bighurt574

QUOTE(AirScott @ Jul 5, 2007 -> 01:41 PM) Why rebuild, though? I think of what the Sox need to do as retooling, because they aren't far away from being a top AL team right now. Certain aspects, or mainly the bullpen, need to be rebuilt, and the offense could use a little life, but there's no reason to embark on a three- to four-year rebuilding process. The reason the Marlins did it was because they don't want to pay guys like Beckett, Lowell, Delgado, Pudge or even Burnett. I think the assumption was that they were gutting the team, keeping the two marquee players (Willis and Carbrera) and moving to Vegas, but I don't know how much truth there is to that. The problem is, our slow and lethargic offense is not getting any younger. Do you really want to count on Thome in 2008? 2009? Dye? Crede? Pods? The starting pitching is the strong suit but the rest will really need some serious reworking to compete with Detroit and Cleveland in the coming years. With the influx of young talent they have, they'll just keep getting better and better while the Sox get older unless some pretty drastic action is taken soon.

Big fire sale. I'd build around Buerhle, Garland, and Konerko (tying up about $40 million/yr), and the various young guys (Fields, Danks, Floyd) -- dump anyone else for prospects. Vazquez, Contreras, Thome, Dye, Jenks, and anyone else with value should be on the trading block. Sign a decent free agent or two in the offseason (i.e. CF) and they are still at least marginally competitive next year as they rebuild around the mostly young talent.

QUOTE(Steff @ Jul 1, 2007 -> 08:33 PM) The season ticket base had been hovering between 12K and 15K before 2006 for nearly two decades. It was a solid pattern as new ones would join, old ones would fall off. Regardless, that decade of fans WITHOUT a World Series win in 70+ years bought tickets. There is no need to spout off about being a knowledgable fan. I never said anything to imply you weren't. And don't put words in my mouth and claim I said there weren't more than 12K TRUE fans. There are many more. They just don't put their money where their mouth is. They watch from home. Then... they come out when the team wins. Some bandwagon jumpers...? Some...? When the base goes from just under 30K back down to the mid teens that'll show how many bandwagon jumpers there were. Hell.. many have already jumped off. There is no longer a wait list for tickets. Naa.. there's a lot of you. Hang in there. The new 15-18k of season ticket holders, did they come out of nowhere? I would imagine most had been buying tickets to some number of games a year and used the World Series run as a reason to take the plunge and buy season tickets. Does that make them bandwagon fans?

I'm still not sure how I feel about McGwire getting in. On one hand, I have little doubt that he used steroids which perhaps should prevent or at least delay his induction. On the other hand, it's always impossible to really compare players from different eras, so you're really just looking for the top players from each era to vote into the Hall of Fame. If you accept that steroid use was indeed predominant in the so-called "Steroid Era," it seems an argument can be made that the best "Steroid Era" players still deserve to get in regardless of steroid use.

That won't get you in the door (as they scan the tickets), but the chances of it working at the 100-level are probably pretty good. Try going in with a bunch of other people and hold the ticket up from a distance, they usually just waive you through.

Great column. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columni...i-sportsnew-hed

With all the talk of unbreakable records - 56-game hit streak, Ripken's consecutive games - is this the greatest record in baseball? The prior record for consecutive division wins was 5 (granted, it is a little easier now with 3 divisions per league).

Tribune this morning said Garland would be scheduled to pitch the last game of the season, but Ozzie would like to push him back to start Game 1 of the playoffs if we have already clinched.

I can't imagine how Gibbons keeps his job through this. If he is back next year the Blue Jays are really clueless. If this happens once, ok, maybe it is the players fault. But twice in a season?

This is a message board, right? Isn't this a place to discuss problem areas and weaknesses? Obviously, of course, when you take a step back, the overall picture is still pretty good, which is important to keep in mind.

Through 53 games, our attendence is 1,908,770, which means we would need 1,091,230 over our last 28 home games to hit 3 million. That would be 38,972 per game. Possible, yes, but we probably come up just short (we haven't even hit that in all of our "sell-outs").

No. We're right there with Boston too. Even if the Yankees take off, as long as we play well, we'll be fine. I can't see both Boston and the Yanks finishing ahead of us (if we don't play well, of course, the whole thing is moot anyway).

If we can get Soriano without giving up BMac I like our chances of resigning Soriano. That lets us stick with the plan of moving BMac into the rotation and shipping out a Garcia or Vazquez. Take the salary we hopefully save from moving Garcia/Vazquez and Pods (assuming he is either part of the Soriano deal or would be dealt seperately if Soriano signs an extension), that already goes a long way towards paying Soriano. I also think the longer the White Sox/Washington deal would take to finalize, the less likely the Sox would be able to just trade Soriano for other parts this year. You can see how long this process takes, hard for it to happen all over again a second time. I can't imagine those second-level discussions are that far along, because if you're another team wanting Soriano, you'd be negotiating with Washington, not the Sox right now.

Leyland, unless Detroit chokes, in which case Torre. No way does Ozzie get it this year. One, even if the Sox win the division or get the wild card, it'll be attributed to the talent, not the manager. Two, Ozzie has probably managed to alienate enough sports writers for one thing or another, for this year at least.

Anyone else find it strange that the Sox are reportedly "extremely close" to getting Soriano, but there doesn't even seem to be an agreement as to the key pieces to the deal? McCarthy? Broadway? Pods?

How does suspending him admit censorship? If Mariotti's allegation was completely false, would a suspension not be warranted?

Should the Sox care about the altercation any less than the Phillies?

I'll take the proven player any day of the week. The Sox are in a rare position of being defending champs and having a championship-calibre team put together for the next few years. If they can trade prospects to improve it even more, I'll go for another title now. The simple odds are that most prospects don't make it in the majors. You may get burned once in a while, but so be it. And although we'll never be the Yankees, if the Sox can maintain this success for a couple years to justify maintaining a higher payroll, we'll be bigger players in the free agent market every year to make up for perhaps less reliance on home-grown talent.

Our pitching has struggled at times, yet we are still on pace to win 106 games, and currently have a 6-game lead for the wild card. The Sox have won 8 straight series (including against Detroit, St. Louis, and Houston) and are coming off a 19-8 June. I'm not too worried yet.

One word - Pirates. Not a bad move.

With his batting average, I'd like to see him in there as much as possible, whether he is officially a "starter" or not.

QUOTE(SoxAce @ Jun 19, 2006 -> 01:08 AM) You are right, but there's no arguing on "rankings" they should be #1. That's my point. The whole point of power rankings is to look past the records and stats and determine who is truly the best team. Based on the Tigers poor showing against the White Sox and Yankees, one could easily conclude that they are not the best team in baseball.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Jun 15, 2006 -> 11:17 AM) 0-1 this year, 3.72 ERA, 1.14 WHIP. Full Riske Stats. When you click on his ESPN player page, I like the first story under the "news" link back from 2005. Sort of ironic.

If he could, I think Ozzie would even admit that the "public" lashing of Tracey was a mistake. It's never been his style to show up one of his own players like that. Is Ozzie at risk for a suspension here even though no one was hit? Seems pretty clear to anyone that he brought in a pitcher with instructions to hit a guy. Stories like this also worry me: ESPN, quoting Suntimes Having "leaks" like this can't be good either.

Luckily for the Cubs, they sold most of their tickets before the season started. If the Sox can make another deep playoff run while the Cubs continue to flounder, next year you might see the attendence numbers get pretty close.