CWSGuy406

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Dec 24, 2006 -> 03:42 AM) Just found the guy in Texas's organization I wanted...Joaquin Arias. Spent last year at AAA, shortstop with a good infield arm, decent batting average (.313 at AA, only .263 at AAA, so probably needs another year at AAA), but a ton of speed, 30, 20, and 26 stolen bases at A, AA, and AAA in the last 3 years. In other words, he's my replacement for Uribe if the Sox don't pick up his option after 2007. And it gives Ozzie the speed he loves at a position where he'd love to have speed and a position where we have room to upgrade. Dah well, too late for that. Oh, you mean the Joaquin Arias who had a .296 OBP last year in the PCL? That Joaquin Arias?

QUOTE(Flash Tizzle @ Dec 23, 2006 -> 11:00 PM) I'm sure Baseball Prospectus will have a delightful twist on it as well. I assume you meant that BP would bash KW because of this deal? Quite the opposite. In fact, the past couple deals -- for Gonzalez, Floyd, Sisco, and now Danks/Masset -- has made KW a lot of fans in some 'saber-circles' (right or wrong).

QUOTE(Buehrle>Wood @ Dec 23, 2006 -> 10:07 PM) That's great, but can they play defense? As for Oden, he's a freshmen, great. However, there are still better players out there then him, even atleast one freshman. Unfortunatly 'being a freshman' doesn't win you extra ball games. In fact it gives you nothing when he's only going to stay one year anyway. These two teams are good, no doubt. I just don't see either as the number one or two this year. And so far, neither has shown why they should be. Who gives a damn if he's a freshman? He's dominating with one wrist right now. That's the most ass-backwards logic I've seen in a long time...

QUOTE(Jenks Heat @ Dec 23, 2006 -> 09:44 PM) Offer Clemens the moon to quite the critics they like theses moves. He is a stop gap until either Floyd, Gonzalez or Danks are ready to take a place a top of the rotation. I actually think that the Sox should tell Clemens he will pitch every Sunday and go with a six man rotation based around this. That's the best idea I've read. Sox should offer one year, $20 million. Kenny Williams says they have plenty of money to make a move, just he didn't want to. It would make this trade look a helluva lot better...

Boo the Florida fans and their pom-poms...

QUOTE(fathom @ Dec 23, 2006 -> 08:32 PM) This makes the Vazquez trade even more disasterous, as now we have to trade McCarthy before we could even tell how he'd be as a normal starting pitcher. Why couldn't Ozzie have just retired after winning the WS like he said he would? You honestly can't be that f***ing dense, can you?

QUOTE(Rowand44 @ Dec 23, 2006 -> 08:22 PM) We're certainly going to regret letting Brandon go. I honestly can't believe we traded him, the more I think about this the more I want to kill someone, trading McCarthy is going to bite us in the ass this year and forever . Danks is fine but Brandon will be the better starter through out his career. As for Masset I assume he'll get a shot at the bullpen this season. I can't believe Brandon is gone. Unfortunately for Brandon, Texas is not exactly the best place for him to 'shine'...

Hawks win! Just ONE point out of the 8th spot in the West now.

Bondra #500. Scored on a rebound of a Cullimore shot. 2-1 Hawks in the third. The UC is packed. 17 thousand plus, largest crowd of the year. I have the game goin' on the computer somehow (TVU Player).

Wilson would make a lot of sense if we could immediately dump Podsednik after inking him. Why? Wilson, Podsednik, and Mackowiak can't all be on this roster, because we're still left without a halfway decent backup centerfielder. I still think the Sox are one player shy of completing their 25-man roster, and that player should be able to play an average CF defensively along with being able to hit right-handed. A Jason Michaels type who could actually play decent defense would be nice, although I understand those types aren't freely available.

One Greg Paulus football reference already, and Dicky V has only been on TV for about five minutes.

That Idaho State team gave Marquette some trouble too. They were beating MU by about ten with ten minutes left in the second half. Luckily we came back and pulled it out in OT.

Is this the catch-all video game thread? If so, someone please try and convince me that Smackdown vs. Raw is not the greatest thing ever invented by anyone in the history of the world.

I'm biased, but... First Impressions of Earth - The Strokes

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ Dec 18, 2006 -> 05:32 AM) But this team is built on defense, and there's just signs with the secondary that they could be exploited again. Mike Brown has really been a BIG loss for you guys. A team like the Saints or Cowboys if they meet in the playoffs is really going to try and take advantage of that. You've gotta give the secondary a little more of a break. I'm not saying they played well today, but they're also playing without their best cover corner and without a decent hitting safety in Todd Johnson. I'm much more worried about the interior of our D-Line than our secondary...

