Vance Law

QUOTE(Hatchetman @ Mar 19, 2008 -> 09:29 AM) And Josh Fields still plays 3B like Cory Snyder. True. Fields plays 3rd like a young Joe Crede.

Re: second base. Platoon. That's my wish, and I doubt it will happen. Richar/Uribe with Ramirez at AAA. Trade Uribe at some point and bring up Sex Ram.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Mar 18, 2008 -> 01:32 PM) Which would mean to me that we traded Garland to: Save a couple million $, get an extra late first/early 2nd round pick, and clear space to give our young pitchers a solid tryout. I think all of those are positive things. And have an improved bat and defense at ss, a base stealer, and the leadership and intangibles Orlando brings.

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Mar 18, 2008 -> 04:38 PM) With worse defense than Pablo. Bourgeois doesnt really excel at any position. I doubt I buy this. If they can put Bourgeois in CF he's certainly better out there. You'd never see Ozuna there.

QUOTE(beck72 @ Mar 18, 2008 -> 01:55 PM) Owens and Anderson should be the last OF spots, with Owens getting the majority of playing time. I think, as of today, that this is what may happen. But it is total f***ing insanity that Owens ("the O is for One-tool") would start over Anderson. If Quentin is not fully healthy, this is a no brainer. If all 3 of Anderson, Quentin, and Owens are totally healthy, then I don't know. Someone is the odd man out and goes to AAA. Owens remains the ideal bench guy with his speed and lefthandedness. Either way one of the 6 OF/1B/DH guys is likely to get hurt and open up a spot. Of all the dumb things Ozzie does, I just hope he's learned this lesson. If Owens tweaks that groin again now closer to April, he's done. He's on the DL or he's in AAA. He is worthless if he is not really really good at stealing bases. QUOTE(beck72 @ Mar 18, 2008 -> 01:55 PM) Quentin needs to go to AAA and get 100%. Quentin needs to get 100%. And the only place for him until he does that is AAA.

QUOTE(Princess Dye @ Mar 18, 2008 -> 03:41 PM) Quentin has been hampered with injuries his whole MLB career. That's the difference between his 400 ABs and Anderson's. Anderson has had a 134 game year and hit .225. When healthy, I think Quentin should be up here. Ozzie has said that his current situation is something he'd have played through if it was midseason, so to me that means he's ready to play. If he's still bigtime hampered, then yes he should be down there. Now all that said, we're back to the topic at hand... how much importance does BA's ability to play center factor in? Part of this question, I guess, involves how bad Swish is in CF. Andruw Jones hit .225 last year. You know who sucked for the first half of their rookie season? Every player ever. That is a slight exaggeration. Look at players from Torii Hunter to Aramis Ramirez to Robin Ventura to Alex Gordon who hit about .185 for the 1st 2 months of last year to the overwhelming majority of the rest of the players in baseball. They all suck ass just like they're supposed to. The difference is that some of them are supposed to eventually be great hitters. Brian is not and does not need to be- he's playing great defense at a premium defensive position. He just needs to be good. Like he has been in the minors. Like he has been in his spring trainings. Like he will be in the majors. Owens will not be a great or a good hitter. He's a one-tool player and a perfect bench guy. The other guys will sort themselves out over this year and next. Quentin will get healthy. He will torch AAA. Someone of Thome, Dye, Konerko, Swisher, Owens will get injured opening up another spot. We suddenly have an abundance of MLB ready middle infielders and outfielders playing for very cheap (Swisher, Quentin, Anderson, Owens, Richar, Ramirez, Bourgeois)that should be playing the majority of those spots next year.

QUOTE(iamshack @ Mar 17, 2008 -> 01:40 AM) Hey, Pods has a .529 OBP with Colorado this spring.... We've got to be kicking ourselves over that.

QUOTE(Want2Repeat @ Mar 16, 2008 -> 09:41 PM) Floyd - 6.55 ERA and 6/5 K/BB ratio in 11 innings. Two wild pitches today. 11 innings, then. Over the course of 11 full innings in spring training, those stats don't look good. Johan Santana last year put up an ERA of 6.39 over a stretch of 12 2/3 innings in July last year. That's right, not only was it the regular season, but Santana's rough spell lasted 15% longer. I'm just glad we have Floyd instead of Santana because of what these stats are telling me. Either way, at least we have Jerry Owens' .429 batting average to fall back on.

IMO hitting will have no effect on Johan. He will be the best pitcher in baseball this year with even better numbers due to pitching in the NL and more wins because of the Mets strong offense. If any pitcher is a good candidate to not be pulled early for a pinch hitter, it's Johan Santana, the best pitcher.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Mar 16, 2008 -> 04:13 PM) On this one I'll agree. A guy has a bad outing in the spring right around the time that Steve Stone keeps telling me every pitcher goes through some version of a dead arm period, and the sky is falling and we're all doomed. Precisely. Gavin Floyd had a bad outing because he is bad and will be bad in every game he pitches this year. Dan Haren has a bad outing because he is good. He is good because he is not on our team.

QUOTE(Greg The Bull Luzinski @ Mar 15, 2008 -> 03:37 PM) I recommend the 12 oz curl for forearm and wrist strength. Nice. Throw in some 16 ouncers to mix it up.

