Balta1701

Happy Birthday Big man! (Btw, KW says in the Tribune that Frank will be rejoining the big league club sometime on the next homestand, which basically means next week, either while we're playing the Angels or Indians. And that means he'll be on the team when they travel to Coors field. Anyone else want to see that BP?)

QUOTE(fathom @ May 26, 2005 -> 08:45 PM) KW.....please, please, please do something about our offense. You have to be nuts to think our starting pitching will continue to perform at the level they have. You'd also have to be nuts to think that these hitters can keep looking this bad for an entire season.

Looks like Extra Innings for Cleveland/Minnesota again.

QUOTE(ottawa_sox @ May 26, 2005 -> 06:19 PM) I don't put that much stock in being picked an all-star. Every team needs to be represented and there are so many teams But Cleveland had 6 people last year. It wasn't because they were being represented.

QUOTE(Sirotka33 @ May 26, 2005 -> 06:19 PM) Come on Cleveland I want to see 7.0 gap between 1st and second in the AL central tomorrow in the paper!!!! Having grown up in the 90's...having to root for Cleveland still makes me feel so dirty.

QUOTE(ottawa_sox @ May 26, 2005 -> 05:24 PM) Michael Bates of "A Clockwork Orange" fame. I actually agree with you that he hasn't lived up to expectations. Yet. But he is only 24. And the same could have been said about Jon Garland. And as high as his ERA has been, it has, each and every year, been below the league average. But Garland wasn't picked as an all-star last year (Over Buehrle and Shingo, I might add)

I remember him...I think...wow there's a name I never thought I'd hear again.

QUOTE(3E8 @ May 26, 2005 -> 02:48 PM) On getaway day, games are usually in the afternoon to allow for travel times. Yeah, but at least it's not a huge trip - LA to Texas, night game tomorrow in Texas, not a big time change.

QUOTE(qwerty @ May 26, 2005 -> 11:50 AM) Five bucks he has to use a dictionary. What, you don't use the word deity in your everyday conversation? It's quite fun to say. (No dictionary.)

QUOTE(Kalapse @ May 26, 2005 -> 03:00 PM) Crede = Lowell (take into effect age, defense, current struggles and contract) Chavez >>>> Crede (take into effect the fact that Chavez is better than Crede in everyway except contract.) Thank you for making some sense. I would fire in that Chavez >> Crede, if you exclude the fact that we'd have to give up a ton (BMac) to get him, and his contract would be I think the biggest one on our squad right now (look how well spreading the wealth around has worked for us this year.) My equations would go something like this Crede + Anderson + BMac >>> Lowell Crede + Anderson + BMac > Chavez

QUOTE(RockRaines @ May 26, 2005 -> 02:43 PM) There are a few people that were VERY opposed to have spods on this team, but I think we have all come around. When we traded for Pods, I was really worried about that .240 BA he had last year. That and his walk/strikeout ratio was also troubling. Right now, he's got an OBP of .375, and he's still hitting .280 after a couple bad games against decent Anaheim pitching. If he keeps those numbers up for the whole year...then man we got a bargain.

So we have a guy at 3b who is struggling and who we hope will find a way to hit better, and we want to replace him with a guy at 3b who is struggling and we can hope will find a way to hit better, except the replacement costs more and isn't as good on defense. I can understand people wanting to upgrade to Chavez, simply for the glove. But why are people so desperate to trade 1 struggling hitter for another one, especially given how important clubhouse chemistry can be to a ballclub?

QUOTE(AnthraxFan93 @ May 26, 2005 -> 11:42 AM) I say never had the sox had a good GM, If they were smart, we fire KW.. And look into Atlanta system to find our next GM, you don't win 13 straight DIV titles on luck. Seriously, is this satire? You can claim that KW is not a good GM if you want, that's a point you can make. But who are we going to get from Atlanta? Are they just going to let Scheurholtz waltz out the door? While we're at it, can we add Mazzone to handle our pitching staff? That guy's a deity!

Right now, amazingly, I'm leaning towards KW, for 1 reason; it seems like he's doing a dynamite job building up the farm system. Right now, we've got as many guys on the way up as I can remember us having at any time in the past. Anderson. Fields. Sweeney. BMac. Gio. Bajenaru. We've had some excellent drafts in the last few years under KW, and I give the credit for that to the guy at the top. Also, KW seems to have done a remarkable job of finding guys who, for whatever reason, were underrated and hence available for less money than they deserve. (A.J., El Duque, Tadahito, Pods all come to mind). That has let us build a much deeper team than we've had in previous years, and that's been a big key this year.

