Kalapse

So that about sets the roster 1. Pierzynski 2. Konerko 3. Beckham 4. Ramirez 5. Teahen 6. Pierre 7. Rios 8. Quentin 9. Jones 10. Kotsay 11. Vizquel 12. Castro 13. Nix 14. Buehrle 15. Peavy 16. Danks 17. Floyd 18. Garcia 19. Jenks 20. Thornon 21. Putz 22. Pena 23. Linebrink 24. Williams 25. Santos This might be the first year since I became a Sox fan that the 25 man roster could have easily been predicted at the very beginning of spring training. Not a single surprise, not a single positional battle.

QUOTE (Thunderbolt @ Mar 23, 2010 -> 10:45 AM) This was back when Eric Chavez looked like he might be relevant for another decade, and when the A’s would insert pitchers into the Closer’s spot to inflate their value and then trade them for high-upside prospects the year after. I imagine both these factors and the expected rewards made Teahen irrelevant to them. I don't see how the next Jason Giambi could be irrelevant to anyone, you can always find a spot for a guy like that. The A's also did no such thing with their closers, their plan was to acquire them in their final year before free agency then let them walk and pocket the compensation picks, much like they do with many of their stars. In 2002 alone they had 6 compensation picks 2 of which were for Jason Isringhausen (Ben Fritz, Stephen Obenchain), they got Swisher, Blanton and Teahen in exchange for Giambi and Damon via comp picks that year. The only closer that was traded for spects was Billy Taylor for Jason Isringhausen in 1999. (and Izzy already had 300+ IP in the majors when he was dealt for so he wasn't really a prospect) Traded for Isringhausen, let him walk and took the picks. Traded for Koch, traded him for Foulke after a year, let Foulke walk and took the picks. (the key was to keep the closers for only a year before they broke down due to overuse) Traded for Dotel with 2 years left until free agency and shockingly he broke down early into his 2nd year, let him walk in free agency and got nothing in return Things changed when beane broke his own rule and took Huston Street in the first round. Street was eventually traded for a veteran hitter in his final year before free agency who was eventually flipped for a high upside spect who in return was flipped shortly after for another high upside spect.

QUOTE (Thunderbolt @ Mar 23, 2010 -> 10:22 AM) The thing is Mark Teahen isn’t a mediocre talent. Mark Teahen is a great talent who has played mediocre at the major league level. He’s given brief flashes of potential for the Royals, but he was in a terrible situation there. Now, he’s in an organization that not only believes in him and is willing to give him a chance, but has shown a commitment to this faith by giving him a three-year deal. White Sox fans should be willing to do the same. Teahen has the kind of upside that Chris Getz doesn't have. At one point he was the next Jason Giambi, of course the club that supposedly believed this ended up trading him for a 30 year old Octavio Dotel so who knows.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Mar 23, 2010 -> 10:19 AM) I don't like the HR/K ideas because it'd sound weird to go from regular commentary to static filled Hawkisms... I've got the following, but will update as needed since it's so easy. Beckham - Your Love Pauly - Harvester of Sorrow AJ - AJ Scratch by Kurtis Blow TCQ comes up to SILENCE per his preference. f***ing guy is hilarious. Alexei comes up to Pobre Diablo by some Spanish dude called Don Omar. Decent rap. ...and the editor is so perfect that Bobby comes in to the correct portion of "Boom". I'll have to add Sweet Home Chicago for a game winner, great idea. "he gawn" actually sounds pretty good if you can find a quality copy and that is what they play at the park so if you're going for full realism . . . I need a copy of "kiss him goodbye" played on an organ, it's absolutely vital, the air raid siren isn't doing it for me.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Mar 23, 2010 -> 01:38 AM) Actually, Pierre is better than Pods. There's not one aspect of baseball that you can say Pods is better at. And believe me, I'm not excited at all about Pierre. Power, arm strength, drawing walks, not looking like a child.

The people love the idea of free s*** more than anything. What percentage of those incensed fans would have actually redeemed their ticket? 5%? If that? It's like that guy who would trample a small child for a free t-shirt from a scantily clad 20-something or a jackass in a bull costume sporting an air cannon when you just know neither he nor anyone else will ever wear it.

