caulfield12

Colon could dial it up there (when he actually wanted to) in 2003. Thornton with his effortless 96-97 and sometimes 98, you almost forget about him he makes it look so easy.

We've already had an endorsement of TaeRyan shirts/clothing (whatever that is)...and "going to eat in half hour why dye no have a job ?"

QUOTE (Thunderbolt @ Feb 23, 2010 -> 08:01 PM) It's crazy what's happening on the other big SOX board. There's a legion of blind optimists pouncing on any detractors. At least we have decent, reasoned debates here. Everyone who doesn't kiss a-- with the moderators or defer to their every judgment about the world (or White Sox) is quickly eviscerated or labelled a "dark cloud."

I don't have the averages in front of me, but it felt like Poreda was at 91-94 most of the time. That was the biggest shock, beginning in spring training last year. That Clayton Richard, even as a starter, was throwing consistently and for a much longer duration at 92-95 and sometimes a tick higher depending on the gun. Before the season, Richard was billed as a loogy or fifth starter but almost nobody talked about his stuff...whereas Poreda had the "hype" surrounding his fastball from the time he was drafted. I think Nathan Jones, when he pitches for the White Sox, will end up in the low 90's somehow as well. The list goes on and on...Felix Diaz, Adkins, Aaron Myette, Lorenzo Barcelo (although he was injured), Rob Purvis, Royce Ring, Broadway, McCulloch, Sean Tracey, etc. I don't have any understanding how Matt Ginter was ever as hyped as he was, not only in college but also coming up through the minors. I guess Danny Wright, when he first came up (before the injury)....had some very nice stuff. But nothing like Jason Bere ten years prior.

QUOTE (southsidepride15 @ Feb 23, 2010 -> 01:23 PM) You guys have no clue what this offense is capable of. Are we going to rip through the league?? No. Do we still play in a hitter friendly park against a division that is sub par? Yes. These guys are major league baseball players....they will figure out a way to produce without the almighty A-Gon. Have some frickin faith!! And you could have said that going into 2000 or 2005, too. All you can do is look at the back of the baseball cards and ages/career paths and make projections. Baseball is not an exact science...in 2006, on paper, we looked great and that team fell apart. In 2008, nobody expected a whole lot and we overachieved. Last year, we had a lot of talent but very little team cohesiveness or identity. Nobody said we have to have A-Gon or Pujols, etc., or really expects those types of trades to materialize. On the other hand, we are still in the American League, not the NL West. Last year, we had very good pitching and the offense didn't exactly figure things out, even though they are all professionals. So is Greg Walker. Please tell me you weren't around last year telling everyone to have faith in Brian Anderson, Corky Miller, Josh Fields, DeWayne Wise, Jerry Owens, B. Lillibridge, Williams, etc.? It's pretty obvious there was a talent gap in the last 5-7 spots on the roster last year, as compared to years past. As Ozzie always says, great players look managers look very very smart, and the opposite holds equally as true.

If you want the "group think" positivism, you might prefer other Sox message boards, IMO. Trust me, that's worse than anything you see here. At least this site isn't NEARLY as filtered or controlling of its posters, as long as they stay fairly civil and back up their arguments with substance and not just personal attacks.

I sincerely doubt that 97 number has any current meaning. I would be really shocked if he was throwing that hard so early in ST, let alone at any point in the season...after all those injuries. I think 89-93 ends up being much more likely.

What the heck is the deal with our "relief" pitching philosophy? MacDougal, Masset, Sisco and Aardsma were coached to try to pitch more than throw...to very mixed results. The same thing with Jon Adkins. Maybe it's simply that if you have 2-3 pitches, you can get away with the loss of velocity...but if you don't have velocity OR movement in the pen, you'll get murdered with predominantly one pitch (see Joel Zumaya). Finally, they just gave up with MacDougal and went back to the throw it at the middle of the plate and let natural movement work to your advantage strategy, due to the failure of everything else to work with him. Looking forward to the competition with Dolsi, Santos, Cabrera, Nunez....who emerges and makes it out of camp. Those are very nice arms (especially the first 3), when they're healthy. Santeliz, too. I think the odds are definitely in favor of Hudson starting in the minors instead of working as the long man unless he just dominates, and there's always the possibility with Garcia of injury at any moment. Also feels like Omogrosso has fallen off the map after looking very good in ST last year.

