Balta1701

QUOTE(3E8 @ Nov 11, 2006 -> 10:04 AM) I think whoever threw out $120 million as a projection for next year's payroll is pretty spot on. The other side of this token though is that just because the White Sox may have the money to spend, it's not necessarily the best idea to spend it. Right now, baseball is in one of those revenue-surge modes, to the point where people are talking about contracts being given out this offseason that are just about as stupid as some of the ones handed out after 2000 (ARod and Manny). The White Sox only have a couple of holes that can be filled. LF, SS, maybe CF if you can find someone really, really good. But they're also in a position to even be cutting salary in 1 place by dropping at least 1, if not 2 starting pitchers. Drop 1 starter, and the difference between what we have committed and $120 million is something like $30 million dollars. It'll cost some to extend Buehrle, Crede, Iguchi, and Dye, but that still leaves a ton of cash sitting there. And, if everyone out there is looking to cash in by going after one of the couple big name guys, a guy like Soriano or Lee could just hold out until they find a freaking fortune somewhere. While getting a Soriano would land us a hell of a player, it also could land us a hell of a bill, to the point that we might regret it in the future. We may very well be better off saving a little cash this season, extending the people we do have right now, and adding onto our payroll when there's either better, smarter, or cheaper options available a year or two from now (especially since it'd give us another year to evaluate Anderson, Haeger, and McCarthy, and see if we need to spend money to replace any of them).

QUOTE(greasywheels121 @ Nov 10, 2006 -> 06:31 PM) Good lord Mikey D. Sounds familiar.

QUOTE(FlaCWS @ Nov 10, 2006 -> 06:54 PM) Thank you... there is absolutely no reason to trade for A-Rod. I just can't understand why people don't look beyond A-Rod's stats and see him for what he is - a losing player. Seattle had the best record in the AL the year after he left. Texas became a contender the year after he left. The Yankees have choked in the playoffs every year since he got there (and they were in the World Series the year BEFORE he got there so it's not like he took them to the playoffs to begin with). There are lots of great talents who are just not winning players. A-Rod is one of them. And he is such an unbelievably great talent that you would have to give up a ton (in players and money) just to get him - especially pitching, which the Yankees need and which we absolutely should not give up. Like Jordan4life said, we won the WS in '05 because of pitching, pitching, pitching. Is A-Rod a Hall-of-Famer? Absolutely. Is he worth what we'd have to give up? Absolutely not. ARod could well be a winning player if he was ever teamed with a team with great pitching. Brian Cashman seems to be moving the Yankees in that direction, which scares the hell out of me.

QUOTE(LosMediasBlancas @ Nov 10, 2006 -> 06:04 PM) I'm with ya Rock. I'm in the middle of contemplating surgery myself after a decade of trying to 'rehab' a herniated disc. Once you really understand the injury, you realize that if it's severe enough, rehab won't do squat..... and I'm not putting my back through the grind that a pro athlete does. I wish him luck though. Well, no matter how much money Boras has to move around, you just have to figure there must be reasonable medical opinion telling him that a real rehab has a good shot of success, or we wouldn't go through this. At this point in Crede's career, if medical folks are telling him that the surgery is a better option in terms of healing and he says no, he'd have to be crazy; it could cost him tens of millions of dollars

QUOTE(Flash Tizzle @ Nov 10, 2006 -> 05:28 PM) Considering what Sheffield cost the Tigers, in a pitching market where even Jeff Suppan may command 7-9 million, anything less than two quality prospects is a travesty. Please lord, have someone overpay for our players. Other teams are doing it!!!!11 At this rate, it looks like the market for our pitchers is just going to be ridiculous. To the point where trading 2 of them actually makes sense. Do you want Jeff Suppan for $8 million or Freddy Garcia for $9 million? Wow.

Man alive, if the Mets lose Glavine, they'll be in such a horrid position with regards to pitching it's hard to believe. They'll have to land Zito/Matz/Schmidt plus at least 2 more guys if they want to be competitive. If not, then that division is going to come down to the Bravos and the Marlins no matter how good the Mets' offense is.

QUOTE(CanOfCorn @ Nov 10, 2006 -> 02:46 PM) Yes, but not because we are both Jewish. But because a vote for Kinky was a vote against politicians. I hope you didn't mean anything by that other than a legitimate question, but I don't vote for religion, I vote for stance on things that are important to me. So, and this goes for anyone who voted kinky...the racist stuff didn't bother you?

