Reinsdorf tid-bits

[chw42]

Pierre only got on at a .365 clip last year because he hit .308 in the NL and got hit by a pitch 8 times.

 

Pierre's career OBP:

2000: .353

2001: .378

2002: .332

2003: .361

2004: .374

2005: .326

2006: .330

2007: .331

2008: .327

2009: .365

 

He'll be playing in the AL for the first time in his career and he will also be playing in a small ballpark. I'd expect something more like .280/.325/.360/.685 out of him next year, but with a ton of SB and CS and a lot of hot air from the Hawkaroo.

 

I can't argue against his 4 straight seasons of mediocre OBP, but you can't treat last season like it didn't exist. He definitely won't put up a .365 again, but I think we can expect .340. If you're going to weigh his previous 3 seasons altogether , with a 50% weight towards the most recent one, you're staring at an OBP around .340-.345. And since he's moving to the AL, we can maybe take 5 points off of that, but the thing is, you don't know.

 

CHONE hates him, but that's pretty much expected. You got that line from CHONE, lol.

 

[Kenny Hates Prospects]

As a .301 career hitter, Pierre will BENEFIT by hitting in the AL by not having a pitcher giving away at bats 3 times a game in front of him.

I'm projecting a line of .290/.340/380/.700 with 50 bags and quality defense in LF.

I don't see the logic behind this. Are you making the protection argument? Because the protection argument (and there are those that say this never applies anyway) only gets made when you're talking about really good hitters (RBI guys).

 

The AL is going to be tougher because it's a tougher league with better pitching. AL pitchers aren't going to f*** around with Juan Pierre at all. They're going to go right after him the way pitchers go after weak slap hitters with no power and no real ability to draw a walk. Whether there are men on base or not, Pierre's game is to put the ball in play and run, so the opposition is just going to do that and get him to ground out. The IF here isn't all that fast so I don't expect a whole lot to get through, and the OF here is pretty small and straight-forward in dimension and lay-out which makes it easy to cover ground, so since his XBH ability is pretty much all due to his legs, I don't see him getting many XBH either. That is huge because when you look at the years he has had good OBP numbers you find he has hit well over .300 all those years. I don't see that happening here.

 

Of all the parks where Juan Pierre might be successful, the Cell has got to be one of the least likely of them all. I don't see any reason to be optimistic about this guy. And I don't care about projections and all that SABR stuff either, but it's hard to argue with those guys about Pierre. They pretty much call it like it is in that regard, and the consensus is he's really not that good.

[Jerksticks]

Just a reminder: The 1 year in this decade where we didn't focus on power we won the World Series. Although there are a million ways to chop up this statement of mine, I still give it weight.

[Kenny Hates Prospects]

I can't argue against his 4 straight seasons of mediocre OBP, but you can't treat last season like it didn't exist. He definitely won't put up a .365 again, but I think we can expect .340. If you're going to weigh his previous 3 seasons altogether , with a 50% weight towards the most recent one, you're staring at an OBP around .340-.345. And since he's moving to the AL, we can maybe take 5 points off of that, but the thing is, you don't know.

 

CHONE hates him, but that's pretty much expected. You got that line from CHONE, lol.

If CHONE says Pierre is a good bet to put up a .340-.345 OBP then that's just one more reason for me to dislike that system.

 

Pierre's OBP is pretty much all batting average with HBP thrown in to help out his s***ty walk totals. The fact that this guy puts the ball in play SOOOO much and still can't hit anything with authority is troubling as hell to me. If Pierre is going to post an OBP around .340-.345 he's going to be hitting somewhere around .300-.310, and I don't see him doing that here.

[jphat007]

If we go into this season with Andruw Jones/Mark Kotsay as our DH because Ozzie doesn't want a 'full-time' DH he better be gone if we don't make the playoffs. And this is from one of his biggest backers. I can't imagine KW would actually listen to him tho.

[chw42]

I'll rattle off some quick projections.

