fathom

QUOTE(MnSoxFan @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 08:41 PM) Then your brother does NOT know pitching, cause Seddon is the pitcher who shut Charlotte down on Monday, Rex got done earlier this week telling me how much he likes Seddon. Haha! My brother f***ing works for the Durham Bulls, and has seen every home game Seddon has pitched. This superstar Seddon has a 6.10 ERA this season, with a WHIP over 1.67. He K's about 6 guys per 9 innings. My brother said that he's far and away the worst Bulls starter. No offense to Rex, who knows his stuff....but Seddon isn't a good pitcher.

Reyes and Gathright are the two fastest players in baseball, and it's not even close. Other guys who supposedly are incredibly fast are Patterson, Wily Mo Pena, and minor leaguer Esix Snead.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 08:41 PM) Here comes the arguement I was making right before the trade deadline... Yeah, keeping Mark Buehrle, Jon Garland, and maybe Freddie Garcia around for a while will cost a fortune. But this team would be insane to let either of the 1st 2 guys go for the next 5 years or more, even if they cost a ton. That's where young guys come in. If we want to pay Mark the $15 mil or whatever it will take to keep him, we're going to have to save money somewhere. How do we save money? By having guys like BMac filling roles in the lineup...because while guys like him are still arbitration eligible, they cost an order of magnitude less than guys who have gotten close to the free agent market. That's why unless we're the Yankees, we have to make sure we hold onto a few prospects, because if they make the big leagues and are even adequate, they make paying for their position so much cheaper. Look at ARow right now...he's great on defense, he's leading our team in hitting, he'll be hitting .300 in another week or so more than likely, and he'll probably hit 15-20 home runs this year. He is now costing us about $1 mil per year. Why? Because he's not even arbitration elibile yet. You bring up guys like BMac, Brian Anderson, Bobby Jenks, maybe Gio, and so on...and those guys filling positions give you the money to keep the keystone guys you have. If I'm in KW's chair...I sit there and say my #1 goal is not letting MB and JG get away, because keeping those 2 around will give me something to build around as long as they're here. Then I say we need to fill in what we can. If BMac is ready to join the big club next year, then Contreras can be moved at some point (if El Duque stays and is healthy for most of the year). If Gload (or Rogowski) can be an adequate fill in for Konerko and maybe hit close to .300, then he'll be so cheap that his contract will give us freedom to keep the guys we need to keep. That's my version of moneyball. Rowand signed a contract extension, and I'm pretty sure he's making about 3 million a year now. Something that's really helping our team this year is that we really don't have any bad contracts. Guys like Iguchi and AJP are giving a lot of production at their positions for below market value. And as long as Crede and Uribe are on the left side of the infield, we can't have a question mark at 1b like Gload or Rogo. No matter which way you look at it, Gload is not a favorite of the organization. The Sox really should consider trading Sweeney this offseason, as he's another year of no power in the minors before his stock drops even more.