I'm confused by the "Avg Win" and "Avg Loss"numbers. They don't seem to correlate to a 162 game season. The avg wins for the best teams is, like 52 or 53.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Mar 13, 2008 -> 08:30 PM) Wasserman's problem is not one of his own making. If it is the case that he can't reliably get lefties out, then it is (partially)of his making. I do agree that Masset having no options left is a significant factor as well. But if Wasserman was as good at getting out lefties as he was righties, he'd have a spot, and Mac and Masset would have to fight for the other. We had 12 pitchers all last year. Seems like that's Ozzie's preference.

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ Mar 12, 2008 -> 10:51 PM) I actually thought this may have something to do with Danks and Floyd. The plan all off-season was for Danks to be the 3rd guy and Floyd to be the 5th starter. Maybe Gavin's impressed KW and Ozzie a lot so far, and they've decided to bump him up at John's expense? Well, yes, this is exactly what Ozzie said. QUOTE(DBAH0 @ Mar 12, 2008 -> 10:51 PM) And because they don't want righties and lefties going back to back when possible, they just decided to flip - flop MB and JV. No, there still will be righties going back to back. Just as there would have to be in any configuration with 3 righties. Now it is #3 Floyd and #4 Contreras. QUOTE(DBAH0 @ Mar 12, 2008 -> 10:51 PM) Unless there is something wrong with MB as fathom speculated, but I would certainly hope that's not the case. Two and a half weeks before the season starts, they have decided that Buehrle is too injured to start on opening day, so they are benching him for an entire........day.....when invariably he would be healthy. I don't think it's that.

Who knows. And all of this is pretty meaningless. Maybe the intent is to try to give Floyd all the confidence they possibly can that they feel he will succeed.

QUOTE(ChiSox_Sonix @ Mar 12, 2008 -> 02:56 PM) With Carlos Vasquez gone that clears a spot on the 40 Nice. Clears the way for us to trade for Crede and Rowand once we trade Crede. These black letters are green.

This guy is f***ing insane. Does anything like this go on anywhere else in the country. A columnist at a major paper who is openly at war with local franchise and just spouts off like a pro-wrestling manager. He's a cartoon character.

QUOTE(Felix @ Mar 10, 2008 -> 08:52 PM) Youkilis is past his prime? He turns 29 in 5 days and has been in the league 4 seasons. (you're right about the others ) Not past his prime, just slow(ish).

QUOTE(almagest @ Mar 10, 2008 -> 10:22 PM) Good point. Check out their career splits: Uribe: BA OBP SLG OPS .273 .315 .489 .804 Home .235 .275 .366 .641 Away Cabrera: BA OBP SLG OPS .274 .322 .405 .727 Home .271 .319 .400 .719 Away Somewhat surprising that Cabrera hasn't hit better away. Not only has Uribe benefited from home ballparks, but these 2 are going in opposite directions the past 3 years. Cabrera averaging 40 doubles the past 2 years and some of those turn into homers in Chicago.

QUOTE(iamshack @ Mar 10, 2008 -> 07:39 PM) Why is everyone so certain that Richar will produce at 2b? I have no problem with Juan starting at 2b and seeing what he can do. If he falters, replace him. It's as simple as that. He hit in the minors. He looks good at the plate. He hit some in his callup last year and improved with time. You don't have to be that great to outproduce Uribe. Richar does that easily, and will get better with time.

QUOTE(lvjeremylv @ Mar 9, 2008 -> 08:01 AM) The fact of the matter is that the Sox simply have 1 too many hitters that are past their primes and extremely slow. Like with Big Papi and Manny Ramirez and Varitek and Lowell and Youkilis.

QUOTE(iamshack @ Mar 10, 2008 -> 02:29 PM) Well, I still have no problem with the Quentin trade- I honestly believe he will be a hell of a player for us in time. But I just don't see Richar as being anything other than a utility player. He has nice plate discipline, which is good for us, but I don't see him ever hitting enough. I agree with the first part regarding Quentin. I don't understand the second part. You don't think Richar will hit enough, but Uribe will?

QUOTE(Tony82087 @ Mar 10, 2008 -> 12:13 PM) Why in the hell was Quentin acquired this off-season. This organization is in NO PLACE to be dealing top end prospects for "project" type players in Quentin, which at this point he is, being behind Owens and now Anderson???? I agree it was a bad decision to get Quentin and make his shoulder continue to hurt into spring training. A smarter decision would have been to make his shoulder stop hurting before spring training started. I don't know why they did it that way.

QUOTE(ptatc @ Mar 6, 2008 -> 09:17 PM) Look at all of the past world series winning teams and 9 out of 10 will have this type of batting order for the top four hitters. You can't use a line like that to imply causality. 9 out of 10 teams that suck also have a batting order like that. Joe Sheehan wrote a piece on batting orders recently and it's what makes most sense to me. Have your best hitters get the most at bats. Have high on-base guys in front of power hitters.

QUOTE(lostfan @ Mar 6, 2008 -> 06:44 PM) I'm not sure why some of you guys are so unequivocally hostile to Jerry Owens Most people wouldn't be huge fans of it, but would be kinda ok with Owens starting in center..............if we didn't have Quentin. But we have Quentin and most people really want him to start in left field. Some people think it's completely insane that we would consider starting Owens over Quentin on a regular basis, and are frustrated that it seems things are going that way.