(wOBA):

Teahen- .330

A.J.- .315-.320

Alexei- .330+ (although I think he can take a step up to the .340 range)

Konerko- .355-.360

Beckham- Hopefully .360+ but .350 is probably more realistic

Quentin- anything less than .370 will be disappointing

Rios- .345-.350

Pierre- .310-.315

 

So the roaming DH monstrosity aside I expect Pierre to be our worst hitter. He's not a .340/.350 OBP guy, he had a good '09 season but in all likelihood his OBP will return to ~.330 next year, and that just doesn't cut it, especially when you have zero power.

I would bat Beckham leadoff. It definitely wouldn't be ideal and I'd prefer to see him in the 4-5 hole but I just don't see a viable option other than Beckham.

 

wOBA is a great stat, but Pierre's a leadoff hitter.

 

Honestly, I think OBP is still the best way to judge a leadoff man since his job is to get on base. If he gets extra base hits, awesome, but I don't think measuring how far on base he got is the right way to gauge his job. If he gets on base, he's done his job. Anything else is extra.

 

If you want to talk about him as our "worst" hitter/run producer (not in an RBI sort of way), then fine, he is. His lack of power and his barely above average OBP don't mix well for that. However, he's a leadoff hitter.

 

[Ozzie Ball]

wOBA is a great stat, but Pierre's a leadoff hitter.

 

Honestly, I think OBP is still the best way to judge a leadoff man since his job is to get on base. If he gets extra base hits, awesome, but I don't think measuring how far on base he got is the right way to gauge his job. If he gets on base, he's done his job. Anything else is extra.

 

If you want to talk about him as our "worst" hitter/run producer (not in an RBI sort of way), then fine, he is. His lack of power and his barely above average OBP don't mix well for that. However, he's a leadoff hitter.

I just don't like this exception that people make for leadoff hitters. I want the player who receives the most PA's on my team to be a good hitter, who is also capable of getting on base, hence why I'd go with Beckham. If Pierre bats 9th he'll still be coming up to bat in front of the 1/2/3 hitters but he'll get significantly less PA's in the process. Surely that's the best of both worlds?

[Kenny Hates Prospects]

If we go into this season with Andruw Jones/Mark Kotsay as our DH because Ozzie doesn't want a 'full-time' DH he better be gone if we don't make the playoffs. And this is from one of his biggest backers. I can't imagine KW would actually listen to him tho.

On the one hand I agree, but on the other I think that it should be Kenny held accountable for listening to Ozzie and building an NL team in the American League. But I really don't want either Ozzie or Kenny gone, I just want them to build a balanced baseball team - or at least pick a philosophy, stick with it, and if it doesn't work, try something else and don't go back to the old philosophy again.

 

I can't believe how we've heard about the importance of OBP and yet we get a bunch of players with zero OBP skills. We hear all season about how the middle of the order has to step up, and yet we lose 2 middle of the order cogs over the last several years and we don't even try to replace them. Now we're hearing about this gap hitter nonsense and yet we play in a major home run park. It just doesn't make any sense.

[Eminor3rd]

This rotating DH bull is really giving me a headache.

 

Seriously, if we waste this pitching staff by intentionally starting bench players in an EASY power spot to fill, Ozzie should have his job in jeopardy. I mean I've NEVER said that, but this strategy is just stupid baseball. It's just dumb. I cannot believe KW really buys into this.

Edited January 13, 2010 by Eminor3rd

[chw42]

If CHONE says Pierre is a good bet to put up a .340-.345 OBP then that's just one more reason for me to dislike that system.

 

Pierre's OBP is pretty much all batting average with HBP thrown in to help out his s***ty walk totals. The fact that this guy puts the ball in play SOOOO much and still can't hit anything with authority is troubling as hell to me. If Pierre is going to post an OBP around .340-.345 he's going to be hitting somewhere around .300-.310, and I don't see him doing that here.

 

He definitely could hit .290-.300, which would put him at around a .340 OBP if you're semi-optimistic.

 

Pierre hits twice as many grounders than he does fly balls or line drives. I don't think it's really going to matter what kind of conditions we have here. Most of his line drives will be base hits and those 25% of fly balls have a better probability of traveling, which could actually help his XBHs. If you argue that he has no power and that those will get caught, fine, but I'm sure some of them will also travel and drop.

 

A league adjustment can't always be predicted correctly. Quentin and Podsednik adjusted to the AL fine, and it was actually stronger when they got here than it is now.