QUOTE (3E8 @ Mar 22, 2010 -> 08:21 PM) Are you saying once the season starts and Andruw Jones starts getting thrown breaking balls he isn't gonna OPS over 1000? The first breaking ball he sees on April 5th will be the best he's seen in months. I do expect Kotsay to keep up his .433 batting average, however.

And here's confirmation; according to Cowley 71 of the 74 pitches Peavy threw vs KC were fastballs. THIS is just one of the many, many reasons spring stats don't mean a whole hell of a lot.

QUOTE (ScottyDo @ Mar 22, 2010 -> 06:33 PM) I don't know Quentin well enough to provide a psychological profile or anything, but it's been mentioned here before that Quentin may not be well suited to a DH role. The worry is that he will beat himself up mentally (and physically?) for 30 minutes between at-bats. Lets also not forget that Andruw Jones is 33 years old, has been in the league for 14 seasons and has made 3 trips to the DL over the past 2 years including one that was supposedly responsible for the .165/.292/.298/.589 line he put up over his final ~150 PA of last season. He's also played less than 700 innings in the outfield over the past 2 years (only 148 INN last year). Perhaps it's best to ease him back into the outfield if he's still capable of being a good defender at this point in his career.

QUOTE (joeynach @ Mar 22, 2010 -> 06:11 PM) Who are we facing opening day, pitcher that is. It's likely to be Jake Westbrook.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Mar 22, 2010 -> 04:43 PM) Didn't Maddux play with Peavy for a half season? Almost 2 full seasons. Lucky for Jake by the time their paths crossed he was already a big league vet so he likely avoided the wrath of Maddux's urine stream.

QUOTE (supernuke @ Mar 22, 2010 -> 04:33 PM) Ahhhh, good old Gold Gloves. The one and only true measure of defensive ability. What would we do without them. Well, he's probably the best CF I've ever seen but I'm thinking judging his current defensive ability based on what he accomplished in his youth might not be the best way to go about it. Ozzie on the other hand likes to bring up the GG both he and Omar have compiled over their careers so I'm thinking he puts a bit more weight on them than I do. Of course, by age 33 I wasn't crazy about watching Griffey hobble around CF, regardless of his 10 GG.

QUOTE (Buehrlesque @ Mar 22, 2010 -> 04:19 PM) I keep hearing this. Can someone tell me why the Sox prefer Jones in CF over Rios? 10 Gold Gloves speak for themselves!

QUOTE (joeynach @ Mar 22, 2010 -> 03:58 PM) Yeah look at gameday..Peavy is throwing like 96% fastballs. I wouldn't count on that to be accurate, they don't put much effort into spring games. This is just about the time where the starters start stretching out their arms a bit more and work on 1 pitch for several innings and his last outing seemed pretty offspeed pitch heavy.

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Mar 22, 2010 -> 03:47 PM) Well, aren't you a sweatheart Scenerio. Anyways. Peavy got shelled, but oh well, I am sure he was just working on a few pitches or locations. Beckham doubles, what else is new? 5-2 Royals. He's doing what veteran pitchers do during Spring games; he's working on his fastball. Just trying to put it where he wants to and not really worrying about getting hitters out. Greg Maddux was famous for this; he'd throw nothing but fastballs in some spring outings just trying to find his release point and develop muscle memory. He's basically throwing batting practice.

Cowley with plenty of new stuff from Ozzie (these are all individual tweets and they keep on coming):

I of course, missed the draft as I do every year with every f***ing fantasy league I play. I don't know why it's so f***ing hard for me to sit down at a computer at a specific time for 40 minutes but it certainly seems to be. Hooray for Randy Wells, Jorge Cantu and Ryan Rowland-Smith!

QUOTE (maggsmaggs @ Mar 21, 2010 -> 05:33 PM) A ton of money for a guy who plays a position where a real breakdown is possibility before the deal is up. That being said, no way you couldn't resign him if you are the Twins, they had to give him his $$. Scary, but Mauer signed cheaply, on the free agent market, he could have gotten more. Even if 4 years from now they had to move him from the catcher's position he'd just be one of the best hitters in the game at some other position, while still in his early 30's and making about as much as your average great 1B.

