caulfield12

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jun 30, 2010 -> 09:59 AM) Seriously, the Nats are asking the moon for Dunn, and the Sox don't have the pieces to acquire him. The best thing you can do at this point is to make a smaller addition or two and to tell the Nats to pound sand. The Gammons article today on Lee (mlb.com) mentioned specifically about the haul(s) the Indians got for Lee and the Blue Jays for Halladay...that almost none of those guys has made an impact worth mentioning for those two respective clubs. That most teams are fearful of giving up really high quality young prospects, even for two of the best pitchers in the game today. To think that the Nationals can get the same for Dunn, no way!

I blame it all on the LaRocheFactor. Well, in all honesty, that 2005 team, they simply HAD to cool off a bit, it happened the same way with the 2000 team as well when injuries started to take their toll. Another reason would be playing most or all of the interleague games in the first half. 2006, same thing, the injuries and wear-and-tear on the pitching staff started to show in the second half of the season. Not to mention the White Sox have had older, more veteran teams that were susceptible to wearing down in the Chicago summers. Finally, Manuel didn't do such a great job in 2003, they still faded down the stretch when it really counted and the Twins blew past them.

I don't think we'll ever sign a $100 million player, let alone $250.

QUOTE (pittshoganerkoff @ Jun 30, 2010 -> 07:06 AM) Let me throw a question out there for discussion. Do you think one of the considerations about who the Sox go after is the possibility of signing said player after this year? The three names that keep coming up are Dunn, LaRoche, and Fielder. All three are in their final year of their contract (although LaRoche has a mutual option). Is there any chance the Sox try to sign any of them, and if so who's most likely to actually sign? Fielder would be the most expensive, and I don't see that happening. Dunn and LaRoche may be about equal considering they are the same age. Thinking that Sox would want to sign one of them, if they were to try to keep Konerko as well, how much do you think the Sox would be willing to spend between the two? No more than $20 million? $18 million? I would guess Konerko at 2 years for $12-14 million...which would be a lot more affordable without Jenks, Pierre, Linebrink and Teahen. Dunn, while he still has limited value because of his defensive shortcomings, maybe he can get $18-24 million for 3 years. LaRoche, I would go 2 years, $9-11 million maybe.

Or Mitchell too...although you'd have to think KW would have realized from the last 3-4 seasons how difficult it is to acquire the "ideal" leadoff man, especially when you don't produce him in your own system. Obviously, there's no choice but to hold on to him...taking one of the 3 best bargaining chips off the table. Morel can't yet be perceived by many organizations (only NL teams) as a legit candidate to start at 3B for them.

And if you add O. Hudson/Thome to our lineup (taking them away from the Twins, of course) and also subtract Pierre/Teahen, it's pretty clear we would be much closer to first if not leading the division. Not to mention a lot more payroll flexibility going forward to boot.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Jun 29, 2010 -> 03:20 PM) Yeah that killed us. I was all for going another route but they had no alternative plan in place. I wonder how realistically KW thought acquiring Damon would be when they officially cut ties with Thome? If he assumed that getting Damon with the numbers that were bandied about was going to happen, that was a pretty big miscalculation on his part. KW has come up short enough times with situations like Torii Hunter, Fukudome, trading for Miguel Cabrera....he had to have the sense that the Tigers or another team would probably outspend him in the end. Sure, the White Sox had the starting rotation, but it's not like Damon and Boras couldn't have just as easily reached the conclusion that Detroit would be equally as competitive, which they have been. Nobody expected Boesch to come out of nowhere though...or Austin Jackson to play as well as he has, although he's fading offensively. Seems like every year they can produce a rookie like Raburn or Clete Thome who puts up an 800+ OPS, and now this year again, Boesch. We had four months of Beckham, which has been the biggest rookie contribution along with Josh Fields in 2007. Yikes.