[Kenny Hates Prospects]

I would have to agree. However, losing Getz was worth getting Teahan (I still wish we could have pulled some magic and get Gordon though, but that was just a pipe dream).

 

I still think closing the door on Pods so soon and dealing for Pierre was a huge mistake. We bought high on Pierre and lost two quality pitching prospect.

 

If we could have gotten Pods down to even 2 years, 7 million... I think it would have been wiser than getting Pierre.

 

Still, the smartest move would have been to forget about both and go for Damon... but this team isnt that smart.

Pods got 1 year, $1.75M. We could have given him $2M and beat out the Royals by quite a bit. And while I wanted something much better than Pods, I'd much rather have Pods at $2M for 1 year than Pierre for 2 years and $8M. It'll be interesting to see what Winn signs for since, given his defense, he's the best of the bunch.

 

Disagree on Teahen. At the time I thought it was a dumb move, and in hindsight it's even worse. We could have signed Feliz for 1 year instead of committing to Teahen for 3. Getz was well worth moving to secure Gordon at 2B for the future, so I have no problems with that. But Teahen? I'm not optimistic about him either. He was a non-tender candidate that we gave up talent for and then extended even though he hasn't shown himself capable of performing to a level that warrants his new contract. Bad deal IMO. My guess is after Tejada signs this deal will look even worse still.

 

Agree on Damon, that would be a nice move but uncharacteristic of the Sox.

[Eminor3rd]

Honestly, I think OBP is still the best way to judge a leadoff man since his job is to get on base.

 

I agree with this 1000%. Speed is a distant second to OBP, so long as he isn't slow enough to clog the bases.

[BearSox]

Pods got 1 year, $1.75M. We could have given him $2M and beat out the Royals by quite a bit. And while I wanted something much better than Pods, I'd much rather have Pods at $2M for 1 year than Pierre for 2 years and $8M. It'll be interesting to see what Winn signs for since, given his defense, he's the best of the bunch.

 

Disagree on Teahen. At the time I thought it was a dumb move, and in hindsight it's even worse. We could have signed Feliz for 1 year instead of committing to Teahen for 3. Getz was well worth moving to secure Gordon at 2B for the future, so I have no problems with that. But Teahen? I'm not optimistic about him either. He was a non-tender candidate that we gave up talent for and then extended even though he hasn't shown himself capable of performing to a level that warrants his new contract. Bad deal IMO. My guess is after Tejada signs this deal will look even worse still.

 

Agree on Damon, that would be a nice move but uncharacteristic of the Sox.

I realize what Pods got, but I figure we would f*** it up anyway and still overpay him.

[chw42]

I just don't like this exception that people make for leadoff hitters. I want the player who receives the most PA's on my team to be a good hitter, who is also capable of getting on base, hence why I'd go with Beckham. If Pierre bats 9th he'll still be coming up to bat in front of the 1/2/3 hitters but he'll get significantly less PA's in the process. Surely that's the best of both worlds?

 

Doesn't that describe a very good two-hole hitter?

 

I understand your logic perfectly about Pierre hitting 9th and I'd think that it might be worth a try. However, we'll never see that in action so we'll never see if that would ever be the case, unfortunately.

[Kenny Hates Prospects]

He definitely could hit .290-.300, which would put him at around a .340 OBP if you're semi-optimistic.

 

Pierre hits twice as many grounders than he does fly balls or line drives. I don't think it's really going to matter what kind of conditions we have here. Most of his line drives will be base hits and those 25% of fly balls have a better probability of traveling, which could actually help his XBHs. If you argue that he has no power and that those will get caught, fine, but I'm sure some of them will also travel and drop.

 

A league adjustment can't always be predicted correctly. Quentin and Podsednik adjusted to the AL fine, and it was actually stronger when they got here than it is now.

Every year Pierre hit under .300 he has posted OBPs of .332 or below.

