White Sox Analysis

The End

2006-05-28T19:39:00.000-07:00

This is a sad day. I am officially declaring this blog dead. I decided that it was too difficult to motivate myself to write long winded analysis of the White Sox on a regular basis (as evidenced by the fact that this is the first post of 2006). In an effort to blog more often I have started a new, quite different blog with much broader content. Feel free to pop on over to http://homeisellipses.blogspot.com/ and take a peak. I will leave this blog as long as blogger allows me in case anyone has interest in the old content and to leave open the (remote) possibility of reviving it sometime in the future. I am extremely grateful to anyone who ever read one of the entries in this blog. Thank you.

An Unexpected Interruption

2005-12-14T20:36:00.000-08:00

It would be incredibly easy for me to analyze this trade to the point of excess. Aside from a few brief comments about Javier Vazquez and a discussion of the money changing hands in the deal, I intend to spend this entry explaining why over the last several months I informed the Sox fans I hold dear that 1) Chris Young had become my favorite White Sox player 2) I could tolerate virtually any move Kenny Williams made over the offseason as long as he did not deal Chris Young 3) Chris Young is an elite prospect who should not be lumped together with Brian Anderson, Chris Owens, and Ryan Sweeney despite the fact that all four players are worthwhile prospects.

When the Yankees traded for Vazquez and signed the righthander to an extension in 2004, I considered the move a major coup. The Yanks had apparently locked up one of the five or ten best starters in baseball at the ripe age of 27. As everyone knows, Vazquez imploded after the All Star Break in '04 and had a mediocre ERA and W-L record in 2005. The good news is that Vazquez improved to sport a stellar 4:1 K/BB rate last season. The bad news as pointed out by many, including BP's Nate Silver via Jonah Kerri, is that Vazquez has averaged a terrifying 34 home runs allowed the past two seasons and is now moving to the park which has produced the second most home runs in baseball over the past two seasons. Most likely, the fact that Vazquez pitched better than his ERA and record last season will be cancelled out by the fact that The Cell will detrimental his production, and we will see a performance along the lines of his 2005 season.

Immediately after the trade was announce, I read the amount of money sent from the D-Backs to the Sox in the trade rumored at $3 million (by the AP), $5 million (by the Chicago Tribune), and $8 million (by USA Today). Well the deal finally became official this week and the actual dollar figure ended up being $4 million. A good deal of the analysis I have seen from White Sox fans regarding this trade suggests the fact that Arizona is paying some of Vazquez's salary is one of several factors that makes this deal a success for the White Sox. I do not understand this logic for a second.

While $20 million for two years is not a bad deal for a good number three starter, especially in baseball's current economic climate, this is due to the number of years remaining on the contract and not Vazquez's annual salary. While Vazquez has a good shot of outperforming Toronto's $11 million per season man, A.J. Burnett, I am not so sure he will perform far better than Paul Byrd ($14.5 million for two years), Matt Morris (3 years, $27 million), or even Esteban Loiza (3 years, $21.4 million) even though I believe Vazquez to be the best of that group. Consistent with Jerry Reinsdorf's prudent unwillingness to sign pitchers, the best part of Vazquez's deal is that there are only two guaranteed years remaining on his contract, so that if he has flashbacks to the second half of '04 or goes under the knife (knock on wood) the club will be able to avoid reliving the Jamie Navarro saga all over again.

What blows my mind most of all though, is that people are singing the praises of this trade due to the cash included when in reality the Sox will be paying Vazquez more money per season than the Diamondbacks would have had they held onto Vazquez! When the Yankees shipped Vazquez to Arizona, they sent $9 million dollars in the trade meaning that Vazquez's salary was lowered from $36 million over three years to $27 million over three years, in other words $9 million per season. Well, the Diamondbacks theoretically put one third of that money towards paying Vazquez's salary in 2005, leaving $6 million to put towards his salary in 2006 and 2007. $4 million of this money was shipped to the White Sox while $2 million was apparently pocketed by the D-Backs for other purposes. In short, taking into consideration the money Arizona received to pay Vazquez's salary a year ago, the Sox actually paid the Diamond Backs $2 million dollars to acquire Vazquez. That's far from a huge discount in my opinion.

Here are the numbers for Brian Anderson, Jerry Owens, and Chris Young for 2005. I am not including Ryan Sweeney because his prospectdom has been quieted after a mediocre '05 season and he is at least two years younger than each member of this trio of outfield prospects that receives the lions' share of the attention from the press.

Prospect	Age	Avg	OBP	SLG	SB/CS	ISO
Brian Anderson	24	.295	.360	.469	4/2	.174
Jerry Owens	25	.331	.393	.406	38/20	.75
Chris Young	22	.277	.377	.545	32/6	.268

It's a crude table but includes what I believe to be the most critical available data for evaluating prospects. The ages are as of opening day 2006 (Young is admittedly a bit older than I realized as he will turn 23 in September). A superficial glance at the numbers shows three players of comparable value and explains why the trio has been lumped together in the press. Young and Anderson's numbers appear similar especially considering that Anderson played at a more advanced level in 2005. Owens appears to overcome his struggles in the power department with a high batting average and more stolen bases than the other two outfielders. To demonstrate how Young separates himself from the pack, here is my attempt to dissect the numbers further and add some context:

Age. The morning the deal was confirmed I was distraught enough with Young's departure to phone my father from work (one of the only personal calls I've made in over five months on the job). While attempting to explain to my old man why I often find baseball fans' inability to place adequate emphasis on prospects' ages maddening, I stumbled upon what I believe to be an apt analogy: a twelve year old who earns straight A's in sixth grade is a bright student; a ten year old who earns the same marks in sixth grade is a child prodigy. Admittedly, the development of baseball players is less straightforward but not by a margin large enough to render the analogy irrelevant. Young's production was substantially superior to Owens' and comparable to Anderson's (I suspect some readers will take issue with these contentions, which will hopefully appear slightly more reasonable after reading the next few paragraphs) despite the fact that Young is over a year and a half younger than the Anderson and two and a half years younger than Owens. The most accurate comparison of the three players will be to compare Young's production eighteen months from now - most seem to believe he will be entrenched as a starting center fielder in the big leagues at that point - with Anderson and Owens' good but not great 2005 seasons.

Walks & Power vs. Batting Average. The sabermetric community places greater value on the ability to draw walks and hit for power than the ability to hit for average. The reason for this is that the ability to earn free passes and hit for extra bases is considered to be far more consistent from month to month and season to season than the frequency with which a player gets a hit. A shortened, oversimplified summary of the logic behind this belief is that while chance effects every aspect of the game, it is far easier to get lucky and hit a few bloop singles than it is to get lucky and hit the ball 380 feet or consistently run work deep into the count. Uncoincidentally, the combination of good power numbers and high walk totals is also considered to be one of the strongest predictors of future growth. Chris Young ranked ninth in the Southern league with 70 base on balls in 2005, compared to 44 walks for Brian Anderson and 52 for Chris Owens. 70 free passes may not sound like a great deal to Sox fans who have been spoiled by Frank Thomas' prolific walk rate over the years, but it projects to 90 walks over the course of a full season which would have been good for 13th in the majors in '05. Young also crushes the ball. His 41 doubles led the Southern League and his 26 home runs tied for the most long balls in what is known to be a pitchers league.

The most impressive aspect of Young's power is that it is not the driven by a high batting average. The final column in the table above is isolated power (ISO) calculated for these purposed by subtracting a player's batting average from his slugging percentage. This calculation represents players' true power more accurately than slugging percentage by removing the frequency with which a player hits singles from the equation. Simply put, isolated power strives to measure how hard a batter hits the ball when he puts it in play (though it is obviously an imperfect measurement as sometimes a player hits the cover off the ball yet the ball is hit directly at a fielder). An ISO above .200 is considered phenomenal, only 50 major leaguers topped that mark in 2005. An ISO of .268 in what is widely considered to be a pitchers league is downright mind boggling.

Simply referring to the Southern League as "a pitchers league" is not sufficient for our purposes here because the vagueness of that statement leaves the reader with little to take away regarding exactly how the league and the Baron's ball park may have affected Young's (and Owen's) numbers. Unfortunately, my lack of experience with park factors and the lack of data available for minor league ballparks prevents considerable precision on this topic. What I have been able to uncover is that from 2001 through 2004, the parks in the Southern League depressed run scoring by 9% while the Birmingham's home field depressed scoring by 10%. The only resource I was able to discover for weighted park factors that included minor league teams was BaseballThinkFactory.org. While the lack of additional sources to corroborate the data and the staggering nature of the figures requires one to view these factors with an appropriately sized grain of salt, Think Factory's numbers suggest that although Birmingham allows singles, doubles, walks, and strikeouts at a near average rate, the park allowed 45% fewer home run than average from 2003 to 2005! Even a conservative application of that figure suggests that 1) if not for park effects, Young would have hit over 30 home runs 2) Young's already staggering ISO is understated.

