southsideirish71

Everyone needs to chill on losing our savior Carlos Lee. Everyone looks at his home runs and power stats, but forgets when he ran like a fool out on the basepaths, struck out with men on all during that Minny series because he was trying to hit an 0-2 count homer when we needed a base hit. Yes Carlos is a great talent, but he was always bullheaded on his approach. Remember when he changed his hitting style in the middle of the year because his power numbers were lacking. If we had the Carlos Lee who hit line drives and made contact during that stretch in August instead of power hitting softball players we might have made a run for it. I want more Arow type players grinders on this team. The power hitting theory doesnt work. I know we won the AL Central the last 5 years in a row but we need to change our philosophy. Everyone wants a change, but they dont want to change our players. These players have not changed their methods through hitting coaches after hitting coaches and manager changes. Maybe its time to look at the players and its good to change the dynamic. Now lets take that money and get Perez or Clement.

Bruce Levine reportedly is camping outside the mens bathroom to get first reaction of the trade talks. KW is in mens stall number 4 saying something about number 1 and number 2. When Bruce approached him in the bathroom he was quickly told to get the hell out. A trade must be pending. AM1000 will be first on the scene when the trade gets released.

I thought that Bruce could talk with a toothpick in his mouth. If its the Toronto deal that would suck. At least the Brewers deal has a 70 SB guy in the mix. Something we need. A leadoff hitter and he is cheap which fits JR's model. If they do this and get some money and then sign Matt Clement then its not so unpalatable.

Boston Gammons was on ESPN News talking how RJ wants out of Arizona and that even with their improvements they might only win 75 games. So he wants to the Yanks and the WhiteSox as the third team is the only route. Now the only spin on this is that he mentioned Lee and Garland as the trick that will get this done. With Pauly on his last year I was hoping we would move him over Lee. But this still has life.

http://www.sports-wired.com/teams/team.asp?Name=H Its the ultimate chicken and egg controversy. It seems that everytime we are about to break that 2 mill mark we shoot ourselves in the foot. Last year we were well on our way to break that 2 mill then the choke happened and of course attendance tails off. In 97 we got close then we have the white flag trade. And in 94 we were on our way with only a partial season. I have heard rumors that JR gets some breaks on the lease if attendance is below a certain mark. I dont know if that is true but maybe the sub 70 million payroll and the sub 2 million marks make for a better profit for JR. Now JR always says if we had the proper attendance we could increase payroll. Does anyone really believe if we had a 2.4 million attendance that we would be seeing a 80-90 mill salary range. I dont know.

http://msn.foxsports.com/story/3228400 I am sure this has been posted already but the same two headed monster that beat us the last two years in Minny is back to make a run at three years. Radke resigned with minny. More fun for us.

If we get too far along and plan Z doesnt work. The Chicago Whitesox have announced the free agency acquisition of Mike "TwoCan" Smith from Oak Lawn today. He is a 6'2 290 pound right hander who played for Oak Lawn high school and made the varsity team. He was signed to a minor league deal and will be invited to spring training. They have also offered a contract to Prisoner 78634D of Cook County division 9. They are working out a work release program to get him to the south side. KW was quoted as saying "The Whitesox are excited to get two players of this quality this far along in the FA period." "We had a series of scouts who watched as 78634D escaped 4 times and was arrested for theft 10 times. He is a proven stealer and knows how to escape from difficult situations. TwoCan will compete for the 5th starter roll. In his last high school game he lasted 5 innings and struck out 4 against Argo. He brings an electric 82 mph fastball and a A+ curveball. He is excited to leave his work as a best buy sales guy and to get to playing ball for a living. Ozzie Guillen was so excited he passed out when he heard we were getting these types of players. Now our owner has some exciting news. JR " Today we have completed a series of block buster trades. I have traded Mark Buerhle and Garcia to the New York yankees for money and a PTBNL. Paul Konerko was traded with John Garland for Jimmy Vasquez. Javier would cost too much money. Brooks boyer has a new marketing theme " WhiteSox baseball we dont give a crap about you the would be fan" I am going to go home and count my money. Remember the less people who show up the less I have to pay in rent to our landlords.

And then we took fans from the stands who never pitched in their lives to throw every fifth game. I love pitching lines like 2.2 innings 7 walks 7 hits 9 runs and it looks that another 5th starter will be going back to AAA.

Maybe Hawk can nickname Robbie boomerang. We keep throwing him away and he keeps coming back.

Just imagine the tigers or the injuns strollin into our launching pad to face byrd. We need a hard thrower or someone with real deceptive stuff. These feel guys are going to get killed. I mean Mark Buerhle has real good stuff and got lit up for 7-8 runs when his stuff got bad agains the injuns.