 

Pierre's good OBP years plus batting average:

2000: .353, .310

2001: .378, .327

2003: .361, .305

2004: .374, .326

2009: .365, .308

 

Pierre hitting below .300 isn't going to get him in that OBP range. And yes, Pierre hits a lot of ground balls, but since there's nothing on them most of the time it doesn't matter. If we had a rock-hard IF or something I'd be more optimistic, but we don't. Those flyballs he hits are weak as s***, they aren't traveling anywhere. They actually hurt him because it's pretty hard to hit a little blooper that finds a gap and turns into a double or a triple at the Cell. This guy has no power at all. If you were playing a video game where you could look at the attributes of a hitter, Juan Pierre's power, on a scale of 1-100 would be about a 1. Mark Buehrle has more power than Juan Pierre. All the winds here are going to do is, on occasion, hold up his weakass little bloops long enough for an OF to run underneath them. This guy makes Ray Durham look like Babe Ruth.

[Kenny Hates Prospects]

I realize what Pods got, but I figure we would f*** it up anyway and still overpay him.

I see.

 

BTW, I don't think JR is on Michigan Ave anymore.

[joeynach]

Every year Pierre hit under .300 he has posted OBPs of .332 or below.

 

Pierre's good OBP years plus batting average:

2000: .353, .310

2001: .378, .327

2003: .361, .305

2004: .374, .326

2009: .365, .308

 

Pierre hitting below .300 isn't going to get him in that OBP range. And yes, Pierre hits a lot of ground balls, but since there's nothing on them most of the time it doesn't matter. If we had a rock-hard IF or something I'd be more optimistic, but we don't. Those flyballs he hits are weak as s***, they aren't traveling anywhere. They actually hurt him because it's pretty hard to hit a little blooper that finds a gap and turns into a double or a triple at the Cell. This guy has no power at all. If you were playing a video game where you could look at the attributes of a hitter, Juan Pierre's power, on a scale of 1-100 would be about a 1. Mark Buehrle has more power than Juan Pierre. All the winds here are going to do is, on occasion, hold up his weakass little bloops long enough for an OF to run underneath them. This guy makes Ray Durham look like Babe Ruth.

 

If ur correct, which I suspect you might be watch Pierre be one of those guys with much better road numbers than home numbers. If thats the case I would hope KW would unload him in the offseason to someone with a large outfield; braves, rockies, tigers, etc.

 

[Kenny Hates Prospects]

If ur correct, which I suspect you might be watch Pierre be one of those guys with much better road numbers than home numbers. If thats the case I would hope KW would unload him in the offseason to someone with a large outfield; braves, rockies, tigers, etc.

That was actually the case in 2006 when he played for the Cubs.

 

Home: .282/.323/.363/.687

Road: .301/.336/.411/.747

 

I'm too lazy to look at all the numbers, but during his 3 years with the Marlins all of his home numbers were considerably better than his road numbers, and the Marlins play in a pretty big park. I don't know if that proves anything, but watching Pierre is like watching somebody go to bat with fly swatter.

 

Also, he's hitting .266/.318/.337/.656 in 622 PA vs. the AL.

 

[dmbjeff]

If we go into this season with Andruw Jones/Mark Kotsay as our DH because Ozzie doesn't want a 'full-time' DH he better be gone if we don't make the playoffs. And this is from one of his biggest backers. I can't imagine KW would actually listen to him tho.

 

Full time DH is someone who is not capable of playing the field. Getting a guy like LaRoche or Damon, they can rotate with other players getting rest where rest is needed. You can't do that with Thome. He either DH's or he is on the bench.

[greg775]

I can't believe how we've heard about the importance of OBP and yet we get a bunch of players with zero OBP skills. We hear all season about how the middle of the order has to step up, and yet we lose 2 middle of the order cogs over the last several years and we don't even try to replace them. Now we're hearing about this gap hitter nonsense and yet we play in a major home run park. It just doesn't make any sense.

 

Amen.

I wonder why Oz is so anti Thome?

I love big Jimmy but maybe Oz didn't like the fact it was all or nothing with him. Back in the day, didn't home run hitters at least shorten their swings with two strikes? Big Jimmy would hack away no matter the count.

Even Paulie seems to try to whack singles up the middle when he has 2 strikes on him.

I guess CQ, Paulie better be our hr threats this year.

[witesoxfan]

Fair argument. It's pretty much a lose-lose. Im just biased cause of my mad 05 crush on him.