QUOTE(LosMediasBlancas @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 08:36 PM) Nah, even without it, his ERA is lower than Duque and Count's. And he gets to pitch half of his games in a great pitcher's park.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 08:28 PM) I really don't think that going for boppers is the best strategy in that ballpark. Take a look at Cinci, or Colorado. They both have ballparks that balls fly out of, and they've both tried having lineups loaded with boppers (Griffey, Dunn, Pena, etc in Cinci, Walker, Burnitz, Castilla, Helton in Colorado last year). What ends up happening is you end up spending a lot more money paying the salaries of the $9+ million a year guys, and then you end up hitting whatever the cap you've decided is the spending limit for your team. Then, you end up finding whoever else is out there (i.e. Ben Davis, Willie Harris, Scott Schoenewies) to plug the holes remaining in your lineup and your rotation. If on the other hand you go in the direction we have this year...defense, productive outs, hitting, pitching, and balance, you end up eliminating those holes in the lineup by plugging in guys who actually can win games. You have a stronger bench to cover your arse when people get hurt. And you don't have black holes in your rotation that you expect will probably be losses. The real key is that guys like Carlos Lee cost a ton more than guys like AJ or ARow, while ARow and AJ probably have won our team just as many games as Carlos has won for Milwaukee this year. You can win games with defense and timely hitting if you get good guys, and you can afford a lot more good guys than you can great guys. You're right about the price of good hitting, and that it makes good pitching difficult. The Reds would be a playoff team if they had solid pitching. Instead, they get stuck with simply awful starting pitchers. Our starting pitching is going to end up costing a lot in the next few years, but our bullpen should be pretty cheap. I'm all for not resigning PK and trying to trade Contreras....and then adding a major offensive bat or two to the lineup.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 08:18 PM) I love having a ballpark that has the ball carry so well...because when your pitching staff is as good as ours, the opponents have a rough time taking advantage of it, and it should help out our offense. Right now we just need to get into a few people's heads and get them to shorten their swings a bit - stop swinging for the fences and let the ball fly on its own. Other than that, the ballpark is lovely. With having a good pitching staff like what we have, and look to have for a few years, would it be better to have a team with more boppers on it again? This is just for discussion sake, as I'm sure they'll continue to go after smallball type players. However, if we had the pitching we had this year in previous seasons, we would have been having a very successful season this year also.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 08:16 PM) We haven't been manufacturing runs for a few games now. We haven't worked at it at all. This is something Ozzie needs to wake people up on. A team meeting might be useful just to get it in people's heads. When your pitching staff gives up 4 runs or less, you should be able to win ballgames. You make a good point about not manufacturing runs. Something that is very noticeable is that Pods is trying to force the action when he reaches. The other team knows he's going, and he's having a hard time successfully stealing the base. Why not take some of the pressure off, and go for a hit-and-run with Pods in motion? He has enough speed that even if the hitter misses, he could be safe. However, we'd still be able to benefit from Podsednik's speed. This team has a very comfortable division lead......they should be playing loose and having fun on the field. Instead of playing not to lose......they should expect to win every game.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 08:13 PM) Garcia giving up 4 is not a bad outing for him. Garcia giving up 5+ in 6-7 innings is a bad outing. You should be able to win ballgames giving up 4 runs more often than not...otherwise you'll have to get your ERA down below 2 to have a winning record. Garcia, since the ASB, has a 4.89 ERA and a 1.66 WHIP. Before the ASB, his ERA was 3.53 with a great WHIP of 1.18.

QUOTE(greasywheels121 @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 07:47 PM) Haha and the negativity starts before the game. Wait until the game starts to start b****ing. Please?! We're not allowed to be unhappy about a lineup that is rather mediocre, and doesn't make a lot of sense? However, I will follow your request.

Quick question for the more optimistic posters on this site: Are you happy with this offensive personnel we have right now? It seems like every team we play, they have a better lineup than we do now. Thankfully, our pitching is better than almost every other team. However, it still means that we actually have to "outslug" other teams. A very strange contrast to last year, indeed.

QUOTE(Whitesoxfan56 @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 07:43 PM) again a s***ty lineup when buehrle pitches. i bet he gets no run sopport either We need to call up Brian Anderson if Everett's injury lingers. Especially considering that Borchard is better from the left, than the right, side...we need another righty on the bench. It's not like Timo hits lefties very well.

QUOTE(Whitesoxfan56 @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 07:40 PM) Pods, LF ... Iguchi, 2B ... Rowand, CF ... Konerko, 1B ... AJ, C ... Crede, DH ... Perez, RF ... Blum, 3B ... Uribe, SS ... Buehrle, LHP no dye vs a lefty, but timo is playing? thats striange, timo must do well vs. moyer. crede at DH i would rather have him at 3B and Blum dh, but we'll see how this lineup works What the hell? That lineup just sucks. The 6-7-8-9 is simply terrible. Oh well, at least Ozzie can get his boyfriend some playing time.

Where's Jose Reyes and Joey Gathright?

QUOTE(BigSqwert @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 05:38 PM) Back to the original post...anyone else think there was a bit of a letdown by the team when we didn't pick up a big name at the trade deadline? Yes, I actually do think this team was expecting to get a shot in the arm.....and it never showed up (not blaming KW). Don't forget that Thomas isn't an option for the rest of the season, so our power off the bench is non-existent.

QUOTE(BigSqwert @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 05:47 PM) We've been playing small ball in a HR park all year. Seems like we've been struggling at home only recently. I just think it would have been a nice boost to get a big bat at the deadline. The park wasn't playing like a homer park earlier in the year, when it wasn't as warm out. Now, you have players hitting the ball out of the park in every direction.