Stolen Bases & Athleticism. It is widely believed that sabermetrics frowns on the pursuit of stolen bases as well as scouts' infatuation with tools and athleticism. While these assumptions were certainly not plucked out of thin air, the sabermetric community's views on these subjects is certainly not so incredibly cut and dry. As I discussed in a previous entry, sabermetrician's frequent distaste for stolen bases lies in the fact that very few players are capable of attempting stolen bases at a frequent rate and also succeeding often enough to render these attempts beneficial. Chris Young appears as though he may one day represent one of the members the exclusive group of players capable of both stealing often and stealing successfully. As I stated in the aforementioned entry on stolen bases, 70% is considered the approximate break even point for stolen base success rate - if a player succeeds in more than 70% of his stolen base attempts he is helping his team win games, otherwise his steal attempts are detrimental to the team's ability to win games. Well, Chris Young somehow managed to steal bases with over an 84% success rate in 2005. Owens has the reputation as the speed demon of the group due to his higher stolen base total, higher batting average, and lower power totals but he needed 20 more attempts than Young just to steal six more bases.

A key element of sabermetric analysis is to resist the urge to evaluate players based on how polished or athletic they appear out on the field (as Billy Beane famously put it "we're not hear to sell jeans"). Baseball is first and foremost a game of skill and there are a ton of players with apparent natural ability in the form of sweet looking swings, cannons for an arm, and incredible speed who simply do not perform well enough to be successful major league players. Think of it this way, if by overemphasizing how well a player looks out on the field you would take Corey Patterson over Matt Stairs every time which needless to say would not be the right situation. A lot of people however unfairly interpret this to mean that sabermetrics places no value in scouting which would be completely absurd (there is a reason Ken Griffey Jr. had a higher ceiling as a prospect than Stairs). Athleticism clearly does play an important role in terms of projecting a player' future development. BP's PECOTA system places a substantial emphasis on stolen bases in projecting future performance because it is the only real statistical measurement of athleticism. Depending on the player's skill set, a low stolen base total can be surprisingly damning to a the player's PECOTA projections.

Anyone who has read a scouting report on Chris Young realizes the kid is a tremendous athlete. Young is one of the sometimes rare prospects who both the performance analysis community and the scouting community salivate over. Baseball America editor Jim Callis rated Young 17th in "a ranking of long-term value, limited to players I think will establish themselves in the majors in 2007" and elsewhere confirmed that Young would have passed Anderson as the Sox top prospect for 2006. There is something frightening to me about parting with a player well liked on both sides of the aisle.

Yikes...

2005-12-09T18:38:00.000-08:00

Five months without an update has clearly robbed this space of the minimal legitimacy it once possessed. That is without evening mentioning the fact that by far the most historic White Sox moment in my lifetime occurred during that time span. Much like a cheating husband crawling back to his wife for the upteenth time, I refuse to promise things will be different from here on out because past experience emphatically suggests otherwise. However, I will state that I sincerely hope to update the blog with more frequency and that I fully expect to have more free time to discuss the World Champions in the near future.

I would be remiss if I did not spend this rare entry discussing the most momentous White Sox transaction since at least the Scott Podsednik for Carlos Lee deal last offseason. In what is perhaps an attempt to be more diplomatic in my assessment of Kenny Williams' moves, I will proceed to address both the good and bad aspects of this trade. While, as usual, I have substantial concerns about this trade, there several highly admirable qualities of this maneuver for which Williams must be congratulated.

The Good:

1) Jim Thome has been a tremendous player throughout his career. It is highly encouraging to know that Williams appreciates Thome's skill set. With all the talk of small ball, grinders, and speed last season it is a massive relief that Kenny was able to both identify and properly value the club's weakness and Thome's strength: the ability to work the count. Overemphasizing Thome's strikeouts and mediocre batting average demonstrates an intense inability to read between the lines and understand the finer points of the game. Thome's career .408 on base percentage and .556 slugging percentage speak for themselves and leave no doubt the man has been one of the four or five best hitters in the game over the last decade. Admittedly, the gamble here is Thome's ability to bounce back from a trying, injury plagued season at age 35. Regardless of the outcome, however, the fact that Williams has displayed a genuine appreciation of his game is important.

2) Convincing a team to pay a player over 20 million dollars to be a member of a different team is highly impressive. Obtaining half a player's salary is a major feat even when you're dealing with someone like Mike Hampton who had completely imploded when the Rockies moved him. Securing such major cash considerations for a player like Thome who is only one season removed from greatness is truly a thing of beauty.

3) The key to repeating is understanding a World Series trophy in no way enhances a team's odds of winning games the next season. Certainly retaining talent from a championship club elevates the Sox's chances of winning well above those of the Devil Rays and Pirates of the world. However, the belief that the team is the favorite or even one of the top three of four contenders to win it all in '06 due simply to the hardware the players are now sporting can only serve to hurt the team. Like every other World Series victor before them, the White Sox would not have ended up on top without considerable luck. Immediately jumping to the conclusion that the organization would not benefit from change can only lead to failure because receiving identical baseball bounces in consecutive seasons is close to impossible. Winning the series does not mean the team lacked weaknesses or that there were not critical lessons to be learned from the team's performance throughout the season. As countless professional baseball writers have acknowledged before me, Williams' desire to improve the World Champions speaks volumes. While I believe his fearless aggressiveness has proven rash in the past, this eagerness to improve the roster figures to be highly effective with a roster full of "proven winners", many who have likely become overvalued at this point in time.

The Bad:

1) The White Sox parted with the organization's top two pitching prospects in a trade for a player the Phillies wanted to move so badly that they were willing to pay half of Thome's remaining salary. In conjunction with the Javier Vazquez trade which I discuss in my next entry, the club has now traded three of the top four players in my prospect hot list from last July. While the team's payroll certainly figures to be larger after winning a World Series, sustainable success will require the integration of successful homegrown talent into the lineup. This feat will certainly be difficult to achieve if the organization continues to part with 70% of the club's most promising prospects.

Admittedly, there are a few reasons that parting with Gonzalez and Haigwood may not be a huge blow to the farm system. First of all, pitching prospects tend to be dicey propositions at best. Fans are fond of reacting to the departure of a top flight prospect by responding "C'mon, how many of these so called 'can't miss' prospects actually succeed?" The reason for this attitude is the constant unpredictability of pitching prospects (sabermetricians are fond of the acronym TINSTAPP which stands for "there is no such thing as a pitching prospect"). The reason pitching prospects are notoriously unreliable is arm injuries. White Sox fans should understand this concept as well as any fans in baseball. Over the last four or five seasons the club has lost the following young pitchers to arm injuries: Jim Parque, Corwin Malone, Kris Honel, Jon Rauch, and Dan Wright. The only advanced pitching prospects who have failed to develop due solely to ineffectiveness that I can recall of off the top of my head are Aaron Myette, Matt Ginter, and Dennis Ulacia. As a 20 year old of slight build, Gonzalez is as susceptible to a debilitating arm injury as any young pitching prospect in the minors. At 6-2 and 200 pounds, and nearly two full years older than Gonzalez, Haigwood is less of an injury risk. However, despite the impressiveness of Haigwood's 2005 season, such dramatic progress is often followed a somewhat less impressive performance the next season (of course the frightening alternative is that Haigwood has simply turned the corner and is now on the fast track to the majors).

2) The White Sox lost a critical component of the club's league best defense in 2005. While the club's defense received considerable praise in the mainstream media, the majority of the team's success has been attributed to the starting pitching. Few have underscored the large degree to which the success of the starting pitching was a product of the stellar defense the Sox played throughout the field. Aaron Rowand is a legitimate gold glove contender and acted as a critical cog in the club's World Champion defense in '05. Clay Davenport's defensive metrics rate Rowand a spectacular 7 defensive runs (close to a full win) above average last season. While another positive aspect to this transaction is that the club has a suitable replacement waiting in the wings in Brian Anderson - who is also reputed to be an outstanding fielder - it is quite unfair and unreasonable to expect Anderson to match Rowand's exceptional defensive prowess in center field.

