Vance Law

QUOTE(witesoxfan @ Apr 1, 2008 -> 09:46 PM) I'll miss Jon, but I won't say that's a horrible deal yet. I'll see what he does this year, the contract he signs, what Cabrera does this year, and what happens afterwards with him (whether he resigns and remains solid or if he is let go and the Sox get 2 picks for him, and then what those picks amount to). Nice, reasonable, rational, thoughtful post. What is it doing here at Soxtalk?

QUOTE(the People's Champ @ Mar 31, 2008 -> 06:36 PM) I hope I don't have the same feeling about him this year,as I did every time they brought in Luis Viscaino Vizcaino had an excellent 3.73 ERA in his one season with the Sox.

QUOTE(Wanne @ Mar 31, 2008 -> 06:27 PM) I'm still wondering why Dotel instead of Linebrink?!? Dotel has better stuff and is the better pitcher when healthy, which he appears to be. If that is rebutted by pointing out this one bad game, I would point to the words "one" and "game." What I want to know is, why the hell was Buehrle the starter over Masset. Masset clearly is a lot better.

QUOTE(Wanne @ Mar 31, 2008 -> 06:25 PM) Dotel just seems like a FLAT OUT WASTE OF MONEY at this point. He's lost every single game he's played for us. Every single game. He's almost as bad as Sabathia. Worthless.

QUOTE(Soxpranos @ Mar 31, 2008 -> 05:31 PM) So much for all the experts here that wanted Thome hitting fifth. Almost Everyone in here knows more than Ozzie and Kenny. You don't need to be an expert to know that Thome is terrible against lefties. I couldn't be happier that he hit 2 home runs. I'm also confident he'll be very bad against lefties over the course of the year. It's absolutely unreal the conclusions people jump to after one game, or 3 innings. Unbelievable. Come on. Buehrle will not be terrible. Masset will not be perfect. Thome will not be good against lefties over the course of the year. If you want to jump to all of the negative conclusions about the Sox, you need to also point out that Sabathia will be worthless and that the Indians absolutely suck.

I can see Masset being given the opportunity to lose the job at the major league level, which he very well might do, at which point Wasserman gets called up.

QUOTE(lostfan @ Mar 27, 2008 -> 01:56 PM) Well coincidentally we have 2 top 5 CFs in baseball on other teams in the division, and they are some of the more well-rounded offensive players to boot. But it's not that much of a stretch to talk about his range in such superlatives because it's all true. It's only a shame that his offense sucked SO damn bad the first half of the year. Grady Sizemore is handsome and an excellent hitter, but he's no Brian Anderson on defense (though he's not bad).

QUOTE(chisox2334 @ Mar 26, 2008 -> 07:26 PM) My question why isnt ozuna hitting leadoff? He has killed cc sabathia now this is lineup: swish, ocab, thome, konerko, dye, aj, crede, anderson or quentin and pablo hitting 9th The article states that Ozuna is leading off on opening day against Sabathia, check it again.

QUOTE(Tony82087 @ Mar 26, 2008 -> 07:10 PM) If Anderson is in the lineup with Swisher, and Anderson is playing LF, Ozzie deserves all the abuse he gets. I agree with this. Good lord is that retarded. The only conceivable scenario under which this is sane is if it's already decided with a high degree of certainty that Anderson will be traded, and that they want Swisher to get practice out there to hopefully preclude Owens from playing there on a regular basis. Sadly, I don't think that is the case. Even if it were the case, I still find the Anderson being traded part to be idiotic because no way we get more value than he is worth as a player on the field. That is, unless Quentin is healthy and starting in LF beginning with opening day. But even still, I don't see how you don't give Anderson a chance, with his A)ability to play CF and B) his ability to play a great CF

QUOTE(witesoxfan @ Mar 26, 2008 -> 04:55 PM) I don't think it has to vest. Philadelphia is paying for $5.5 mill of it, and it's worth $13 mill; there's no one on earth who is going to convince me Jim Thome isn't worth $7.5 million on a one year committment, barring a pretty substantial injury. Where do you know that from?

QUOTE(Shamrock4Life @ Mar 25, 2008 -> 11:48 PM) I don't like the idea of Quinten being on the 25 man to open the season, I would rather bring in another arm in the bullpen for April, since Ramirez is going to get limited time at 2nd with Uribe there and would make a good/serviceable 4th outfielder until Owens is completely healthy, which after a week long minor league assignment/extended spring training, will be in mid to late April. Hopefully Anderson can stake his new claim to the CF job by then. Huuuuh? 8 relievers? and it's Quentin, folks

Wow. If we could get Owens on the 60 day DL. Have Quentin, better yet, Dye, DH against all lefties, with Quentin in RF, I'd be pretty ecstatic. But also, wow. We're starting off the season with all of 2 left handed hitters on the team, while last year we occasionally started 4 or 5. Edited to add, oh yeah, Swisher is a switch hitter, so 3 lefties.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Mar 25, 2008 -> 06:20 PM) Does that sound like something he might need surgery to correct or is that re-hab-able? It sounds like what speedy Podsednik had about 40 different times over the past 3 years.

