White Sox Acquire Javelinas, Rafters

i can’t wait to see what these guys can do…i never liked our lineup anyways

nice!

The Mariners are adding a statistics department:

The department will fall under the auspices of Tony Blengino, a longtime baseball stats analyst and a special assistant to new Mariners general manager Jack Zduriencik. Details of the department’s mandate and size are still to be worked out, but the move could vault the Mariners from their perceived Stone Age approach to stats to one in which they’re seen as one of the game’s more progressive franchises.

“We want to take all the information at our disposal and combine it with our scouting,” Blengino said Friday.

Good for them. They’ve used Matt Olkin as a consultant, and it’s not clear if that relationship will continue. If you’re looking for a job in this area, it’s a good time to send your resume to the Mariners!

http://www.baseballmusings.com/archives/030167.php

MacDougal out: The White Sox on Friday outrighted disappointing relief pitcher Mike MacDougal to Class AAA Charlotte.

If MacDougal declines the assignment, he forfeits his $2.65 million salary for 2009. The Sox also hold a $3.75 million option on MacDougal for 2010, which includes a 350,000 buyout.

If general manager Kenny Williams can find a team willing to pick up MacDougal’s salary this winter, MacDougal is likely to be traded.

http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=250913
 
so it doesn’t seem likely that he’ll refuse his assignment and become a FA, yes?

in light of the depressing developments in my sport world among other things, was hoping to watch an upbeat-y film, but realized my collection is pretty sparse in that department, any recs?

but i am pretty interested in this match up. Brock is going to kill this guy.

They need a second baseman, shortstop and third baseman, although the Dodgers expect Blake DeWitt could fill second or third. They would like to bring back Rafael Furcal, although they appear more likely to sign Orlando Cabrera to a short-term deal.

http://www.latimes.com/sports/baseball/mlb/dodgers/la-sp-shaikin14-2008nov14,0,1168314.story?page=2
 
I see the dodgers pick (#17) isn’t protected
so if kenny offers him arb we get #17 and #23 (24 instead of 23 if seattle doesn’t sign fields)
offer it kenny!

but I put on the game today to find Larry Hughes wearing a full under armer shirt under his jersey. I think he looks like a complete fucking moron…..let alone missing every shot he heaves up.

Bobby Jenks doesn’t carry the albatross of a long-term contract around his neck and he’s coming off a strong 2008 season. So when you’re looking at the White Sox through the prism of our New York teams, don’t make too many connections between Jenks and new Yankees first baseman Nick Swisher.

But people in the loop say Omar Minaya is wary of investing a huge contract in free agent Francisco Rodriguez and is intrigued by the idea of trading young talent to Chicago for Jenks. An official from an American League club — not the Angels or White Sox — opines that the Mets would be better off giving up high-level prospects for Jenks than throwing big dollars at K-Rod.

Jenks’ strikeout numbers have gone down the last couple of years, from 80 in 692/3 innings in 2006 to 56 in 65 innings in 2007 to 38 in 612/3 innings in 2008. But the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said those numbers actually reflected a change for the better in Jenks. …

http://www.newsday.com/sports/ny-spken1116,0,292784.column

It’s not exactly at the top of his agenda, but President-elect Barack Obama says there should be a college football playoff to determine a national champion. In fact, he knows exactly what he wants – an eight-team playoff.

In an interview with “60 Minutes,” Obama addresses a subject college football fans have debated for many years, and says he will use his influence to create such a system.

“If you’ve got a bunch of teams who play throughout the season, and many of them have one loss or two losses, there’s no clear decisive winner. We should be creating a playoff system,” he tells CBS’ Steve Kroft in an interview to be broadcast Sunday.

According to Obama’s proposed system, eight teams would play over three rounds to settle the national champion.

“It would add three extra weeks to the season,” he said at the conclusion of a wide-ranging interview. “You could trim back on the regular season. I don’t know any serious fan of college football who has disagreed with me on this. So, I’m going to throw my weight around a little bit. I think it’s the right thing to do.”

