Balta1701

QUOTE(SoxAce @ Oct 7, 2006 -> 11:05 PM) I would not go that far now. This I understand...his time in NY has seen him at least now trying to defend himself, not just accepting the blame for his suckage, and it's seen him not learning form his suckage in the clutch. He has a bad rap because of his $250m, but if he was carrying teams to winning records or championships, his rap would have been forgotten, even if he was blaming Jeter every time he went 0/4.

QUOTE(Rowand44 @ Oct 7, 2006 -> 11:04 PM) ARod is the best defensive shortstop in baseball imo. Having not watched a ton of games with ARod at SS, I really doubt that claim. But with his bat, if he came at $13-$15m to the White Sox, I would tolerate adequate and nonspectacular defense in exchange for his bat.

QUOTE(JohnBasedowYoda @ Oct 7, 2006 -> 08:18 AM) You probably don't want to pay millions for your car either If my next car could work on Mars, with no oxygen in the atmosphere, I'd tolerate the price tag

QUOTE(greg775 @ Oct 7, 2006 -> 11:00 PM) Regardless, Uribe is a talent who should take instruction and become the hitter he can be. If we can turn our entire team into Borg, such that we can simply program Uribe to take pitches and aim pitches away for right field, then we're set.

QUOTE(Tony82087 @ Oct 7, 2006 -> 10:58 PM) I'll take a .300, 40 HR, 130 RBI, Gold Glove "Cancer" on my team any day of the week. Gold Glove? GMAFB. I want ARod for his bat. He's a clear downgrade from either Uribe or Crede defensively. He may be an upgrade from Jeter, but that's about it. I'll take the .290, 35 hr's and extra ticket/merch sales due to added press coverage.

3 words. Offer Mark Buehrle. Buehrle is not under Contract. ARod is. That is a huge difference. Arod fills our major hole at shortstop. Buehrle can be replaced. We have 2 starting pitchers, at least 1 of whom can be replaced by a guy who may be better. This only works if we get the money that Texas sent to NY to bring ARod's cost down to about $15 million. He is not worth more than that under any stretch of the imagination. If Buehrle will sign for something in the $10-$11m range, fine. Sign him and offer Garcia+ something instead. But MB is our ace in the hole if we want to talk about this. And he's the best chip we've got.

Thank you Detroit. Thank you. It was hard for me to cheer for you after months of chasing you, and I'm still rooting for #35 to freaking destroy you...but thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for the deed that Verlander, Rogers, and Bonderman have done. You have all made America a better place.

It would be really, really sweet if the Tigers could put the Yankees facing 2 elimination games.

QUOTE(FlaSoxxJim @ Oct 6, 2006 -> 03:04 PM) Must be Friday afternoon - the best time for bad news from the White House. Hence the phrase "Friday surprise time".

QUOTE(GaelicSoxFan @ Oct 6, 2006 -> 02:24 PM) I hope the Dems hammer Hastert on this. I don't think Howard Dean and the DNC brain trust are hitting him hard enough. He thinks his you-know-what doesn't stink. He knew years ago and was hoping to use it as leverage. Speaking purely from a political perspective though...I don't see any reason why the Dems should do anything except let Hastert twist in the wind. Right now polls taken midweek show that 27% of Americans think Hastert should retain his majority leader position. 63% think he should resign, 43% think he should leave the House altogether. The traditional Republican scandal-avoidance technique over the last few years has been to sound very contrite, announce an investigation, and start saying that you won't comment on an ongoing investigation while the investigation takes months/years and you stall wherever you can (i.e. the WMD in Iraq). This one, however, is so blatant and so obvious that even the press realizes something more should have been done. Fox News polled yesterday suggesting that Hastert's resignation-or-not could be the difference between the Democrats winning 20 house seats and 50 house seats. The effects on the campaign have already started; the Republican leadership has been totally, 100% derailed. Hastert can't fund raise - he was planning some 30 campaign visits in the last few weeks (including in IN). The President's "Dems are weak on terror" message has been totally derailed for a week because everyone's paying attention to Hastert. Already we have Rep. Harold Ford firing back "I'm not going to take a lecture on morality from a party that took hush money from a child predator" when his opponent criticized him for visiting the Playboy super bowl party a couple years ago. We've somehow got Lieberman defending Hastert (thanks Joe!). We've got great leading lines like this describing ads that the R candidates have to run. And maybe most importantly, we've got a non-trivial decrease in the support for Republicans amongst evangelical voters, the ones who have been part of Karl Rove's key turnout strategy over the last few years. The Dems have no reason to really push Hastert on this. Presumably he's not actually avoiding investigating any other potential child predators in his party, so hopefully the danger to the Page program (and thus the urgency in his removal) has ended...so as far as the Democrats are concerned, the more Dennis Hastert goes on TV and tries to blame his staff, George Soros, or wierd scandals involving the Clintons and Dick Morris, the better off the Dems are going to be. Right now, the Democratic strategists are hoping against hope that Hastert will not resign before the election. They've got 4+ weeks of ads saying "Candidate x voted for Dennis Hastert as majority leader" to run.