3) The acquisition of Jim Thome signals the departure of the greatest hitter in White Sox history. The resigning of Paul Konerko and the acquisition of Thome at DH eliminates any potential starting role for Frank Thomas in the 2006 lineup. The majority of my disdain over Thomas' departure may be the result of sentimentality. I can still recall attending one of Thomas' first games with the big league club as a seven year old and have lost track of the countless blissful moments I have experienced as a result of Big Frank's play over the years. Furthermore, while I figure to have another sixty years on this planet if my health holds up, I remain skeptical that I will ever witness a more potent hitter in a White Sox uniform. Personally, the hardest part of letting go of number 35 is that I virtually no doubt that Thomas can continue to produce at an All-Star caliber level, the only question remains his health. With Anderson, Young, and Owens waiting in the wings, the club would have been in the perfect position to sign Thomas to an incentive laden contract to stay with the club. If Frank remained healthy and posted his typical .300/.410/.530 line the team would have scored the best bargain of the offseason. If the Big Hurt's health failed him yet again, the club would be able to improve its defense further by moving Jermaine Dye to first base and adding a young, defensive minded, athletic young outfielder to the mix.

Since I find it impossible to withhold my ultimate take on the deal, here it is: securing Thome for three seasons at $8 million a year is a tremendous move which is mitigated by parting with the best player in the history of the franchise and dealing away two of the club's three best chances (with a nod to Lance Broadway) to develop someone to start alongside McCarthy for the long run. B-.

Here we go again?

2005-07-24T00:18:00.000-07:00

According to the Chicago Tribune, Kenny Williams is willing to deal Brandon McCarthy and Damaso Marte for A.J. Burnett provided the club is allowed a 72 hour window to resign Burnett. This is a deal largely similar to the Freddy Garcia trade I detailed in my last two entries. My mantra remains more or less the same in this case. A 72 hour window to resign Burnett is nice but it doesn't mean he will sign for peanuts, he and his agent will still demand at least 8 million dollars a year which is not chump change. I'm all about Jerry Reinsdorf adding more payroll but a starting rotation with Buehrle making 7.75 million, Garcia making 9 million, Contreras making 7 million (?), El Duque making 4 million, and Garland well on his way to 20 wins and arbitration eligible (figure at least 5 or 6 million) is a very expensive rotation. The reason I scoff at the 72 hour window a bit is that somewhat like the Garcia deal there's absolutely no reason to believe the Sox would have a better chance of signing Burnett in the 72 hour window than they would in the off season. In fact, you could argue that with such a limited amount of time the club's odds of signing Burnett are actually worse.

My two largest problems are the fact that I don't think another starting pitcher is particularly valuable to the club at this point and that trading McCarthy for a rent a player is a considerable mistake. I said in my last entry that I don't believe dealing a top 10 prospect for a rent a player is ever an acceptable move and in response to a comment authored by Flight I wrote that I believe trading a top 30 prospect for a rent a player is borderline disastrous. Brandon McCarthy may not be a top ten prospect at this point but he's certainly a top 30 prospect. He's no doubt had a disappointing season evidenced by several disastrous starts with the big league club. However, we're still talking about a pitcher who reached AAA at a very young age (21), most likely would not have spend the season in Charlotte and the big leagues if not for an outstanding spring which earned him universal praise, and only has one legitimate flaw (allowing the long ball). I'll be the first to admit, allowing 22 home runs in 122.2 innings is terrifying but Charlotte (and the Cell for that matter) is a band box, McCarthy is still very young, he'd only pitched 4 games above A ball prior to this season, and his K/BB ratio is an outstanding 111/30 this season. Barring injury (which is a significant concern for a young pitcher) this kid should be a very solid major leaguer at the worst.

A huge problem here is that the Sox don't have much use for another starter. First of all, adding another starter presumably means the club will be paying a pitcher at least four million dollars to pitch long relief which is mind boggling for a club that is by no means the Yankees or Red Sox in terms of payroll. The most important consideration is that with the second best team ERA in baseball, how much value could a starting pitcher - even one of Burnett's caliber - actually add to the team? The team's worst starter is Hernandez but apparently now healthy and tossing a solid 6.2 IP 2 ER tonight, he really doesn't appear to be much of a liability at this point. I'm not a Jose Contreras fan by any means but with a 4.34 ERA it's hard to argue he isn't a capable fourth starter and therefore belongs in the pen. My concern is that an additional starter will be of little to no value to the club for the duration of the season under the team's current circumstances. With a 11.5 game lead and a .529 third order win percentage , BP's Postseason Odd's report pegs the ChiSox with over a 95% chance of reaching the playoffs through 5/22. That suggests that virtually no player the Sox could add between now and the trade deadline will substantially increase the team's chances of reaching the postseason since a playoff birth is more or less guaranteed.

It seems unlikely that an additional starter is going to have any large effect on the team's playoff success either. First and most importantly, most teams start just 3-4 pitchers in a playoff series. The White Sox currently have three of the five best starters in the American League. The first question is "How much better is A.J. Burnett than Contreras or Hernandez?" Burnett is a very good pitcher and no doubt substantially better than either of those two players but most perhaps not leaps and bounds better. More importantly , how much more confident can you be that Burnett will be far better than the two Cubans over the course of 1-5 games. Assuming a new starter slots into the fourth spot (it'd be really difficult to demote any of the current top three guys), he'd pitch at most five games in the playoffs assuming the team doesn't pitch anyone on short rest, there aren't enough off days in between playoffs games to allow a fourth starter to be skipped, and the team plays four games in the ALDS and wins, plays 7 games in the ALCS and wins, and plays 7 games in the World Series. Obviously as much as I love the White Sox that sequence of events is highly unlikely. Furthermore, when we're dealing with a maximum of five games you must consider the fact that virtually anything could happen. Certainly the odds are frighteningly high that even Jose Lima let alone Jose Contreras could out pitch a much better pitcher such as Burnett over a span of 5 games. Selling a key piece of the club's future for 12 regular season starts, a 1-5 post season starts, and a slightly improved chance at resigning a player for what may be a poor value would certainly be an enormous mistake on the part of the organization.

Part 2

2005-07-10T07:03:00.000-07:00

As promised, today I am returning to discuss the players received by the White Sox in last summer's trade with Seattle one year after the fact. For starters, Ben Davis seems to pretty clearly represent the most inconsequential player involved in the Sox-M's swap. Once regarded as a top catching prospect in San Diego's system, Davis' stock had dropped considerably by the time he was dealt to Seattle in 2002. This is however, not to say that Davis completely lacked value in his time with the Mariners. From his last season with the Padres in 2001 through 2004, Davis performed at a level similar to Miguel Olivo's previously discussed 2003 full season debut. Davis' performance was consistently above replacement level but with potential which dwindled each season and he eventually appeared best suited for a back up role. However, early last season, the Mariners came to the conclusion Davis was incapable of sticking with a Major League roster in any role, demoting him to AAA after a stretch of 33 horrific at bats to open the season. Davis remained at Tacoma until Kenny Williams freed him in the Garcia deal. With the Sox, Davis bounced back from his poor start and demotion to the minors but still continued the downward slide apparent ever since his final season with the Padres in '01 by putting up a homely .231/.276/.400 line. Still, while Davis clearly did not represent the everyday catcher some Sox fans naively described him as after a two week hot stretch in August, he was reasonably inexpensive and provided useful catching depth in light of Olivo's departure. The team stood to lose little from including Davis as part of the trade so with the exception of the highly unlikely event that he took the place of a player with legitimate potential or value, it is virtually impossible to condemn such a minor aspect of the deal. Ken Williams' decision to consider Davis for the club's starting catching vacancy and sign him to a million dollar deal this off season on the other hand represents a far less harmless move. However, that transaction occurred separate from the Garcia trade and Williams deserves quite a bit of slack for bravely reversing course and shipping Davis off to Charlotte in favor of A.J. Pierzynski and Chris Widger. All in all, aside from wasting a million dollars of payroll, acquiring Davis was harmful and in some ways resembles some of the low risk/high reward deals that have paid of for Williams in the past.

While I stated earlier that Jeremy Reed has always been the key to the trade for the Mariners, the same applies tenfold to Garcia's presence in the deal for the Sox since he is the only significant piece the team acquired in the move. I find it important to first state the obvious: Freddy Garcia was a far better pitcher than any other pitcher the White Sox could have reasonably managed to acquire last season and substantially improved the strength of the pitching staff. The key to examining the trade from the Sox end is answering the immensely difficult question of whether or not Garcia has improved the club enough to justify the young talent the organization relinquished.

