ZoomSlowik

Mexico tied it up on a great shot from outside the box from Castro.

I can't believe that during that stretch of Beckham references no one said "slayin' your bacon".

QUOTE (nitetrain8601 @ Aug 7, 2009 -> 05:56 PM) And I don't remember Michael even doing anything whatsoever. Yeah, he sucked pretty hard. Good size and decent athleticism, but no skills whatsoever. I'm not really sure how he got a scholarship from Duke first, but whatever. Still intrigued, I'm not used to caring about Northwestern recruiting.

Weird blurb I saw on Rivals/an NU blog: Northwestern supposedly has/had visits from 6 of Rivals top-40 basketball recruits from the 2011 class. Considering I think the only one they've signed since I started following the team over ten years ago is the Michael Thompson transfer, I thought that was pretty interesting/strange.

Illinois is going to have to be A LOT better than they were last year. I watched them lose to Northwestern by 17 in their last game of the year even with Tyrell Sutton out, that should not happen to a "talented team". Williams will have to get a lot better as a passer, he made way too many turnovers last year. The defense will also have to get better, the only teams they held under 20 last year were Louisiana-Lafayette and Indiana. It also doesn't help that Ron Zook is the coach, who has developed a history of underachieving.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jul 24, 2009 -> 01:28 PM) He might not be as good in those circumstances. Different type of scenario. Hard to say. Agreed entirely, the one guy they paid to keep was Eric Chavez, which has turned out to be a disaster. If they had a Sox-level payroll they'd have still had a hard time keeing Hudson, Mulder, Tejada, Giambi and Zito, and they could have easily made some bad choices in there.

I don't think I could go to any games in that hypothetical series, the odds of me getting arrested would be extremely high.

Clayton really shouldn't be in the rotation anymore, that much should be obvious. Come on, he's averaged 4.25 innings per start since that solid KC outing and righties are now batting .332 off him. When did his change become a "good" or "decent" pitch either? According to the ESPN scouting breakdown the BAA on his changup is .391. His slider gets a lot of swings and misses, but he barely throws it against righties. He'll need to do something to his approach against them, because he's getting rocked.

QUOTE (rangercal @ Jul 9, 2009 -> 11:24 PM) Exactly what I was thinking. Take him out of that high paced gimmick offensive system and his rebounding totals will go way down. I would say his scoring goes down, his rebounding is legitimately good. No way he'd be getting 12 shots and that high number of easy looks in a normal system. He averaged about 11 and 9.5 over the two years pre-D'Antoni ball, that seems like a safe guess for his true value. If Noah plays 30 MPG, Lee probably gets you one more bucket inside per game with less help defense.

QUOTE (kjshoe04 @ Jul 9, 2009 -> 10:37 PM) Why? We already have the defensive, rebounding, hustle guy in Noah. We need someone that can score. That is where Bosh comes in. Exactly, take Lee out of D'Antoni's system and you've basically got a slightly better Joakim Noah. Plus he's not a particularly good defender and will be making 3 times as much as Noah in about a year.

It's bad, but "worst ever" is pretty strong, and also debateable because some of the monsters to semi-stars are pretty awful themselves. Off the top of my head, names like Malik Rose, Brian Cardinal, Adonal Foyle, Etan Thomas and Marc Blount. None of those guys are remotely competent players and all made $6 mil plus. Then you add guys like Larry Hughes, Stephon Marbury (even when he was good $20 mil was excessive), Arenas' latest deal coming off a knee surgery, or highly mediocre big men like Joel Pryzbilla and Raef LaFrentz making serious money. My personal worst vote goes to Eric Dampier, even after his "breakout" season in Golden State he probably wasn't worth $10 mil a year, he certainly wasn't before and after that fluke season.

There are some more arguable ones, but I'd probably take all of these if you asked me right this second (age and salary matter, so no guys Utley/Tex)... Pujols Hanley Ramirez Lincecum Mauer Grienke Haren King Felix Longoria Braun Fielder (probably take him off once he gets a new deal) Morneau Justin Upton Kershaw Talk to me at the end of this season or next year and the list could change a lot either way.

I would REALLY like it if they stopped putting women's scores on the bottom line on ESPN, especially college basketball. On multiple occasions I've glanced at it, seen a score that makes me think there's been a major upset or something, and right when I'm getting ready to freak out and try to figure out what the hell happened I see the "WNCAA" or "WCB" or "WBB" or whatever abbreviation next to it.