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/cfootball/2060ap_fbc_obama_football_playoff.html

Betemit hasn’t lived up to his billing since becoming a prospect in Atlanta’s organization at 16, but Williams believes he could blossom thanks to his adjustment to prescription goggles.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/whitesox/chi-14-white-sox-nick-swisher-chnov14,0,2316997.story

is a competent offensive coordinator for the Bears. Seriously. Ron Turner is an incompetent boob. I know he’s not working with a whole lot of talent but this offense is a fucking joke — Turner’s plays are much too predictable. I can only hope that I can suck as much at my job as he sucks at his and still be able to work.

http://deadspin.com/5089479/start-your-preparations-for-the-vick-media-onslaught

what a joke that lance briggs goes on the radio for 30 seconds, spews a few cliches between bites of whatever the hell he was eating, and gets a couple of $200 gift cards to show for it.. yeah, that dude needs someone to pay for his fucking steak.

It might completely blow up in their faces, but that screams pure entertainment to me.

i miss it a lot.

Up at Moon nightclub, more racers, riders and rappers: former Dancing With the Stars winner and Indianapolis speed king Helio Castroneves; Todd Braun, owner of the NASCAR racing team Braun Racing; and race driver Denny Hamlin with 20-plus people in their entourage. They arrived at midnight and stayed until 3:30 a.m. before returning to their Palms Sky Villa suites.

Professional BMX rider Rick Thorne, who is also an actor and musician with a principal starring role in the new Kevin James comedy film Mall Cop, was there, too, plus Todd Shaw, better known by his official stage rapper’s name of Too Short, and sports stars Carlos Quentin and his pal Brian Anderson — both from the Chicago White Sox. The two outfielders also went down one floor to play blackjack in the Playboy Club.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/blogs/robin-leachs-las-vegas-celebrity-watch/2008/nov/15/gene-simmons-ludacris-dave-navarro-rockers-rule-pa/

seeing that what’s done is done re: the Swisher trade, I’m interested in how the move impacts the 2009 Sox, mainly the addition of Betemit. A very quick-and-dirty peak seems to tell me that Betemit should compliment Fields somewhat nicely, letting Betemit grab at-bats against a good amount of righties and letting Fields shield Betemit from southpaws.

I’m going to take a rosy view of things and make two assumptions (that may or may not be reasonable — I tend to think they’re somewhat reasonable but not even close to 100% reliable) — the first is that the knee surgery allows Fields to return to his 2007 level, i.e. a slugging-heavy league average hitter who’s still below average defensively. The second is that Betemit plays a bit above his mean projection (99 OPS+ being his mean projection according to ZiPS, also slugging heavy) — this could be for any number of reasons such as “ZE GOGGLES!”, moving to a marginally better hitters’ park, Ozzie’s Latino goodness, a talented 27 year-old following normal trajectory and having a bit of a peak season, Walk (or Coop!) fixing him, Kenny’s scouts coming through again, etc. I’m not saying Betemit plays at a 90th percentile level, but somewhere around his 60th percentile (and as such an OPS+ closer to 110).

So that leaves us with two poor defending but decent bats at third. My question is — how would that compare to the Sox 2008 White Sox third basemen and — what I’m ultimately looking for — would we be looking at a net improvement or not? I see that Sox third basemen in 2008 finished with a .264/.322/.441 line (a 97 OPS+) with average-ish defense (I’m not sure what the numbers say — here I’m just going kind of by what I saw). My scenario has the Sox doing a decent amount better at third with the bat (maybe something like .260/.325/.490) and a bit worse than the glove.

So under my (somewhat optimistic but, IMO, not overly so) conditions, the Sox are slightly better at third — probably not even approaching the Cabrera over Uribe uprade (which was what, a win or two?), but still a bit better.

Thoughts? I’m still as miffed as anyone about the trade, but Betemit is an intriguing player. I don’t have a BP subscription and as such can’t access PECOTA, but for those that do, I’d be interested to see if Betemit projects as more ‘variable’ than your average player (I think what I’m trying to say is that his standard deviation for a given offensive category is higher than normal).

In conclusion, players with good skill sets but bad luck may no longer be undervalued like they would in the past. There are two main types of players where I see potential for looking at for sleeper picks. The first type is the kind every writer likes to project in spring training. These are the breakout players, the usually young guys ready to take the next step. The other kind are players with a past history of high playing time variation, typically due to injury. So while you may not be able to count on a guy like Nick Swisher as a sleeper pick this year, there are other places you can look. However, these players are ones that projection systems may struggle with, requiring you the owner to make some more subjective judgments.

link here

Bold mine. He’s talking about fantasy, but considering the rapidly dwindling supply of completely awful GMs, he may as well be referring to actual baseball. Playing time fluctuation isn’t always a function of injury, either. Kenny is itching to find out what Betemit can do with 600 PAs.