Remember this owner defies logic. He has a team that is in first place and has a great chance of getting to the post season and to the world series. What do you do. You be the guy to champion locking the players out killing the season. Then you give up when only a few games back. Then you blame the fans for not showing up as the reason you cant sign free agents. Now with your more than banner reputation you have a hard time attracting said free agents. Cry that you dont have money after you started this little comcast money making channel deal. Now sign a 38 year old pitcher and call it a success. Maybe we can trade Ryan Sweeney, McCarthy and cash for Everett ...damn he is on the team.....well someone might sign alomar. Last year we heard the we need grinders montra. Did they get any grinders. No. Then they miss out on Flash and sign Mike Jackson. Flash wanted to much money. This year JR states on the radio, the only reason we lost to the twins this year was because of the number 5 starter. Now he is a man of his word. He will find a number 5 starter no matter what minor league incentive backloaded deal it requires. And when the indians and the tigers have higher payrolls than us. He will quote well Minny did it with no money and look at those amazing fish that did it. They of course had a stocked minor system like the sox did in the early 90s. You have to either buy your talent or stock it yourself. You cant have ass it and try to do it halfway on either side. You wind up with 500 teams and 4th place finishes. Which would be ok if we were in the AL East or West but we are in the central for gods sake.

You keep saying that we are glad we didnt get him. So what praytell do you see as the answer for our 5th starter retard-a-thon we march out there to go 1-15 last year. Who do you think we will go after and how much money do you think it will cost.

We burned that bridge. He will sign with the devil rays and one hit us when we have Jason Grilli starting against him later this year.

I disagree. I think this will drive the market. The mets started this crap by giving Benson the big contract based on nothing. Now Wright gets big money based on one season and a lot of injuries. This is similiar to real estate. You watch the values of other properties to set a price and then you go from there. I think Wright is a good pitcher and all but a Matt Clement or a Pavano bring more to the table and are worth more. You can bet that their agents are noting statistical splits to bring to the table. This will only ehance their value. Plus as more of these pitchers go off the market the more demand there is for the remaining. Which will create more demand and drive up the prices. My absolute worse case scenario for this year. Is that we add some C level free agent or old guy who hasnt played baseball in a year or so, or we go with the 5 headed monster at number 5. The tigers get pavano. And we wind up fighting the royals for 4th place. If we are at that point around the trade deadline with heavy priced Konerko and Lee do you really doubt that we will not dump those plays for "a chance to retool for 2006" I dont trust Reinsdorf or his salary requirements.

Well who do you really think we will sign and for what real dollar amount.

I am sick of having these soft tossing location pitchers who get killed when they come up to the majors and realize that the large minor league strikezone is a thing of the past and that you cant get by with a 3-1 85 mph fastball anymore. We have a guy in class A that throws 98. KW better not trade that guy. The last guy we had that had a cannon like that we traded and he threw chairs into the stands.

Kenny will eventually trade whatever trade pick we would of given up away in some last minute trade deadline deal. So why keep them.

Our Mike Jackson replacement is Felix Diaz.

How much do you think Clement and Pavano are going to cost with the Yanks and Mets setting this price. Do you really see the sox paying that asking price. I dont care if we got Wright or not. I am more upset at the salary level that these fringe pitchers are getting. It sets a unrealistic and unatainable salary level for the sox. We will go back to the lightening in a bottle theory and hope some C level pitcher can have a career season next year. Thanks New York for nothing.

Watching what I would of thought would be more attainable FA's sign elsewhere(Visquel and Wright) leaves me with a pit in my stomach. We will need to outbid Detroit who all of a sudden has boatloads of money, the Yanks, Cleveland and Boston for Pavano and Wright. This of course is not going to happen. I wonder what plan Z is for the sox.

Well JR will need to increase the payroll to 71 million to justify we have the largest payroll in the AL Central.

After that enchanting lip service from our chairman I feel real good. The money comment has me more than bothered. I see our payroll sitting about the same as last year. I believe we will fill the 5th starter roll. But will not attract a top tier FA. Everyone is worried about the Twins, but if the indians get Matt Clement and Troy Percival with that offense we will be in more trouble. The Tigers have money to spend. This is starting to become a depressing hotstove season already.

Miguel Cabera came up quickly with the Marlins and made a difference. He started 2003 in AA and then was called up in June for the Marlins. The Whitesox usually take a real long time to promote outfielders through the system. Maybe we are going to be a bit more aggressive with our prospects. I think this is a good idea, as we have seen that keeping people in the minors forever doesnt necessarily promote their success. IE Joe Borchard.

I hear that Atlanta was going to getting ready to give Leo Mazzone the boot if they could get their hands on our pitching genius Don Cooper

Walk worked with Carlos this year and specifically worked with him to change his swing from a compact line drive swing to a extend your arms and hit home runs. This is why I blame him. Von Joshua was the one who stated that our hitters were listening to their agents and couldnt resist the power number appeal. He basically called our hitters out as money grubbing mopes.