Balta1701

QUOTE(Heads22 @ Dec 23, 2006 -> 05:04 PM) It's pretty damn clear that KW is comfortable with BA in CF. I thought it was pretty damn clear than KW was comfortable with McCarthy in the rotation when he traded Freddy Garcia to make room for him. I hope you're right and I'm wrong.

QUOTE(beck72 @ Dec 23, 2006 -> 04:59 PM) I think this also shows how much the Sox like Haeger and believe in what he can give the sox in 2007. Then deal one of the other starting pitchers who hit Free Agency after 2007-2008 at a much higher cost. Don't deal the one who hits Free Agency in 2011.

QUOTE(Craig Grebeck @ Dec 23, 2006 -> 04:54 PM) You can suck and still win games. I care a hell of a lot more about the quality of their innings pitched than how many games they won. I completely understand what you're getting at Balta, it's just frustrating as hell to read these chicken littles compare some of the best prospects in baseball to Felix Diaz, Dan Wright, Arnie Munoz, Jason Grilli, etc. First of all, watch yourself on the insult towards people. Secondly, I would have loved to get more quality innings out of El Duque as well. But it's simply hard for me to ignore the fact that he was one of those bi-modal type pitchers, either he was really good or really bad. Because he had enough really bad games, his overall numbers were really bad, but he also gave us a good share of really good games, which is why he wound up with 9 wins. McCarthy gave us some even better games on top of those. Wins do mean something. They're a hard stat to evaluate, but they can be damn important. Especially for a team like the 2005 white sox, where the offense wasn't carrying the team at all, if a pitcher puts up fairly poor numbers and still wins 10 games, or 2 pitchers put up poor to decent numbers and still win 15 games, they're figuring out ways to get the job done.

Texas is, to my eyes, now officially a major threat to win the American League the next 2 years. I essentially disagree with every single reason given for accepting the McCarthy deal in this post. I can live with the Garcia deal. It makes sense. The McCarthy deal does not. Who will be our Left handed starter? We have 2 candidates in Gio and Philipps hanging out at AAA already.

QUOTE(Craig Grebeck @ Dec 23, 2006 -> 04:40 PM) Fifth starter woes? Anyone remember 2005? El Duque gave us 130 downright bad innings. ERA+ of 87. McCarthy was slightly better, but it's not like we had five guys light the world on fire. Granted, the other four peaked considerably that year, we only had 3 guys in the entire lineup that were above average offensively (using OPS+, I'll check their eqa later). But you know what else that 5th starter spot gave us, despite relatively bad numbers? A sh*t load of wins. 9 wins out of El Duque and 6 out of McCarthy by my count. That's 15 wins. Compared to the 0 we had from the 5th starter spot in 2003 through the first half of 2004. El Duque had a ton of sh*tty games, and McCarthy had his fair share early in the season. But those 2 guys were key in helping the team pile up 99 wins. Between 2003-2005, they were the difference between an 85 win team and a 99 win team.

QUOTE(EvilMonkey @ Dec 23, 2006 -> 04:33 PM) Come on, are you sure Brandon would make it? He had as mixed a bag as any of the others. Yes, he showed some good stuff, but he also sucked sometimes too. Bmac could be a big bust. Or, he could not. I have more confidence, just from what I've seen, of Brandon becoming a quality top or near-top of the rotation starter than I do with any other pitching prospect in our organization right now.

QUOTE(EvilMonkey @ Dec 23, 2006 -> 04:29 PM) But we have like seven people that could take that spot. Or there could be another trade. Or a FA? Kenny Williams is not stupid enough to spend money on a starting pitcher in this Free Agent market, and I don't blame him one bit.

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Dec 23, 2006 -> 04:22 PM) You bring up a very good point. We have Dye who if he has a similar season will get paid well, especially in the AL. So what praytell are they doing there. Buerhle is going to make good bank for a long time. To my eyes, if you're willing to back off the accelerator in 2007 by trading away McCarthy and going with Haeger/ST contest winner as your 5th starter, then you may as well take the added step and try to get someone to bite on Buehrle or Dye as well. I would almost guarantee you the Dodgers would take a flyer on Dye for a pretty big deal right now, and they have the talent to make it work.

QUOTE(Chisoxfn @ Dec 23, 2006 -> 04:19 PM) That would be an outstanding move. Plus its a great guy to have around the Sox young arms. The White Sox have plenty of veteran guys around their young arms right now. Edit: if anything, we could use a veteran type guy in the bullpen, because that's the area we sure don't have one. Anyone else remember how much Hermanson helped Jenks along 2 years ago after Dustin got hurt?

