[Youkilis, $5.6 million traded to White Sox]

At this point, I'd be elated to acquire You given the performance we're getting at 3B, but I don't see how the Red Sox expect to get anything of value for him.

$3 million of salary relief and a marginal prospect is better than nothing.

[Youkilis, $5.6 million traded to White Sox]

You watch every game. Do you not agree Crain is finished?

Either you're a troll or the dumbest human being I've ever encountered in my entire life.

 

Crain has a 2.38 ERA, a 1.10 WHIP, and a 11.12 K/9. Which one of those stats screams out "finished" to you?

 

If you really aren't a troll, then you're the worst kind of sports fan. The typical meatball fan who lets a recent event affect his perception of a player's entire body of work. Have you ever looked up statistics? Do you know how they even work? See, what's cool about stats is we can use them to overcome our own biases. You saw Crain lose a game for us and have convinced yourself he's finished. Unfortunately, you didn't look at his stats, or the stats of the other guys in our bullpen, or even other relievers througout the game. If you had, you would have realized how stupid your "Crain is finished" theory was and why wanting to just give him away was just your inner meatballness shining through.

 

Having said all this, you're obviously a troll and a bad one at that. Life really must be boring in Lawrence if you spend this much time trolling on a White Sox message board.

[Sox. Brewers. Gamethread.]

Bad play, he got way too close to wall. Viciedo's June has been quite atrocious.

Which hopefully means he'll have a big July.

[Sox. Brewers. Gamethread.]

Nice half ass effort there Viciedo!

[Youkilis, $5.6 million traded to White Sox]

Good. No way in hell Sox will pay the club option on that. He's a rental, so give them Crain and be done with it.

You are both a meatball and a troll. I didn't think that was possible.

[Youkilis, $5.6 million traded to White Sox]

Rogers is seriously one of the laziest reporters I have read in a long time. Even on CTL, he comes off as unprepared and just throwing s*** at the wall.

 

On "Who you crappin" someone got "Crap of the Week" for his MLB Draft predictions:

Not to defend Rogers, but I think that crap was a bit unfair. All he predicted was the 1st round picks and quite frankly you should be drafting the best player available at that point. This is one of the reasons I hate B&B, as they love piling on things they hate, even when it's not exactly appropriate or true.

[Youkilis, $5.6 million traded to White Sox]

I think the Red Sox throw that out there to try to get others involved. I still think Pittsburgh and Arizona are possibilites since the cost shouldn't be much. I think all offers being the same, they would prefer to have Youkilis on a team that is not an AL playoff contender just in case he rediscovers his performance.

 

I'd love the Sox to upgrade wherever they can, and even bad Youk is probably an upgrade at 3b, but I won't be bummed out if he winds up somewhere else.

The one thing that might give the White Sox an edge is that we have some interesting relievers at AAA who might be able to help this season. I'm not sure other teams have or would be willing to give up a player that could be in the major league mix for Youkilis.

[Youkilis, $5.6 million traded to White Sox]

As of now, I'd give Escobar a shot. I am not willing to mortgage the future who is rapidly deteriorating.

How would we be mortgaging the future by trading for Youkilis?

[Youkilis, $5.6 million traded to White Sox]

Greinke might get you a World Series. Next 5 years of Viciedo they might not win a division.

Man you sound more and more like KW with every single post.

[Youkilis, $5.6 million traded to White Sox]

You need as many aces as you can get because sometimes aces don't pitch like aces. If they do pitch like aces the Sox are World Series contenders. Of course it's a gamble, but if you can trade Daniel Hudson (and Holmberg) for Jackson and Gonzalez for Swisher, you certainly can trade Viciedo for Greinke.

So you cite two of KW's worst and most short-sighted moves as support for trading Viciedo for 3 months of Greinke. That makes no sense.

 

Also, not defending the Jackson deal, but he was under control for an extra season, so the Sox had the opportunity to recoup some of the cost that next deadline or would at least be eligible for draft pick compensation if they held on to him.

 

You're only guaranteed 3 months of Greinke if you trade for him. If you don't win the World Series, you risk losing 5 years of Viciedo for nothing. I'd rather wait until the offseason, use the Peavy money towards a Greinke offer and keep Viciedo at the same time.

[2012 Minor League Catch All thread]

I hope they move up Sanchez, who has to be one of our top prospects.

I really don't see any reason to. He'll be 20 at the start of next season. Let him start next year at AA and he'll still be amongst the youngest in the league. I'm more than fine with that being the plan. Nothing wrong with him spending a full year at A+, especially when he hasn't shown much power yet.