Shelby is the one who really strikes me as having fallen off the map. He wasn't horrible last year, but he's not exactly a youngster anymore, either...and he's never seemed to have found one position on the diamond. I guess there's an outside possibility he makes it as a super-utility guy like a Willie Harris that can play multiple positions and pinch run. CJ Retherford has gotten about as much discussion as anyone in our system, but it's pretty clear the scouts don't see him as much of a prospect. Rodriguez, Escobar and Griffith have a lot of potential.

I miss Josh Fields' plus defense at 3B from 2009 spring training already...

I am positive about Greg's renewed positivism...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseb...0,5065584.story Jenks down to 275 pounds, has stopped drinking and is TRYING to lay off the junk food...sounds good, so far!

After 2006, all the talk was about having the most expensive rotation in the major leagues. At that point, I think it was around $55 million, something in that range. You had Buehrle, Contreras, Garcia, Garland, Vazquez and McCarthy, who would be traded for Danks...the Garcia/Floyd move was the other one that really saved KW's a--. I agree with the diminishing returns idea...heck, KW also did too, he dealt Javier away in order to create payroll flexibility AND simply due to the fact that he thought the back end of the rotation could sort of hold up enough to justify the move. We really need a premier offensive player to get us over the hump and give us a much better opportunity of making the playoffs and going deep...the question is which players can KW afford to part with and still not impact the future TOO adversely. Beckham, Ramirez, Danks, Floyd, Thornton, Putz (if healthy), Quentin (maybe)...have the most value to other clubs, but they do to the Sox, too. If you trade away Flowers, that leaves no replacement for an aging AJ. One of the keys with Flowers is that you insert a pretty big bat at a position that's more statistically anemic than any other on the field. That leaves Hudson, Danks, Mitchell, Viciedo, Morel, CJ, Shelby, Miguel Gonzalez, Santeliz et al to get a deal done. They would really have to gut at least 40% of the farm system, like the Swisher trade TIMES 2. If I was KW, I wouldn't be sleeping easily right now...and I would be even more worried about doing nothing about the DH situation, because the longer he waits, the more expensive the solution. I'm not buying that he can wait for a player to be waived out of ST and strike gold...at best, we'll get someone like Jayson Nix again.

Is James Cameron a White Sox fan, lol? Maybe he would be willing to give Johnny Damon an extra $1-2 million.

QUOTE (Ranger @ Feb 22, 2010 -> 10:22 PM) Well, why would you hear about that? What point would it be for the GM to come out during the winter and say, "jsut thought you'd like to know, but I can't get ahold of ________." You have heard maybe a couple of examples of Kenny talking to a player during the offseason and you just assume that it is easy for all of them to be reached. Sure, some guys are easy to get ahold of. Other guys are not. Sometimes the easy guys are even hard to reach. And yes, sometimes deals do get done very quickly, but even you should know that's not normal. While you went to law school and understand the drafting of an addendum can be done quickly, that doesn't mean that getting all parties to agree on an addendum would be as quick. Sure, the actual drafting of it may take little time, but that's once the parties have agreed. That's the part that usually takes a while. On a side note, what's interesting to me is how you fought me on this idea that it wasn't a realistic option to ask a player to renegotiate, yet you've since admitted that it would be nearly impossible to do. An example would be how difficult it was getting information about Juan Uribe when he had his incident in the DR a couple of years ago. He was out of touch for quite awhile. A lot of times the agents don't even know where their players are....and inevitably it seems there are visa problems with getting players back to the US for spring training from the Caribbean.