This rant about a rumored Ordonez/Rauch for Ortiz/Jones trade seems to be my first ever on Soxtalk. As usual, it was about 2 paragraphs long and no one replied to it. I'm glad we never got Ortiz, but I greatly mis-judge the timing of Andruw Jones' demise, considering he hit 92 homers over the next two seasons. I've still never been a big fan of his, and we ended up with JD/AJ/Tadahito/Pods and a World Series title instead, so I still stand by the general point of the post.

I've got to be over 100, how many over I'm not sure. I've been going to 15-20 a year since we got season tickets in 2006 (we split them), plus I would guess an average of 5 a year since the early 90's. I also remember going to games at Old Comiskey, but I have no idea how many. Also been to Spring Training in Tucson once and I'm pretty sure at least one South Bend Silverhawks game.

LOL, of all of the ways to add payroll, the Grizzlies finally decide to do it to acquire Zach Randolph. I don't even care that they're essentially getting him for free, that's REALLY dumb. Not only is he making $17 mil each of the next two years, he's a malcontent that is arguably the worst defensive big man in the league.

QUOTE (rangercal @ Jul 1, 2009 -> 11:37 AM) I just do not see the point in OKC signing a 4. Jeff Green is still developing and very serviceable. They desperately need a big man to help with their defense and rebounding, especially since Krstic is more of an offensive/finesse big. Millsap makes a ton of sense for them. I would imagine they'd go small and start Green and Millsap up front against a lot of teams and only use Millsap/Kristic up front when they play someone with two bigs. I think that'd work pretty well, especially since Durant and Green both have a ton of length and can probably bother most of your finesse bigs and may be able to do even more as they add strength.

Didn't every White Sox player refuse to take the test in an attempt to trigger the new policy, thus causing them to count as positive tests? That would mean this list isn't accurate since there are only a couple of them on there.

QUOTE (DanksFan @ Jun 27, 2009 -> 02:24 PM) Thanks but no thanks for not actually reading my post. Did I compare Buchholz to Thornton? No, I recall comparing Fields to Borchard and questioning your idea that he has zero value whatsoever despite hitting more HRs in the bigs then Joe Borchard. Yet you think he wouldn't net us a Matt Thornton-type of prospect, at best. Whatever, I won't ever understand why us fans underrate our prospects so much. If JOe Borchard can get us Matt Thornton with no ML success whatsoever, then Fields with his 20+ career home runs will be able to get us something of value. Please, learn to read before ripping me for something I didn't even say. And that goes for ZoomSlowik too. I compare Borchards trade value to Fields and you try to say I'm comparing Thornton to Buchholz... gimme a f***ing break. You call it MY Matt Thornton comparison??? You guys put those words in my mouth, sorry, I call it my Fields trade value vs Borchard trade value comparison, and yes, it is relevant to the discussion because you're endlessly insisting that Fields has no trade value yet Borchard was able to get us a Matt Thornton type of player... it makes no sense to label Fields like that when he's had more success then Borchard ever had already. I already admitted it wouldn't be Buchholz, but if you're thinking Fields wouldn't net us a player of similar value in return, you're f***ing crazy and caught up in yourself. It's one thing to defend your opinion, but defending a ridiculous claim like "Fields has no trade value whatsoever" is just plain asinine. You grouped that paragraph very poorly if that was the point you were trying to get across, you went on a two sentence rant down-playing Buchholz's value and then immediately went into your Fields/Borchard rant. That implies a direct relation to that point, not a seperate thought. Starting a new paragraph or moving that to the first part of the post would have gotten that across far more clearly. You also spent the previous post and part of that one trying to defend a deal centered around Fields for Buchholz, so it looks like an attempt at a direct comparison. It's still a poor point anyways because Thornton himself had virtually no value when we got him. He was struggling mightily in relief and the lightbulb didn't go on until we acquired him and he was 29 when we got him. He wasn't really a prospect, he was a journeyman that could throw hard but not do anything with his arm. Had he pitched like that before the trade, it would have cost a lot more than Borchard, we just had great timing and some help from Don Cooper. That's the entire problem with your point, "a player of similar value" at this point is an unproductive player in his mid-20's with a serious flaw or two.

Buchholz is not REMOTELY comparable to Thornton when we acquired him. Buchholz is 24 and has been largely successful throughout his minor league career with half a season of unsuccessful performance in the majors, Thornton was a 29 year old reliever that couldn't find the plate with a GPS.

