Gene Honda Civic

QUOTE(michelangelosmonkey @ Aug 22, 2007 -> 11:54 PM) Put down the hyperbole gun. Carlos Silva trade was BRILLIANT scouting? Carlos Silva has been 43-43 on a team with a better than .500 record. His ERA has been 4.30 on a team with a team ERA of under 4.00. He's a guy. I don't want to undervalue just-a-guy...I remember the White Sox dreaming of getting a fifth starter in 2001. But to say the Twins refused to pay Eric Milton a fortune (sane decision) and traded him for J-a-g is brilliant scouting? Again...how can we deify Terry Ryan and condemn Kenny Williams? Didn't KW get Freddie Garcia for a bunch of overvalued prospects? Didn't he find Contreas and El Duque in the Yankee's dumpster? Didn't he get Iguchi for next to nothing from Japan? Jermaine Dye if I remember properly was a blue light special at Kmart? I will HAPPILY say that the Twins are a worthy opponent in accumulating talent. But to look into the future and say the Sox are doomed and the Twins are great because of their superiority in evaluation of major and minor talent? There is no evidence in the past to confirm that and some evidence (world series ring) to prove Kenny is smarter than Terry. Yeah... Just a guy... here's a list of all the pitchers in the AL (since 2004) to throw 700+ innings with an ERA+ over 100... 8 f***ing "guys" How can we deify Ryan and condemn Williams? Did I bring up Williams? No, but keep calling me the debating equivalent of a Cubs fan while you run around changing the subject.

QUOTE(Gregory Pratt @ Aug 22, 2007 -> 09:42 PM) How many Australian major leaguers are there? How many Australian impact players are there? According to baseball reference, there have been 19 major leaguers originally born in Austraulia the last 20 years... That works out to .4% of all major league players over that time. http://www.baseball-reference.com/bio/Australia_born.shtml

QUOTE(michelangelosmonkey @ Aug 22, 2007 -> 03:49 PM) So either I'm F'ing naive or assinine to say the Twins were lucky? These brilliant Twins...these flawless visionaries who spotted Travis Lee and nabbed him with the #2 overall pick in the 96 draft. Then laughed as Ryan Mills fell to them at the #6 pick in the 98 draft. BJ Garbe at #5 in the 99 draft. Adam Johnson with the #2 overall pick in the 2000 draft. As i tried to point out earlier in this thread...getting a 20 year old power pitcher is a total crap shoot. If the system is...acquire a whole bunch of young power pitchers...again...what has that system gotten them? A couple of division titles when the Central was weak in the early 00's. And one playoff series victory in 15 years. So for nearly a decade the Twins drafted in the top 10 and were able to see things in 20 year old power pitchers that other organizations couldn't (a skill, not luck) and...at the start of the year the Twins staff consisted of Sidney Ponson, Carlos Silva and Ramon Ortiz? Shame on me for suggesting they hit lighting in a bottle...and remind me...how many divisions does Minnesota win without Santana? You do realize that pro and amateur scouting are two separate entities, right? The Twins have demonstrated that they have perhaps the best pro scouting in the game. You make fun of Carlos silva, but he's given them over 700 innings of above average starting pitching for less than the cost of 1 year of Eric Milton, the player he was traded for. That's brilliant scouting. I don't think Alexi Casilla will amount to anything special, but acquiring a slick fielding 2B on the cheap for a LOOGY with a WHIP over 1.5 is another great move. Add in the Santana, Liriano, and Nathan thefts, and you've got yourself a more than solid core simply by identifying and trading for other franchises undervalued spare parts... (KW tried to do the same thing in acquiring Richar, but using Cunningham instead of a high salaried player on the ML roster was a mistake) You don't trade with Terry Ryan and come out on top often. He probably knows your minor leagues/cheap players better than you do...

