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It's a huge shot to the ego of some of these guys who aren't offered megabucks after a lousy couple of months. Add that to the fact JD isn't much of a fielder anymore and you get this ... nobody wants him for more than a discount rate. Will he sign for a million or 2 a year? Sounds like a team would be getting an unhappy camper at that discount rate. He's an interesting case. Teams aren't going to pay JD more than Pods-type money it appears.

I think they'll have the usual homefield advantage, but it won't be anything like the dome. I would suspect we'll win our share of games in the outdoor park.

Our offseason has been blah. We're hoping to strike gold with Omar, Putz, Teahen, Jones, Pierre. I would say none of us can say with any certainty how those guys will perform. We can hope that they perform well. That's what the winter is for. And it still is winter evidenced by me missing a flight today because I sat my ass on I-70 for 2.5 hours as a 30 car pileup got cleared up. It was bad. I hope everybody is OK.

I'm a little concerned, only because I don't sense a majority of the question marks coming through. I remember our offensive problems during stretches last season and I think we have on paper a worse club offensively than a year ago. Who knows? I do hope we get off to a good start, not the five under .500 thing the whole first half. It would help if Rios emerged into a hitting star, ditto Lexi. I think we know what we're going to get from Paulie and AJ. We need many other guys to produce. I think our ceiling is 10 over .500. And I can't see us getting Damon cause of the Boras thing.

That bridge could be rebuilt quickly, by him saying, "World Series MVP." Like Frank, he'll always be a Sox.

That rotation sounds good to me. Hope Freddy has a good start to the season.

I forgot about Thome to the Twins. That is going to be so strange seeing him up there hacking for Minnie.

I'd start Peavy if he has an average to good spring. Jake seemed like an ornery bulldog during his few starts with us in September. I doubt Mark will mind.

His attitude isn't any different from most guys who have been as productive as long as he has. Lots of these guys are proud (cocky) and tend to make excuses for their decline in productivity. Nothing new there. So what if he's whining. It just takes one team to pick him up. He's not going to be highly paid, however. He's going to have to adjust to that fact mentally. It'd suck if the team that picks him up gets a less than stellar effort from JD just because he thinks he's underpaid. I'd be surprised if he and Thome both don't wind up with some team. But it's interesting that nobody has gobbled them up yet. I still say JD wasn't that disgraceful of an outfielder, but it sure took a long time to get those long legs moving sometimes.

I was against this until I read previous threads that said Omar's number was 13 and Oz had it. This is indeed simply a tribute. Nice.

I enjoyed your post, Smokey, but don't know if I agree with this statement. You think our infield defense is acceptable?

Great pictures. Fans wearing jerseys and posting with players is cool in my book.

I'd have to say that's about what I expect from our team this year as well. Hopefully all the question marks will be exclamation points and then we'll have something special. I'm just not big on any of our acquisitions except Peavy.

This stuff about Jones being in great shape is the cliche offseason story. Baseball writers laugh about it. It means nothing.

These well written glass half empty threads scare me. I'm trying to remain optimistic. I'm pretty convinced our offense will be average at best. However our starting pitching is wonderful. My question to you all is ... objectively speaking, how will our defense be??? That is pivotal to go with our starting pitching and decent relief corps (decent if our starters can go 7 full innings much of the time.

I just don't agree with this if you are saying Kotsay and Jones and Omar ARE good enough to be on this team. WTF? Jimmy I think can still hit righty pitching. I hope our righties own him. What's the over/under on how many dingers he hits against Cliff and Freddy. Hopefully Peavy is nasty enough to retire him.

Jordan I do worry about this with former players, especially if they go to the Central because we play them so many times.

Caufield's post is kind of scary. If his point of view is correct, our team better throw a lot of shutouts or we could be in trouble. He makes some good points, but it is the glass half empty take on the team.

Kotsay and Jones aren't exactly guys you can say that "change our approach." You just know Thome's going to go to another team in our division and kick our f***ing ass. Oz better know best. Oz obviously is sick of the shift and slow Jimmy. By the way, these paragraphs in Cowley's story are scary: Thome told the Sun-Times in October that should he not return to the Sox, his preference would be to stay in the American League Central, and he was most intrigued with the idea of playing for the Twins in their new outdoor stadium. Without Thome, it's still a rotation of Andruw Jones, Mark Kotsay and Omar Vizquel, plus Carlos Quentin and Paul Konerko should expect time in the DH spot when they need a breather. ''It's weird because since I've been the manager, we've always had the big boys in the middle,'' Guillen said. ''We have a little different philosophy. I'm very, very optimistic. I don't want to say I've put my job on the line, but I've been telling Kenny for three weeks that I like what I have.''

Man that is very true. I have very high hopes, but very low expectations, for our lineup. I have high expections for Paulie, AJ, CQ and Lexi. I have high hopes but low expectations for Teahen.

Rios. Both on offense and with the glove. We need him to play well.

I'd also hate to see Jimmy with the Twins. Just sign him for one more year. Oz falls in love with certain players like Kotsay, who is decent, but my god, Jimmy is a threat in the middle of the order. Limit his at bats some, but sign Jimmy.

I used to hate the Royals; but I feel sorry for 'em and kind of like them now. But they are in our division and I desperately want the Sox to win the division every year.

Whatever happened to the annual thread where they rate posters like most annoying poster, most fun to go to a bar with, etc? I figured this year after such a wild September I might be voted most hated poster. Sorry this is in a different section but I've been looking for the awards.

You need a threat of a big bomb in there. Helps everybody in the lineup, or so they say.