Another trade that was speculated about and then reported prematurely was the Hal McCoy one about Dye for Homer Bailey. The Garland/Erstad one as well, when it became obvious that the Disney/Cap Cities group felt that Erstad was one of their core marketing omponents and didn't want to part with him. Or Garland to the Astros for Taveras and 2-3 pitchers that have never amounted to much For former prospects team: Brandon Allen or Chris Carter 1B/DH Getz 2B Andy Gonzalez SS (just kidding) Fields 3B Ryan Sweeney, Chris Young, Aaron Rowand, Br. Anderson OF John Ely, Gio Gonzalez, Frank Francisco, Matt Guerrier, Jon Rauch, Charlie Haeger, Clayton Richard, Aaron Poreda, Russell Actually, in terms of major leaguers produced from the Sox system, we rank somewhere around 15-20 in baseball, but in terms of true "impact players" or All-Stars, probably somewhere in the 23-27 range I would guess over the last decade compared to other organizations. Of course things look a LOT different if you just included players who at ONE POINT played for the White Sox.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jun 28, 2010 -> 07:53 PM) Through May 30th, Chris Coghlan put up a .217/.268/.272/.540 line. He was at .275/.338/.400/.738 before tonight's game, and that improved due to a 2-3, 1 HR, 1 BB night. That means he's hit .380/.456/.630/1.086 since that point in time. My query, quite calmly is, why, in the blue f***, can't Beckham do that same f***ing s***? Because he's more lost than Alex Rios last year and Walker and the coaching staff simply don't seem to have any answers to help him.

Twins now down only 5-3. I have a feeling our lack of offense is going to really hurt us in the next week. Guess now that we're "close" KW will feel he doesn't have to make a move quickly....and if our getting back into it against NL competition turns out to be an aberration, you shouldn't gut the farm system. There's a good chance we'll be 7-12 combined against CLE and KC after tonight. That's just not acceptable if you want to win the ALCD.

QUOTE (southsideirish71 @ Jun 28, 2010 -> 07:41 PM) How exactly does one explain only 3 hits against this hot garbage that is pitching against us. It makes no sense. Bad advanced scouting, or simply not enough of our budget allocated in that area. Cora called that pitch-out. Probably saved a run there for us.

QUOTE (Kalapse @ Jun 28, 2010 -> 07:25 PM) It wasn't a blatantly blown call. These things do happen, I'd prefer if we didn't afford the umpire the opportunity to blow such calls. For the record: I've b****ed in the past when he was safe in that exact same situation, there just isn't a lot to be gained but there is a lot to be lost. Aviles playing like an MVP still against the White Sox. Wasn't it Rios' fault for the bad slide on that call at second? 21/29 isn't a great stolen base ratio. Wow, White Sox getting bailed out there by the Royals' bad baserunning.

Now we're back to the old White Sox. Royals doing an imitation of the Texas Rangers with their Augusta National infield. Just not quite enough offense...and Rios was safe, so it should be 3-2. Jones is as cold as he was hot at the beginning of the year. But perhaps most troubling, the problems we've had for a decade with pitchers we haven't seen.

Now we're back to the old White Sox. Royals doing an imitation of the Texas Rangers with their Augusta National infield. Just not quite enough offense...and Rios was safe, so it should be 3-2. Jones is as cold as he was hot at the beginning of the year. But perhaps most troubling, the problems we've had for a decade with pitchers we haven't seen.

I don't think Ozzie would find it very easy to DFA Jones, FWIW. They need him as PH power off the bench and for spelling anyone defensively, and just in general as injury insurance. The obvious concerns going forward are 3B, Beckham and Pierre, along with DH. For mid-season, that's quite a few questions marks to have offensively. I sincerely doubt they would trade any of the key components right now off the big league roster. It's going to come down to taking on additional salary commitments (or swapping them out for a Linebrink/Teahen/Pierre) OR which minor leaguers are expendable and not integral parts of the plan going forward. That's probably someone like Morel, Danks 2, Gilmore, Justin Greene, Brand. Short, Cleveland Santeliz, Nathan Jones, Santos Rodriguez, etc. I just don't see trading Flowers, Hudson, Mitchell (that's obvious) or Viciedo.

