are hitting the RBI-type hits, except they aren't driving in runners because there aren't any runners to drive in

 

summary: we need certain guys (swisher, cabrera, uribe) to get on base so the RBI guys behind them can drive them in or advance them on the base paths, once we start hitting higher than .220 this should start happening, but WILL these guys hit for sub-.250 again in 2008 is the question, if they do (doesn't look like it'll change at this point), then the problem needs to be addressed whether it means getting a new hitting coach or ozzie going crazy in the clubhouse ala Leyland, or whatever other ideas you can come up with. point is, something needs to be done, these guys are too good of hitters to be hitting .220-.230 for back to back seasons

 

guys i'm talking about mainly are paulie, thome, swisher, and cabrera, the 1 through 4. they need to be getting on base more.