QUOTE(michelangelosmonkey @ Aug 22, 2007 -> 02:10 PM) Eight years ago they got lucky trading for a 20 year old single A pitcher Santana who had an 8-8 record and a 5 ERA. Luck had nothing to do with it. They identified the top unprotected player in all of baseball, and convinced the Marlins to pass him over for the "second best" unprotected player baseball and some cash. They kept him on the roster for the year despite his ineffectiveness because they saw the long-term potential, and would lose him back to the Astros if they had taken him off the 25-man roster. First of all, it wasn't a deadline deal. Second, it wasn't luck again. Liriano was another high powered lefty in the low minors who had been injured enough for Sabean to let him escape. Nathan was a good young pitcher who already had success in the majors. With his stuff, Sabean was an idiot for thinking he had reached his potential. Bonser, the other arm in the deal, was considered the prize of the deal by most. The Twins new exactly what they were getting in both of those deals; tons of potential. Alot of things had to go right for those players to reach that potential, but it's f***ing naive to call them lucky because they were able to identify (and acquire) some of the highest-ceilinged talent in baseball.

QUOTE(IlliniKrush @ Aug 21, 2007 -> 12:38 PM) I'm having this problem right now. Just got a new computer, dl'd firefox. I close firefox, try to go back to Soxtalk (or anything) 20 minutes later, and i'm logged out. And i checked all the settings to save password, etc. Take a look at the pic above... It looks like you have it set to keep cookies "until I sign out of Firefox" instead of "until they expire"

Fruto is (or rather was) a high velocity arm with an exceptional changeup who had great success in AAA last season. Can you name a similar pitcher in the Sox organization? Carter, the player the Red Sox are recieving, is a defensively challenged 1B (probably a dh) who has posted better numbers than anyone not sharing the same name in our system. Though he's been classified by many as a AAAA player.

QUOTE(michelangelosmonkey @ Aug 20, 2007 -> 10:13 PM) MLB drafting ESPECIALLY of pitchers is a wild longshot. Not worth $5 mill that Detroit is giving Porcella...Porcello=Josh Hamilton.Here is another list... Eggs Broccoli Cajun seasoning Butter Pepsi Chicken livers Broccoli = your post. Not worth eating.

QUOTE(Rowand44 @ Aug 20, 2007 -> 06:50 PM) A 4.6 era will get you more than 5 mill a year on the fa market right now. Not to mention that $5M is a huge red herring considering Borchard set the bonus record at the time at $5M, which is still well above average for a first round pick 7 years later. Oh and nevermind that the 2000 draft is now considered one of the worst all-time. Heck, just look at the 2005 first round. 6 of the top 7 position players selected are already in the show. Jay Bruce is waiting in the wings. It's already more productive than the 2000 first round and it's barely two years later....

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Aug 20, 2007 -> 05:24 PM) There is one big difference between the 2 cases: Owens was at least getting better before he was called up. His OBP in 06 in AAA was .328, it was .361 in Charlotte before his callup. He had his SB %age go from about .75 to about .85 from 06 to 07. Average .260 to .284. Sweeney has gone the opposite direction this year. Sweeney's BA and SLG were essentially exactly the same as '06 in mid-to-late July. he then went on about a 12 game skid where he didn't hit at all before being DLed, and hasn't hit well since. His OBP and walk rate were up at that time.... The walk rate remains improved over last season, and he appeared patient in his time in the bigs. I don't think it's a question of talent with Sweeney. I think we would have seen continued improvement were he healthy. Sweeney has absolutely been a disappointment this season, but most of that disappointment has been directly tied to his recent health issues.

FWIW, ESPN contacted me to participate in this... When I replied and told them that Southpaw was clearly "the most now," I think I was removed from consideration as a participant.

QUOTE(forrestg @ Aug 19, 2007 -> 11:15 PM) thornton will go down to develop another pitch so he can be a starter,,,,,,,,,,, Thorton is out of options. If Thornton still had options in '06, he wouldn't have been traded for the similarly option-less and in danger of being DFA'd Joe Borchard.