QUOTE(Chisoxfn @ Dec 18, 2006 -> 04:52 AM) Just in time too...cause the Hawks have been kicking ass. Khaby played great tonight while Ruutu had his 4th goal in 5 games (I think its 4 in 5 games at least). Khabby was amazing tonight. Really ridiculous that he wasn't one of the 'stars' tonight; probably should've been the first star. Aucoin was also pretty good. He played physical and finally let that hard slapshot off on the point of the PP a couple times, scoring once. He's still slow, but it was good to see him actually pushing people around tonight. And I know it's been said a million times already, but Havlat is so calm, cool and collected with the puck. He made a pretty nice pass to Ruutu on the first goal, and in the third, made a spectacular pass from the corner of the blueline all the way to the far post where Hamilton tipped it just wide. This team is fun to watch. They're competing every night. They don't have any real heavyweights, but they hit. Stewart flies around trying to lay a body on anybody he can, Wisniewski has played quite well in his time up here, and even Vandy is starting to play more physically. Hopefully Seabrook's night in the press box will get him goin', too.

QUOTE(Kalapse @ Dec 17, 2006 -> 06:33 PM) Shannon Stewart is no longer capable of playing the outfield. And I question whether or not he can be a good hitter still, either. His ZiPS projection for next year is .275/.341/.392. When you add in the bad defense and mediocre baserunning, he's worth nothing more than minor league deal.

QUOTE(SoxHawk1980 @ Dec 17, 2006 -> 06:11 PM) That's quite a gamble. How much of the team's play was underachievement? And did any players overachieve last year? Shouldn't we expect them to regress as well? I still think standing pat as a 3rd place team doesn't make much sense. We didn't need a massive overhaul. This team won 90 games last year. In the mind's of the front office, the pitching staff massively underachieved. You've said that you disagree with that, or at least part of that. And in the end, that's what it will come down to -- whether or not that pitching staff is actually above average this year. ------------------------------------------------------------- All that's left is to find a real LFer, or, if not, a real 4th OFer who can platoon with Podsednik. Would Heath Phillips net Willy T? He'd make a good platoon partner for Pods, and it'd be a fairly cheap one year solution stopgap, so long as Kenny made it clear that the platoon was with Podsednik, not Anderson.

Hawks pwning the BJs right now. 4-0 and still a couple minutes left in the first. Goals for Havlat, Hamilton, Ruutu, and Arkhipov.

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ Dec 17, 2006 -> 12:00 AM) And I wouldn't use Sisco as a reliever. Have him start the year off at Charlotte as a starter, and let Boone Logan or a FA pickup be used as the lefty reliever out of the pen. I know people keep talking about another bullpen arm, but I think the Sox are done in that department. The top four spots are locked; Jenks, Thorton, MacD, Aardsma. The next two spots will be earned by two of Boooone, Perez, Floyd, Sisco, and Haeger. Hell, Phillips might even have a shot at the LOOGY job. Oh, and then there's any NRIs brought in.

FWIW, here's an article from BP talking about the trade and some of Sisco's behavior problems: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/unfiltered/?p=104

QUOTE(Whitewashed in @ Dec 16, 2006 -> 08:37 PM) Initially I thought all those homers came from hanging curves. I am sure some did, but I didn't know it was mostly from leaving the fastball up. Can anyone verify that he can pop the fastball at 95 consistently? Two comments: Part of the reason for the increase in homers was due to his home park. Redding is an extreme pitchers park, and IIRC, he pitched two-thirds of his innings this year at home. A higher percentage of his flyballs went out of the yard. And no, he doesn't pop the fastball at 95 consistently. All the scouting reports seem to say 90-93 while occassionaly touching 94-95.

Not a good day for the Big East today. Pitt loses to Wiscy. At least I don't feel so bad about the four point loss last weekend now... Louisville goes down to Kentucky, and I can't believe there's a team out there that's worse at shooting threes than Marquette. Cincy already down 19 in the first half to Ohio State on a neutral court. Not that I expected anything different, but still. Marquette won, but this game (UMBC) and the remaining OOC games are all (should be) cupcakes.

BobDylan, you seem to be under the impression that salaries are going to keep escalating at the pace that we've seen this offseason. That $17 million this offseason for Soriano will mean $20 million per season for Wells and $25 for Andruw Jones. It simply cannot keep escalating at that pace, however, unless MLB is somehow becoming one of the top five enterprises or businesses in America. Sometime in the next few years, the market will correct itself. Yes, salaries will always be 'rising' at the normal rate of how currency 'rises', but they simply cannot going up as rapidly as it has this winter.

Powerplay chances aside, we outplayed that f***ing team tonight. We had lapses where we coughed up the puck, but we had so many more good scoring opportunities tonight. I really shouldn't be terribly pissed off... the Hawks played one of the best teams in the West to one goal, and for the most part, they had their way with the puck all night. But it's f***ing Detroit. I'm so sick of that team having their way with us. BTW -- Havlat wasn't Havlat! tonight. He looked slow. If I were to guess, the injury is still bothering him.