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 10, 2006 -> 04:09 PM) And for that reason, it should be an external agency, not Congress itself. But no matter what, because they have the ability to create the laws of the nation, Congress will be the group regulating that organization. The fact is, if you have a one-party rule system and that party is insistent on castrating whatever oversight board there is because they've decided that anyone who finds them corrupt hates baseball, apple pie, chevrolet, and America, there will be no way around it, they'll be able to neuter that investigative body. The House/Senate ethics committees work fine...if you don't have a party which has decided that any ethics body is going to focus on them and therefore the ethics process is an enemy. And no matter what you create, it is just a matter of how determined the party in power is; the Congress has enough power that they'll be able to kill oversight if that's what they want to do. If there was an independent committee of investigation for the last 2 years, all they'd have done is push through a rider on some bill stripping it of some key power in order to shut it down. I for one don't see how anything you could design would actually work better than the current system, in that it would always be subject to the whims of any corrupt supermajority. The one nice thing about having it be a part of Congress was that the minority could actually prevent it from reaching quorum and therefore prevent it from actually killing the whole process; it was all just delayed instead of dead. If it was something created by law, then a simple majority in Congress and the presidency would have been enough to kill investigations. Because of the way the ethics committee was constructed, a shutdown was not equivalent to a total neutering, which was a positive.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Nov 10, 2006 -> 04:15 PM) Hmm I figured he would have waited a little longer, but on the other hand, this is the time to be able to separate himself from Bush, while it is still acceptable. But of course, the problem is, he's spent the last 2 years trying to either move closer to Bush or even move to Bush's right in order to try to appeal to the primary base. Hence the McCain "Vote for GWB" at that presidential candidate gathering a year ago, or his support for even more troops in Iraq (which come presumably out of thin air), and so on.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 10, 2006 -> 03:35 PM) Either way, its only awesome with that enforcement body actually checking the data. Without that, this is nothing but a farce. In theory, the House and Senate ethics committees were supposed to work that way; equal parts of members of each party, with the ability to launch outside investigations, but a few years ago the Republicans decided to completely remove the teeth of those committees by giving each party the ability to totally shut down an investigation without any input from the other party, and the Dems walked out in protest, shutting the whole process down.

So, for those like me watching the whole "power corrupts" meme before it even really starts...here's a good rundown of the non-Jefferson (hopefully he loses) people in the House facing potential ethics problems.

QUOTE(Rex Kicka** @ Nov 10, 2006 -> 01:38 PM) This would be awesome if they get it done. Even awesomer, if it gets through the Senate and the White House. I think it would be absolutely awesome if the Dems pushed anti-corruption legislation through both the House and Senate and the President vetoed it.

AP.

Crede gets one over ARod?

QUOTE(AbeFroman @ Nov 10, 2006 -> 01:38 PM) So what does this mean for an Arod deal? It means that the Yankees need less pitching, so it probably makes it harder for teams to pull off, as the Yanks are less desperate. QUOTE(JackTalkThai @ Nov 10, 2006 -> 01:42 PM) If that's all they wanted for Soriano, Dombrowski would have tripped over himself running to the table to sign that deal. But that's not what they wanted. They wanted Sanchez AND Cameron Maybin. lol. Which was a joke. How stupid do both sides look for not finding a middle ground? The Tigers lost a world series, and the Nationals will lose Soriano for nothing.

QUOTE(beck72 @ Nov 10, 2006 -> 01:02 PM) I'd rather the sox take a flier on Shannon Stewart if the prognosis for his foot is decent. He'd be a short timer. If KW could be convinced he was healthy, I'd have no problem with that...but I'm just not sure he could convince people that he'd stay healthy. And I'm also not sure he has enough of that speed that Ozzie/so many folks here want.

QUOTE(ptatc @ Nov 9, 2006 -> 01:09 AM) This was a matter for the legal system. legally the Federal Government couldn't do anything until the State governemnt declared the disaster and asked for help. This is where the delay occurred. Interjecting with a small fact: a Federal state of emergency was asked for by Governor Blanco and declared by FEMA on Saturday, August 27th, 2005, almost 2 full days before the storm hit Louisiana. A state of emergency was declared at the state level on Friday. Here's the declaration, if you want it. Here's the request from the next day to the executive level. Therefore, this statement is incorrect.

QUOTE(jackie hayes @ Nov 10, 2006 -> 10:17 AM) That's fine, I just don't understand how you were responding to that post. Trading Thome -- seems like an idea that a couple people have floated, but I haven't seen tons of people clamoring for it. He still has something of a no-trade clause.

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Nov 10, 2006 -> 11:44 AM) Because I do not believe that the rehab will be as effective. I have seen players do just rehab work only to revert to surgery eventually. From my own experience with herniated disks, I always felt like the rehab work was a temporary solution. Am I forgetting something, or did Crede not have the same injury and attempt to only rehab it last year, only to have it flare up before the end of the season?

Remember remember the fifth of November Gunpowder, treason and plot. I see no reason why gunpowder, treason Should ever be forgot...

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Nov 10, 2006 -> 06:31 AM) Now can you imagine what the US is tracking? Based on the debates earlier this year, as far as I can tell, it just topped 300 million like a month ago.

J.D. Drew is an absolute moron. The whole idea of opting out of your contract early is that you'll get more money if you do so, not less. He's going to wind up in the Jeff Weaver role of last season...taking a 1 year deal somewhere because no one will give him the big contract he and Boras want. Unless he was just really, really, really unhappy with the Dodgers, which is always possible I guess.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Nov 10, 2006 -> 07:47 AM) Of maybe the weight loss throws off his mechanics and he regresses. He seemed like he gained what, 20-40 pounds before last season, and his top fastball went from being 102 to 98 (and even slower earlier in the season). I'm hoping he gets a little better range of motion if he drops some of the weight, and it jumps his heater back up to the triple digits.

Another possibly noteworthy point: The White Sox at the end of 2005 did have to spend something like $4 million or so on buying out the end of the deals for Frank Thomas and Carl Everett...money which we don't have to repeat again this year because the only guy we're buying out was Hermanson.

Please Bobby...lose some damn weight. I bet you he regains those extra 2-3 mph if he drops 15-20 pounds.