 

Which is, admittedly, a huge problem. I don't think you'd want Carl Everett DHing, just as I'd hope you wouldn't want Podsednik patrolling LF or for God's-sake, CF. And if you think he's about to put up another healthy .300/.350./.375/.725 year, I'd say you were crazy. Dude didn't even do that in 2005. He probably had the 2nd best season of his career offensively, and considering the metrics I recall seeing, probably the 2nd best season he's ever had. Entering his age 34 season, and the baserunning blunders he was making last year, along with constant complaints from the fans about his defense (haven't seen his Tango score, but I imagine it's below average for 2009), a Podsednik resigning would have been a total PR move with high risk and little reward. You don't make those types of moves.

 

I don't see the logic behind this. Are you making the protection argument? Because the protection argument (and there are those that say this never applies anyway) only gets made when you're talking about really good hitters (RBI guys).

 

The AL is going to be tougher because it's a tougher league with better pitching. AL pitchers aren't going to f*** around with Juan Pierre at all. They're going to go right after him the way pitchers go after weak slap hitters with no power and no real ability to draw a walk. Whether there are men on base or not, Pierre's game is to put the ball in play and run, so the opposition is just going to do that and get him to ground out. The IF here isn't all that fast so I don't expect a whole lot to get through, and the OF here is pretty small and straight-forward in dimension and lay-out which makes it easy to cover ground, so since his XBH ability is pretty much all due to his legs, I don't see him getting many XBH either. That is huge because when you look at the years he has had good OBP numbers you find he has hit well over .300 all those years. I don't see that happening here.

 

Of all the parks where Juan Pierre might be successful, the Cell has got to be one of the least likely of them all. I don't see any reason to be optimistic about this guy. And I don't care about projections and all that SABR stuff either, but it's hard to argue with those guys about Pierre. They pretty much call it like it is in that regard, and the consensus is he's really not that good.

 

Haven't looked at the numbers, but the AL has always been a league of not only good fastballs - which the NL features - but also good breaking balls. If you don't have a plus fastball and a plus breaking ball, or multiple plus pitches along with fantastic control (looking mainly at Buehrle here, but there are others involved, while now looking at Minnesota in particular), you can't make it. I haven't looked at the numbers, nor do I care to now, but if Pierre is a good breaking ball hitter, then most AL pitchers haven't seen that. He doesn't strike out much, so I think it's entirely possible that a lot of his outs have come on fastballs.

 

Besides all of that, he is a singles hitter, and the outfield dimensions mean little to a player like Pierre. He's going to get his hits, or he's not. If anything, I wouldn't be surprised to see him accidentally putting up a career high in homers, accidentally or intentionally.

 

Just a reminder: The 1 year in this decade where we didn't focus on power we won the World Series. Although there are a million ways to chop up this statement of mine, I still give it weight.

 

You mean the 200 homers they hit? Yeah, weren't focused on power at all.

 

-Frank Thomas arguably saved the 2005 White Sox from a relative catastrophic fall from grace with his June, where he hit like .210 but put up a .900 OPS because he hit about 10 homers.

-Some character named Joe Crede saved the White Sox from falling into 2nd place in what would have been the biggest collapse of all time with a game winning homer

-That team hit a few homers in the playoffs

 

Maybe, just maybe, maybe that team succeeded because it had 4 starters with ERAs under 4, Dustin Hermanson not allowing a run until like late May and not blowing a save until like June, the rise of Bobby Jenks, magnificent years from Cotts and Politte...hmm, what would I be trying to say? Maybe...PITCHING?

 

Get f***ing real. The White Sox had one of the worst offenses in the league that year, and their ability to pitch, to play fantastic defense, and come up with a clutch hit (which cannot be measured from year to year because it's generally fluky) had much more to do with them winning the World Series then their supposed "lack of power."

 

If we go into this season with Andruw Jones/Mark Kotsay as our DH because Ozzie doesn't want a 'full-time' DH he better be gone if we don't make the playoffs. And this is from one of his biggest backers. I can't imagine KW would actually listen to him tho.

 

I agree, and Ozzie has grown on me the past few years. I think Williams becomes accountable too, as KHP has stated too, as it's Ozzie's job to manage the players given to him, not to make the decisions. If I'm a cook, I'll listen to advice on how to cook a pasta from a server, but I won't let tell me exactly how they want it, especially if I KNOW it's wrong.

