southsideirish71

Just remember the other hand also. That this mythical 6 millions dollars in savings will not be spent if we are say 10 games back by July. If we are 10 games back by July there will be another salary dump, you can book that. Konkero will most definately be gone as well as others.

Garland has the tools, but doesnt do well with pressure. That is why an error, or just mental fortitude causes him to walk a few hitters and then groove a pitch down the cock to be slammed. First few years? Garland has been a major league pitcher for more than a few years. This is the point he should start to mature and get over the hump. Buerhle is a success because he is aggressive and ptiches without fear. Garland on the other hand pitches without fear and then at some point in the game, loses his grip. The reason I think his ERA will plummet in the 5th starter role. As a fifth starter he will get paired up against other 5s and possibly 4s. He would be better than just about 90 percent of the pitchers he would face in this role and therefore would have a better chance to win the game. As a fifth starter the pressure to be perfect is not there. He can just throw instead of thinking of every pitch and what happens with it. Garland has all the talent in the world, just not the stones to win. You take the pressure off of him he will pitch a lot better. I think the hype last year of "this is his year" was too much.

The best PR move for this team would be to sign clement and pick up AJ. AJ is a dick and all, but he teaming up with our catching crew would be killer. Make him the primary catcher and use Ben Davis to catch a few guys saving AJ's knees. With AJ in the lineup we could deal with Willie Harris at 2nd. LF Pod SS Uribe RF Dye 1B Konerko DH Thomas(Everett) CF Rowand C AJ 3B Crede 2B Harris

No, Grilli is another non option. He has okay stuff. But again he is someone that needs to avoid the big inning. I dont know if he has the mental makeup of it. Its one thing to have your 5th starter who has a tendancy to give up 4 runs in a big inning. At least we could use our bullpen to go longer. All we are looking for in that situation is 5 innings. But now that we add the wild card Garland. Garland can come out and just look like cy young. The next start he could look like cy young and then when something goes wrong he walks a few and gives up the big inning. Having one pitcher who has the possiblity of either looking good or bad in a start is one thing. Having multiple pitchers in the starting rotation will stretch our bullpen. Its also a domino effect. If Garland is our number 5. I think his ERA is south of 4.30. He is someone that thinks too much on the mound. He lets things build up. Putting him in the number 3 spot last year was a huge pressure point. Yes he has the stuff to be a number 3. But he needs to get some confidence to do that. At some point Jon will start to believe in his stuff and then will be a guy who can win 17 games. Saying that, contreras is a mixed bag also. As a number 3 he can look like cy young or cy disaster. I think the cost of getting a big time FA pitcher will be offset by the change in the makeup not only pyschology of our rotation. We move contreras and garland down. We lessen the stress on them and make them only that much better.

The deadline money thing is a red herring. Remember that yes we will take on that players salary at the mid season point. But we will lose something else that is harder to replace. That is prospects. We are not a 100 million dollar team, so our prospects must mix in with our FA's to fill out our team. The more impact players we trade away to save a few bucks for the first few months the more we hurt ourselves for years to come. But if we could pick up a ben sheets...

As I see it the only possiblity is for Hermansen to take over the 5th starter. The rest of our guys need to either work on confidence or get a pair. We have seen this with numerous prospect pitchers that have come up. They get up and dance all over the strike zone almost afraid that the hitter will make contact. They walk everyone in site and then give up the big bomb. Garland still does this from time to time. His stuff should get him through anything. He should be south of the 4 ERA line not north of the 5 ERA. Lets look under the hood of what we have in house. Diaz. A lot of people like this guy. He does great in AAA, dominates it. Does good in the winter leagues. My only concerns is the quality of this guys stuff. He is a control pitcher who has a very straight fastball. He is about deception and pitch count. A free swinging team will look bad against him. Aka the first time he faced the cubs. But a team that takes a pitch or gets locked in just on his fastball will kill him. I think his confidence took a knock and if he goes out to start against the Injuns he will gets destroyed. Cotts. Deceptive delivery. Lack of control. Again free swingers will go down against him. His problem is when someone works the count. He needs to develop a better breaking pitch. He has his fastball, his slider or fastcurve and his change. His change isnt something he gets over. And his slider/fastcurve is about the same velocity as his fastball. I question his mental makeup also. He completely self destructs ala the Ricky Vaughn. He is best to leave in as a reliever. Munoz. Great curveball. But again he needs to get it over for strikes. If he does this his fastball is sneakyfast. Has better breaking stuff that the above two. He needs more time to mature. Atkins. Possibly serviceable. He needs to concentrate more on his location. Good breaking pitch. Needs to learn how to pitch effectively in the zone. Not to just groove a pitch ala Mike Jackson every so often. Diaz is great in the dominican league, he is great in AAA. But how comfortable do you feel putting him on the bump with cleveland? Hermansen at least knows how to pitch as a major league pitcher. And lets be honest, he has to be better than what we saw last year. Hell I think that most of us could pick up a mitt, drive to the cell, and have better results that some of the number 5 starters did.

