Vance Law

Q

Ozzie's gut, oft times, is a really s***ty manager.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 6, 2010 -> 02:41 PM) Alexei now pushing .260 after his horrible start. 08-09 Alexei hit a combined .192 in April, .287 in May Not much different this year, .221 in April, .283 in May

Month is surprising, didn't seem like a major injury at the time. But putting this into some perspective rather than kneejerk emotional reaction: I will wager that a Nix/Vizquel platoon is worse offensively than Teahen. By how much? 5%? 10%? 15% I don't know. I do know it's not like replacing 2010 Rios with D. Wise. Nix/Vizquel are better defensively than Teahen. So we get an upgrade on defense at the hot corner, and we likely get some marginal decrease in our offensive production for 1/9th of the batting order for 1/6th of the season. This is less than a drop in the bucket compared to the relative importance of our starting pitching (which we expected to be among the top few rotations in the league), not being dead last in the AL with a 5.04 ERA.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jun 1, 2010 -> 01:08 PM) well said...what a mess! I would say, rather, that he is the exact perfect guy to call up to be the 25th man who doesn't ever play- 1) is very fast. 2) we don't care about his development/ he can come up and ride the bench

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ May 31, 2010 -> 11:13 PM) Lillibridge is the obviously encumbent right now, but I really wish this was Morel who was getting his cup of coffee in the majors right now. I would rather it's Lillibridge, as he'll be sitting on the bench 99% of the time and coming in to pinch run in late innings.

I like Konerko and all but given all of the current puzzle pieces I don't expect he'll be back/ don't want him back at the expense of what would make for a better team. We need left-handed power. What we need is left handed-power. Prospects most likely to join the team shortly are Flowers and Viciedo (yikes, though, just 5 walks in 48 games). Kenny's #1 priority during this season and/or the offseason should be trying to acquire someone like Gonzalez or Berkman or someone else. We don't have a whole lot of salary coming off the books and if there's room for just one (relatively) big signing, it needs to be a serious lefty bat.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 30, 2010 -> 01:44 PM) Forget about Dye. He hasn't had a competitive AB in pretty much eight months now. He will catch on somewhere this year. And I could see different scenarios where it is with the Sox. Remember when Andruw Jones' career was over. David Ortiz' career has been over a couple times the past 2 years and then also his career is not over.

Rios can do no wrong. Spoke too soon

Smart moves for the Angels would be: Mike Lowell Jermaine Dye

QUOTE (pktmotion' da and te='May 17, 2010 -> 02:39 PM) The Elias Rankings right now list AJ as a Type A Free Agent, why I have no idea Because the ranking is based on his last 2 full seasons, and over that stretch, he is in the top whatever % of full time catchers. His ranking after the season, going into free agency will be based on his 2009 and 2010 season. He will almost certainly end up at least type B, and if he turns things around over the course of the 80% of the season that remains, he could be type A.

QUOTE (Frankensteiner @ May 13, 2010 -> 09:12 PM) By the way, I think the key hitting statistic is our average w/ RISP. It's dead last. We've actually finished last twice before under Greg Walker ('05-surprisingly & 07) but we were much closer to the mean both times. In 2007 they had the worst batting average in baseball period. It shouldn't be a surprise that they were also worst with RISP. Their batting with runners in scoring position was perfectly in line with their batting in general. That was by far the most injury-plagued team of recent seasons, and an abnormally down year for a number of players. It was as much of an anomaly as 2006 was in a good way. Sox were first with RISP in 2006 and 8th in MLB in 2008. Figure out their average with RISP for the 5 years Walker has been here and I bet it is middle of the pack. Right in line with where their overall average is. The team may not end up a great hitting team this year. But they are not this bad. They are hitting .230. They will end the year hitting .250 at least. They have been a combination of bad and unlucky over the relatively small sample size of the first 20% of the season. Plenty of other teams will hit .230 for a given stretch of 35 games. This particular 35 games is magnified in the eye of the fan who looks and sees that that is the batting average FOR THE ENTIRE SEASON! and flips out. This fan does not go back and check every team's batting average for every team for every 35 game interval. There are 5 starters batting .226 or less. If they are healthy and play the rest of the season, 0 of those 5 will end with a batting average that low.

Will definitely enjoy listening to Wimpy and Farmer.

Don't Stop Bieberin'! (did somebody already beat me to this s***ty line?)