One difficulty in weighing the costs and benefits of the Garcia trade for the White Sox is determining exactly how much of the value Garcia generates in a Sox uniform should be considered a direct result of the trade. While Freddy has no doubt been a major piece of this season's enormously successful 62-29 team, the White Sox traded Reed, Olivo, and Morse for Davis and Freddy Garcia at a point during which Garcia was signed only through the duration of the season. The three year $27 million extension the right hander reach with the team represents a separate transaction which followed weeks later. Considering the idea that the extension is in fact a separate move, a major point of contention is - had the trade never happened, could the three year deal with Garcia still have occurred a few months later in the off season? Since Garcia merely generated a very good but by no means all world 3.2 wins above replacement for a .500 team, if the Sox could have kept Reed, Olivo, and Morse to forego only the 16 relatively meaningless games Garcia started in 2004 and this season's 2005 first round draft pick, the trade clearly represents an unforgivable miscalculation (Some of you might want to stop me here and argue that at the time of the trade, the team had compiled a solid record and it appeared Frank Thomas and Magglio Ordonez would remain healthy throughout the duration of the season. In other words, by pointing out that Garcia's contributions were largely meaningless on a team that was out of contention late in the season, I am unreasonably relying on the hindsight required to foresee the team's collapse - which was highly unlikely at the instant the deal was consummated. The point is well taken, but I have to disagree. While clearly no one had the benefit of knowing when the trade was consummated that Thomas and Ordonez would be sidelined and the team would completely tank, a major contention contributing to my disagreement with the trade stated that the move was unwise because the team assumed too much risk by playing for one season when over a short period of time the unexpected can happen: teams can experience horrible luck and lose a ton of one run games, multiple players can slump terribly at the same time, and a team's best players can unpredictably go down with season ending injuries. While these factors will generally even out over several seasons if an organization fields a strong team each year, a team's luck can easily be incredibly good or bad over a half season. While I did not know the team would falter, the possibility of a scenario such as the one that ultimately occurred was a major reason I decried the trade from day one.). The difficulty with assuming that Garcia either could or could not have been signed to a similar contract in the off season is that either way, one is relying heavily on speculation. The Venezuelan presence in the Sox clubhouse and the fact that Garcia is married to Ozzie Guillen's niece certainly suggests that Garcia would have been more open to signing with the team in the off season than your average free agent. At the same time, Garcia's deal is for $9 million a season while Jaret Wright, Carl Pavano, and Pedro Martinez signed deals for $8, $10 , and $13 million respectively last winter. It is hard to say exactly what type of offers Garcia would have fielded in the open market (offers at least matching Pavano's $10 million per season seem likely), how much of a discount Garcia would've provided to play for a family member, and how willing the Sox would've been to pony up a few million more than they ultimately paid if that's what it took to get a deal done.

I promised three parts to this series of articles and due to the degree to which all aspects of the Garcia trade are intertwined it appears I spent the majority of the second part rambling on about the nuances of the deal I intended to discuss in part three. Somewhat disappointingly, one year later clear, concise answers regarding who won out are still not easy to come by. I attempted to avoid interjecting my opinion throughout both entries, although I'm not sure my efforts were successful. At this point I feel I owe the few readers I have left some definitive judgments even if some of these judgments are laced with subjectivity. With that said, here are the best conclusions I am personally capable of producing as far as an overarching evaluation of the trade: 1) It appears that despite my protestations from a year ago, the White Sox will not miss Miguel Olivo, substantially reducing the risk of the trade. 2) Despite a red hot debut, it still seems Michael Morse will develop into a solid major league starter at best. 3) Jeremy Reed is a solid major league starter at 23 with a chance to be a well above average starting center fielder for a long time, and he will not be arbitration eligible until after the 2007 season or eligible for free agency until after the 2010 season. 4) Freddy Garcia did not help the White Sox to reach the playoffs in 2004. 5) As tremendous and essential as Garcia has been in 2005, it would have most likely been worth parting with an extra one to two million dollars per season from 2005-2007 (I ultimately just can't see Garcia getting Pedro money last off season) or to settling for a different high caliber starter such as Matt Clement to keep Olivo, Morse, and most importantly Reed in a Sox uniform for a combined total of 14 seasons, 7 of which would have been practically free in terms of salary.

I guess what it comes down to is that my personal philosophy is not to part with players of Reed's caliber in "rent-a-player" deadline deals. While I mentioned earlier that the possibility of Thomas and Ordonez going down or other similar catastrophe must be considered over the course of 80+ games, that does not mean it was inevitable the Sox would tank. Garcia could have pitched the Sox to the playoffs under other circumstances and the handful of games he pitched in the playoffs could have been monumental for the organization. However, by the same token, Miguel Olivo could have continued to progress and become a perennial All-Star, Morse could hit 30 home runs as a short stop one season, and Reed might post a career average of .340. The greater the amount of time that passes after a trade occurs the more difficult it becomes to separate the odds of events occurring at the time from what actually took place in the aftermath of the deal. In the end, I believe what I believe about the trade but must admit that at some point the endless permutations one must consider to evaluate a move one year down the line, let alone six are enough to make anyone's head hurt. In my opinion, if you disagree you're not thinking hard enough.

The Freddy Garcia Trade One Year Later

2005-07-08T12:35:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across an old comment posted by my old WSI friend Flight regarding the purported success of the Freddy Garcia acquisition which altered the direction of the franchise last summer and decided to write a series of blog entries reexamining the move. At the time of the trade and in the following months I was extremely outspoken in opposition of the deal, creating dissension which eventually led to my partially voluntary exile from WSI. My criticism of the trade centered around the following issues 1) Jeremy Reed should have been untouchable. While no player is actually untouchable (certainly Reed should have been available for Mark Prior or Joe Mauer) I held the opinion that due to Reed's status as one of the 5 or so top prospects in the game (Baseball Prospectus rated Reed baseball's second best prospect behind Mauer heading into the 2004 season) and readiness to play at the major league level it was unacceptable to peddle Reed in a standard deadline deal. Including Olivo in the deal who was hitting .270/.316/.496 at the time meant the Sox were trading away two future starters and quite possibly two future all-stars for that matter. While Michael Morse did not appear to have a future as bright as Reed and Olivo it seemed unnecessary to include him as a throw in. In short, I believed the team parted with too much young talent and my hopes of transitioning to a young team centered around Mark Buehrle, Jon Garland, Reed, and Olivo were dashed. 2) The club further overpaid by dealing for Garcia at the peak of his value and paying for a top of the rotation starter when Garcia would more closely represent a number two starter once he left the cavernous dimensions of Safeco Field and regressed to his career norms. 3) By trading two and possibly three future fixtures in the lineup for a pitcher signed only through the remainder of the season, the Sox took on too large of a risk. Unless the team won the World Series the entire deal would be for naught as Garcia could have just as easily been signed in the off season for the price of a first round draft pick (who turned out to be Lance Broadway) at the absolute most. The best approach to winning a World Series is to build a strong team with relatively young, inexpensive players tied into long term deals who will be in contention every season barring catastrophe. Since five and seven game playoff series are largely based on luck, going all out in an attempt to succeed in the playoffs in one season is a dicey proposition because even if one assembles the best team, the odds of winning it all are slim. The greatest odds of winning the World Series can be obtained by making the playoffs as often as possible with a very good team as opposed to making the playoffs once with a great team. I will discuss each of the three different accusations I leveled at Kenny Williams in separate entries beginning today with analysis of the three players the Sox sent to Seattle.

I have no doubt that at this point it would be highly embarrassing to go back and read some of the posts I made at WSI praising Miguel Olivo at the time of the deal. To state that Olivo has been dreadful for Seattle since the trade would be an understatement of epic proportions. Furthermore, Olivo somehow seems to continue to play worse and worse all the time. He's already seen time at AAA Tacoma this season and at his current rate he will be auctioning off Richie Sexson autographed baseballs on EBay for a living in no time. The inclination is to say that Miggy's 2004 performance for the Sox was simply a fluke bolstered by a few weeks of blistering hitting towards the beginning of the season. Still, Olivo has not even sniffed his unappealing yet far from worthless, above replacement level numbers of .237/.287/.360 from 2003. This seems to be a situation where some unforeseen and drastic mental, physical, or skill level deterioration renders a player a complete shell of his former self (think Fernando Tatis metamorphosizing from perennial all-star to a poor man's Joe Crede overnight). Olivo is still just 26 so the possibility of a rebound does exist but I certainly wouldn't bank on it.

A 6-5 power hitting shortstop, Morse has always been more a curiosity than someone expected to turn into a star down the line. The fact that he's hitting .330/.404/.426 for the M's in nearly 100 at bats comes as a shock to everyone, most likely even Morse himself. The fact that he was hitting .253/.317/.407 at Tacoma upon his promotion provides a pretty strong indication that his hot hitting won't last for long. However, combined with his position the impressive month makes Morse a player worth keeping an eye on in the future.

