Balta1701

Edwards joins in with a stronger statement than either of those 2.

Maybe Anderson will be downstairs in the batting cages working between at bats.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Apr 25, 2007 -> 12:06 PM) The day the firings happened, it should have been: 8 people were dismissed. They serve at the pleasure of the president, and we decided to move in a different direction. We thank them for their service. Questions? I understand where you're coming from, but here's a potential response. If these people were fired for not sufficiently politicizing their offices, or in other words to basically slow down/stop investigations of Republicans and encourage investigations of Democrats in order to try to win the 2006 election, would you have a problem with that? Most specifically, if the attorney prosecuting the Duke Cunningham case was fired so that the investigation in that case would not touch any higher-ups in the CIA, Pentagon, or administration, would you have a problem with that? I doubt that the law is clear on the last matter, but that is running awfully close to obstruction, and that seems to be a genuine part of this case.

QUOTE(Dick Allen @ Apr 25, 2007 -> 12:38 PM) Hunter didn't intentionally break a rule. It really would be absurd if he was punished in any way. Ignorance of a rule/law is no excuse for breaking it. There is cause for leniency here, but I would like to see something, if nothing else a small fine, handed out. Either that or just get rid of the rule.

QUOTE(joeynach @ Apr 25, 2007 -> 11:00 AM) You dont really see guys on contending teams like the Yanks, BoSox, Angels, etc who struggle to throw strikes. Walks per innings pitched out of the bullpens thus far in 2007. Boston .365 LAA .489 CHW .457 NYY .553 Player and walks/innings pitched this season: Darren Oliver 1.125000007 Boone Logan 1 Andy Pettitte 1 Colter Bean 1 Luis Vizcaino 0.833333333 Mike MacDougal 0.666666667 Greg Jones 0.666666667 Scott Proctor 0.636363636 Kyle Farnsworth 0.600000024 Andrew Sisco 0.563380282 Jonathan Papelbon 0.54545457 Nick Masset 0.525000013 Chris Britton 0.5 Mike Myers 0.5 Scot Shields 0.483870968 Chris Bootcheck 0.480000019 Joel Pineiro 0.461538461 Brian Bruney 0.454545455 Justin Speier 0.416666667 Matt Thornton 0.392156863 Hector Carrasco 0.387096787 Mike Timlin 0.352941176 Hideki Okajima 0.346153846 Javier Lopez 0.333333333 Francisco Rodriguez 0.333333333 J.C. Romero 0.31578949 Mariano Rivera 0.31578949 David Aardsma 0.315789465 Dustin Moseley 0.3000003 Bobby Jenks 0.257142856 Sean Henn 0.243243244 Brendan Donnelly 0.230769233 Kyle Snyder 0.187500001

Dante Hall goes to the Rams for a 5th round pick.

QUOTE(DrunkBomber @ Apr 25, 2007 -> 09:41 AM) I saw them talking about this on the news. This is really interesting. I wonder how long until they send something out there to check it out. A long, long, long time.

Mark Salas is not a porn star.

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Apr 25, 2007 -> 09:02 AM) Is OPS really a great indicator of how valuable a lead off hitter is? How important is slugging PCT when your job is to just get on base and slap hits? A majority of his career has been batting lead off. He has done that to a tune of a .299 avg .354 OBP and .809 OPS (for Craig). I would say thats a pretty good line. Darin Erstad has not batted leadoff for a majority of his career, first of all. He has 2251 at bats as a leadoff hitter, and 5330 at bats overall. That is 42%. Secondly, you're looking at a very biased stat line there, because of Erstad's one good season. Erstad saw 746 plate appearances and 675 at bats in the leadoff spot during the 2000 season. In Erstad's best season, he hit leadoff almost every time. From 2004 to 2006, much more recent data, he has only been in the #1 slot for 170 at bats. He has put up a .259 average, .315 OBP, and .709 OPS in that slot. And I would add that while OPS is not a great indicator of the quality of a leadoff hitter, there are ways to evaluate them. First, you can look at OBP, which for Erstad is simply not his strength, because he doesn't take a walk and eveyrone knows it. But beyond that, if a guy is leading off and doesn't have a high OPS, one thing he can do to help is steal a lot of bases, because it makes it so that he's in scoring position when he is on base and distracts the pitcher. Unfortunately, Erstad doesn't do that very well either. He'll get a handful, but certainly not enough to even qualify as a good leadoff guy.