QUOTE (GoodAsGould @ Apr 26, 2010 -> 04:14 PM) Ok, the bolded guys dont make any sense to be on the list. I can almost include Masset because he wouldnt even be on our current bullpen, only guy he is better than is Randy Williams. Really, Aardsma and Rauch are the 2 that got away I guess... but Rauch was traded more for attitude than performance. Harris is about as good or better than Pierre. Roughly .350 OBP and .750 OPS over the last three years. And The Fielding Bible ranked him as the #2 or #3 left fielder in baseball behind Carl Crawford.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Apr 28, 2010 -> 01:40 PM) With his noodle arm he might taste like fettuccine. Someone with good photoshop skills, please put together a photo of Pierre with noodle arm and Fielder salivating.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Apr 24, 2010 -> 07:26 PM) And I'm pretty sure union rules didn't allow it. What union? The sports agents' union? A player is not required to go through an agent in order to contact a team. A player is not required to have an agent. Teams and players are not barred from negotiating in the absence of an agent It is against union rules for a team to attempt to bar a player's agent from negotiations. If the Sox tried to negotiate an extension with Jones and said, "we'll only talk if you keep your agent out of this," that would be against the rules.

QUOTE (Ranger @ Apr 6, 2010 -> 10:50 PM) I can't understand ever wanting a Sox player to "suck". If he didn't suck to begin with, there would be no need to replace him in the first place. I think the point he's trying to make, Ranger, is the following: Kotsay sucks. That is a given. Fine, he doesn't completely suck- he would be fine as a pinch-hitter/defensive replacement role player if we had room on the roster for it. The idea of giving him the large share of a DH platoon SUCKS. Big time. It's insane. You'd be lucky if he put up a .750 OPS. I want Sox players to suck when their sucking ultimately leads to the improvement of the team. Our highly-opinionated former weak-hitting shortstop of a manager seems to force some of these bad decisions now and again. You want these players to suck quickly so Kenny has the evidence to say, "sorry Ozzie, we've got to make a change." You don't want these players to get hot briefly- a ton of AAAA players or semi-washed up old guys can hit .340 for a few weeks, a month. That ends up buying them a longer trial period to prove that, while they were hot for a while, they are not a full time regular. Wise sucks. You want him to prove it as soon as possible to force Kenny's hand into putting a legit player in there. Erstad sucks. You want him to prove that as quick as possible to force Kenny's hand to make a change. You don't hope he breaks his ankle while swinging a bat. But your not surprised that he wound up with another injury. I want the White Sox to win Mark Kotsay getting a lot of DH time is a poor choice in the long run The sooner Kotsay proves he shouldn't get a lot of at bats, the sooner Kenny can pull the plug on Ozzie's bad idea Adrian Gonzalez, please.

Cust is Jim Thome lite. They didn't want Thome, it would make zero sense if they then picked up Cust.

QUOTE (justBLAZE @ Apr 3, 2010 -> 09:55 PM) True, and I'm not gonna say I'm worried but Flowers was pretty overhyped in this board ever since he got here from Braves. They aren't going to bring up Flowers to sit on the bench 99% of the time. He will play everyday at AAA. You bring up a backup like Lucy to be the backup in Chicago. If AJ were to get hurt during the season, Flowers would be brought up and given the starting job.

As currently constructed, I pretty much agree with this. I think we are a little better than 50/50 shot to win the division. Unless we add a serious bat like Adrian Gonzalez, it doesn't seem like we're at the same level as the teams in the East.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Mar 3, 2010 -> 01:51 PM) And as far as letting some of the regulars get some rest, well that's what having a bench is for. Vizquel, Kotsay and Jones are fine bench players and I'm fine with them relieving a starter every now and than but having one of them in the lineup everyday is just unacceptable. Precisely.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 15, 2010 -> 04:49 PM) Let me put it another way. If the end of the season came, and I told you that there were 5 games over the course of the season where we wound up having 2 infielders hurt, would you say "That's it, our season's gone" or would you say "Well, that's not half bad, I'm glad we didn't suffer too many major injuries". If we had 5 games over the course of the year where 2 middle infielders got hurt, I would say, "wow, that was ridiculously bad luck. That was unlikely enough that it was not worth wasting a spot on the 25 man roster to cover that improbable contingency." QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 15, 2010 -> 04:49 PM) There have been times in the last few years where we've had as many as 3 IF's go down or get tossed during a single game. How many times has that happened? How many times has it happened to 2 middle infielders in the same game, in the same season? I would assume very, very few. And over the course of the season, how many more runs would you have scored, and therefore games would you have won, if you instead used that roster slot for a legitimate hitter to DH?

best post I've ever seen on this site

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jan 28, 2010 -> 07:48 PM) That's fantasy. Karabell was talking about homers and RBI and SB and runs and whatever else. He wasn't actually talking about Alexei Ramirez being better than Derek Jeter. But also in reality, the argument could be made. And the fantasy numbers don't take into account defense, where Jeter is, by many, considered the worst shortstop in baseball. In 2008, you can argue Alexei was the better player (obviously not last year). Who knows which Alexei we will get in 2010.