squally1313

I just read this about check swing calls in MLB: So if true the angle that we're talking about is technically not the determination of a swing Yeah and I think you need to change the rule. The NCAA has it as a certain point/line. It might mean hitters need to change their approach, but would still be better than the current set up.

Small picture, Flores was 0/18 with 9 Ks going into that AB against Scherzer, and definitely looked like it. Big picture, adopt the NCAA rule which actually puts a line (believe front of the plate or the batters front hip) and figure out some way to automate it. Shouldn't be too hard to throw a camera in every dugout that can get the angle right.

Flaherty for La Russa. Do it.

This is simultaneously extremely fun to watch and profoundly unfair that an essentially 6 month battle for being the best team in baseball will come down to a few innings (and infield singles like that) to earn the right to enter two more slightly weighted coin flips.

Has there been any talk about extending the blue line past O'Hare (or making like a Yellow Line type extension) if the Bears end up out there? Would think with enough lead time you could follow 90 and get pretty close, but I also understand being weary of building out public transportation in a remote work heavy world.

Liam Hendricks is 31 years old and signed for 3 more years, and isn't chasing down any save milestones or anything like that. Turn him into your 6th-8th inning fireman, let Kimbrel close if you don't find a good deal for him.

But doesn't the 'actuarial reality' come for every team? By that logic, won't the Astros be worse next year too? I get that pitching is more susceptible than offense, but this was still a 6th in offensive fWAR, 3rd in wRC team with every major piece coming back next year. I don't see why regression is a White Sox unique concept, and so if you set that aside, the core they have (Robert, Moncada, Eloy, Anderson, Vaughn, Sheets, Gio, Cease, Kopech, plus the guys in their 30s), don't need to improve much on 6th best offensive team, best pitching (by fWAR) team to have as good a chance as anyone the next couple years. Yes, but they needed a 2016 Cubs level of good outcomes to be the 7th best team in MLB(beating 9th by a game), and they don't have the financial resources of many of those teams to stay there nor the farm system(Fangraphs has the Sox system as 30th by a non-trivial margin) to keep up on that axis. And again, the implication isn't that the Sox are doomed, I like lots of their players and I'd be surprised if they don't have multiple other playoff appearances in the next 3-5 years. But in terms of the probability of winning a championship, I don't think those teams will be as strong as this year, similar to how the 2017-2020 Cubs turned out to not be as strong as 2016. But they didn't get the 2016 Cubs level of good outcomes right? Their team, by advanced statistics (total fWAR), was the best team in the AL this year, and 3rd overall. And then they lost to a 'worse' team. Maybe we're just splitting hairs on percentages (and maybe I'm just bored at work), but just replicating their level of play should give them as good a shot as any non-Dodgers team next year, and I think the room for improvement at least comes close to balancing out the expected step backs. Essentially, I don't think this is a 'the playoffs are a different animal and they don't have the resources to take the next step' situation as much as it's a 'the playoffs are a crapshoot and once you get to 8 teams you probably have between a 10% and 15% chance of winning it all, thank god the Cubs won one of their dice rolls' situation.

They can definitely be the 2015 Cubs or 2015 Astros, but as I mentioned in my last post, I don't think they are set up as well for the future as they hope they are. The 2015 Astros still had 4 top 100 prospects, the Cubs still had 5 (not including Eloy who didn't make it). The Sox have 0, and doing a quick google search saw one site rank their farm system 29th after this year's draft. Their payroll is already pretty high, though I don't think they have any Heyward like contracts so they have some maneuverability there. Their window is right now and maybe the next 2 years unless they hit on a high percentage of their moves, which they could. Like I was saying a few pages ago, the easy part is accumulating talent during a 4+ stretch of tanking. Expectations are low, you can afford to take risks, you have extra draft and IFA capital. The hard part begins now when you have the good team but need to not only make it better, but sustainable. Based on the state of their farm system, I'm not sure how sustainable it is. We'll see...I like their team overall. Also I think the Tigers are the sleeping giants there. They have a top 5 farm system, a ton of money to spend and had an unexpectedly decent year. Fair points on the future help in the pipeline. Some of that is timing/qualification based, because at this point their future help depends a lot on Sheets, Vaughn, Burger developing and Kopech/Crochet taking off rotation spots, but not much in the pipeline after that. I just don't see a team that needs to get better, and I think they're pretty set up to maintain this level for a couple years at least, assuming they are comfortable with the arbitration costs continuing to rise.

