southsider2k5

Baseball is almost here again!!!!

didnt sweeney just sign a long term deal with them last season??? Yep, and there is an outclause that he can leave if he believes the Royals aren't trying to be competitive. As a matter of a fact if the Royals are under .500 this year he can exercise that clause.

Two of those guys you mentioned, Fernandez and McDowell were drafted by Larry Himes. I wish Himes was our GM now. He sure did put together a hell of a team. And to trade for Sosa and Alvarez too, damn. The Sox should put any bitterness behind and hire him back as a draft coordinator at least More of that I atribute to the scouting vs. the GM's. Our scouts seem to have pretty good success when compared to a lot of teams. The great majority of our front line players came from within the organization, or were traded for before they emerged

Has anyone heard if Stewart has mastered the MB cutter yet? Is that why he has been so successful this spring?

The Sox have drafted a ton of college pitches over the years with mixed success. Going back Rauch, Fernandez, McDowell, Parque, Wright, off the top of my head, were all college pitchers. The Sox biggest problem in general is we really haven't had high enough draft picks to get the Mark Prior type picks. And even if we have, we have avoided most of them due to salary/agent worries.

I wonder how long the Royals will be able to afford to keep Sweeney around? I imagine the impending dealing of Beltran will help, but at the rate they rid themselves of salaries, how long with it take for Sweeney to price himself out of KC?

No, it sounds more like they were being rewarded for having excellent springs, and keeping an extra couple of bodies for the last few spring games. It'll be interesting to see how Miles does at AAA.

Now if we could only do something about Sweeney and Randa...

Carl Crawford maybe? He played some last year. A classic 5 tooler. He is supposed to be a star someday.

There is no way he finishes at .500. Tampa Bay has zero offense. He might have finished above breakeven here, but with that high school offense behind him, he will lose 15 games no matter how good he pitches.

I just when to White Sox.com and they have an adobe downloadable form. I don't know if they are still selling them, but it is a sweet deal if you can still get it. Buy 6 games at reg price, and get the 7th for $1. You can also buy your parking in advance too.

These were my predictions I made on the ESPN board Final Standings American League AL East NY Yankees 104-58 Boston 88-74 Toronto 83-79 Baltimore 67-95 Tampa Bay 54-108 AL Central Chicago 95-67 Minnesota 94-68 Kansas City 72-90 Cleveland 64-98 Detroit 58-104 AL West Oakland 103-59 Anaheim 90-72 Seattle 85-77 Texas 74-88 Playoffs Yankees over Twins Oakland over Sox ALCS Oakland over Yankees

I have gotten the 7 game plan each of the last few years, and that always seems to work out nicely. This year is it openning day, the Sat Twins game in Apr, the 3 Cubs/ Sox games, the last game against the Giants, and the last weekend home game of the year.

MB is the openning day starter. It has been MB then Colon in their last 3 or 4 spring starts, and JM is going to continue that through to the reg season.

Keep adding to it! It is amazing the changes that have been made to this site, in the year or so that I have been following it.

I was more upset at him b****ing about going to AAA after he gave up the HR's to Cameron. It was obvious that he wasn't healthy, for god sakes his fastball was in the low 80's! You are obviously hurting the team, just take the assignment and go get things right. Instead he openned his mouth, and sealed the fate that he wasn't coming back to the Sox.

After asking around it sounds like he is actually healthy again. He might be OK over there.

Hey Molto, do I know you from the ESPN board, or are you just a reader over there?

I would be suprised if Crede's OBP was very much higher than it was last year. With him hitting 7th in the line up and having Rowand and the catcher hitting behing him, he will be seeing a lot of fastballs, and not alot of offspeed stuff. In other words pitches to put into play, instead of pitches to walk on.

I hope you didn't think I took offense to it. I was just curious if you had some new info, or some inside info, I wanted to hear it!

I will say one thing, a troll free forum has its bright points...

I just got reading your latest write up, and a line jumped out at me about Kelly Wunsch being the one who actually organized the almost boycott of drug tests. Where did you hear this from? I haven't seen anything about who was the point man on this, let alone anyone else who was involved. If you have any more info I would love to see it. Thanks SS2k3