I don't really see anyone pulling way out in front of this division all year, the winner will probably be in the high-80's. Granted I don't think KC or Cleveland have a real shot at the division (offense for the former, pitching for the latter), but I don't think they'll end up 15+ games back either. The Tigers look great on paper, but they're not exactly out-hitting the Sox by much, and Galarraga and Dontrelle have sucked. They appear to be the most talented, but I still have a hard time seeing them blow everyone away. I know it's board policy to fellate the Twins, but even with Mauer doing his Albert Pujols impersonation and Kubel putting up a .912 OPS they're 32-33. I don't get why anyone is worried about their rotation either, 3 of their starters have an ERA over 5 and their team ERA is 3 tenths higher than that of the Sox. As has been stated before, they're also 11-21 away from the dome. Though I don't think the Sox will do more than match their 87 from last year barring a major jolt to the offense from either a healthy Quentin or someone like Beckham stepping up, they've got enough talent to hang around, especially on the pitching side.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Jun 4, 2009 -> 10:15 AM) If Tyler Hansbrough were black, he'd be a top-5 pick. I kinda doubt that, you can find plenty of other comparable guys that didn't go anywhere near that spot. That said, Shelden Williams inexplicably went #5, so who knows. He's still a flawed NBA prospect. Regardless of a respectable max-vert, he generally plays below the rim. He's going to be an average NBA defender at best, even in college he was a non-factor as a shot-blocker and wasn't a good defensive rebounder. His offensive game also isn't as strong as his stats would suggest. He made almost 7 free throws per game over the course of his college career, which he has zero chance of repeating in the pros. He was also an excellent offensive rebounder, averaging 3.4 per game over the course of his career, giving him plenty of putback opportunities. On top of that, he relies on power and energy to get most of his baskets, something that will be harder to do in the NBA. I think he's going to be a fantastic role player, but all of those things he's getting credit for now are still relatively average and don't really change what we've seen for the last 4 years. Basically he's just not as short or unathletic as some people (including me) thought he was.

I was still collecting stuff until the late 90's when stuff went REALLY nuts. I didn't have a problem with the Fleer Ultra, Topps Finest, ect., it was when you got to stuff like SP Authentic that started costing you $8 a pack/$120 a box and unless you got lucky and pulled a short-printed rookie or a nice autographed card you'd end up with a giant pile of crap. Then every company had like 3 or 4 sets like that (or worse, there were some super-premium ones that were north of $50 a pack with a guaranteed game-used/autographed card) and the only boxes you could get for less than $80 were the basic Topps/Fleer/Upper Deck sets with virtually none of the big time insert cards. I'm not surprised that people got sick of that, I just wish I had realized it a bit sooner. I hate to think of how much money I spent on cards that are now sitting un-touched in boxes scattered around in various cabinets.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jun 1, 2009 -> 12:05 PM) Andrew, if the Bulls want they can easily clear CAP room to offer two guys from the 2010 class max deals. Doesn't mean they'd get them, but they are in a great cap position. You move Deng or Hinrich and its an even better one. Huh? They don't have THAT much space at the moment unless I'm reading your post wrong. Deng, Hinrich, Salmons, Gordon and Noah adds up to $34.8 mil. Add in Tyrus' qualifying offer or an extension for Gordon and you're over $40 mil, maybe approaching $45 mil. Even at the current cap of around $59 mil that leaves you at best enough for one max-type deal ($17-$18 mil depending on the exact math). Then factor in that the cap is supposed to go down, the two 1st rounders this year, plus cap holds for 2010 picks, and they probably don't even have enough for one as things currently stand. They can VERY easily get enough space for one max deal if they do some combination of letting Gordon walk, out-righting Tyrus and trading Deng or Hinrich for expiring deals, but to make room for two max deals they basically have to gut the roster of everyone except Salmons and guys still on rookie deals.

QUOTE (SoxFan1 @ May 29, 2009 -> 03:31 AM) I disagree when you consider the fact that Kobe gets a lot of bad calls against him on the defensive end, you know, because he actually plays real defense. Lebron gets WAY more calls and gets away with more defensively than Kobe. Your logic is strange. Kobe only gets around a half a foul more per game overall and while he's a good defender a lot of his accolades on that end are based on reputation. Lebron has slacked off on that end a lot in the past, but his defensive numbers are excellent this year and superior to Kobe's (I'm not going to bother posting them because I know you don't care) and plays on a far stronger overall defensive team. Then when you factor in that Kobe shoots far more jumpers than Lebron and still drew comparable numbers of FT's for the bulk of his prime (a bit down this year), I don't see how you can say that Lebron is WORSE in that department than Kobe (though obviously comparable). Wade should really be thrown in that group too, he has a ring because of his "knack" for drawing fouls.