I don't think you can necessarily take the Cubs 2016-2020 gradual decline and slap it onto the Sox though. They don't have a Heyward, they hopefully don't have a Russell, and they have 2 top 20 fWAR pitchers, ages 27 and 26, locked up for 2 and 4 years, even ignoring Lynn (and to a lesser extent Kopech). Why can't they be the 2017 (or 2015) Astros? Or even the 2015 Cubs? And I guess it depends on how much weight you place on being among the best 2-3 teams in baseball, vs just being in a position to take as many shots at the post-wild card playoffs as possible. I think they're in a good spot to carry their division for a few years. I don't think they'll have the Cubs specific decline, only that the most likely outcome is this is their best team of the competitive window. They may not have the specific components that led to the Cubs decline, but regression to the mean comes for everyone. Will they still be division favorites? Probably next year at the least. But it only takes one pop up team to knock you to the wild card if you aren't in that 'best 2-3 teams in MLB' tier(and sometimes even then like this year's dodgers), and even if they don't they still have to beat the best in the AL to win a title in all likelihood. If this sounds bearish it doesn't mean to be, I like the White Sox roster for the most part and think Hahn is capable of supplementing it further, but there's an actuarial reality, especially when it comes to pitching, and I think it's fair to question if they can replicate that for the foreseeable future. But doesn't the 'actuarial reality' come for every team? By that logic, won't the Astros be worse next year too? I get that pitching is more susceptible than offense, but this was still a 6th in offensive fWAR, 3rd in wRC team with every major piece coming back next year. I don't see why regression is a White Sox unique concept, and so if you set that aside, the core they have (Robert, Moncada, Eloy, Anderson, Vaughn, Sheets, Gio, Cease, Kopech, plus the guys in their 30s), don't need to improve much on 6th best offensive team, best pitching (by fWAR) team to have as good a chance as anyone the next couple years.

I don't think you can necessarily take the Cubs 2016-2020 gradual decline and slap it onto the Sox though. They don't have a Heyward, they hopefully don't have a Russell, and they have 2 top 20 fWAR pitchers, ages 27 and 26, locked up for 2 and 4 years, even ignoring Lynn (and to a lesser extent Kopech). Why can't they be the 2017 (or 2015) Astros? Or even the 2015 Cubs? And I guess it depends on how much weight you place on being among the best 2-3 teams in baseball, vs just being in a position to take as many shots at the post-wild card playoffs as possible. I think they're in a good spot to carry their division for a few years.

Yeah, this was the Sox best chance and they didn't get the job done. Kind of like the Cubs at the start of the run everyone talks about their bats but it's the pitching that really made the team special. Meanwhile Rodon is a FA, Lynn will be 35 next year, and Cease hasn't shown what he did this year before. They're going to slide Kopech in, and that will help, but this rotation is going to regress a lot. It'll still be quite good, but there's really no place to go but down from #1. Can the offense pick up the slack? You look at Robert, Eloy, and Vaughn and you probably think "Of Course!" but we all saw how assuming your guys will keep improving turns out. And even on this side of the ball, they have no 2B, and their 1B and C are starting to get pretty old. I assume they still are willing to spend resources to do some stuff this winter, though likely nothing huge. So at that point you'd expect a slightly worse team next year? But then you have to think about the rest of the division. It's been complete horsefeathers the last few years, but that might not still be the case next year. The Twins and Tigers are expected to be pretty active this winter. The Indians and Royals will likely make a few moves, and have some significant help coming from the farm imminently. So even if the Sox hold serve talent-wise, it's not going to be nearly as easy next year. They're not going to crash and burn, but they really needed to at least make some noise during these playoffs. Eh. On the flip side, even a 'slightly worse' version of this team should carry the AL Central pretty easily. Can't assume full health from Robert and Eloy, but I'd take the over on the 520ish PAs they got combined this year. Vaughn and Sheets both have plenty of pedigree. The Madrigal/Kimbrel trade obviously hurts, especially if they can't teach one of these corner guys into a marginal second baseman, but Moncada can play there, so they can be flexible in who they target. Pitching will regress because it always does, but the offense should improve and there's a lot of margin for error the next few years that you feel pretty safe saying they'll have a few more shots at the playoff lottery.