QUOTE(YASNY @ May 26, 2005 -> 11:22 AM) Damn. First response and I get someone wanting to hand my ass to me on a platter. Churchill is an example .... an extreme one to be sure ... of the radically left slant of the "advanced" educational system in this country. The fact that he was employeed by an institution of "higher learning" and invited to speak at other "institutions of higher learning" after his extremist rants tends to reinforce the fact that some people in the world of academia do not consider him so very extreme. Hence, my point, that he is a "hero" to some. You do not agree that he is worthy of the label "hero". Good for you! Here's one thing you need to remember about institutes of higher education; it is their job to employ people who are completely out of the mainstream. It is also their job to expose their students to beliefs that are totally out of the mainstream. Why? Several reasons. First, it is an absolute necessity in a quality higher education that a student learns how to judge, evaluate, and refute an argument made by someone else with whom they disagree. This should happen at any credible institute. During my time at Indiana, I went to talks by such folks as Elizabeth Dole, Colin Powell, and Howard Zinn. I didn't agree with everything said by any of them. That's what's supposed to happen at a genuine university. Would I have gone to see him had he spoke at my university? Probably would have. Would I have agreed with him? Of course not. The guy's a nut. That's my evaluation of him. It's also worth noting that, at least prior to the point in January where that post 9/11 essay of his was unearthed, a lot of his speaking engagements came from the fact that he was supposedly a scholar on Native American issues, and that's a topic that is actually worth some discussion. (His record on that topic has sense been called into question, as I noted, since he may have lied about his heritage in the first place). I think that the thing that got to me most from your original statement was that it seemed that you lumped Pat Tillman and Ward Churchill on the same level, and gave Pat Tillman to the Right and Ward Churchill to my side. I think it's hard for anyone in this country to disagree with the statement that Tillman is a hero, no matter how badly the military treated his memory after he was killed. He gave up a wealthy life for something he believed in, and lost his life in the process. That qualifies as a hero in my book.

QUOTE(TheDybber @ May 26, 2005 -> 10:01 AM) Why do people live there again??? Last year, 4 hurricanes hit Florida. Why do people live there again? If the polar icecaps were to melt completely, New York City, Boston, and most of the Eastern seaboard would be under water. Why do people live there again? This is actually quite an interesting question to deal with (Graduate student in geology speaking here) - how much risk do you allow people to take with where they want to live? Within probably the next 500 years, there will be an absolutely massive, hugely devastating earthquake in the Pacific Northwest, larger and more powerful than anything that can happen in California. Maybe even on the scale of Sumatra. The last event that large happened on that fault roughly 300 years ago. It's average recurrence interval is about 500 years we think, but there's a lot of variation. The last time it happened, a tsunami was recorded in Japan. Should we evacuate the Pacific Northwest? The reality is...it's almost impossible to pick a place on the earth that isn't at risk for some sort of geologic hazard, whether it's flooding, a drought, a tsunami, an earthquake, etc. In most cases, all you can do is prepare for it and try to make sure the end result isn't cataclysmic. There are only a few places where you can point and say "it is genuinely stupid to live here because you're going to die." Almost everywhere else, it's a guessing game. And even in those cases...you have to balance the rights of the property owners against the government's desire to protect its citizens. There is no firm line at all. Oh, and 1 more I forgot; at some point in the next few thousand years, there will likely be a major collapse and avalanche in the Azores, setting off a tsunami that will dwarf the one from Sumatra, and do heavy, heavy damage to New York, Boston, and the entire east coast. Why do people live there? Because it's a risk they're willing to take.

As a person vehemently on the left, I'd love to know where exactly you came up with the idea that Ward Churchill is somehow a hero of the left? I highly doubt that the guy qualifies as a hero to almost anyone. Here's what Ward Churchill is; he's a random, obscure professor at a University in Colorado who holds some pretty damn extreme views, and who goes around publically expressing them. Because his views are so far out of the mainstream, the folks on the right wing (read: Bill O'Reilly) grab him as an example of those "crazy liberal universities" that they can use to brow-beat anyone who disagrees with them. CJR did a great piece the other day on how O'Reilly was using Ward Churchill as a whipping boy for his political opposition at the same time as he was complaining about the NYT using the widespread abuse of prisoners by the U.S. in the same manner. Here's the reality about Ward Churchill and the left; we really don't give a darn. The guy's a nutcase, he's certainly no spokesman for the left. The left does tend to care about academic freedom, and hence we wouldn't be thrilled if he lost his job simply because of some remarks he made (his reported lying about his heritage in his job application is a different story), but overall, no one really cares about what some crazy professor in Colorado thinks except for the folks trying to use his craziness to score political points against the other side.