[Youkilis, $5.6 million traded to White Sox]

This. The last thing I want us to do is gut our franchise for a starting pitcher right now.

Agreed. If we can get Danks back, I'm not too worried about our starting pitching. Sale, Peavy, & Danks can be a very good #1/#2/#3. Gavin will hopefully go on one of his stretches of dominance soon. Quintana looks like he can be a solid #5. Plus we actually have some depth in Axelrod and Castro.

 

A guy like Greinke would be amazing, but he's not worth 5 seasons of Viciedo.

 

 

[Youkilis, $5.6 million traded to White Sox]

I was reading an article that contained several scouting reports basically saying his body is breaking down and he's done. But you're right, as long as it doesn't cost much and doesn't impair the Sox from making other moves, its probably worth a shot considering the Sox 3rd base situation now and for what looks like the rest of the season. Especially considering it looks like Morel isn't going to be much of a help this year.If this is the Sox blowing their entire load this year just on him, its should be a fireable offense if the most likely happens and it doesn't work out.

And the key here is we're only talking about 3-4 months. I don't want a 33 year old with back issues in my long-term mix, but for the rest of the season I'm willing to take a gamble that his back issues will be moderate and allow him to be a significant upgrade over the 34 year old 2B who has been on 5 teams in the past 6 years.

[Youkilis, $5.6 million traded to White Sox]

I don't know about that. They really want to get him off the roster.

 

Let's put it this way, if/when this trade happens, I'm not expecting it to be a big deal either way.

Exactly, the Red Sox want him off the roster now and just want to get something for him rather than release him. That might be some salary relief or a marginal prospect, but they aren't getting a legit prospect for him. As everyone has mentioned on here, he's been awful this year, the Red Sox have a terrific replacement, he not much of a bench guy, and he's had his clubhouse issues this year. Teams know the Red Sox want him gone, so unless a bunch of teams are fighting for him, they have very little leverage IMO.

 

As for the White Sox, I'm shocked how many people are ripping this move. We all know how bad Youkilis has been this year, and people love to point out he's actually been worse than ODog this past month. Fair enough. However, people saying he's been trending downward the past few years are somewhat missing the point here. From 2008 to 2010, Youkilis had an OPS of .958 or higher each year. That's elite level production and it obviously wasn't going to last forever. Then last year he had his "down" season and only put up a .833 OPS. While not elite, that's still a fantastic number.

 

I guess my point here is that Youkilis hasn't just suddenly lost all his talent. He's getting older and his performance is declining, but the impact should be more gradual than what we're seeing this year. Obviously his back has been hurting him this year and we know he's had his clubhouse issues this year. I'd like to see how he responds to a new set of trainers and a fresh new clubhouse. IMO, the guy can still be an .800 OPS player if healthy.

 

I know trading for Youkilis has risks, but what's more important to me is the downside. If we don't have to trade anything of value or eat most of the deal, then what do we have to lose? There's not a lot of other options at 3B. We can't spend this money on prospects. The move would be a gamble, but one with no long-term consequences. The one thing I do know is we can't win with ODog at 3B. So we can either take a chance on Youkilis or die a slow death.

[John Danks diagnosed with a grade 1 scapula tear]

It's not Ohman's fault he faces too many right-handed batters. It's not his job to signal to the bullpen when a righty comes up. This is one of Ozzie's faults that seems to have carried over to Robin. Ohman has a 0.77 WHIP vs. lefties.

The point is that he sucks at his current role and that role isn't changing. Maybe our pitching staff just isn't deep enough to carry a LOOGY and only use him in the appropriate situations. If that's the case, get someone else up here who can actually help our team.

[John Danks diagnosed with a grade 1 scapula tear]

Yeah, I think Castro will be one of the next guys we see. Leesman...I don't know. I wonder how many lefties we're willing to have in the rotation? lol. Castro (supposedly) has a very high ceiling though so I hope he really produces in AAA.

I think Leesman ultimately ends up in the bullpen. Yet another reason why I don't get how Ohman is still on this roster. If I needed a lefty in the pen, I'd easily take Leesman or Septimo over Ohman right now. Plus there are another three or four right-handed relievers at AAA I'd prefer. Heath is having a hell of a season and Omogrosso sounds like he's been dominating the past couple months. I'd prefer taking the best overall reliever than keep the LOOGY that continues to face too many right-handed batters.