With BP taking huge projected losses because of the spill, I bet they will renege on that commitment. Unless it's with a "local/regional" affiliate insulated from the issues of the parent company, but I don't see that as being very likely.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Jun 27, 2010 -> 07:31 AM) I was thinking the same thing the other day. Or at least it would have been nice to play this series mid-week and have KC roll in over the weekend. 13 Detroit 36 1,077,696 29,936 74.6 37 30,095 67.4 73 30,016 70.7 14 Atlanta 33 983,027 29,788 59.5 42 30,552 70.0 75 30,216 65.0 15 Houston 40 1,100,123 27,503 67.2 35 34,751 75.2 75 30,885 71.2 16 Texas 39 1,042,949 26,742 54.4 35 27,406 63.9 74 27,056 58.6 17 Seattle 38 1,013,296 26,665 55.8 36 24,334 54.5 74 25,531 55.2 18 Arizona 36 925,660 25,712 52.4 39 31,539 69.8 75 28,742 61.1 White Sox now 19th, at 24,913 per game after Sunday. Good job by the Astros, Mariners and D-Backs to draw the crowds they're drawing. With the Mariners, there was a lot of enthusiam coming into the season and increased season ticket package buying.

Yes, CQ for Chris Carter. So that's 3 moves in 5 years, pretty good track record. We also had the common training camp together for many years in Tucson and picked up the scrappy Alex Cintron. The main question, though, is if Hinch and Byrnes keep their jobs all the way through the end of the season.

What is the argument here? Obviously, Ozzie having faith in the players on his roster had SOMETHING to do with them eventually coming through in the end, PROBABLY. Obviously Ozzie didn't give up on Peavy or Floyd or Jenks or AJ or Carlos or Alexei or Pierre, etc. Say what you will about him, his showing confidence and faith in his players and backing them up (when not throwing them under a bus, which is USUALLY deserved) has worked out pretty well. Let's not forget Ozzie has a higher percentage of playoff appearances in years attempted than KW. KW is 2/10, Ozzie is 2/6...but someone will argue if anyone but Jerry Manuel was manager in 2003, we SHOULD have gone to the playoffs, well, that's also KW's responsibility, isn't it? The worst run of Ozzie's managerial career, we're something like 11 games under 500 since the 2006 ASB. But you can also turn that around and say we're 15 games over .500 from 2008 through 2010. I'm going to become like Greg here in a minute and just defend Ozzie just for the heck of it.

QUOTE (The Beast @ Jun 27, 2010 -> 02:33 PM) I don't see how having poor seasons or being kept on the team by the GM is incompetent on their parts. The only time we've eaten a big contract this decade was MacDougal, but Linebrink is inching closer. If this was the final year of his deal, he'd be gone one way or the other. KW wasn't incompetent, he simply over-reached by 2 years on that deal for Linebrink. Williams should have been replaced by trade or Threets a long time ago.

QUOTE (The Beast @ Jun 27, 2010 -> 02:31 PM) I am so glad that I am listening to the Cubs broadcast on WGN because I don't have to listen to that jackass argue with every call, obvious or close. Also I hope Ramirez quits this "I'm safe" s*** at first base because eventually he's just going to get shown up by an umpire. As an umpire I hate when anyone says "SAFE!" or "OUT" when I'm making a call. It is distracting and could impair the judgment on the call since it is a bang bang play. Pablo Ozuna says "hi!"

Yeah, I'd really like to see what Threets can do. Even Santos, it would be a lot better to get some more work in for the youngster. Linebrink and Williams, yuck. Unless they really think they can get Linebrink on a hot streek for a couple of weeks of "Carrasco time" innings and package him for a hitter with a bad contract.

White Sox, for the moment, only 1 game back with the Twins' loss, but that probably won't stand. Linebrink time? Or Williams? Threets?

For two months, you basically hated watching everyone hit but Konerko, Rios and Andruw Jones while he was hot. It's pretty amazing that Quentin is on a pace for well over 100 RBI's, considering how much he's struggled, seemingly.

Alexei is getting ripped off today. Beckham at least took a solid swing there today....not flailing, feeling or reaching for it.