caulfield12

Yikes. I guess we do have to be happy with Beckham at .270 or .280. Btw, Mark Parent's a pretty big guy, he makes Hermie look tiny.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 5, 2012 -> 02:30 PM) Daryl Van Schouwen ‏ @CST_soxvan Jhan Marinez went one scoreless with 3 Ks, Simon Castro threw 2.0 scoreless IP with a K and Deunte Heath struck out two in 1.0 IP. Jose Quintana allowed 2 runs on 3 hits with 2 Ks over 2.0 IP … bullpen combined to work 7.0 scoreless IP with eight strikeouts Start the countdown for the first KW trade of one of our pitching prospects in ST. F=m * a, Bill First clues about Gordon's "me being me" swing and Morel's carryover from late 2011 coming up next.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 5, 2012 -> 02:29 PM) Daryl Van Schouwen ‏ @CST_soxvan rhp jhan marinez: 1 inning, 3 strikeouts v indians in b game It would be nice if one of those RH relief candidates comes out and posts a 0.00 ERA in spring and takes the bull by the horns right off the bat for those final 2 bullpen spots. Generally Bill, no, most teams don't have 3 lefties in the bullpen.

God, Melton's worse than listening to about 95% of minor league announcers. The King of Obvious Statements. Spring is here, start the Melton complaints thread and forget about Harrelson for at least a month.

No K for Dunn, at least.

QUOTE (Heads22 @ Mar 5, 2012 -> 01:51 PM) Um, baseball's back. Any particulars? The theme of ST will be any positives about our winning percentage and how somehow this year it will be indicative of April success and how it should encourage fans to go out and buy season tickets or Pick 7 packages...."how Ozzie wanted to see a lot of young players" in Spring but Ventura's determined to win more March games and translate that to a fast start out of the gate.

Gold Glove 2012, Alexei. Too bad he couldn't get rid of the ball and cut down Ethier at third.

Hope we don't see that bottom of the 1st performance repeated in a loop for the first half of the season offensively.

Tickets "JUST" start at $73 for Crosstown Series? That's funny. Sounds not exactly like a bargain.

We're going to lead the AL in ERA, from the start of ST until the end of October.

Sparse attendance. Fire KW. LoL. The ubiquitous comment about curveballs not biting in the desert air, knew that one was coming.

Who is Russ Langer?

Who is the guy singing the National Anthem? Hulk Hogan's brother? Hollywood Gates? What? Weird to see Buehrle NOT catching the ceremonial first pitch.

We'll see how much AJ is worth at the deadline....if it will be just a salary dump, saving us $2-3 million, or if we can actually get a decent prospect or two back. As far as 2005 goes, nobody knew anything about Iguchi, only that he had good stats in the Japanese leagues but that KW had only scouted him via video. (He could just have easily ended up like Nishioka or Kaz Matsui). Pods was coming off a down year (certainly compared to his rookie campaign with the Brewers), and Dye from an injury. El Duque was a huge question mark, especially at that $6.5 million salary line. They were replacing about 40% of the roster, and there were also inevitable questions about Thomas' health as well as Everett's "combustibility." All things considered, it would have been just as easy to be pessimistic (because of the chemistry and roster turnover issue) as optimistic, as we had very strong teams in 2003 and 2004 but were turning over our operating model almost completely at that time, besides the starting pitching. And Contreras was also a huge question mark as well.

Hochevar, Chen and Jonathan Sanchez are the top 3 for the Royals at the moment. Yikes! Duffy, Paulino, Aaron Crow, Montgomery, Teaford, and Luis Mendoza (he started yesterday) competing for the 4th/5th spots. Duff, Crow and Montgomery are the well-known names in top prospect circles. Crow going through the Chris Sale transition phase.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 2, 2012 -> 02:49 PM) Heh. I got to go to a Final Four with his team. If Alford was attempting to run in the 2012 Republican Presidential primary, Herman Cain could still show up today and beat him 90%+ to whatever abysmal single digit number Alford would poll in the Hawkeye State. Michele Bachmann would crush him, too. Huntsman might actually be able to beat Alford. Well, maybe not.