I went to one of my nephew's little league games in July. Any shred of faith I had left in humanity left me that day. Just moved out to the suburbs and we're right down the street from a huge park with a ton of baseball/football/soccer fields. Only have a 2 year old, so don't have to deal directly with it for a while, but walked over and started watching a football game with 10 year olds and my god, the Dads involved. At this point that's probably better argument for me than the health issues.

Fair, probably depends a lot on the Sox fans you interact with. Most of my Sox fan friends will beat me to making LaRussa jokes. Went to a handful of games at the Cell and saw some Bad Fans, but you also see that at Wrigley (and the UC, and definitely at Soldier). There isn't a 'good' fan base in pretty much all of professional sports.

Eh. I'm in my mid 30s. Most of my friends are Sox fans, but we've gotten past the whole Cubs vs Sox thing. Sucked in 2005, but whatever now. Feels like forever ago, but we're still only 5 years out from winning ours. It'll flip again. La Russa sucks, and he's going to screw up something here at some point (if they make it through today), but there's like 8 dudes on their team that I'd trade anyone on ours for, both talent wise and personality wise. I agree with this. 2005 was brutal but since we won I really don't care. Their fans get on my nerves and occasionally trigger me but at the same time I kind of like having a little sports excitement in town and as much as it sucks when they clobber us the team is super likable. I have no problem pulling for them among what is a pretty unlikable field of teams. Yeah you can't criticize/stereotype all Sox fans as caring way too much about the Cubs and then be that upset at them doing well, especially given how unlikeable the Cubs org is at the moment. If I get a month of the city being excited for games, for people getting together to watch them, etc etc etc....better than pretending to like, latch onto the Braves. If it gets to game 7 and LaRussa blows it in some hilarious way? Awesome. But just give me fun baseball with some semblance of meaningfulness for as long as possible.

Toews Captain, Kane full time alternate, Murphy and DeBrincat splitting the second A between home and away games. All the advanced analytics absolutely hate us, but the one way to get rid of those problems is to have a stud goalie (Flower) and a generational player who has always converted a ridiculously high amount of his chances (Kane), so we'll see.

If it were just the White Sox players? Yes. But unfortunately they're packaged with their fan base. Therefore, their fans' misery must be greater than or equal to mine. And I'm a Cubs fan, so... Eh. I'm in my mid 30s. Most of my friends are Sox fans, but we've gotten past the whole Cubs vs Sox thing. Sucked in 2005, but whatever now. Feels like forever ago, but we're still only 5 years out from winning ours. It'll flip again. La Russa sucks, and he's going to screw up something here at some point (if they make it through today), but there's like 8 dudes on their team that I'd trade anyone on ours for, both talent wise and personality wise.

Go White Sox. Most of those guys are fun and maybe it'll put some pressure on the Cubs to actually put out a strong team.

Four scoreless innings, 5 Ks. Guess who had over 5.5 strikeouts.

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Chris Taylor is like the 15th best player on the Dodgers and I would trade pretty much anyone on the Cubs major league roster for him, which is fun.

Some terrible managing by Mike Shildt there. Will forever love the fact that the dudes name is Mike Shildt.

Agree with the overall goal, but 'taking pressure off the defense' is such a dumb, old school baseball-y way of saying it. And the rest of his quotes above are also not very promising at all.

Cool. Cool cool cool cool cool.

Schwarber hitting a no doubt bomb to right off Gerrit Cole to put his team up 3-0 in the third inning of the wild card game. A tradition unlike any other.

A post trade deadline loan system would be a fun idea to think about (and then probably ultimately decide it wouldn't work). Every team gets to make one loan transaction, trading something permanently for the services of one player for the rest of the year that goes back to their original team in the offseason, all parties (both teams, the player) have to sign off on the transaction.