Yeah Ranger, that's how it is. My guy was VERY hands-on, that was part of the problem, because sometimes we were at cross-purposes. However, I'd much prefer working with any ahtlete who is personally invested into something in the charitable realm, rather than a player who just puts their name on something out of obligation or because the team requires community involvement. (This was the case with the KC Chiefs, and one of the really outstanding athletes I had a chance to work with there, just briefly, was named Pellom McDaniels--I see now that he has become as Assistant Professor of History at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, not the most likely post-career for an NFL football player!). Unfortunately, it's the journeymen players (who are most often involved in really worthwhile projects) who hang around the league 3-4-5 years but when their time is up, they're really shut out and it's much harder to accomplish anything on their behalf. When I was working for the Augusta GreenJackets, I tried to put together a celebrity home-run hitting contest. I had Garrison Hearst and Bert Emmanuel (he played some college BB at Rice University, and drafted by the Pirates) very interested, but they had to defer because their agents were worried they might get hurt and their NFL contracts could be voided. I remember Bert even took one of my phone calls when he was in the shower, lol. Many of the players were surprisingly accessible, some were deliberately evasive or would commit to do something and then keep changing their mind on a weekly basis. Some of the best athletes are the ones you would think would be the most difficult. It's just like getting a job in sports...everyone assumes the most competition is for a job with an NFL or MLB team, so they try to get minor league jobs or internships. What ends up happening is that the competition is stiffer at that level than for the minor leaguers. I guess I'll always regret turning down the Red Sox (I hated them, and it was "only" an internship with $200 per month stipend) and taking a minor league job instead. But that's life. One of my dorm-mates at the University of Iowa ended up getting a radio job with the Astros (Brett Dolan) andI was really shocked, because I know how much competition there is...you just have to be in the right place at the right time, cliched as that is.

And the players that the owners/GM have the most power over...the first/second/third year players, most of those guys are just starting out in the game and aren't in the type of financial position to commit to something like that. Not to mention the players' union would have a field day if it came out that owners were trying to do something like that with their pre-arb players. Maybe only Viciedo or Gordon Beckham would have the ability to help out the team in that way. I wouldn't be shocked if Beckham did offer to help if there was some type of "handshake" agreement to give him an extension after this year (into his first year of FA), with some of the money deferred to create more "present" dollars to sign players in 2011 or 2012. Can you imagine KW asking Orlando Cabrera or Swisher in 2008 to do this? I'd love to hear THAT conversation, frankly.

QUOTE (WCSox @ Feb 22, 2010 -> 08:35 PM) ??? I used to run an NFL football player's non-profit foundation in 1995 and 1996. We put on a charity basketball game, golf tournament and dinner, so, as the Program Director, I was lucky enough to deal with Coach Landry, Ditka, Schottenheimer, Dan Reeves, Hootie and the Blowfish, Garrison Heart, Rodney Hampton, Robert Porcher, Shannon Sharpe, etc. Well, Deion Sanders was a pain (we had to get first class tickets for his wife, Deion Jr and Deiondra, from Ft. Myers to Augusta, limo service, etc.). The basketball game was the NFL All-Stars against the Dallas Cowboys. And this was Michael Irvin's first public appearance after his drug problems, the event was early 1996, can't remember the exact date. But there must have been 50+ media requests. The one individual I left that experience having a great amount of respect for was Herschel Walker. He volunteered his own time to be the keynote speaker and didn't even accept a free hotel room, if I remember correctly. I think he was still getting paid by the New Jersey Generals at the time, one of the best contracts ever for a professional athlete. But Coach Landry, he had that sort of "gravelly" voice, like Vincent Price from the Thriller video, you just knew instantly who it was as soon as you picked up the phone. The other interesting celebrity I met was almost a baby, lol. She would later go on to win American Idol, Jordan Sparks. I rode to a game in the Meadowlands with Jordan, her mom (Philippi Sparks, the former CB for the Giants, is her father) and my boss' wife.

Am I an expert because I once hung up on The Coach, Tom Landry, lol? It's hit or miss during the offseason, I'll agree with that. Some players consider themselves full-time members of the organization and will bend over backwards to take a phone call, go to the hospital to visit a kid with a terminal illness or fulfill a personal request. Just look at the example of some of the squad (like Beckham) showing up early for ST. I do think it's kind of akward to ask players to do this, especially when the players and agents always argue the owners are making so much profit, the mentality is that why should I sacrifice if my owner isn't willing to do so? I'm sure none of the players or agents will ever be privy to the actual, up to the minute financial position of the White Sox organization. It's fluid. One week we're hearing $4 million is available, the next that we're giving Damon more than that (plus money deferred), it's pretty hard to know who is telling the truth. Then you have the argument that Damon wasn't/isn't an "impact" player and that's the reason they pulled out of the negotiations, etc. If this happened quietly, behind the scenes...during the heat of the pennant race, I would be surprised if JR went to one of the players like Konerko or Buehrle that they wouldn't at least think about trying to restructure their contract (deferring money) to bring in someone who could help the team in the present. A lot of the players like Paulie, Mark, Thome (last year, when he was making $12-13 million) and AJ have been around long enough that they know JR would take care of them down the line if he promised to do so. Now, asking someone like Rios, I wouldn't go near that with a 10 foot pole, he's already sensitive/touchy about his contract and performance last year. Same thing with Jenks. The fact remains that maybe some of those guys don't really like Damon that much, and wouldn't care whether he got an extra $1-2 million or not, coming off the contract he had in NY, and also the way he handled negotiations, overestimating his market value. If they were bringing back Juan Uribe, there's definitely a group of players who all would have figured out a way to get it done financially if JR approached them and said the team was at the breaking point in terms of payroll. (Although I doubt that will ever happen).