QUOTE(Cubs Suck23 @ May 26, 2005 -> 08:55 AM) If Hawk was to retired who would you like to see replace him the booth... My choice would be Steve Stone I never think of Steve Stone as a play-by-play guy. I still think he's the best color man in baseball though.

While you're complaining about the "professional" rankings, you should also take a second to look at the rankings compiled by ESPN.com visitors. The public poll is turning out the right way. We're on top. Feel free to go vote yourself.

First, yeah I know, there's no player who can guarantee you a world series. So, just imagining that there was some way we could nearly guarantee ourselves a series, I still wouldn't trade McCarthy. Why? Because this kid looks so good that I think we'll have a better chance of being there and winning every year we have him than we would even if we traded him. Even if we were trading McCarthy to suddenly make ourselves the best team in the world, the Yankees last year proved that even if you've got the greatest people at every position, you can suddenly become unlucky. The best chance for this team is going to be to make the playoffs first, and then hope that our starting pitching and some of our bats get hot enough to carry us through the playoffs. That's what worked for Florida 2 years ago, Anaheim 3 years ago, Arizona 4 years, ago, etc. Once you're in the playoffs, the question isn't always who has the best team, it becomes who has the dominant players who are the most dominant. You can win a world series without being the best team, if you have a couple parts that suddenly work properly. McCarthy has a good shot to be 1 of those parts for years to come. What's the Billy Beane line? Give me 3 aces and I'll be a genius GM too? Right now, that's almost where we're sitting.

QUOTE(nitetrain8601 @ May 25, 2005 -> 06:59 PM) Ask the Braves. None of their fans show up every year when they make the playoffs. You play to win it all. I have yet to see a trophy for just being "good". You get that nice trophy with flags on it for winning the game and being the best. If you don't strive for being the best or you rather have your team being a "good one" instead of a great one, you shouldn't be a player or fan. Except of course...didn't the Braves win a W.S. back in the 90's? Yeah, I know it's only 1, but from our perspective, isn't 1 more than enough?

QUOTE(AnthraxFan93 @ May 26, 2005 -> 08:41 AM) I am with you on this.. Jose been a different pitcher this season.. Copper is becomeing one hellva pitching coach. I didn't realize how much of a different pitcher he's been until I read this in my morning paper today... Right now, Contreras has the best BA against him in the American league. Guys are hitting just .203 against the count. There's a few guys in the NL with a better number than him, but for guys that have to face the DH, he's on top by quite a bit. If this guy keeps the walks down, he's unstoppable.

QUOTE(RockRaines @ May 25, 2005 -> 01:53 PM) I posted the exact same thing yesterday. I think for an 8th place hitter, he has enormous power potential, and he makes so many difficult plays at first look easy, I think he is underrated as far as that goes. I like him. I think the biggest problem everyone has with Crede is that he's supposed to be so much better than this. He has the ability to be so much better than this. He has the ability to hit .280 or better, and drive 30 home runs out of the park, but he just doesn't do it constantly. We saw what Crede could do when he had his technique right in the first weeks of the season, and now he's back to his old ways and everyone feels angry and mistreated. The guy should be so much better than this. He really should.

I wish I was old enough to have seen some of those guys play. Without that, it's hard to do a fair evaluation. Just on total numbers, I'll take Frank's 430 some home runs for the Sox, but I can't say for certain there's never been a better player on that team.

QUOTE(beck72 @ May 25, 2005 -> 12:13 PM) If BMac has the talent to be a #3 SP in this league, then he has the talent to pitch in the pen. These guys didn't suck [or do well] because they first pitched in the bullpen. They suck because they can't get guys out/ throw too many meatballs/ give up too many walks. If BMac has the talent most people think he does, then a stint in the bullpen won't hurt him. I disagree. If a guy is not getting in regular work as a very young kid, then a stint in the bullpen can really do some damage. How many times have you seen a guy who hasn't pitched in 7 or 8 days come out of the bullpen and suddenly start walking every hitter he faces? If a guy isn't getting in regular work against decent hitters, things can start to suffer, like the pitcher's technique. Now, if the pitcher we're talking about is someone like John Smoltz, we're talking about a guy who's been around so long that no matter what goes wrong in his pitching, he'll figure it out and fix it pretty quick. On the other hand, if you stick a rookie into that same spot, what can happen? The guy can develop a few problems with his technique, and as he's trying to fix those, things can multiply. Remember 1 thing about guys like BMac. At every single level they've pitched at, they've dominated the guys hitting against them, even on bad days. At the big league level, that will not happen. You need to be dominating in order to outduel big league hitters. If you're not...then suddenly you're being beaten for the first time in your career. Not everyone knows how to handle that. Not every pitcher will struggle with that. But a young starter can have so much value to a team that it's worth a fair amount of caution to make sure they enter the league easily.