So, given that at least to my eyes, this is the first deal that we've done that does not have any hope of making us better in 2007, but instead is almost certain to weaken the White Sox in 2007, does anyone think Kenny may now be slightly more willing to weaken the Sox in 07 by dealing some of the other guys who hit FA next offseason?

QUOTE(Craig Grebeck @ Dec 23, 2006 -> 04:12 PM) If this is your reaction now, I can't wait until we trade/let walk the rest of the starters in the next few years. I would have been happier had any other pitcher in our rotation been included in this deal instead of McCarthy.

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Dec 23, 2006 -> 04:06 PM) Stuff guys, outside of Danks and Gio now. Who are these stuff guys. Gavin Floyd absolutely falls into the category of a "Stuff guy", in that he has the potential and stuff to be a very dominant pitcher. That's how he wound up as a #4 draft pick. But, the problem is, not all "Stuff" guys wind up succeeding in the big leagues.

So, you know what's bothering me about this deal? It's the upside/downside ratio. In the Garcia deal, the potential upside was pretty big. We got 2 upper-minor-league, high draft level pitching prospects, one a righty and one a lefty. Because they're prospects, there is still a big risk, but there is a potentially very high upside. On top of that, we also saved $9 million next year. Here, similarly, there is a potentially high upside. 3 pitching prospects, 2 fairly high caliber ones and a throw-in. However, the potential downsides in both deals are wildly divergent. In the Garcia deal, the potential downside is we lose Freddy Garcia for 1 year, and lose a couple of compensatory draft picks. If Garcia had a good year for us, there would be no chance of us resigning him, and if Garcia was cheap enough for us to resign, he'd have had such a bad year we wouldn't want him. The potential downside of that deal was missing 1 year of Garcia. Here however, the potential downside is far, far higher. We lose out on McCarthy for around 5 years, instead of 1. The potential upside of 5 years of Brandon >>>>> the potential upside of 1 year of Freddy Garcia. If Garcia came out next year and pitched like a Cy Young award winner, we'd have lost him anyway. If Bmac came out and pitched like a Cy Young award winner, we'd have 4 more years of him. And to my eyes, we basically traded each of them for a similar price; one potentially very good left handed starter, and a righty. And unlike the Garcia deal, the McCarthy deal doesn't save us any money. On paper, I really don't like this deal. Even if McCarthy winds up a failure in Texas, which I highly doubt, I can't help but think we could have gotten more, a lot more, for Brandon this offseason. Hell, we supposedly almost dealt him straight up for Soriano and Griffey in each of the last 2 years. Even if the concept of stockpiling young arms is right, and everything works out, Danks succeeds, Haeger succeeds, the Sox wind up winners, I still think this is a bad deal.

QUOTE(daa84 @ Dec 23, 2006 -> 03:35 PM) don't get me wrong....im not a big fan of this trade either....but to assume that mccarthy got traded because of that quote is just stupid.. So is this trade.

QUOTE(3E8 @ Dec 23, 2006 -> 03:28 PM) I bet the information is that our organization knows it f***ed up McCarthy's development by placing him in the bullpen and rather than spend more time off his arb clock to fix him, they'd rather get a pitcher of similar stature who hasn't hit the bigs yet. I could be wrong. I was worried about hte same thing until McCarthy had that start at the end of the year and still dominated.

QUOTE(bulokis @ Dec 23, 2006 -> 03:25 PM) I still dont like this trade at all. I kept reading here Ozzie doesnt like Brandon, where do you guys base that on? Check the quote I just posted.

QUOTE(daa84 @ Dec 23, 2006 -> 03:20 PM) I got a lot of problems with you people! And now you're gonna hear about it! Kruger my son tells me your company stinks! you couldnt smooth a silk sheet if you had a hot date with a babe.... i havent really been reading this thing, but is it a fact that brandon got traded because ozzie doesnt like him? i dont even know that ozzie doesnt like mccarthy....can someone point me where that was said? Ozzie Guillen, last year, right before we fell out of the playoff hunt. Oh, 1 more thing to say: By Brandon. Thanks for those awesome games in 2005. The back to back shutouts against Texas and Boston, the 8 inning 1 run duel against Johan in September, polishing off Cleveland on the last day. Man I wish I got to watch you pitch for us more.