QUOTE (Princess Dye @ Mar 21, 2010 -> 04:19 PM) If he has a full year like the time he had with us last year, will he be an 'ugh-level' DH? For certain it wouldnt be that impressive, but I dont know about 'ugh.' These are great points about how he'd be decent production for a CF, etc...bad production for a DH... But I think of those as being valuable in constructing a team. Now that the team's constructed, I think we have to take a .350 OBP anywhere we can get it. Yeah he's be a light-hitting DH. But we've added power in the IF (and hopefully with CQ) to possibly offset that lack. If he gives us a year full of quality at-bats from the left hand side, he's giving us something we need every bit as badly as SLG, if not more. No he's not an outstanding player, obviously. But he fits a need. He can do something with the bat besides 'all-or-nothing.' I have long wanted more of that, be it at DH or elsewhere. He was healthy in '05 and '06 while leaving his prime and hit .278/.329/.405/.734 with 22 HRs in nearly 1200 PA, aside from a tiny sample with the Sox last season there's really no reason to believe he'd do any better than that ~735 OPS and 10 HR he put up when he was last healthy and somewhat youthful. This isn't some 28 year who's had a rash of bad luck injury wise, it's a mid-30 year old man who's body has been breaking down and just isn't nearly as talented as he once was. He won't be an all or nothing guy because he has no power, he'll just be an occasional doubles guy who doesn't get on base, play good defense anywhere but 1B or run well. In other words; not very good. Instead of making his outs via the K he'll make them via the weak popout and grounder, I don't see how that's much more exciting.

Good for them and good for the game of baseball. Seems like they did pretty well committing 8 years rather than the rumored 10. Given that Tex got 8 and $180M this seems about right. It's the fourth highest sum of money committed to one player in baseball history behind only Arod's 2 deals ($275M and $252) and Jeter ($189M).

QUOTE (Kenny Hates Prospects @ Mar 21, 2010 -> 12:33 PM) Yeah, and Rios was making $5.9M last year so you're overstating this just a tad, aren't you? Rios doesn't get expensive until this year ($9.7M - and BTW Mike Cameron got $7.25M per for 2 years, so maybe Rios really isn't all that expensive) and then in 2011 Rios starts making $12M per. And given Rios' talent level and career overall, I have no idea why last season should be so damning. No, not really. When you're given a $70M contract it doesn't really matter how it's structured, you're expected to produce at the level of player who's worthy of such a lucrative extension. So you give a guy a huge contract that's mostly backloaded and because of this your expectations are backloaded as well? That's ridiculous. I really only care about that first line as the rest of your post applies to me in no way, the only thing I'm arguing is the contention that Rios only had 2 bad months last year and what qualifies as "bad", "awful" or "subpar".

QUOTE (Ranger @ Mar 21, 2010 -> 02:31 AM) He had 2 awful months, 3 subpar months, and 1 pretty good one. And even if 5 of them were awful, it doesn't necessarily mean anything in terms of what is to come for him. Players will sometimes have anomalous poor seasons. Semantics. You see a .670 OPS from a 28 year old $70M, 3 hole hitter as "subpar" while in my world .750 would be subpar.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 20, 2010 -> 09:30 PM) that is a huge stretch. How? Aside from May his OPS's for each month were .728, .670, .663, .604, .553. The .728 is the only one that's not awful (I'd categorize it as bad) and that's made up by my calling a .553 OPS "awful" rather than something much, much stronger.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 20, 2010 -> 09:23 PM) I can't believe how much people are putting into a bad couple of months that look nothing like the rest of his career. Alex Rios had 5 awful months last year.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Mar 20, 2010 -> 06:42 PM) I think it's pretty silly, actually. What happened to the best 25 games breaking camp? He's unquestionably the best pitcher on the team. All this babying/coddling we have nowadays with young pitchers is very annoying. I don't think it has a single thing to do with coddling, they'll keep him in the minors until June when it'll be impossible to earn a year of service (earning them an extra year of control) and he won't be Super 2 eligible down the road. It's a business decision through and through.