Garcia had as good of a fastball last night as he's had all season. His inability to get the leadoff hitter out in the last few innings really hurt him. Garcia is consistently giving up 4 runs in his outings lately. Ozzie should be a little more proactive in how he handles Garcia, and maybe pull him BEFORE he gets in trouble late.

QUOTE(Soxpranos @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 05:07 PM) The whole team has not hit good all year. If it wasnt for Gouch and Pods we would be in a deep hole, the other guys need to pick it up. Pods and Gouch cant do it all year by themselves. Dye carried this team offensively for two months. He's far and away the most underrated offensive player on the Sox this season. The scary thing about the offense right now is that Iguchi, AJP, PK, and Crede have been putting up very good numbers lately. It's not like we have a team full of guys struggling. Lets face it: this isn't a team loaded with offensive talent. We need better execution, as well as some more clutch hitting. Lately, we've had very little clutch hitting.....and even less clutch pitching. Our pitchers are really struggling preventing that big inning which they did so well avoiding earlier in the year.

QUOTE(beck72 @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 10:37 AM) Perez' ERA would be over 6 in the AL. I'd rather stick with Jose, at least he's healthy Dmitri Young wouldn't be bad. Although I'd be worried about his hallucinations [saying Det. and Cle. would be battling for 1st place this yr] Young is likely to have an 8 million dollar option kick in because of 500 ABs. No way do I want to pay him that much money next season, when he can really only play DH.

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 04:53 PM) The team is near the bottom on the AL in OBP and near the bottom in singles. I see this as more of a chronic problem. Our guys need to go deeper in the count and take smart cuts. If they get 2 strikes, shorten the swing up a bit and put it in play. Too many strikeouts with men on. That has a lot to do with the team's approach. There were some awful ABs late in the game yesterday. If a player is looking to swing on the first pitch at the fastball.....just take the pitch if it's offspeed. Both Rowand and Uribe hit about 10 hoppers on the infield because they swung at first pitch offspeed pitches. I actually am optimistic about Uribe, as he's been taking better swings lately.

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 04:46 PM) Well chicagosports.com reported that if Everett goes on the DL, Joe "no tool" Borchard will get promoted to the show. Chicagosports.com also had a quote from Ozzie saying how we need to get more people on base. It's not like we haven't been hitting a lot of homers recently. It's just that too many of them have been with no one on base.

Our bench right now is extremely weak in terms of hitting. You need to have someone on the bench that you think actually has a prayer of getting an extra base hit. When Thomas got injured, it made Everett into an everyday player. The problem is that we did nothing to replace Everett's power on the bench. I've said recently that we should call up Brian Anderson for Adkins. With Everett's injury likely one that will linger for a few weeks, we can use a righty bat against lefties or off of the bench. I don't get real excited with the thought of Ozuna playing DH.

QUOTE(SoxFan562004 @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 02:53 AM) Really sad story. I don't mean to be insensative here, but it seems like a lot of the 80 and 90's QB's have children with severe medical problems. I think Marino and Flutie are at least two others, Boomer Esiason (sp?) as well. I've always wondered if there's more to this... but with that said, it doesn't matter why it happenned now, it's really sad to see such a young child pass away. Yeah, it really is interesting how so many athletes have children with medical problems. On the bright side, at least a lot of them are in the spotlight and have enough resources to really raise awareness of the medical problems, and raise a lot of money for research, etc. Also, I still think it's funny that Kelly's wife shares the name of a famous porn star.

QUOTE(Sonik22 @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 04:25 AM) Don't u dare f***ing say that. lol It's on chicagosports.com right now. I know the trade market was steep....but it's really too bad we couldn't have got a bat at the deadline.

BTW, the Sox are expected to call up Borchard if Everett goes on the DL.

QUOTE(SoxFan101 @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 04:16 AM) Well than whatevr he had a bad day but im still not going to judge him on one of his worse days lately and say he has been looking worse than ever. That Monday game was indeed the game he saw, and I'm just relaying what he told me. I didn't say that Borchard is worse than ever. Just said that when my brother saw him play, he couldn't believe how bad he looked.