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 19, 2010 -> 02:09 PM) Hafner is a great example of the dangers of giving players big contracts. Commiting all that money to Peralta at such an early stage wasn't such a wise idea, either. It's one of the many reasons (along with Kerry Wood) they had to trade away DeRosa. I'm not even sure what happened to Sizemore last season. Hafner, it's pretty obvious his body shrank noticeably. So much for Pronk, more like Shrek as a hitter now.

Didn't Buehrle offer to give up some of his salary so they could keep Juan Uribe after 2008? I read something like that...probably just a show of support for how much he meant to the infield defense, the World Series championship and how well liked he was in the clubhouse. You almost never saw Juanie NOT looking like he was having a great time or sulking in the dugout.

Fine, then use the example of Andre Agassi in tennis. He was notorious for partying, had a spare tire and was the most famous slacker on the USTA tour, but he finally re-dedicated himself to tennis in the second half of his career and fulfilled a lot of his potential. I guess we'll just have to wait for April-May-June games with Andruw to see what we actually have.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 21, 2010 -> 05:57 PM) I'm glad he's in shape, but guys have and can lose their baseball hitting ability quickly. I think you have to wait for Jones to outperform Konerko before you should worry about how Ozzie handles it. It really is a longshot it will come to that. If guys are hurt for 3 years straight, there's a good chance they won't make it through season 4 without getting hurt. Jones is going to be eating different food and exercise and eat on a different schedule than he did during the offseason. I believe we are creatures of habit, and if he falls back into the habits he had before he got in shape, he probably will require a bigger uniform rather quickly. I'm sure Allen Thomas probably hangs out with him. One recent example is Roberto Remember the Alomar. You could have made a case for him a decade ago as the all-time best 2B in MLB history, but the spitting incident and the ignominious end to his career caused him to lose a lot of his luster. He still should have received more HoF votes, IMO.

QUOTE (1977 sox fan @ Feb 21, 2010 -> 05:39 AM) twins lineup but not there batting order span 8 to 12 hrs cf hudson 12 to 15 2nd mauer 20 to 25 c morneiu 30 to 35 1st cuddeyer 25 to 30 rf kubel 25 to 30 lf dh ? hardy 15 to 20 ss young 12 to 15 lf dh ? thome 12 to 20 dh depending on abs tolbert 12 to 15 3rd ? i think he is playing 3rd well you may be right that they don't have 8 guys who will hit 15 hrs but possibly 10? but i dought that . but they do have 5 guys im sure will hit 20 to 30 and that the sox don't have. the twins im sure will hit 30 to 35 more hrs then the sox depending on injuries and how there new stadium plays . but for me i rather have there lineup over ours anyday and twice on sunday . There's no way Tolbert will get that many homers. You should run Punto or Brendan Harris for 3B, they are the most likely....probably Harris, he has more experience at third, Punto at SS and 2B.

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Feb 20, 2010 -> 11:31 PM) I am not denying we are a faster team, but that does not mean we have speed threats. Instead of having lumbering "base cloggers", we have a much higher average speed. However, outside of Pierre, we don't have any guys who are going to late game pinch runners to steal a base, this is why having De Aza might help add his weapon to this team. But that 2005 team didn't have more than one primary base-stealing threat in Pods, either. We had players like Iguchi and Willie Harris who were capable of stealing a bag, but that was a clearly slower team than this one. As mentioned, OBP matters more than speed, otherwise you would see Renaldo Nehemiah and 4X100 track team enjoying careers in baseball...in football, speed and athleticism can get you a job, in baseball, not so much (see Jordan, Michael). FWIW, Rios and Pierre are solid base-stealing threats. The jury remains out on Alexei's ability to hone and master the art of basestealing. Willie Harris was very fast, but he never figured out the nuances. In fact, even at his age, I think Vizquel might end up being a better basestealer (on craftiness alone) than Willie Harris.