Rates juuuust belowaverage, about a half win better than what we’ve been seeing.

Gammons say: Mets avoiding Jenks

…but they somehow are in love with some kind of long term deal with Frankie? Fuckinaye. If Jenks doesn’t perform, he’s still cost controlled and easy to ditch.

who would it be…..

I would pick up Nick Markakis in a heart beat from Baltimore. I think this guy is one of the top players in the league.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Dallas-Mavericks-owner-Cuban-cnnm-13594659.html

Looks like his bid for the Scrubs is really screwed. Think the MLB owners have any pull with the SEC? Timing is really interesting, since this allegedly took place in 2004.

some needs get over there and defend our honour.

or kick some ass, you know the drill.

regards

Sesame street with the kid…baseball talk… the godfather is on now (kid is sleeping)…. analyzing my fantasy football team…. all days should be this miraculous lol

but apparently ben davis wants to ensure that his career lasts longer than sandy jr.’s.

as a pitcher.

i’m jealous. although not really because i can do it all summer…. but still for now i’m jealous.

ever remember seeing a Beta score higher than 1.07? I can’t, but it’s not something I look at too much. But the normal range it seemed was like .98 – 1.02 or so.

CHICAGO WHITE SOX
Team Audit | DT Cards | PECOTA Cards | Depth Chart Return to Top



What Do They Need? The White Sox head into next season with essentially replacement-level alternatives at two positions, center field and second base, though there is room to debate that characterization at the keystone, depending on what you think of rookie Chris Getz. They could also use a fifth starter, since Jose Contreras can’t be counted on for much, and since the organization seems a bit overly optimistic about the speed with which someone like Aaron Poreda will be ready to become a big-league regular.

What Do They Have? After dumping Nick Swisher and letting Joe Crede and Orlando Cabrera walk out the door, the White Sox have become fairly streamlined, particularly as their minor league system—while improved—does not really contain any Must! Play! Now! guys. This is not necessarily a bad thing; on the contrary, it’s indicative of a team that is getting better and better about understanding marginal value. But it does mean that wheeler-dealer Kenny Williams has somewhat fewer assets than he’s used to working with. The one exception is probably relief pitching, where the Sox are fairly stacked, to the point that Bobby Jenks could potentially be moved.

What Are They Likely Do? The hottest target for the South Siders appears to be free-agent second baseman Orlando Hudson, a terrific overall player who could potentially double as the club’s leadoff hitter. He’s a good fit for the club and a good fit for Williams, though I can’t help escape the feeling that O-Dog has probably peaked. It’s less clear what the White Sox may do about center field, where the free-agent pickings are pretty slim. The hole there will probably need to be filled by trade, which likely means flipping Jenks or perhaps Javier Vazquez, also rumored to be on the trading block.

What Should They Do? The improvements made by the likes of Carlos Quentin, John Danks, and Alexei Ramirez last season were very real and will tend to pay dividends for a long time, and the White Sox can be in the 87- to 90-win range again without doing anything too radical. If the basic game plan is paying slightly too much money to someone like Hudson and trading Jenks for a decent center fielder (which might be harder than it looks, because it’s something of a buyer’s market for relief pitching), I think I’m on board, though I’d complement that plan by adding a veteran starter, which the White Sox seem disinclined to do. The worries I’d have are that Williams will either decide that either DeWayne Wise or Brian N. Anderson is an adequate alternative in center field, or that he’ll move Vazquez, who is undervalued right now.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=8315

http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/prospects/rankings/organization-top-10-prospects/2009/267205.html

I think that Pujols had a very very good year, but he wasn’t even the MVP of the Cards…

I think Ludwick & Loshe were probably more of the reason that the Cards were competitive most of the year for the division title. I think maybe the MVP should have gone to Howard.

Jimmyeatworld

by Jimmyeatworld on Nov 17, 2008 3:05 PM CST to parent up reply reply 0 recs