QUOTE(Tony82087 @ Apr 25, 2007 -> 08:10 AM) My problem is this is the choice the Sox have to make. Erstad or Anderson. Those being the only two real options just make me sad. I think the Sox did pretty darn well in setting up what they needed this season personally, I just think they aren't handling it the right way. The price on all the out-of-house options was clearly through the roof, as the previous person pointed out. The thing the Sox needed last year was a backup, Lefty outfielder who could play good defense and give Anderson time to develop and hopefully work through the kinks. They found exactly that. That was good. Then, they decided to sit Anderson 80% of the games. That is the mistake. To even make things better, the Sox went out and grabbed a guy who, although he's a bit older, put up a >.900 OPS in AAA for the D-Backs last year in Terrero, who also plays good defense. If we're not going to be a $200 million a year salary team, this is exactly how we should set ourselves up. We have a talented kid who struggled last season. We have a backup option from the other side of the plate. And we have another backup option who is not as much of a prospect, but who might well turn into a decent bench player if our youngest option needs to get sent back to AAA. There are 2 ways that we should be doing this, and we're doing neither. If Erstad is the starting OF, then Brian Anderson should be in AAA and Terrero should be up as a platoon partner. If Anderson is the starting OF, then he should be on pace for 500 + at bats until either we give up on him completely and send him down or someone gets hurt. I'm not a huge Erstad fan, but I'll tolerate him succeeding if it helps the team. But what really bugs me about this situation is how the White Sox are dealing with their young guys. We are simply not going to remain competitive in the next few years if we can not keep subbing in some of our young guys to free up salary. Sweeney, Anderson, Owens, Fields...some of those guys need to become regulars. We just don't have the salary freedom to put in a $10 mil + guy at every position. We need to develop some of these guys. Anderson is a prime candidate to turn into a Crede...a guy who struggles at first offensively but grows into the role. But he is not going to do that in 100 at bats. Either play him every day, or send him down and give Terrero a shot...there's at least a non zero chance that Terrero could turn into a very good OF as well.

QUOTE(Jordan4life_2007 @ Apr 24, 2007 -> 09:04 PM) Could the Cubs possibly be worse than last year? Does being slightly better and spending a lot more money count?

Andy Marte to the DL with a hamstring issue. Shin Soo Choo called up. Casey Blake takes over as the Indians regular 3rd baseman.

QUOTE(BearSox @ Apr 24, 2007 -> 06:28 PM) who cares... I could see if it was almost like bribes for beating up on such team, to give them more motivation or something, but this was probably a cheap bottle of champagne all out of jest. This shouldn't even be an issue. According to Hunter on the Dan Patrick show, he spent at least $500 on it.

QUOTE(whitesoxfan101 @ Apr 25, 2007 -> 07:24 AM) Just get 1 in Miami to come home 3-1 and it's over in 5. The Bulls are just too quick and deep, and Wade and Shaq aren't themselves. Win this next game and let the Heat decide whether they even want to bother showing up for game 4. They're old, banged up, and may just not have the fight in them to try to come back 3-0.

QUOTE(Craig Grebeck @ Apr 25, 2007 -> 08:59 AM) Here are players with similar or worse OPS from 2001-2006 than Darin Erstad. http://www.baseball-reference.com/pi/shareit/aRXn There's at least one hall-of-famer on that list!

Kick some kitty arse, john.

QUOTE(Dick Allen @ Apr 24, 2007 -> 07:44 PM) Sweeney is going to be out there next year.Both KW and OG are big fans. I think next offseason we may see why this offseason KW didn't even try to spend money. He'll have to sign somebody if Dye goes. To my eyes, we have 4-5 potential OF's in our system. Fields, Sweeney, Anderson, and Owens...5 if you count Terrero. I'm going to be really disappointed if we can't find a way to get at least 2 of them into the lineup as starters next year...because that means that the Young trade looks even worse, and our Minor league system has really decided to start screwing up talented people.

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Apr 24, 2007 -> 07:38 PM) Well its about time for Mr. Anderson to get his rust off in the comfort of Charlotte. In fact the honey's down in Charlotte would be excited to meet a real life major leaguer. I think it's about time to see Mr. Terrero get a shot also.

Prior has shoulder surgery , and in the latest of continuing ominous developments, the Cubs did not say whether or not it found anything.

Chris Carpenter threw a ball today. Akinori Iwamura to the DL, Jorge Cantu called up. Randy Johnson makes his first start of the year.

So, I'd suggest anyone with a passing interest in the disaster that is the U.S. health care system should take some time to read through this summary piece on health care systems throughout the world, especially before this issue winds up dominating the discussion within a couple years.

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Apr 24, 2007 -> 04:53 PM) If the Bears can move up to 6th, I would like them to pick up Amobi Okoye. He is 19, could help strengthen the interior defensive line and we could send Tank and his insanity to someone else. Another pressure guy with Tommie Harris would be nice. We could get more pressure up front, and allow the linebackers and dbs to play the cover 2 correctly. Tank is one of those guys I'd hate for the Bears to wind up having to trade, because his trade value is so low because of his off the field stuff. It'd be damn hard to come up with equal value for him without at least a full season, if not more, with no trouble. It'd also be really disappointing for the Bears to invest so much effort in trying to help him out and giving him so many chances only to turn their backs on him.

QUOTE(danman31 @ Apr 24, 2007 -> 09:22 AM) No more relievers in the first 5 rounds please. With the youth already in our bullpen right now, there's no good reason to draft a reliever for the next year or two in any of the early rounds. Much more pressing needs in position players.

So, it's time to link some more fun to this story. One of the fired attorneys is David Iglesias, the guy who was illegally called by a Republican Senator to try to bring pressure on him to bring cases favorable to the Republican election efforts. Yesterday, it was announced that an investigation had begun into Karl Rove, for potentially having advised government employees to do things specifically benefiting one party, including some of the U.S. attorneys. The man who it seems tipped off the Office of Special Counsel about Mr. Rove's actions? David Iglesias, who filed a Hatch act complaint with the Feds about Mr. Rove.

QUOTE(witesoxfan @ Apr 24, 2007 -> 03:52 PM) you're willing to write him off after 137 career plate appearances. Jesus Yeah, Everyone knows that it takes at least 408 AB's before you can write a person off as a failure for life.