The key to the deal amongst the three players the Sox dealt is and always has been Jeremy Reed. At the time of the move I insisted that the odds of Reed failing to become at least an above average major league starter were close to non-existent, a claim heavily disputed by many Sox fans. While a lot of baseball fans consider any young player without substantial major league experience an enormous gamble who very well may make absolutely no worthwhile contribution at the major league level, I was adamant that such a belief structure was overly simplistic and did not apply to Jeremy Reed for a number of reasons. First of all, Reed's performance in the minor leagues was not merely outstanding, it was borderline historic. Batting .409/.474/.591 in 242 at bats in AA is virtually unheard of and immediately renders comparisons to over 99% of prospects a baseball fan has encountered in his life completely and utterly obsolete. Another factor working in Reed's favor is that while he was by no means tearing up the International League at the time of the trade the fact that his dominance had come at AA and he had not collapsed at AAA seemed to guarantee he was capable of having a long major league career. For Reed to be incapable of holding down a job as at least an above average reserve outfielder for many years would require him to regress considerably from the level at which he had already been playing during his time in AA and AAA. The only other factor capable of completely derailing Reed's Major League career and resulting in the complete failure many insisted was a realistic possibility was the occurrence a career threatening injury. Yet another failure baseball fans often make when labeling all prospects gambles is failing to distinguish between hitters and pitchers. While the whole "there is no such thing as a pitching prospect" line is a tad overwrought for my taste, the reality is that an extremely large portion of pitching prospects who never pan out are ravaged by injuries. While Tommy John surgery has revolutionized baseball, labrum surgery is still more or less the kiss of death and occurs rather frequently. Just looking at the White Sox organization, the failed pitching prospects who went under the knife such as Danny Wright, Jon Rauch, Corwin Malone, Jason Stumm, and Kris Honel seem to outnumber pitching prospects who fell by the wayside due purely to performance issues such as Brian West, Josh Stewart, Dennis Ulacia and Aaron Myette (the latter group also appears to be composed of prospects with less impressive performance records compared to the first group). The odds of a position player ending or seriously altering his career due to injury are a fraction of what the same figure is for pitchers. Sure you have an occasional Rusty Greer who is eventually driven out of commission as various moderate injuries pile up and eventually become insurmountable or a Jermaine Dye who suffers a freak injury and never fully regains his athleticism, but these occurrences are quite rare. At the time of the deal I was convinced that the only way for Reed not to become a capable every day player would be for the highly unlikely to occur in the form of severe regression at the age of 23 or a incredibly unlucky injury not to the mention the fact that at 23 the odds generally favor significant improvement over the course of a player's next four or five seasons.

The accuracy of labeling the first half of Reed's 2005 season a disappointment is dependent on one's audience. In my experience the majority of White Sox fans avoid praising prospects traded out of the organization at all costs. At the same time, I have no idea whether M's fans are pleased to have an often exciting young player manning center field or are frustrated the team has not yet reaped substantial rewards from a deal in which the consensus was that the Sox gave up a good deal of young talent. Personally I will admit to expecting a bit more from Reed in his first full season. Hitting .259/.330/.357 is enough to easily hold down a starting job for the time being, but Reed's walks are down some from the start of the season, a player capable of hitting .400 in AA should hit at least .280 in the show, and while he appears Ruthian next to Scott Podsednik, Jeremy's power numbers leave a great deal to be desired. On the bright side for Seattle, Reed is still just 24 and this is probably the worst he will ever hit in a Mariners uniform. A line of .290/.370/.400 next season is not unfathomable and would constitute a highly impressive stat line for a 25 year old center fielder. The most interesting development in Reed's career this season has been his defense in center field. While he was in the White Sox organization there was constant talk that as a converted first basemen, allowing Reed to patrol center field at the Major League Level would be a dicey proposition. On this account, Jeremy has resoundingly proven the naysayers wrong at this juncture. A staple of Sports Center's top 10, Reed boasts an impressive defensive rate of 104 (100 is average, 105 or higher is generally approaching gold glove territory) using Clay Davenports' defensive metrics. Not only does this strong defensive performance indicate that Reed will continue to help his team win games with his glove in the future, even more importantly it renders Reed's bat far more valuable. While a corner outfielder holds little value if he can't slug .500 or at least .450 combined with an OBP above .360, a slick fielding center fielder who gets on base is a huge asset even if he can't hit double digit home runs. Will Reed meet become this type of unheralded force along the lines of Mark Kotsay, soar to all-star status, reach an untimely demise similar to teammate Miguel Olivo, or simply remain a merely adequate center fielder? As they say, only time will tell.

Prospect Hot List

2005-07-07T09:47:00.000-07:00

Two months since a post. Yikes. My apologies.

With the All-Star Break approaching, I want to take a look at some of the most exciting and surprising performances by White Sox minor leaguers this season. The list is not intended to be a top prospects list but instead simlar to Baseball America's Prospect Hot List. While Brandon McCarthy no doubt remains the club's best prospect, his performance has been undeniably disappointing this season so he won't find a spot on the list.

1. Chris Young

For a 21 year old skipping advanced A ball, Young's performance has been nothing short of brilliant. His numbers may not stand out at first glance but his plate discipline and spectacular power elevate what are otherwise so so numbers. Young has walked 42 times in 366 plate appearances putting him on pace for around 80 free passes over the course of a 162 game season. Perhaps most impressive are the extra base hits Young's bat has yielded. While most can recognize that a .525 slugging percentage is an indication of good power, Young's slugging percentage is astounding when examined in context. Slugging percentage is calculated by dividing total bases by at bats, meaning the ability to hit for average contributes substantially to a player's slugging percentage. Pure power can be measured more accurately by subtracting batting average from slugging percentage to create a statistic referred to as isolated power (ISO). So while Moises Alou is slugging over .500 on the season (.514 to be exact) his .321 batting average heavily contributes to that figure. A whopping ISO of .267 tells us that Young is hitting for far more power relative to his number of hits than someone like Alou (.193 ISO). An ISO above .200 is considered excellent so Young is more or less off the charts if not quite in Adam Dunn (.315 ISO in 2005) or Barry Bonds (a mind blowing .311 over the course of his career) territory. To further understand Young's potency at the plate, consider the fact that of his 81 hits 48 have been for extra bases and Young has hit just three fewer doubles than singles! Combine this power with strong plate discipline, youth, speed (15 stolen bases in 19 attempts), purportedly outstanding athleticism, and the ability to play a defense oriented position (center field) and Young should have a very bright future in the organization.

2. Gio Gonzalez

94 strikeouts against just 22 walks with only 5 home runs allowed in 66.1 innings and a promotion to High A at 19, need I say more? Pray for continued good health.

3. Charles Haeger

Haeger exploded out of nowhere to post a 3.20 ERA at Winston Salem and earn a promotion to Birmingham at the tender age of 21. Believe it or not Haeger, drafted out of a Michigan high school in the 25th round of the 2001 draft as a 17 year old, actually quit baseball in 2003 on the heels of two unimpressive seasons in rookie ball. In 2004 Haeger returned to the organization armed with the decision to rediscover his old friend, the knuckleball. Haeger was hardly dominant in Bristol last season but seems to become comfortable with the pitch this year, baffling hitters with the knuckler and a mid 80s fastball. While Charlie's 75/45 K/BB rate is nothing to drool over, knuckle ball pitchers are the rare breed of pitcher able to limit the number of hits allowed on balls in play and can therefore succeed with tepid strikeout rates. Furthermore knuckle balls are extremely difficult to hit for home runs as evidenced by the fact that Haeger has allowed just 3 (!) long balls in 101.2 innings. Sabermetricians have theorized that since it takes most knucklers until their mid to late 20s to master the pitch and reach the show, the ability of a pitcher as young as Haeger to advance to the high minors is remarkable and suggests a high ceiling. The community is slightly less willing to embrace this logic after the theory's poster boy Charlie Zink (who oddly enough shares Haeger's surname) bombed as a 24 year old in AA last season. Have no fear though, if Haeger continues to even remotely resemble the dominant pitcher who has showed up for his first three AA starts (2.25 ERA, 18 hits in 20 IP) people will begin to take notice in a hurry.

4. Daniel Haigwood

Riding strong if not immaculate peripherals (84 K's, 33 BB's, 8 HR's in 76.1 IP) at Winston Salem, Haigwood is finally cashing in on the promise he showed in 2002 and 2004 (2003 was lost to a knee injury). His recent promotion to AA adds yet another exciting 21 year old to Birmingham's roster.

5. Casey Rogowski

A .319 average and 22 doubles in 330 plate appearances at AA certainly jumps off the page. The reason Rogowski is not higher on the list is there are some question marks surrounding his performance. For starters, the hulking Rogowski (6'3, 230) is playing as though a much smaller man inhabits his body (just 6 HR's, 19 stolen bases attempted with 12 successes). Furthermore, due to injuries and dawdling on the part of the organization, Rogo is already 24 years old, a tad mature for a prospect's first exposure to AA. Perhaps most disappointing, while Rogowski's average is up 33 points from last season his on base percentage is actually down 11 points with his walks - his previous strongsuit - on pace to fall from 91 last year to around 60 this season. There is certainly cause for optimism with anyone hitting the way Rogo has this season but that optimism needs to be tempered when Casey's half season is examined in context.