QUOTE(fathom @ Mar 25, 2008 -> 03:12 PM) If the Sox were so intent on having Crede play 3rd base, we would have better much better off putting Fields in LF, letting Owens/Anderson fight for CF, and not trading 3 of our top prospects for Swisher. em, hindsight. And Swisher will be here for 5 years, and Crede is very unlikely to be on the Sox for the whole year. Half of it tops, it seems, and possibly much less than that.

QUOTE(heirdog @ Mar 25, 2008 -> 04:34 PM) I think the organization knows what they have in Brian Anderson the CFer. Its beneficial for them to have Brian try all the other OF positions (considering they were probably slating him to take the 4th OF position if he made the team...knowing they wanted Owens' legs in the line-up most of the time). I agree with the first sentence. They know they have one of the better CFs in baseball in Anderson, he doesn't need to prove anything. They want to get a look at how the other guys do/improve. If Anderson is in a regular season game, there is absolutely no reason for him not to be playing CF.

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Mar 24, 2008 -> 05:26 PM) Ozzie wants to start Owens against lefties as well. He will be down in the order, but in the lineup. Hopefully he hits himself out of a job quick, then. We've got more of an Ozzie problem than a don't-have-guys-who-can-hit-lefties problem.

If there's one thing that has me semi-optimistic about Anderson starting (aside from the obvious he's had an awesome spring) it's that Jerry Owens has all of ONE stolen base this spring. Hopefully that gives Ozzie enough pause to think Owens isn't fully healthy, and therefore worthless.

Sox hit lefties better than righties last year. The maximum # of lefties we'll ever have starting against a lefty is 3, probably 2 on average. How do Konerko, Dye, Swisher, Cabrera, Fields/Crede, Anderson/Quentin, Uribe do against lefties? Generally great to not-bad.

QUOTE(Greg The Bull Luzinski @ Mar 24, 2008 -> 04:15 PM) Starting pitching is going to be sooooooooo bad this year. At least we don't have Eric Bedard and his 9.50 ERA.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Mar 23, 2008 -> 05:29 PM) Finally saw Anderson today. Looks like a totally different player at the plate. Knees more bent, better balance, less stiff. Made an out his first time up and I thought he looked good. His next time up he hit a ball hard enough to make Thome jealous. I don't know for certain that it will carry over. But he looks like a completely different player. He looks like the kind of guy a pitcher wouldn't want to see come up. At all. Yeah. He's leading the Sox in ST in basically every single offensive category aside from being #2 in RBI (solely because he's hitting so low in the batting order). OBP, SLG, BA, walks, homers, runs, extra base hits.

QUOTE(knightni @ Mar 21, 2008 -> 07:42 PM) I can't imagine Hawk saying "Sex Ram" for some reason. Then tell him I said he's fired.

QUOTE(Shamrock4Life @ Mar 21, 2008 -> 05:40 PM) i believe there is really only one type of waiver. So we have no idea how this discussion of "revocable" vs "irrevocable" waivers started. Since apparently there is no such thing. We have no idea how the media latched on and assumed Uribe was put on "irrevocable" waivers (which does not exist). This then led to the unreasonable general consensus that Williams was going to let Uribe walk away and pay him $4.1 million to do so. There was never the logical question raised, "if Williams was going to let him just go, why wouldn't he at least get $2 or $3 million from some team who could use him," because all of the incorrect, bad, and illogical assumptions stacked on top of each other precluded that from being a possibility. Also precluded was the real thing- he was gaging interest/seeing if he could get someone to pay the whole contract, with no risk, because he could simply pull Uribe back off waivers. Which he did. If Williams put Uribe on imaginary irrevocable waivers and pays him $4.1 million to go home, I am writing "season tickets" on my TV and kicking it out my window.

QUOTE(knightni @ Mar 21, 2008 -> 06:46 PM) X-Ram? It's Sex Ram. I combined Sexy Lexi with A-Ram a couple of weeks ago. This case is closed.

Is anyone a brain-genius with all of the rules of waivers? I don't understand why it was so difficult to get the details. I understand that the Sox can't comment on a player on waivers. What about an official from MLB or the commissioners office? Nobody was able to determine whether or not it was revocable or irrevocable waivers, and as it turned out (revocable) everyone was wrong. Is there literally no way for this to be determined until after the fact?

QUOTE(fathom @ Mar 19, 2008 -> 10:26 AM) We used all of our prospects to try and field a good MLB team, and as of right now, there's still a lot of holes on the team (starting rotation, CF, 2nd base, back-up catcher). I like how having too many players at a given position is a "hole."