[2012 White Sox draft picks]

Yeah, I believe the penalties don't kick in until you go more than 5% over budget. So if I am figuring this right, we have the $100,000 we can offer to anyone outside of the first 10 rounds, plus the $159k we saved, which makes $259k. If you take 5% of our draft allotment, which is $5,915,100, that gives us another $295,755. Added together we could offer one player as much as $554,755 before being penalized (assuming we didn't go over 100k with any other player outside of rounds 1-10).

 

Is that right?

That seems right to me. $555k isn't bad if we have someone worth signing.

[KW whining about (OK bringing up) attendance again]

Isn't it a little strange KW rmentioned the attendance perhaps hurting his ability to add to the current roster only days after Peter Gammons reported the Sox offered Soler $25-30 million? Either Gammons is lying or KW is lying about being strapped for cash.

No offense, but why does it bother you so much? Part of his job is creating misdirection. If he always came out telling the truth, he would never have any leverage in negotiations and would be giving his competition unnecessary information. I don't see how him telling the press he has a $25 million rainy day fund just lying around would do any good.

[2012 White Sox draft picks]

I think Ayala was thinking 7 digits.

Fair enough, I'm just trying to understand what the new rules would permit us to offer without consequence.

[2012 White Sox draft picks]

Ayala was offered 300k plus college tuition by the cardinals and said no, I'm pretty sure se wouldn't me able to offer him more than 259K so there's no way he signs with us.

What was our budget this year and did we come in $259k under?

[2012 White Sox draft picks]

Well, we saved money from our other signings, so we can freely use that money for Ayala.

I was missing some words there, I meant beyond the $200k we went under-budget on our first 11 picks.

[2012 White Sox draft picks]

Wow - a little over two weeks after the draft, and the Sox have signed 28 of their first 32 picks. The only remaining ones are Eric Jaffe (11th, and his post-season just ended recently), Derek Thompson (13th), Jordan Guerrero (15th) and Sammy Ayala (17th, would need serious overslot money). Not bad.

Can't teams go over budget without consequences as long as it's not more than 5%? If so, we should have more than $200k to throw at a guy like Ayala right?

[Carlos Sanchez to play in futures game]

Daryl Van Schouwen ‏@CST_soxvan

 

White Sox Class A Winston-Salem third baseman Carlos Sanchez to play in All-Star Futures Game.

I love that Sanchez has played 0 games at 3B this year.

[KW whining about (OK bringing up) attendance again]

No, I understand that, but with this Cubs series, most tickets were sold to season ticketholders, or the people who received ticket plans that aren't considered season ticketholders, and people who bought tickets right away. The pricepoints were nowhere near what they were on ticketmaster the past several weeks. Pricing them ridiculously left those seats empty. I would really love to see an actual comparison from year to year on walk up sales from before they were dynamic, until now. What the Sox are hoping is the people who thought tickets for that game or others were too expensive will buy them in February next year to "get a deal". Maybe it will work, maybe it won't. If it doesn't, I bet bleacher seats against the Cubs won't be $90 next year.If they are optimizing profit, why doesn't KW just say we are doing fine when asked about money available to add payroll. There is no way they really expect a regular guy with a family to spend $90 a ticket to sit in the bleachers do they? The other problem is the person willing to pay $90 a ticket probably isn't a bleacher guy.

I'm not saying the White Sox are currently optimizing profit with their pricing decisions, but that's clearly the goal of the dynamic pricing model. There are obviously going to be some kinks along the way, especially early on.

 

The Cubs/Sox series is probably a great example, as I'm assuming the pricing model overestimated demand for the series. Honestly, the overall interest for the series this year was at an all-time low. A model is going to struggle to predict that if it's using historical data of any kind. I'm sure the Sox will find ways to avoid most of these types of issues in the future.

[KW whining about (OK bringing up) attendance again]

I'm beginning to think the White Sox actually don't mind this attendance and media talk. It makes people overlook revenue and concentrate on weak ticket sales. If they are pricing tickets at the level they are pricing them, they must be hard to get. Isn't that how supply and demand works?

You're overlooking elasticity. Some people are willing to pay any price (within reason) to go to Sox games. If you lower ticket prices in an effort to get more people into the park, then you forego the potential revenues from people who would have been willing to pay more for the same tickets. This trade-off is going to be factored into the ticket pricing model. While it's surprising the Sox keep their prices so high, they obviously know their customers better than we do and have years of financial data to develop their pricing models. I trust that the Sox are making all their pricing decisions with a goal of optimizing profit.