Honorable Mention:

Micah Schnurstein

I must confess to some skepticism regarding Phil Rogers' tendency to throw Schnurstein's name around when discussing prospects to watch in the White Sox system the last few years. Well, Phil seems to have once again proven he knows what he's talking about. After two disappointing seasons following his impressive 200 at bat rookie league debut in 2002, Micah has put together a solid first half. Schnurstein's walk rate is still not something to write home about but has improved to respectable levels this season with 26 walks in 303 plate appearances. Furthermore, Micah has turned some of his doubles into long balls with a 20 home run pace set to obliviate his previous high of six. Still a youngin' at a week shy of 21, if Schnurstein continues to rachet up the power and plate discipline he should quickly pass Josh Fields in the race to replace Joe Crede and his appalling .303 career on base percentage.

Robert Valido

Who is Robert Valido? The player who hit .307/.364/.479 in his rookie league debut and is currently hitting .313/.360/.429 as a 20 year old in Winston Salem or a steroids offender who flailed to the tune of .252/.313/.333 at Kannapolis last season? With Juan Uribe failing to reproduce the magic of last season, Sox fans are praying for the latter. Valido's plate discipline and power are uninspiring but if he can continue to hit for a high average and his fielding is as good as rumored there's some cause for excitement.

Dissension

2005-03-26T10:23:00.000-08:00

The e-mail I sent BP's Joe Sheehan in response to his AL Central Preview:

Joe,

I get the impression you may have received a barrage of angry e-mails from White Sox fans in response to your AL Central preview the other day. As opposed to casual baseball fans stumbling across your column, like most devout BP readers, I agree that the White Sox off season was not successful and that the team does not figure to contend late in the season without catching quite a few breaks. However, I felt the need to voice my disagreement on a few specific points in the article.

Clearly, Frank Thomas suffered yet another serious injury last season. BP 2005's contention that if Thomas' string of injuries persists his career may very likely be over before long. That said, while Will Caroll has yet to release his White Sox THR, I have not encountered any published speculation or notes in Under the Knife suggesting Thomas' most recent injury is career threatening. There are indications that Thomas' size and age could lead to further ankle/foot injuries which would threaten his career but the odds of suffering another injury prior to a May return seem slim. While I would struggle to strongly argue against the statement that Thomas is at risk of returning and sustaining another injury at some point in the season, suggesting there is a substantial possibility that Thomas will not return at all this season strikes me as highly speculative and at least midly irresponsible.

The aspect of the AL Central preview I struggle the most with is the assertion that Mark Buehrle is a "mid rotation innings guy". While agree with applying the sentiment to Freddy Garcia, lumping the two pitchers together is highly inappropriate. Buehrle has spent four full seasons in the majors and finished 9th, 11th, and 16th in VORP in three of those seasons and projects to finish 13th in 2005 according to PECOTA. Furthermore Buehrle is still only 26 and finds himself coming off a season in which he posted career bests in BB/9 and K/9 with a negligent increase in HR/9. If Buehrle is a mid rotation pitcher then there are extremely few pitchers who qualify as legitimate aces. Sadly, there's not a lot in the White Sox organization I will bend over backwards to defend in the dreadful Kenny Williams era. Arguing that Mark Buehrle is an elite pitcher is a cause I will take up any day of the week.

BP on stolen bases

2005-03-08T10:22:00.000-08:00

Baseball Prospectus is stealing my ideas and writing better columns on them!! Haha. Seriously, if anyone found my analysis of the team's outlook on the basis in 2005 interesting, BP has a slightly more sophisticated take in the most recent White Sox triple play. I've had a pair of midterms this week but I should be back with a new entry next week, assuming I can come up with a decent topic to write about.

The Basepaths

2005-02-28T16:27:00.000-08:00

In Sunday's Chicago Tribune, Bob Foltman writes an interesting piece on the White Sox' basestealing prowess and approach to baserunning in the upcoming season. Foltman discusses the club's high stolen base totals from the 90s and suggests that the club will need a large improvement from last season to represent a strong running team. I found the article highly disturbing due to the fact that at no point in the entire piece is the concept of stolen base success rate addressed. In fact the closest the article comes to discussing outs on the basepaths is this nauseating passage:

Guillen wants his runners to be aggressive going from first to third on hits, and if that means they sometimes run the team out of innings, so be it.

"That's fine with me because if you're afraid to make a mistake running the bases, you're not going to be aggressive enough," Guillen said. "I'll take the chance because in the long run, we'll have the [last] laugh."

Rest assured, if the Sox run wild on the basepaths and find themselves running into outs 40% of the time, Ozzie Guillen will not be laughing this season unless the club benefits from a number of huge breaks to compensate for the baserunning blunders. For some time now, it has been well accepted in the sabermetric community that for a stolen base to increase a team's chance of scoring runs, a player must be successful roughly 75% of the time. Fans subscribing to more traditional baseball knowledge tend to scoff at this assertion for reasons I've never been able to completely understand. Even children in little league understand the concept that being thrown out on the basepaths costs the team scarce opportunities to score runs. Everyone should be able to agree that there is a point at which a player is caught stealing too frequently to render his stolen bases valuable. For those who consider the 75% figure to be arbitrary, Joe Sheehan wrote an outstanding article for Baseball Prospectus about a year ago that demonstrates the strength of the calculations based on run expectation and dispels the common misconception that intangibles such as distracting the pitcher are not accounted for in the calculations.

Now, with the help of the always wonderful Baseball-Reference.com let's take a look at the Sox' potential to generate runs on the basepaths in 2005 compared to the teams of the 90s:

Year	SB	CS	Success Rate
1990	140	90	60.9 %
1991	134	74	64.4 %
1992	160	57	73.7 %
1993	106	57	65.0 %
1994	77	27	74.0 %
1995	110	39	73.8 %
1996	105	41	71.9 %
1997	106	52	67.1 %
1998	127	46	73.4 %
1999	110	50	68.8 %
2000	119	42	73.9 %
2001	123	59	67.6 %
2002	75	31	70.8 %
2003	77	29	72.6 %
2004	78	51	60.5 %

A few things stand out from table. First of all, despite Foltman's praise for the baserunning ability of the Sox clubs in the 90s, none of those teams scored substantially more runs through the act of stealing bases. While the clubs with success rates above 70 % certainly were not killing the team on the basepaths, the rate still falls below the 75 % break even point. As far as the current club's prognosis, while we have only the admittedly small sample size of one season, it appears Ozzie Guillen's aggressive approach towards baserunning is hurting the Sox' ability to score runs. The table suggests that Guillen inherited a power laden team with few stellar baserunners and encouraged them to run wild in 2004. While the team's number of stolen bases remained virtually the same as the past two seasons, the number of attempts increased, leading the club's success rate to plummet more than ten percentage points. Perhaps such a decrease should not come as a shock for a team managed by a man with a putrid 61 % success rate during his playing career.

The optimistic outlook on the Sox' ability to steal bases this season states that Guillen now has the proper personnel to fit into his baserunning philosophy and the team will therefore be more successful on the basepaths. Scott Podsednik is a good place to start. While Podsednik does have a number of flaws in his game, stealing bases is most certainly not one of them as Pods had 70 thefts last season and sports a stellar success rate of 83.1 % (!) over his career. Tad Iguchi figures to be another plus on the basepaths with a career success rate of 77.9 % in Japan. However, it does remain to be seen though how Iguchi's basestealing prowess in Japan will translate to the majors and Iguchi will be taking playing time away from speedster Willie Harris (19 SB in 2004, 81.3 % career success rate). Additionally, offseason acquisitions Jermaine Dye (23 career stolen bases) and A.J. Pierzynski (6 career stolen bases) do not represent upgrades on the basepaths. Ultimately, the best case scenario in 2005 is that Podsednik and Iguchi will perform to the best of their abilities and Guillen will lay off the green light. The former is a distinct possibility. I for one would not count on the latter.

Random Notes

2005-02-23T00:53:00.000-08:00

First of all, congratulations to Brandon McCarthy and Brian Anderson for nabbing spots 23 and 32 respectively on Baseball Prospectus' Top 50 Prospects list. Ryan Sweeney also added an impressive nod as the favorite outfield prospect of BP's prospect guru Rany Jazayerli during the site's outfield prospect roundtable.

Today's interesting bit of news regards Willie Harris' prospects of making the roster as the Sox' utility infielder. The Chicago Tribune states:

Guillen wasn't sure about having Harris take ground balls at short to add to his versatility. Harris played some shortstop in Double-A and also can play center field.

"It's not easy moving from one position to another, especially shortstop," Guillen said. "He had some innings there but I don't know that he can play shortstop that quickly at this level."