 

 

wOBA is a great stat, but Pierre's a leadoff hitter.

 

Honestly, I think OBP is still the best way to judge a leadoff man since his job is to get on base. If he gets extra base hits, awesome, but I don't think measuring how far on base he got is the right way to gauge his job. If he gets on base, he's done his job. Anything else is extra.

 

If you want to talk about him as our "worst" hitter/run producer (not in an RBI sort of way), then fine, he is. His lack of power and his barely above average OBP don't mix well for that. However, he's a leadoff hitter.

 

So Jimmy Rollins is chopped liver?

 

I just don't like this exception that people make for leadoff hitters. I want the player who receives the most PA's on my team to be a good hitter, who is also capable of getting on base, hence why I'd go with Beckham. If Pierre bats 9th he'll still be coming up to bat in front of the 1/2/3 hitters but he'll get significantly less PA's in the process. Surely that's the best of both worlds?

 

amen

Edited January 13, 2010 by witesoxfan

[witesoxfan]

 

On the one hand I agree, but on the other I think that it should be Kenny held accountable for listening to Ozzie and building an NL team in the American League. But I really don't want either Ozzie or Kenny gone, I just want them to build a balanced baseball team - or at least pick a philosophy, stick with it, and if it doesn't work, try something else and don't go back to the old philosophy again.

 

I will give a quick amen to this, though...

 

I can't believe how we've heard about the importance of OBP and yet we get a bunch of players with zero OBP skills. We hear all season about how the middle of the order has to step up, and yet we lose 2 middle of the order cogs over the last several years and we don't even try to replace them. Now we're hearing about this gap hitter nonsense and yet we play in a major home run park. It just doesn't make any sense.

 

The only starters the Sox have acquired this offseason were Teahen and Pierre. I don't know what to think of Pierre - he's as crazy as they come to predicting stats, though I envision him putting up a disappointing season - but I really do think Teahen is going to have a good season. Not middle of the order good, but I am thinking .280/.340/.435/.775 good, and potentially better. Teahen's performance is going to mean a lot to the Sox.

 

All that said, there are several players that either showed good peripheral numbers (Alexei), or were complete disappoints (Quentin and Rios come to mind). I expect this team to be underwhelming offensively without a true left-handed power hitter, which is why I still expect either Gonzalez or Thome to come on board.

 

That said, I'm putting 50:1 odds on Thome over Gonzalez, but probably 5:2 odds on neither being brought in.

 

He definitely could hit .290-.300, which would put him at around a .340 OBP if you're semi-optimistic.

 

Pierre hits twice as many grounders than he does fly balls or line drives. I don't think it's really going to matter what kind of conditions we have here. Most of his line drives will be base hits and those 25% of fly balls have a better probability of traveling, which could actually help his XBHs. If you argue that he has no power and that those will get caught, fine, but I'm sure some of them will also travel and drop.

 

A league adjustment can't always be predicted correctly. Quentin and Podsednik adjusted to the AL fine, and it was actually stronger when they got here than it is now.

 

Quentin is completely different, and you should know that well enough. He finally got healthy and put up monstrous numbers and was the MVP until he didn't play in September, in which case the writers had to give it to someone who played the last month of the season (because the first month doesn't count, especially when you put up numbers like Mauer did).

 

Podsednik had a lucky year. If he puts up the same or better numbers, I'd be completely and utterly surprised.

 

Pods got 1 year, $1.75M. We could have given him $2M and beat out the Royals by quite a bit. And while I wanted something much better than Pods, I'd much rather have Pods at $2M for 1 year than Pierre for 2 years and $8M. It'll be interesting to see what Winn signs for since, given his defense, he's the best of the bunch.

 

Have you even bothered to look at Randy Winn's numbers last year? against the "inferior" NL pitching? Add to the fact that he's an older player too. Randy Winn should be no where on the White Sox radar and should rather be on the Newark Bears radar.

