caulfield12

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.

We are faster than last year, but it's not like we are an NL team yet either...like the mid to late 80's Cardinals. Rios will get his steals, and Ramirez hopefully can pick it up in this area, too. We've subtracted the lumbering Dye and Thome...although Thome was a good baserunner, just not fast. Teahen is a good baserunner but not fast, Beckham and Q (healthy) have good/decent speed. It remains to be seen how much A. Jones, Kotsay and Vizquel have, but they're all at least "capable" in that area, along with Nix. Then you have Konerko, who's obviously slow and AJ, who's deceptively good in this area but not fast, either.

QUOTE (WCSox @ Feb 20, 2010 -> 05:59 PM) Agreed about that first part, but none of the prospects that we've traded over the past five or so years have amounted to much. I'm perfectly fine with dealing guys like Richard and Poreda for Peavy and Olivo for Garcia. So then I'll roll this question, and I'm pretty sure of your answer. You would hold on to Hudson, Flowers and Mitchell (although I would hope it would ONLY cost Jordan Danks) instead of trading them for two years of Adrian Gonzalez, yes? If KW has demonstrated anything, he very rarely makes those "all or nothing moves" that are intended for winning it all one season but not being sustainable. You could certainly argue he's boxed in with the contracts of Buehrle, Konerko, Rios, Peavy, Linebrink, Jenks, etc. The problem most fans have is with watching winnable divisions (like 2009) slip away when the competition from the Twins is getting even stronger, and the Tigers have shown the willingness to still outspend us when their city looks like Ireland/Iceland/Portugal/Spain/Greece economically...and the fact that Eric Wedge is no longer the manager of the Indians. A lot of our advantages that we rode after the World Series title are now pretty much gone.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Feb 20, 2010 -> 05:58 PM) So you're claiming that Ozzie is just rolling with this roster and taking one for the team by pretending this is just what he has always wanted? If you had the Vizquel from 2000 with the bat hitting 2nd, Juan Pierre, Andruw Jones and Kotsay in their primes, then there would be absolutely no problems with this roster. You could hit Beckham 1st or 3rd and hit Pierre 1st or 9th with Vizquel 2nd. Unfortunately, we are going to have to use Pierre at leadoff 80-85% of the time and we are far from having an ideal #2 hitter. Beckham might have to hit in this spot, because Ramirez, AJ and Rios all have weaknesses in their approaches that preclude them being strong candidates for the role. It's kind of the same thing with Boyer or JR saying they have money to spend as Ozzie saying he loves this roster. Now he wasn't out there everyday hyping D-Wise as the leadoff hitter and starting CFer, I'll give you that. But everyone these days has their "PR spin" and they're not going to openly question their boss before things have gone south. I don't even have a problem with Andruw Jones as the DH against LHP, really. It's having sacrificed Dye and Thome AND not having coming up with a legit LH power hitter that's the obvious issue befuddling everyone on this board for months. Maybe Ozzie's just seeing Kotsay with rose-colored glasses based on 2009's second half, I don't know. Same thing with Juan Pierre's stat line from last year. In some ways, Kotsay having success led to this problem...the belief that he can repeat or sustain it at his age and with his history of injuries.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Feb 20, 2010 -> 05:46 PM) What do you buy then? That KW put himself in a financial straight-jacket with the Peavy and Rios acquisitions... There were a lot of "ifs" at the eve of 2005, too. Iguchi, Pods, Dye coming off an injury, and exactly what did El Duque have left, if anything? How close was McCarthy (not unlike Hudson this year)? Takatsu was the de-facto closer but everyone was worried about hitters sitting on his FB and laying off the frisbees (see One Tricky Pony). The bullpen, there were no hints of the seasons Cotts and Politte would have. The problem I guess is when there's no margin for error, everything has to go right. We have insurance for one injury in the starting rotation, that's good. I'm starting to believe that Tyler Flowers is going to be given a serious look as the DH at some point this season, maybe even in the first half. Otherwise, there's not really any logic to what KW is doing.

QUOTE (103 mph screwball @ Feb 20, 2010 -> 05:40 PM) Not for 8 million. No. Besides, if the Sox had put that much money into Damon, there would not be a spot for Konerko to DH when the Sox trade for Adrian Gonzalez. Felipe López is available too I think and he fired Boras. It's a DH guys. Hell Jermaine Dye would make a fine DH if that bridge hasn't been burned. If the Sox start the year with Nix a DH, it won't be the end of the world. We know the Sox have another 6 million to throw at the right bat, and they have prospects to trade. Screw Damon. He's a tiger. LET SPRING TRAINING BEGIN!!!! Do you really believe they're going to trade away Flowers, Hudson and Mitchell/Danks for A-Gonzalez? Forget about it. If the 2007 and 2009 seasons have shown anything, it's our inability to develop and not have to trade our minor league prospects that has put us in this defensive position with roster construction in the first place. Felipe Lopez most definitely won't be our DH, either. If the Sox start the year with Nix as ANYTHING but DH against LHP, then it will have been officially worse than starting 2009 with Anderson/Wise/Getz/Fields/Lillibridge/Miller. The irony is that after everyone has put the Thome debate behind them, KW will probably be forced to add someone like Adam Dunn and we'll be right back where we started, excepted likely 3-7 games back in the standings and having lost more prospects because we hadn't developed enough hitters in our minor league system over the last decade.