Friday surprise time: top aide to Karl Rove Susan Ralston resigns due to the Abramoff scandal and the report out earlier this week of hundreds of contacts between Abramoff's people and the high-ups at the White House.

QUOTE(Rowand44 @ Oct 6, 2006 -> 02:29 PM) It could be a fun game to play: What's the biggest reason you want to get rid of pods? His defense in left field is the answer for me. His Stolen base percentage/totals. I would put up with the sh*tty defense, poor OBP, and strikeouts, if when he did get on base, he was guaranteed to cause problems and get his arse on 2nd base.

QUOTE(The Ginger Kid @ Oct 6, 2006 -> 12:44 PM) Since I've been accused of ignoring stats, let's take a look. The Sox went 16-13 in August. Of the 29 games played in August, Brian started in 21 of those. He did not play at all in only 3 games. In those 13 losses, Brian started in 9 of them, did not play or PH late in 4. What you're missing though is that there's a real selection bias in your data here. Specifically, Ozzie constantly gave starts against right handers to Mack and starts against left handers to Anderson. Ignoring the fact that some of those lefties included guys like our friends CC and Santana...our lineup as a whole was significantly worse against left handers than right handers. Thome, Pods, Iguchi were all pretty bad during the year against lefties, then you throw in giving starts to Alomar, Ozuna, etc., and our lineup wound up being shut down pretty constantly against lefties. So yeah, when Anderson played, we did tend to lose. But this was more because we couldn't hit lefties, especially the 2nd half of the season, than it was Anderson not being a better option than Mack against righties.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 6, 2006 -> 12:02 PM) Is the skewed poll from Zogby? That would also explain it. Yes, that most recent Reuters poll should be a Zogby one, if that's the one we're talking about. It's a phone poll, not one of his internet polls, but it's still the same group, and Zogby's reputation has taken a big hit since 2004.

QUOTE(Steff @ Oct 6, 2006 -> 12:36 PM) Works fine for me. Maybe it's you with the problem. Error 403 Forbidden here.

John Travolta grabbed the picture and locked himself in the closet. Along with Tom Cruise. Why won't you just come out the closet Tom Cruise? So I starts to get Angry...then I pull out my gun!...

"Fly ball to center field, can o' dick for Anderson..."

QUOTE(Tony82087 @ Oct 6, 2006 -> 10:58 AM) And thats the reason alot were upset with the move. When Anderson was pretty much taken out of the lineup, The O had already been on fire, but the pitching wasnt always there. So why take out a guy with great D and possibly hurt the pitchers in the process, just to add a little O that was not needed at the time... And then when the O did slow down...we kept putting Mackowiak in anyway, despite the fact that he wasn't giving us anything offensively either (hit .250 in August with a .668, and .194/.590 in September). So we were costing our pitchers runs in CF, but without any hope of getting any of them back at the plate.