Owens has hit .263/.306/.306 since his second call-up, which has drawn immense praise from the organization and TV booth.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Aug 18, 2007 -> 08:45 PM) So I was looking at the numbers. Before the start of tonights game, Pauly has 261 homers with the Sox, while Frank Thomas had 448. Konerko still as the rest of this year, plus 4 more years on his contract. He currently trails by 187 homers, meaning if he can get to 30 or so this year, he would need to average 45 a year over the next 4 years to tie Frank, or average a little less, but get another contract extention to pass him. So what are the chances that it happens? Konerko signed a 5 year deal following the '05 season.... By my count. he has 3 years (and six weeks) remaining on that contract.

This was a hobby of mine in HS. (I also liked to read the classifieds and see if there was anything worth buying from the delinquent storage unit sales) You saw the same people at all of them. Bought my first PC for $75 at one. It was tough to get a good deal like that on anything of value. Though I do remember buying a set of Taylor Made clubs for $50 and reselling them to a friend for $250... I haven't been in 10 years, but I would imagine that everything has moved online to a site like you posted or eBay.

QUOTE(whitesoxfan101 @ Aug 13, 2007 -> 09:49 AM) I doubt it. They'll have about a 60/40 edge though. There were 25 thousand NIU fans my freshman year when we were at Northwestern, had them greatly outnumbered at their own place, but people seem to underestimate the amount of NIU fans there are so to each his own. Although I am sure the Iowa fans will be coming from all over Wrigleyville in their Cub hats, Cub fans and Iowa fans really do go hand in hand often times, and I'll just leave it at they are about similar in intelligence usually. Each team was given an allotment of 25K tickets. Iowa's allotment never made it to the general public. They were all pre-sold to season ticket holders, students, alumni associations, and VIPs. The 10+K tickets that were "neutral" sold out in a day. (I couldn't find a neutral ticket about 2 hours after they went on sale) And I got my ticket in the nosebleed endzone NIU section about 3 days after they went on sale to the general public. I'd be willing to wager that about half of NIU's allotment was bought up by Iowa fans, which would put the mix at somewhere around 75-80% Iowa fans. You're talking about a fan base that reportedly outnumbered both Florida and Texas at recent bowl games in Florida and Texas.

DONNY LUCY!

QUOTE(fathom @ Aug 15, 2007 -> 10:29 PM) It just baffles my mind how bad they've looked in the games I've seen recently. Honestly, is it really that baffling? The team consists of: Pods and Erstad (who we were both against carrying prior to the season) Owens (who I've called a future 4-5th outfielder for going on 2 years now) Richar (a guy I'd never heard of before we traded for him) Cintron (who was poor last year, had a LATE off-season surgery, and looked f***ing brutal on the rare occasion that he did play in ST) Fields (who looks great on occasion, but also looks really out of place at times) Uribe (who even though I was for his sticking around, is nothing more than a low-OBP power hitting slick fielding shortstop, who has seen his defense and power slide) Be thankful there's some major league talent on the pitching staff. Otherwise this would be the worst Sox team of our lifetime. It still might be.

QUOTE(fathom @ Aug 15, 2007 -> 10:27 PM) This team is just so bad. They're going to have to spend a fortune this offseason to compete again. I do enjoy watching grind outs to 2nd base. At least they're defensively sound.

Did you guys just see Donny Lucy go yard? No, didn't think so.

So what's the Brewers' record since the creation of this thread?

LOL at Hawk... Jerry can't manage to reach on a 75 footer, and he's going nuts.

Erstad hit .192/.300/.346 vs. LHP last year, and is currently hitting .180/.219/.279 against them this year. Spectacular choice..... And it nets a run before I can finish typing.

QUOTE(fathom @ Aug 14, 2007 -> 11:35 PM) For some reason, seeing that Pods has 7 RBIs this year made me laugh. This is so sad. Never fear. Darrin Erstad is ready to pinch hit in case Juan Uribe accidently reaches base on a dropped third strike.

QUOTE(Gene Honda Civic @ Aug 14, 2007 -> 10:52 PM) Fixed. Oh, and I hope you're OK with me changing around your words... I got a PM today from somebody who didn't appreciate the same treatment. I'll leave you all to guess who it was.

QUOTE(Brian @ Aug 14, 2007 -> 10:51 PM) He's making 12 mil next year. Fixed.