The fact that the Tigers are feeling they're back into this AL Central race speaks volumes. After basically surrendering the season with the trading of Granderson and Jackson for budgetary reasons, they've reversed course and added Valverde and now Damon. I guess this is the final nail in the coffin for any hopes the White Sox had for sustaining a new approach...it lasted from 2006-2010, but we no longer have the clear advantage over the Twins and certainly not over the Tigers in payroll or the willingness to spend that money. If KW has still had a difficult time keeping up with the Twins and Bill Smith (not nearly as effective as his predecessor Ryan....thank God they don't have Bartlett and Garza now) when MIN was operating at 65% of capacity, then why should we expect anything different in the future? I understand that sometimes moves like the Carlos Lee one will work out mysteriously in the end (while somewhat baffling at the time), but this approach isn't any better. We've constructed a Minnesota Twins-like team to play at USCF. Whoopee. Well, this is all on KW...I don't buy the whole blaming Ozzie thing for our present line-up construction. So, because this strategy worked in 2005, it will work again. We shall see.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 20, 2010 -> 10:22 AM) KW obviously had been negotiating with Toronto about acquiring Rios, and it had to include Toronto eating some salary and the Sox sending viable players back, because if KW really wanted him and was willing to pay him the entire salary, why would he have risked Toronto placing him on waivers and having another team claim him? He obviously put the claim in to block. I'm sure he liked Rios as a player and probably coveted him, but not that contract. I'm pretty sure KW was as surprised as anyone his claim was successful or unsuccessful depending upon how you look at it. The contract is burden especially if Rios continues to play as he has. As for Konerko, it was widely thought the White Sox probably went at least a year too long with their contract, but that was after a WS win and Paulie was a hero. Losing him after that would have hurt some of the momentum they had built. Even with the 20/20 hindsight, and as much as I like to rip some of their mistakes, you can't give them a hard time about that contract. We'll probably never know...just like we'll never be privy to how close we actually might have been to getting "stuck" with Orlando Cabrera in 2009. I think, with all the talk last year about financial constraints and teams like the Blue Jays attempting to shed players like Rios and Wells that KW must have believed there would be at least a 75-80% chance of ending on the "wrong side" of a waiver claim, simply because of the fact that the teams with the option to place a claim before the White Sox were generally teams in a lesser position competitively and/or teams without the ability to absorb his salary. The fact of the matter is that he had already been "struggling" (his RBI numbers were okay, but the OPS/SLG was way down) for 1 1/2 years at the time of the waiver claim...so unless you went with the "change of scenery" argument, most GM's around the league weren't going to make the gamble on Rios being the one player (at least in 2009) to put them over the top. At the time of the acquisition, many posters were already arguing he was beyond "lost" at the plate (Walker later affirmed this) and that there wasn't a lot that could have been done to salvage the rest of the season in terms of the back of his baseball card. I also think there was the sense that last year's team wasn't going very far without a healthy Quentin...the only sort of sustained "hot" streak they had was right around the time of the Buehrle no-hitter where they very briefly pulled into a tie for 1st.

Besides Borchard and the failure of all the first round drift picks (and yes, Borchard did net us Thornton even)...the biggest "in your face" condemnation of the minor league system has to be the "forced" acquisition of Alex Rios. If KW didn't think Brian Anderson was the answer in CF, he wouldn't have traded away Rowand and Chris B. Young, not to mention Jeremy Reed and Anthony Webster. The other prime example of a forced acquisition to plug in a gap was the Nick Swisher trade, arguably one of KW's worst in the second half of his career, where he's made significantly fewer mistakes compared to the first 2-3 seasons on the job. When you look at the payroll inflexibility, it begins and ends with Rios and Konerko. Konerko's understandable. Peavy has a huge contract, but he's emminently tradeable if we had to dump salary (barring injury), Rios is a much more difficult proposition if he doesn't return to form. Danks, Floyd, Beckham, Quentin and Alexei are the five prime examples of why this team has a shot to win it all. Jenks used to be in this group as well, until 2009/2010, in terms of cost/benefit analysis. You could also make an argument that if Dayan Viciedo had come along with the bat quickly enough, he could have been able to take over for Konerko at 1B this year and that would have ended up providing the flexibility to spend an extra $14-16 million instead of just $4 million, which is currently leaving us $2-3 million short on Damon. Or the Linebrink contract, that's another hole in the budget, so hopefully we can get something out of him again this year.

Then in 2001 Albert Pujols would be saying "hi!"