http://www.baseballamerica.com/blog/prospe...beras-contract/

Couple of things that are interesting...that he tried to hire Keith Law as a scout this past offseason, and wasn't Jon Daniels of the Rangers also from a "non-traditional" baseball background? Daniels was born and raised in Queens, New York.[2][3] He went to Hunter College High School and Cornell University, majored in Applied Economics and Management, and joined the Delta Chi Fraternity.[4][5] After graduating from Cornell University in 1999, Daniels went into business development for Allied Domecq.[6] KISSIMMEE, Fla. -- For a guy who came to baseball relatiavely late in life and who runs a team that is by all accounts overmatched, new Astros GM Jeff Luhnow seems quite relaxed. He appears to have the right outlook and demeanor for a team that may again lose 100 games. "Of course, he is (calm),'' one skeptic from a rival team said. "There is absolutely no pressure.'' Luhnow, an intellectual ensconsed in the stat crowd (he just got back from the MIT Sports Sloan Analytics Conference), is always going to have his critics. He and Rays GM Andrew Friedman are the only ones to take the non-traditional route to the GM's chair, meaning they didn't start out as baseball executives. But Friedman quickly proved himself one of the best execs in baseball by now after starting out in the investment business. Pressure or not to win this year, folks are looking to Luhnow to prove himself. Not everyone is going to be rooting for him, either. Some folks like tradition, and he's taken an unususal route to get where he is. He has a dual engineering and business degree from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Northwestern University, and he got into baseball in his mid-30s with the Cardinals, in 2003. Now 45, he spent nearly a decade as an executive with the Cardinals, contributing to two World Series teams as a high-level front-office person. Though, with the ongoing old-school vs. new-school denate raging (he is firmly in the latter crowd), there were definitely some critics in St. Louis. He tried to hire ESPN's Keith Law for a top scouting job in Houston, which wouldn't necessarily have endeared him to some older scouts. (Law turned the job down.) Say this for Luhnow, the Cardinals generally thrived in his time in a top scouting and player development job there. And say this, too, he seems to have an excellent handle on where the Astros are today. Luhnow said he seeks progress, which is precisely the right answer for a team that lost 106 games last year and threatens to repeat that output. He also said their seemingly dire situation will be aided by a lucrative TV contract that begins next year and that they also hope to become a free-agent player if they can recapture their audience in what he pointed out was a big market. Luhnow provided a positive-as-he-could be rundown of the Astros playing personnel, but it isn't fair to recount any of that here because his job is to be as upbeat as possible, no matter what the roster looks like. While Luhnow mentioned several nice things about many of their players, he isn't about to pretend the team is ready to contend, which shows he's far from delusional. He does seem to have high hopes for new Astros shortstop Jed Lowrie, whom he acquired in a trade for ex-Astros closer Mark Melancon, as well as a few others. The reality, though, is that even his relatively honest portrayal of his team's situation doesn't say how bad the Astros are thought to be. Their rotation led by Wandy Rodriguez, Bud Norris and J.A. Happ is somewhat presentable, but their everyday lineup threatens to be the worst in baseball. Everyone has their own evaluation of course, but one scout said he believed that besides veteran Carlos Lee, who Houston would love to trade, only two players have a chance to be major-league average, catcher Jason Castro and third baseman Chris Johnson, and Castro missed last year with a knee injury and Johnson hit .251 with seven home runs. "Two years ago, he hit,'' the scout said. "Last year he forgot how.''(sounds like Gordon Beckham, Alex Rios and Adam Dunn) Jon Heyman

Speaking of getting on-base... Pierre said the Phillies were the only team that reached out to him this offseason, making what he said was a surprise call in January. But perhaps nobody was happier to hear the Phillies were giving Pierre a shot than Willis. Pierre is the godfather to all three of Willis’ daughters. Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/04/2673...l#storylink=cpy

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Mar 4, 2012 -> 04:59 PM) It's just a terrible article all around with a writer who did no fact checking whatsoever. Looks like they misjudged the money left on Rios' deal (plus buyout) and averaged it over just 2 years instead of 3. Isn't our obligation to Rios around $42 million remaining? 12:$12M, 13:$12.5M, 14:$12.5M, 15:$13.5M club option ($1M buyout) NOPE, $38 million, still can't figure out where the $21 million average came from.

Ideally, Beckham would hit 3rd with Ramirez or Morel 2nd. Unfortunately, nothing is ideal with the Sox for the moment. As much as they claim they follow stats in the Sox front office, having Ramirez/Morel/AJ with their low walk rates at that spot in the order isn't ideal, but at least AJ's a professional hitter, albeit one who doesn't have much patience at times. http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=sh-h..._ramirez_030412 Cespedes and Manny becoming fast buddies...too bad we didn't sign both of them, haha.