 

Disagree on Teahen. At the time I thought it was a dumb move, and in hindsight it's even worse. We could have signed Feliz for 1 year instead of committing to Teahen for 3. Getz was well worth moving to secure Gordon at 2B for the future, so I have no problems with that. But Teahen? I'm not optimistic about him either. He was a non-tender candidate that we gave up talent for and then extended even though he hasn't shown himself capable of performing to a level that warrants his new contract. Bad deal IMO. My guess is after Tejada signs this deal will look even worse still.

 

Agree on Damon, that would be a nice move but uncharacteristic of the Sox.

 

Have you looked at how bad Pedro Feliz is? with a coach who is supposedly really good? Pedro Feliz is a backup player at this point and will be lucky to put up a .700 OPS this season as a starter. His only retaining quality is his ability to play defense, and that would be lost on Sox fans very quickly.

 

But it's quite aware at this point that you have essentially written Teahen off, which is completely cool.

 

I realize what Pods got, but I figure we would f*** it up anyway and still overpay him.

 

And thank God the Sox didn't, because I didn't want him getting picked off 10+ times while regressing to the means in the leadoff spot. It's pick my poison at this point, and I'd much rather take Wild Turkey than Everclear.

 

 

Full time DH is someone who is not capable of playing the field. Getting a guy like LaRoche or Damon, they can rotate with other players getting rest where rest is needed. You can't do that with Thome. He either DH's or he is on the bench.

 

Nobody knows how LaRoche is going to play next year. He could be fantastic, he could be horrible. I'd be less upset about his signing than I would if the Sox signed Hank Blalock.

 

Johnny Damon isn't a good outfielder at this point, and I think if the Sox wanted him, they would have signed him by now. Maybe they have him in their sights and they have an offer of like $4 mill on the table to a certain date and are waiting to see if Boras bites on that and waits till someone else offers more (hence, Reinsdorf's comments) and have an offer for Thome on the table.

 

Speaking of Thome, and I commented on this earlier tonight...for f***'s sake, the Sox can quite easily have a rotating DH with Jim Thome, who really can't play the field, on the roster. It involves a 5-man bench and a 6-man bullpen. I think the problem with that becomes Ozzie's second lefty and Sergio Santos, who the Sox obviously like a hell of a lot, considering they sent him to the AFL. They have Jones, Kotsay, Vizquel, and Castro on the bench right now, and you can probably include Nix onto that list as well (and a combination of Nix and Jones would be serve for a nice platoon to Thome at DH).

 

 

 

We'll see though. The closer and closer Soxfest gets, the more and more I don't think Jim Thome is coming. If it came right down to it, I think I'd rather have Jim Thome than about 10 players on the 40-man, including several on the edge. If Sergio Santos makes the roster in the Carrasco role, and Thome's not on the roster, I will be pissed. I'll take a proven talent over someone who could be a great reliever, especially considering the Sox outlook on pitchers and the current state of the offense. Santos is fun, but he's not worth scoring fewer than 750 runs.

[WHITESOXRANDY]

I think that the Sox are going to wait before they spend more money.

 

I think they will wait till atleast the spring to take a look at the players they have first. They're going to see, most importantly, how Andruw Jones, Carlos Quentin, Alex Rios, Mark Teahen and Gordon Beckham look and play.

 

Don't forget that Juan Pierre and Omar Vizquel are also new to this team.

 

If there are no injuries I think they will likely start the season with this team. If all goes well KW probably won't make a major move until July.

 

But, I think that it could be a big move then. And, this is where Reinsdorf is saying that they'll spend the money. And, I think that the people clamoring for a big move so as to "not waste this pitching staff" will be pleased.

[hogan873]

I don't pay as much attention to other teams as I do the Sox, but I don't remember seeing many teams that rotated players into the DH spot. At least I haven't seen many successful teams do that. I have seen, however, some teams use a guy who is not so much of a power hitter as a DH. From the comments I've seen floating around, it seems that some would be comfortable with a guy who can smack 20-25 HRs, knock in 80+, and draw walks. I agree. The team has the speed, now they need some guys to move the speedsters along. I like the idea of Johnny Damon and even Thome. I just hope that KW makes a move so that we don't have to watch the potential debacle of a rotating DH.

[quickman]

Boras represents Damon. JR's comments about Boras clients tell me Damon is not a possiblity unless no other teamwants him, then negotiation is gone.