It's assumed Harris is going to be shopped this spring, but the Sox may want to wait and see how Iguchi looks when the games start. Plus, Harris' speed would seem to fit Guillen's style.

The bottom line is that while Harris has limited experience playing shortstop, he is not completely green at the position and appears to clearly represent the club's best option as a utility infielder at this point in time. Harris' would be a valuable asset as a pinch runner, has demonstrated strong on base skills despite his lack of power, and would presumably make up for minimal defensive lapses at shortstop with the versatility of being able to play any outfield position. If Harris proves himself completely unable to handle SS in spring training, the trading block seems like a reasonable option. Otherwise, Harris should be given the hardest look of any player on the roster at the utility infielder spot this spring.

A New Format

2005-02-21T16:19:00.000-08:00

So...in the event I still have any readers remaining, one might notice this is my first entry in two months. Sadly this phenomenon cannot be explained by a lack of White Sox news as both Tadahito Iguchi and A.J. Pierzynski were signed during that span. My explanation (aside from the nightmares generated by the thought of attempting to spell the names of those two players) is sadly mere general laziness. In an attempt to rediscover my original intent in creating this space, I am hoping that writing shorter, less expansive analysis will make writing these entries more fun and less daunting. Hopefully what will be lacking in the length of the entries will be made up for in the frequency with which I post. Here goes nothing:

The Daily Southtown and a number of other sources are reporting that at this point in time the Sox are leaning towards moving Aaron Rowand to left and leaving Scott Podsednik in center field as a means of keeping Rowand healthy. The timing of the report is somewhat odd, considering that Rowand played in 140 games last season - the second most of his career - and as far as I can tell did not miss a single game to injury. The club's concerns about Rowand's health presumably stem from the fact that he has a reputation for playing with reckless abandon, earning the nickname "Crash" due to a propensity to collide with the outfield walls. The reality of the situation though is that apart from missing a handful of games after slamming into the wall on a highlight reel grab in '01, Rowand has never missed substantial time due to injury and has never landed on the DL. The only serious injury Rowand has experienced while in the organization was a non-baseball injury, his dirt bike accident in the 2002 offseason. Furthermore, there are outfield walls to crash into in left field as well as center field. The unique health benefits of a move to left are almost completely lost on me.

As I noted in my previous entry on the club's outfield defense, he downside to selecting Podsednik and not Rowand as the team's center fielder is considerable. BaseballProspectus' metrics rate Rowand as slightly above average in '04 while rating Podsednik below average in his two full seasons. Perhaps more importantly, as noted in the Southtown article Rowand had more outfield assists last season and conventional wisdom suggests a strong arm is more important in center field than left field.

Thoughts On Outfield Defense

2004-12-25T19:45:00.000-08:00

The conventional wisdom spewed forth from the mouth of Ken Williams states that by swapping Carlos Lee for Scott Podsednik and adding Jermaine Dye in right field the White Sox will follow through on promises of improved pitching and defense with vastly superior outfield defense in 2005. Considering the effort I've invested in finding some upside to the Lee-Podsednik swap beyond an additional $6 million in payroll, $4 million of which has already been invested in Orlando Hernandez, I would love to believe that the team has replaced an outfield of plodding sluggers with tremendous athletes who will routinely race to the gaps to catch balls which previously would have dropped for doubles. Unfortunately, the available data suggests that the purported improvements in the club's outfield defense for 2005 are overblown at best.

The majority of the misconceptions about the White Sox outfield defense seem to stem from flawed perceptions of Carlos Lee's play in left field. Sox lore states that Lee was an absolute butcher in left for his first several Major League seasons after making the move from third base just prior to his debut. In spring training in '03 Lee was reported to have spent considerable time on his fielding with then manager Jerry Manuel and the coaching staff. During the '03 season, it became accepted that Lee had improved his fielding and reached the skill level of an average or slightly below average left fielder. The numbers tell a somewhat different story. Clay Davenport's fielding statistics at BaseballProspectus.com do demonstrate Lee struggling as an above average fielder his first three seasons before improving to average in 2002 and 2003. However, in a development which may shock many Sox fans, Davenport's numbers peg Lee at a spectacular 13 runs (or more than a game) better than the average left fielder in 2004. Michael Lichtman's Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) more or less confirms BPs findings through '03 rating Lee as slightly above average in range. It will be highly interesting to see if the UZR numbers incorporating '04 reflect the same leap in performance as BP's figures.

Perhaps most illustrative of Carlos' underrated defense however is the writing of Tom Tippett at Diamond Mind baseball, most likely the first to stumble upon Lee's success in the field. Examining the gold glove races in the 2003 season Tippet wrote:

There are several other AL outfielders who might be worthy of consideration if not for the presence of these three guys. Among the corner outfielders we noticed are Winn, Garrett Anderson, and (believe it or not) Carlos Lee.

I'm sure that last name will come as a surprise to many of you. It came as a big surprise to us, too, because Lee has a reputation as a defensive liability and has been removed for defensive purposes more often than any other fielder in recent years. As a result, we spent a lot of time studying his performance, and here's what we found:

- Lee stole 18 bases in 22 tries this year, and his career totals are 53 steals and a 72% success rate, so he does have some speed

- according to our analysis, Lee had no weak spots ... he was at or above the league average in all zones and depths ... and while he hasn't been this good before, he was slightly above average in 2001 and 2002, so this type of performance isn't as much of a reach as you might think

- other systems place him in the top half ... he was 24 points above average in the STATS zone rating system, and his range factor and adjusted range factor were both a little better than average

- the defensive replacements are easy to explain ... he was being replaced by two exceptional fielders, Aaron Rowand and Willie Harris, so even though Lee was getting the job done, these guys were better

- overall, Chicago's outfield converted almost as many fly balls and line drives into outs as did the Minnesota trio, so somebody was doing something right ... Rowand and Harris were major contributors, but they didn't play enough to explain this, and Lee appears to have done more than Magglio Ordonez and Carl Everett to help this outfield rank so high

Even after reviewing all of this information, I wasn't convinced. So I decided to spend some time with the MLB.com video clips service. I picked a six-week period and requested every play Lee was involved in.

(MLB.com's service isn't perfect, so I was able to get my hands on only about 80% of those plays. But think about that for a minute. I was able to call up dozens of video clips for a specific fielder in a matter of seconds, and it only cost me a few dollars. Yeah, it would have been nice if I found everything I was looking for, but how can I complain about some missing clips when such a thing wasn't even conceivable a few years ago?)

It took about three hours to view the clips that were available, and I came away very impressed. There must have been ten or eleven really good plays in that stretch. Among them were two long runs to flag down deep fly balls in the gap. On two other occasions, Lee reacted very quickly to line drives and made sliding catches to his left. Twice he went over the left field wall to save homeruns. And in what may have been his best play of that sequence, he covered a lot of ground to make a catch in foul territory while going up and over the bullpen mound at full speed.

Admittedly, sabermetric analysis of defense is far from perfect. However, performance based observations have clearly demonstrated that subjective evaluations from scouts are highly susceptible to biases and arbitrary observations. Therefore, defensive evaluations based purely on scouting do not represent a desirable alternative to sabermetric methods. Ideally, both approaches should be combined as with Tippett's use of video clips to coraborate statistical analysis. That three different methods of analysis (plus Tippett's scouting observations) rate Lee above average, with two of the methods suggesting his defensive performance is outstanding, provides a rather reliable indication that Lee is a highly underrated and highly valuable defender in left field. This revelation immediately weakens notions of a highly improved outfield defense in 2005. One of the strongest assumptions responsible for predictions of improved defense is that Lee is a plodding slugger with average to above average defensive ability. The logic follows that replacing Carlos in left with an athletic, defensive-minded outfielder will therefore generate huge gains in the field. Once one considers the fact that Lee is most likely a well above average defender, it becomes far more difficult to reap benefits through the elimination of his defensive production.

Aaron Rowand is an outstanding defensive outfielder. Davenport's metrics rate him as slightly above average in CF in 2005, not an easy feat to accomplish. I have little doubt that Rowand will play tremendous defense in left field and I suspect he will be a better left fielder than Lee in 2005. The question though, is how much better than Lee will Rowand be in '05? To represent a one game improvent over the course of the season Rowand would need to perform at more than 20 runs above average next season, a rather difficult feat. Unless Rowand manages to redefine the position of left field in 2005, it will be difficult for the White Sox outfield defense to provide the significant improvement envision by Williams and the front office. UZR rates Podsednik as a centerfielder with below average range while Davenport's methods peg Pods at 6 runs worse than Rowand in '04, suggesting the outfield may actually need to compensate for poorer defensive production in center. BP's metrics also suggest that Dye generally been a below average defender the past six seasons and claims persist that Dye has failed to regain the mobility he possessed prior to breaking his leg in the playoffs with the A's several years ago. Magglio Ordonez, the man he replaces, was above average in 43 games last season and an impressive 11 runs above average in his last full season in 2003.