This late night rants are due to the dwindling market for prime FA pitchers. KW said last year pitching was the key. Colon got away, Flash, and we wound up with Cotts and Jackson in the pen. Our pen is a hell of a lot better than last year. But we are missing the number one thing that was identified as a problem from last year. JR himself said on the Score that the only reason we lost last year was due to the number 5 starter. When the chairman makes that statement its obviously an issue. But to get shutout on this is a huge issue. Its not only a PR issue, but an issue with the makeup of this team. Last year when the number 5 spot came up the sox played like crap. It was almost like the team felt is was an automatic loss. Filling this with a top tier FA was a huge priority. It not only fills a need, but helps with the team makeup. Trotting Garland out as your 4 is ok, but diaz/cotts/grilli etc at 5 is not going to do it. Plus this puts more pressure on Garland. How roasted will he get if he gives up his 5 run crap this year. When someone with a 7 ERA follows him in the rotation.

Maybe they can borrow the Bulls PR campaign Jimmy you are going to a sox game? But they got rid of everyone. You can tell me not to go see my sox. Where else can you see Randy Johnson, those amazing Twins, and Alex Rodriguez. But they dumped salary and put it in their own pockets. Think about it, box seats right behind third base all to myself. I am on the bandwagon before it gets going. We have Pods, Arow, and have you seen our minor leagues. Sweeney, Bmac, honel, and Anderson. Ozzie will have this team flying and playing to win. Well have fun with these kids can play Jimmy. You are missing out, these kids can play is right. And you know I love my whitesox, Through thick and thin.

He will probably sign some reclamation project for the 5th starter. Someone who used to be good and he believes he can get lightening in a bottle from. He will have his payroll at a good point and call it a day. JR happy, KW happy, sox fans pissed. :fyou :puke

Well we can add BMAC to the list of people that can compete for the 5th starter role for 2006.

But if the 10 million dollar contract is actually the usual money on the backend, deferred, team option, you will get your money later crap that we tried to pull on Colon. You can kiss Clement goodbye. If the contract is fair market value maybe we get a home town discount. We will see I would say in the next day or so.

I can see it now. Diaz is ready to throw the first pitch. He is a control pitcher who has pinpoint control. Ball one. He is a proven winner in the minors. Ball two. He has an electric makeup. And there is a drive, and this one is out of here. Wow tape measure shot. Well it didnt travel as far as borchards. And Cleveland is up 1-0. Neil Cotts and Artie Munoz are warmin in the pen. The sox cant seem to get any consistancy in this series. Jon Garland pitched one hell of a game last night, outside the 5th inning where he gave up a grand slam to Travis Hafner. Grilli looks to be the next to get a shot as the sox are out of options at the number 5 spot. *SHUTTERS

Everyone was predicting either a 75 or 80 million dollar payroll. I keep going back to the fact that we hit 65 in 2001, dumped salary, we hit it again last year. I think Uncle Jerry is pretty happy with the salary staying at that 65 million mark. He gets the comcast deal and maybe he gets some fans through the turnstyles. Its a win win. Plus doesnt he have some sort of aggreement based on attendance for rent for the stadium. The only good thing is that none of the other teams in the central got stronger. I dont want to see showenweis, diaz or grilli start. Showenweis is not a good starter. He gives up too many long balls. Diaz doesnt have the melon to start. He has Cotts disease. He goes from a control pitcher to someone lofting up 85 mph meatballs on 2-0 3-1. Grilli reminds me more of garland. He has the stuff, but he will self destruct for an inning and give up 4 or 5 runs. Hey we havent seen any retread action from Kenny this offseason. He usually has some retread to get lightening in a bottle from. If he pops out with Andy my arm has fallen off Asby we are doomed.

This is what is going to happen, unfortunately. The dogers are in the mix to be Arizonas trading partner. So that would leave us without Vasquez or RJ. Clement will sign for BoSox or Ana. When Clement signs the pack of wolves that is left will go after Perez. Lowe will sign with the tigers. Hey but look on the bright side. Uncle Jerry gets to pocket some nice money making him happy. And we get to our 65 million dollar payroll just like last year.