QUOTE(shawnhillegas @ Dec 23, 2006 -> 03:03 PM) right, just like the arnie munoz, danny wright, etc. depth that worked so well in 2003. I'll take any of Haeger, Broadway, Floyd, Danks, Gio, and Heath Phillips (who I think are our top 6 AAA and up starters) over anyone who pitched for this team in the 5th starter slot in 2003/2004. QUOTE(Wanne @ Dec 23, 2006 -> 03:05 PM) I'm not crazy about a knuckleballer coming out of the bullpen. It worked for us pretty well in September last year, and Haeger would have been an excellent changeup from the other 5 fireballers in our bullpen. But that doesn't really look possible now that we need him in the rotation.

QUOTE(Gregory Pratt @ Dec 23, 2006 -> 11:00 AM) Rollie Fingers has a blog. It kind of sucks, but hey, it's Rollie Fingers, so it's kind of cool. http://www.rolliefingerssportsblog.com/blog/ Imagine how fast he could type if he could train his mustache to hit the g and h keys on his keyboard.

QUOTE(shawnhillegas @ Dec 23, 2006 -> 02:51 PM) We are all so worried about the 5th starter next year, but lets face it, Jose is going on the DL next year at some time....this 5th starter problem will quickly become a 4th and 5th starter problem. We better resign Arnie Munoz fast. Well, the good news is that in the event we need the 6th starter, we have an enormous amount of nearly-MLB-ready starters sitting down at AAA in Floyd, Broadway, Danks, Phillips, etc. So what we might be missing in terms of an obvious #1 candidate we do make up for in depth.

QUOTE(tonyho7476 @ Dec 23, 2006 -> 02:43 PM) I'm with you...something else is coming. Don't forget, Kenny had that 1AM meeting with Cashman. I bet Cashman said 'We'd love to have Crede, Broadway and DAnks'....now we can do it. Ok, that probably didn't happen. I'm just hoping that a big name player is coming for some of these pitchers. Cashman woulda said McCarthy.

QUOTE(Greg The Bull Luzinski @ Dec 23, 2006 -> 02:31 PM) I have to go with you on this one, I think Haeger is going to be the best knuckle baller in the bigs since the Niekro Bros. Better than Charlie Hough? Well, I'll hope you're right on that. Sure would be helpful.

QUOTE(TitoMB345 @ Dec 23, 2006 -> 02:30 PM) And in the end, we still need a LF leadoff hitter. How is this trade fixing that problem? The fact that you have a bigger need doesn't mean you can't make other deals. That's not a solid argument against this deal. The only way they're possibly linked is if we would have had a deal involving McCarthy for a leadoff hitter, which, given the potential value of starting pitching, would have been a pretty silly deal no matter who we got (assuming McCarthy alone wasn't enough to get Crawford).

Question for folks in the know: Do either Danks or Masset immediately go onto the White Sox 40 man roster? Just wondering if this opens up a slot for a FA signing or not.

QUOTE(Steve9347 @ Dec 23, 2006 -> 02:24 PM) I just don't understand why you do this trade. B-Mac is only 23, has had plenty of Major League seasoning, and isanincredible starting pitcher. You do it because of a few possible reasons: 1. You're completely throwing in the towel for 2007, and you want to be ready with a dominant team from 2008-2012. 2. You get 2 arms in exchange for 1. 3. You get a lefty starter in exchange for a righty in a division with Mauer, Morneau, Hafner, and Sizemore. 4. Maybe you like Danks better than McCarthy. 5. Maybe your manager despises McCarthy. 6. Maybe someone else really dislikes McCarthy. 7. Maybe you have another potential deal lined up. The sad fact is, the only way I can possibly see this deal helping the White Sox in 2007 is if option #7 is true. There is no way this makes us better next year unless we deal these guys for a position player. QUOTE(iamshack @ Dec 23, 2006 -> 02:28 PM) BTW, for everyone jumping off a ledge in regards to 07', do you really think there is going to be THAT much difference between what Brandon would have accomplished and what his replacement does? Brandon v. Charlie Haeger? I doubt the difference would be as large in wins and losses and many here would believe. Hell, I love the concept of throwing Charlie into the bullpen this year, but yes, I think there will be a huge difference between the performance of Charlie Haeger and Brandon McCarthy next year. Or Brandon and Floyd, Brandon and Danks, Brandon and anyone else you name. Just from watching Brandon the last 2 years, I think he's going to wind up being one of the best pitchers in the AL.