It should be fun for Sox fans to watch Rowand dominate left field after battling to play average defense out of position in center field the last few seasons. Unfortunately, the bottom line is that the man he is replacing did an outstanding job in left last season. Furthermore the team is potentially looking at net losses defensively in centerfield and right. While I'm not ruling out the possibility of slightly improved outfield defense in 2005, trading your best defensive outfielder (relative to position) and downgrading in the two other outfield spots is not a surefire recipe for reconfiguring your outfield in the name of game altering defense.

Five For Fighting

2004-12-22T20:59:00.000-08:00

Something amazing happened today: Kenny Williams made a solid baseball move. First, let's address the negatives. Orlando Hernandez is old, he is injury prone, and $4 million dollars is a large sum of money for a "fifth starter". Rumors have persisted for years now that El Duque may be closer to 45 than his listed age of 35. Clearly, we are looking at a pitcher on the downside of his career capable of missing quite a few starts the next two seasons despite a salary which would have netted Miguel Bautista or Mark Redman last offseason. However, it has become evident over the last few weeks that this is not last offseason. Contracts for starting pitchers in particular have spiraled out of control and at some point one simply has to accept that the only alternative to overpaying for pitching is working out a trade or perhaps forgoing pitcher in favor of adding more offense. With the club's sights set on adding more pitching, acquiring a fifth starter via free agency was clearly the White Sox best option as Jason Grilli is a tremendous liability in the starting rotation and Williams is a tremendous liability in trade negotiations, especially with one of the game's top pitching prospects down on the farm.

The good news is that Hernandez is still a very good pitcher. After returning from rotator cuff surgery last season, El Duque posted healthy strikeout and walk rates for a better than 2:1 strikeout to walk ratio. Perhaps more imporantly, he was stingy with the long ball for the second consecutive season after surrendering nearly 45 home runs in just 300 innings in '00 and '01. When healthy, Hernandez will easily be the team's third best starter behind Mark Buehrle and Freddy Garcia. Based on reports of fatigue late last season, using the fifth starter's spot to give Hernandez the occasional extra day or two of rest and ensuring Ozzie Guillen understands that Duque cannot go 110 pitches every game at this point in his career would be a good start towards preserving the pitcher's health.

Rumors Abound

2004-12-18T06:52:00.000-08:00

Sometime last last night, rumors emerged that upon completion of the three way trade agreed to in principle by the Yankees, Diamondbacks, and Dodgers the White Sox will acquire Javier Vazquez from Los Angeles. The intensity with which Kenny Williams has supposedly pursued Vazquez, a tremendous pitcher who is theoretically undervalued at this point in light of a poor second half for the Yankees, has both suprised and impressed me throughout the offseason. However, two somewhat problematic issues emerge in acquiring Vazquez. First, an average of $12 million dollars a year for three more seasons is a large sum of money to pay a pitcher coming off a down season. While earlier three way trade proposals involving the Yankees, Diamondbacks, and White Sox included cash from New York, the current three team deal includes Yankees prospects Dioner Navarro and Eric Duncan, precluding the inclusion of money to cover a portion of Vazquez's salary. The Dodgers do not figure to send money to the Sox in the event a trade for Vazquez is in fact consummated. $12 million dollars a season is not an unreasonable figure for a legitimate ace who figures to rebound in '05 particularly in light of some of the mind boggling signings this offseason. However, paying Tim Hudson $13 or 14 million dollars over the course of a three year deal next offseason would involve far less risk albeit less upside as well.

The second complication with a trade for Vazquez is the talent the White Sox would be asked to surrender in return. Most print rumors have the Sox offering Paul Konerko, Jon Garland, and Damasso Marte in return for Vazquez. Needless to say, this would be a horrific deal for the White Sox. While moving Konerko and his $ 9.25 million dollar salary coming off of what figures to be the first baseman's best season is a sensible move, including Garland and Marte in the deal is overkill. Even if Vazquez replicates his best season with Montreal in a Sox uniform, using Baseball Prospectus' metrics, the team would be trading away a total of fourteen Wins Above Replacement (five a piece from Garland and Konerko, four from Marte) from '04 while receiving only nine or ten WARP in return. While Garland receives a lot of flak from White Sox fans for failing to develop into Kevin Brown, he has become an exceedingly valuable innings eater at the back of the rotation and once luck and park effects are factored into the equation, his dissapointing '04 season closely resembles his solid '03. Acquiring Vazquez at the expense of Garland while also plugging a sub replacement level Jason Grilli into the rotation and losing the team's most reliable hitter and reliever would decimate the Sox 2005 season.

A second variation of the deal originating at Soxtalk.com and purportedly based on a report from WFAN 66 AM in New York includes only Konerko and prospects in return for Vazquez. A deal allowing the Sox to add Vazquez at a price of only Konerko and prospects is far more promising. While the team would still struggle to score runs while fielding perhaps the worst lineup in baseball, at two years younger than Konerko, a revitalized Vazquez figures to be of more value to the club over the next several seasons. The downside of this deal is Paul DePodesta acquiring prospects from Kenny Williams and the White Sox. Williams has shown an extreme willingness to part with prospects in return for veterans in recent seasons and DePo is bound to press for the inclusion of the unreal Brandon McCarthy in the deal. After cruising through the Sally League, the Carolina League, and concluding the season in AA while improving throughout the season and finishing with a ungodly 202 to 30 K/BB ratio, McCarthy must be considered one of the top pitching prospects in the game. Unfortunately for the White Sox, Depodesta has proven himself to be both more intelligent than Ken Williams and more appreciative of stellar performance based results resembling those generated by McCarthy than the White Sox front office. Even in the event Sox fans escape the more widely publisized trade rumor of Garland, Konerko, and Marte for Vazquez, a second bullet must be dodged in the form of the Sox refusal to include McCarthy (and hopefully Brian Anderson, Ryan Sweeney, and Chris Young as well) in a deal for Vazquez. Sadly, if either trade rumor has legs in the end, Kenny Williams figures to entrench his status as the laughing stock of baseball in the next 24 hours.

Debut

2004-12-18T06:13:00.000-08:00

So amidst rumors of yet another White Sox trade and an inexplicable bout of insomnia that awakened me at 6 AM despite less than four hours of sleep, I've finally managed to create a "blog" where I can discuss White Sox baseball.

First, a brief note about how I got here: I spent the better part of the last couple seasons feverishly posting about the worth of various Sox players, transactions, potential transactions, the quality of the team's in game strategy, and hypothetical transactions I believed the team would be wise to pursue at WhiteSoxInteractive.com. Unfortunately, my performance based analysis and refusal to back down in debates got under the skin of a number of posters on the board. My disagreements with WSI's dominant faction eventually culminated in an ugly incident where I was temporarily banned for responding in kind to a moderator's sarcasm. Unwilling to accept the censureship of my opinions in light of the vast amount of time I already spent posting about baseball at WSI and extremely busy with school and my part time job, I retired from the world of baseball message boards in October.

While typing the above paragraph, I found myself engaging in the most pathetic form of internet drama. Whining about temporary banishment is in reality no better than whining about the fact that your internet girlfriend of two weeks cheated on you by participating in cyber sex with a random guy she met on Live Journal. However, while I promise never to engage in such behavior in the space again, my experiences at WSI are illustrative of what I hope to accomplish in this forum. Most importantly, I hope this space allows me the opportunity to analyze Sox moves in greater detail than national performance based analysts such as BaseballProspectus.com and BaseballPrimer.com. While the analysis provided by these sites is tremendous and will certainly prove far more insightful than any perspective I can offer, with 30 teams to cover, discussion of White Sox transactions is often brief. Comparatively, with somewhat limited restrictions on my time, it is not out of the realm of possibility for me to post four or five entries on a single transaction over the course of a week when waranted. The recent string of White Sox transactions revealed to me that I might very well lose my mind without the opportunity to offer my opinion on the team's trades and signings (one discarded title I considered for the "blog" was "What did Kenny Williams do now?!").

Another lesson I've taken from my time at WSI is that I am no longer interested in painfully long debates over baseball. I highly encourage anyone who stumbles upon this web site to comment on my entries when criticism is warranted. I also hope to respond to any comments appearing on the site. However, I no longer have the patience to engage in nonstop, back and forth conflicts. If a disagreement with my opinions exists which cannot be resolved through a brief conversation, it will most likely never be resolved. Hopefully the absence of constant bickering will allow me to effectively communicate my thoughts on the White Sox in a fraction of the time I devoted to posting at WSI.

With these guildlines established, let's play ball! (I apologize for being far too weak to avoid the cringe-inducing cliche.)