But nationally, most experts were picking the Twins, because they'd won the division 3 years in a row...it was the logical choice, and we'd jettisoned Ordonez, Lee and Valentin for WHO? On the Sox, are they better with Dayan Viciedo in left field and Alex Rios in right — or with Viciedo in Charlotte and Rios on the bench? What happens if center fielder Alejandro De Aza regresses? Adam Dunn's fixed, right? Can Chris Sale and Jake Peavy combine for more than 50 starts? And who's the closer again? Cubs and Sox questions outnumber answers. Oh, yeah, can either Sveum or Robin Ventura manage? It promises to be fun finding out. It could be frustrating too. When Sveum addressed the idea of Soriano as a leadoff hitter by saying, "We don't have the bona fide guys at any position in the order,'' he became the latest Chicago baseball figure to inadvertently foretell the upcoming summer of nothing. Paul Konerko beat Sveum to it by correctly saying the Sox can have a successful season without making the playoffs. Both teams view the season through the same prism because, according to their top executives, neither is built to win in 2012. Pay now, playoffs later. That might sound like a lousy way to build a marketing campaign, but it represents the smartest approach to build a perennial winner. Teams committed to player development as much as the Cubs and Sox find themselves will endure growing pains. At least both teams appear to have their eyes wide open — not necessarily the way I recommend viewing all 324 of their games. One thing that stood out from splitting last week between camps in Glendale and Mesa was a common sense of inevitability. Optimism didn't spring eternal as much as realism. Professionalism permeated the desert air. Catching the Tigers or Cardinals came up in conversation as much as creating a new mindset. Not even Commissioner Bud Selig adding a wild-card team in each league produced much of a we-can-do-this buzz. Unsolicited, several Sox people at Camelback Ranch offered how refreshing it was to focus on baseball again instead of outside nonsense. One answered a question about the differences under Ventura by cupping his hand to his ear and asking with a smile, "Do you hear that? Silence." The strongest vibe at a serious Cubs camp surrounded young prospects such as Rizzo, Jackson and Matt Szczur as well as the confidence in Epstein and Jed Hoyer to replenish the farm system one shrewd move at a time. The process will take time, essentially giving 2012 the feel of a six-month-long extended spring training. It has been 13 years since the Cubs and Sox each won 75 or fewer games in the same season — the Sox were 75-86 and the Cubs 67-95. Brace yourself, Chicago baseball fans, to party this summer like it's 1999. [email protected] Twitter @DavidHaugh Let's see here. Sveum's idea is to hit the team's oldest player, and the one who's known to hustle the least of maybe any player in the entire league leadoff. Talk about a managerial brainstorm. I'd have hoped the Cubs would have hired a manager which has a true feel for the game, and not one who lives off stats, especially when the stats show failures from the past. The true quality managers don't play by the book only. They have gut feelings, which they're not afraid to implement. Sveum, i don't think so much. michaelc at 10:42 AM March 04, 2012 PECOTA projects White Sox for 78-84 and Cubs for 74-88. But the records are irrelevant. Making good progress on rebuilding is relevant. But experts have raised a very good question about Kenny and the W. Sox. Is he all in toward rebuilding, as he should be. I think not. There is no way AJP should still be the starting catcher over Tyler Flowers on a rebuilding-commited team. MikePomatto at 10:22 AM March 04, 2012 So the premise of questions the Sox have entering this season is to compare them to an idea to have Soriano bat first? This is the epitome of spurious coorelation. Whether to put Viciedo in right, or even in the lineup, is a legitimiate baseball question. The latter is typically asinine aspects that define the cubs.

Ramirez was horrible with situational hitting last year, though. The other side of the coin is that putting him in the 2 slot, he is almost forced by a new manager to be more of a "team player" and less of a free swinger. But will that take away his aggressiveness, or make him start going back up the middle and to RF? Morel seemed to "shrink" his offensive game in that type of situation, and the power only came back later when he started to feel like he belonged.

Hafner was really solid though, last year....after sucking eggs for about 3 consecutive years. I read somewhere that Sizemore was expected to be out the first 2-3 months of the season...keeps sounding worse and worse for him. Whose favorite player was he? Ozzie or Hawk's, there for a while?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 2, 2012 -> 11:26 AM) I got an A in basketball at Manchester with Steve Alford. Ah, the good old days. F--- Alford. He only won a single NCAA tourney game at Iowa, but he's actually had two good years at UNM. The one year he has a good season, they go out in the first round in 2006 as a #3 seed to one of those directional Louisiana schools. A's for racquetball and field hockey at Iowa.