QUOTE(The Ginger Kid @ Oct 6, 2006 -> 10:22 AM) When Brian slumped right out of the gate (with the exception of opening day) Ozzie made the decision to stay with him and not send him down or bench him. It was a very real possibility that Brian was going to get sent down. You may recall there were several articles on this subject in the Chicago press last June. Kenny supported that decision. You might also check some of Brian's comments about the conversation he had with Kenny and Ozzie, how it bolstered his confidence. In an effort to protect Brian he started using Rob in CF more, sacrificing defense to try and provide more pop to a sluggish lineup. Do you honestly think Ozzie Guillen doesn't realize that Mack is weaker at defense than BA? It's for this reason, I believe, that Brian was able to have a strong second half. He's a rookie on a world series team and he admitted that he was floundering and struggling to stay positive. But here's the key point you're missing...the 2nd half of the season was totally different than the first. In the first 2 months, Brian Anderson was hitting .180 or lower...and Rob Mackowiak was hitting over .300. Anderson was better against righties, but Mack was murdering them. Every game Mack played, he cost us at least a run, sometimes more. But the difference of another lefty bat in the lineup somewhat helped make up for that. It probably did help the kid's confidence some as well, and it certainly gave him more time to work. But in the 2nd half...Anderson improved. He finally learned how to swing for line drives, and his average started to climb. He hit above .250 for several months in a row. Meanwhile, Rob Mackowiak's numbers took a plunge off the deep end. By almost any metric you look at, Anderson and Mackowiak put up virtually identical numbers in the 2nd half offensively...and this was with Anderson facing mostly lefties, who he is worse against, and being protected from dominant righties like Bruce Chen and Carlos Silva. Seriously, how in the world does it help Brian Anderson's confidence to sit him on the bench against right handers who are being killed, when its costing the team games, when he is hitting better against righties, and when he's not facing the greatest righties in human history? So, when Anderson improved, and Mackowiak got worse, what happened? Ozzie gave Mack more playing time, not less. We had a stretch in August, a key stretch, 7 games against Detroit and the Twins. What happens? Ozzie plays Mack in CF 4 out of the first 6 games, and we wind up being beaten up pretty badly, and at least a couple of those games, Mack's defense gave up key runs. And it just kept happening. Yes, it made sense to sit Anderson some in the first half. But it made no sense at all to sit him in the 2nd half. Mackowiak was no where near as good, Anderson was better, Anderson was a better hitter against righties but never was given the chance to face them, Anderson had much more room for improvement and could have used the at bats, and having Mackowiak start in CF was basically the equivalent of taking a gun and shooting the starting pitcher in the knee that game. You know what would have been great for Anderson's confidence? Having him play against a bunch of those righties where Mack's defense cost us a shot at the game, so that we're either in the pennant chace until the very end or actually in the playoffs. There were enough games where Mack's defense hurt us badly that it would have made a major difference in the standings. Playing in a pennant chase, and the playoffs? Yeah, that always kills a kid's confidence.

QUOTE(fathom @ Oct 6, 2006 -> 10:04 AM) Anthony Reyes might be the most overrated player on soxtalk. He had a great game against us, but his ERA ended up being way too high (5.06), and he's had a history of injury issues. Flat out, the Cardinals don't have the pieces for the Sox to trade with. Puj...ah nevermind.

Good to know that the law still ain't that important. I was almost worried there for a while. But oh, it actually gets even better than that. "I have every f***ing right to hire idiots, and you can't take it away from me. How else will I find an excuse to kill black people, who I hate so much!"

Bravo.

QUOTE(Soxy @ Oct 6, 2006 -> 09:27 AM) I don't see Hastert losing his seat this year, but does anyone know where I might find some info on the latest polls out of the 14th? So, I don't know if there are some that they don't post, but the TPM Poll tracker usually is a good place to look. I haven't found anything with Hastert's name after August 20th, and I'm too lazy to keep looking.

QUOTE(Rowand44 @ Oct 6, 2006 -> 01:27 AM) So instead we throw a guy out there in center who cost us at least a good 3 games in the field. Ozzie hurt the team by continuing to throw Rob out there, it's that simple. It was a lot more than 3. It might have been more than 3 in September.

QUOTE(CanOfCorn @ Oct 6, 2006 -> 09:01 AM) For those of you willing to ship Mark somewhere, who do we get to replace him? And I don't mean BMac. I mean, a lefty. We are going to be in third again if we go into the season with 5 RHP starting for us. Buehrle will get back to where he was when he remembers how to keep the ball down. You don't figure out a guy like Buehrle because he pitches to contact. He isn't a strikeout machine. That's why he's had success. He may not ever be a 20 game winner, but he's going to consistently win 15 a year. Keep him long term...well, three years. If we have to have 5 righties starting, then we have to have 5 righties starting. Yes, it is a problem. But again, we would be in worse shape if Buehrle were to leave as a Free Agent after 2007. Then we would be left with Garland, Contreras, Vazquez, McCarthy, Haeger, and Broadway as our potential starting pitchers in 2008. And guess what arm they all throw with. Yes, we need to find a lefty for the rotation. The best way to do that is to keep Buehrle. But if we can't do that for whatever reason...another option is to deal Buehrle and use that talent to fill your lefty starter spot.