Hes a guy that needs to hit to right and center first. When he does this he hits a hell of a lot better. When he purposely pulls the ball with his step in the bucket approach he is done. If he looks center away and then pulls the mistake pitch in, then he will be a star. That is the difference between when Uribe hits and when Uribe slumps.

Thank god Harry has radio, who wants to see his mug and those man boobs. f*** him and f*** the cubs :fthecubs

Great attitude so far.

If he hits 285 with 60-70 SBs we should be great.

He should host a celebrity texas hold em tourney. If he starts giggling like a school girl during a bet he might have a hand.

Anyone who watched the sox remembers them going off in one game and then getting shut out by some 1-10 pitcher with a 6 ERA. We made bad pitchers look like Cy Young all of the time. Silvy obviously didnt watch too many games. Most years you have at least one good tear, hell the Tampa Bay Devil rays had a good run where they wont like 14 in a row. I think we won 5 or 6 in a row. We couldnt keep a streak together except for a bad streak in August. Minny did everything they could to give us the division. Remember even after play so bad in august we were still only a few games out of it. If we had a decent 5th starter and a more consistant offense we would of won this division hands down. Jay and Silvy are tugging on each others nuts right now over this. This is the best thing that could of happened for Jay.

One of the reasons we lost last year according to Silverman is that we didnt have a closer. Takatsu is a hard name to remember I guess.

Blah Blah Blah Ballmall Blah Blah Blah Ballmall These two strokes need another gimmick.

He had some pretty good statistical numbers. But I will say that the Carlos Lee that was hitting line drives and hitting to right field was a very dangerous player. This is the player we saw during the hitting streak. Then he with the help of Greg Walker decided to change his approach to a power centric hitting approach. Flash and Jeckle can remember me posting stuff on this during the games in chat. His approach to the plate changed during the most in opportune time during the first few weeks of August. He started pulling the ball for power. His power numbers went up, but so did his strike outs and the amount of men he left on in scoring position. Between his home run cuts and valentins glove that Minny series could of been won and what tone would that of set. I think Carlos Lee does have all of the natural abililties, but I think he is more of a dangerous hitter when he doesnt pull as much and uses his line drive swing. He has enough power still to hit 25-35 home runs with his stature. But I think with Maggs and Thomas gone he put it on himself to hit home runs. At the end of the season Carlos put it all together. He was hitting to right with power and was pulling the inside pitch in. But how many people remember how that any pitcher could own the sox last year by painting the outside corner. As long as you painted the outside corner about 90 percent of the time you could own this team. Why because we got into the pull crazy home run mode. We need to change this methodology. We need our hitters to use the entire field. Instead of trying to park pitches in the stands.

Everytime a trade comes up or rumors start everyone starts a pissing party. Unless the guy is God someone would get pissed. God is probably overpayed would be the comment. I remember comming out here during the games and on the whitesoxcentral chat and would see the same comments. People loved how Arow would play, wished more of the team would play like that and how our team only goes for homers. Corpseball is the term that was thrown around. Reading time and time again how they cant believe how team members were obviously trying to hit home runs in contact situations with the game on the line. How we hit so many home runs without anyone on base. We must lead the league in solo home runs, If I see another home run swing on 0-2 I will puke. Does everyone remember these comments. We have such short term memories. We all like the idea of the big bopper, the home run hitter. But it doesnt work. Pitching wins, especially in the playoffs(that we havent gotten to in a few years mind you). We have sat and watched time and time again on how the weak hitting MInny Twins without power would kick our asses every year after August. Why because they do the little things. We need more of that on our team. That is why these moves are being made. Yes they save us money. Which I am sure makes JR happy. But this team needed to be blown up and rebuilt around another philosophy. And it was a bit harder than just changing coaches or batting instructors. How many times did we have to read from Von Joshua or even Ozzie about how they couldnt change the mentality of our hitters for going for the fences. Maybe this will change their thought processes. If Carlos Lee is not untouchable maybe it will change some of our hitters who feel that they can ignore the coaching staff and try to park one so they can see fireworks instead of making contact and driving in the run. Maybe this will change us into more of a team instead of a few power hitters who put up impressive stats. And before you discount the impact of pod, remember how many of you wanted this guy and that guy because the would steal on us last year like crazy. Brian Roberts stole on us, we should trade for him was the call after we played the Orioles last year. If he gets some more patience at the plate and gets on more he will be a good leadoff. Remember for all you how Willie has a higher OBP people, Willie would take a 2 foot lead with the green light from Ozzie to steal at will. Pod has the knack to swipe a base.

Sorry I didnt type the sarcasm in green.