Chisoxfn

Except his MN stands for Montana

Random Musings on the Draft By Jason Gage May 29, 2004 FutureSox.com The Major League Amateur draft starts on June 7th and will be concluded on June 8th. The draft is 50 rounds long and unlike the NFL, NBA, and NHL draft, it is not televised. However, the MLB draft can be heard live on MLB.com radio which is the first step towards baseball finally making the draft more exciting. As of now, not many baseball fans know much about the draft. Usually, following the draft their will be a small blurb in the paper that comments on the local players that were drafted as well as who the local teams drafted in the early rounds. Lets be honest, where is the fun in that? I realize that the MLB draft is 50 rounds long and to televise something like that would be incredibly hard. However, televising the draft with a scrolling ticker of the current selections (you can’t put teams on the clock in the MLB draft, its basically a live conference call) would be a start. Then you could have a few draft guru’s, people like Jim Callis, John Manuel, and company who could talk about some of the key players. They could also take time to comment on all the team’s minor league systems and give a little info and video footage on each of the team’s top prospects. This would be a unique opportunity for Major League Baseball to market the draft and its up and coming stars. To me the MLB draft is a very fun day. Before to the draft a lot of college baseball is televised, whether its conference tournaments or the beginning of the regionals, which gives you the opportunity to check out some of the top college prospects in the country. Then following the draft, you can maybe watch a player or two in the college world series that your team has just drafted. The question is why isn’t major league baseball marketing and televising the building block of every organization (including the Yankees). Note: This is the 1st piece of what will be a daily article as FutureSox countdowns to the amateur draft.

Lol, Heads is beating ya...thats brutal

I think its because when I copied the database, you were still putting the stories on the old server. Therefor the database isn't fully up to date. I didn't realize any new stories were done before the switch cause I hadn't been paying attention, was just doing tons of coding. But from now on everything is good. I just have to restore all the secondary html files, but all stories work. I'm working on setting up a real cool chatroom that should work great for player chats in the future.

Its tough for Wunsch. I hope he gets healthy and I know he'll find a spot somewhere else. He's a good guy and I wish him nothing but the best in the future.

Alright, FutureSox.com will be back to its normal updating state starting today. I am currently working on installing and customizing a few cool new features or at least I think they'll be cool

I'd say front to middle of the rotation in the majors. He has good stuff and a lot of upside. He's a pretty big lefty with good breaking pitches if I recall. Of course this was all presurgery. In a little over a month and a half, I'll be catching a few minor league games, he's one pitcher I hope I get to see.

Thats good news. Hopefully this is one of those injuries that will heal quickly and won't nag him. As always thanks for the update!!!!

I'll tell you one thing ,Byrd is a good player and FLoyd has a ton of potential. Beltran is a stud, but that deal would make sense and it also makes sense from the Phillies point of view cause they have a few more pretty damn good pitching prospects if I recall.

Hey Rex, I couldn't agree more with you. I made this statement after they said they would be moving Cotts back to the bullpen and I also felt this way after they pulled Diaz. If the Sox want these guys, they first off need to realize odds are a pitcher is going to come in and struggle at times. However, with Diaz, he retired 11 straight batters in his first start. You could see his release point on his pitches was a bit off, but that very well coul do with the fact that instead of letting him pitch on his normal schedule, they had him pitch very limited over an extended period. Then they had Diaz go on 3 days rest the 2nd start. Yes, he struggled, but it was against the 2nd or 3rd best offense in the majors and an offense that had been on fire. He struggled early and then, even though he was on 3 days rest (this was the rigth call, cause Garland threw a ton of pitches the same day as Diaz) but then their was no reason to not start him the next time around. If you are willing to call these guys up, then you have to be willing to give them a chance. Now if Diaz or something else happened where basically they all agreed he wasn't ready, then fine with me, but I'm sick of the Sox just handing it to a guy for one start expecting him to just instantly be the savior. It doesn't work that way in the majors. Now I sure hope Rauch can come in and do his thing, but I don't expect him to go very deep.

His ERA may be good, but he's struggled with making a key pitch with runners on base...aka inherited runners.

He is freaking good.

It should be interesting. Hopefully he comes up and pitches good and after tomorrow the Sox think they have a 5th starter.

I'd say that other then Anderson so far the other two have been dissapointments. Still, pretty high expectations were put on them, especially Sweeney, and as long as they are making progress I'm happy.

Kohleimeir has been solid out of the rotation, but I think his career is as a minor league right now. Majewski to me would be the first guy up, although Santiago and Baj both are more then capable. For whatever reason I think the Sox are going to try and stick with Munoz as a starter and won't be calling him up anytime soon, unless its to join the rotation. Rex, do you think if the Sox called up Arnie, that he could handle being the 5th starter or would it really be rushing him?

He projects as a front to middle of the rotation starter. The guy has good upside and is pitching pretty good this season.

Ya, its on KCAL 9 today. Got the game on right now. I don't know how many areas get the station though, but I know it goes from LA to Orange County for sure.

I'll have to root for him, afterall he is an Angel. But I hope he sucks until they leave Chicago.

Its on the website...download it. Its pure gold

Long story short, a buddy of mine is like an insomniac so he calls me up to tell me about the funniest infomertial that he's ever seen. I turn on the TV and was like oh my god this is awesome. Found the website and I couldn't not share this with the rest of the world

Also, want to add, unfortunately, the hot chick thread will probably be removed. After looking at the bandwith useage stats I noticed that it takes up a huge amount of the bandwith from the site. Unless I can learn a way to compress an individual thread, then unfortunately It will be put into a forum where it can't be viewed, but if the site goes dedicated sooner or later, then it can once again be up.

To add to this, the rotating banner caused the banner to load each time you refreshed the site. If I had to guess it probably caused a 20%-40% increase in bandwith alone. The banner is back to loading just once per visit, which is Great. It also means the site will load faster.

The site hit its bandwith limit so in the next few days I'll be working on compressing a lot of images and stuff like that. The big culprits to it from what I can tell were the hot chick thread because the pictures on the thread are HUGE and a lot of them are hosted on the server as well as the rotating banner which causes the banner to be loaded fresh everytime. I Think this minor adjustments will cut bandwith down by 30% or so which should keep the site on the current hosting plan. However, the bandwith was upgraded and tomorrow the site will be going to a static IP address and there will be about 10 minutes of down time when that happens. I was told it was going to be done either Saturday Night or Sunday night depending on when the staff can easily get it done. Anyway, thinks should be rolling again

Well obviously, someones dad is missing out.

http://www.healthstep.com/