R.J.

Baaaaaaaaaaad. Bad, overpaid pitchers who have no chance of success in the AL have NEGATIVE value. (Noah Lowry, Jason Marquis, Kyle Lohse)

Correia and Velez are both baaaaaaaaaad.

Alex Gonzalez hurts his knee... Uribe would make a decent replacement if he's going to miss significant time. (they're probably better off with Keppinger but don't tell them that) The Giants 3B situation is absolutely brutal. I hope they're dumb enough to try and compete for something this year so we can take... I don't know... someone with upside. And they don't have a lot of that outside of Villalona (not trading) and the guys they took in 2007 (not tradeable).

If you're talking about who would I rather take a chance on to help the MLB team, there's no debate. Even a hurt Colon can get some outs. Ohka was awful in AAA all year in 2007. He's a non-entity. Colon is at least a gamble.

At least now we have an excuse to use that "gong" sound effect again.

As long as we don't guarantee him a ton of money or a second year, I love this move. It can't hurt. Colon has never had great off-speed stuff, so if his fastball isn't there, he's going to struggle. He's a reclamation project. He needs to be given time to heal, rehabilitate, and get some velocity back. If that doesn't happen, then at least we didn't risk much. It's riskier to sit down and believe that you'll get 90 decent starts from the three-headed Floydankontreras monster.

I don't see anything wrong with waiting to trade Crede before the deadline. If Fields is a beast in Spring, then you probably just get what you can (2 single-A relief prospects!?!?!) for Crede. No contending teams are really in the position of needing a third baseman, so it won't be much. Buf in the situation you presented... If the Giants are offering us basically nothing (Noah Lowry) right now because Crede hasn't proven anything, then maybe you give him a couple of months time to play and hope he develops value. I understand Fields is ready, but I don't think anything he does will make this team more than a third place finisher.

QUOTE(Reddy @ Feb 15, 2008 -> 05:55 PM) i thought we were looking for wild predictions Oh sorry... Joe Crede ($5.1M), Juan Uribe($4.5M), and MikeMacDougal (2y/$4.6M) will be traded for Matt Cain.

Both Joe Crede, Juan Uribe, and one of Floyd/MacDougal/Masset are traded, yielding a total of zero prospects who would be listed in a top 250 list.

The White Sox will have more than 10 pitchers start a game this season.

QUOTE(GreatScott82 @ Feb 12, 2008 -> 03:37 AM) I think he's capable of a .270 batting average with 50 SBs if givin the playing time for an entire season. He is. He's also capable of a .320 OBP and absolutely no power. If you're jonesing for a .640 OPS then Jerry Owens is your boy. Jerry Owens is an excellent 5th outfielder and a decent 4th outfielder. There's nothing wrong in that.

I think the Red Sox would be more willing to give up Crisp than most people believe. Crisp was acquired after a career year, and because he was just 25 there was good reason to believe that he had a lot of promising things in his future. Since then he has settled in to a fairly underwhelming career and can only be reasonably counted on to hit .265 with below average power. He's a very useful player with his speed and (pretty good) defense, but certainly not a lead-off hitter and probably not an impact player. He's clearly a 4th outfielder in Boston and while he's a nice player to have off the bench, it'd be much more valuable to them to get a 2nd tier prospect for him, save a few pennies, and move on. But he's no fit for the White Sox. Not if you're a believer in Carlos Quentin. Dye and Swisher will have 2 of the outfield spots and the third will be comprised of some combination of Owens and Quentin. Crisp would be an interesting experiment for a team that has room for him and not much to lose, if you buy into the possibility that maybe playing in Boston had some negative effect on him (ask Edgar Renteria, Eric Gagne, Julio Lugo, and other anecdotal examples) and that his growth as a player was stunted - not stopped. Plus, we don't have anything that would improve the Red Sox or a prospect that would fit. The best I could figure is if they see something in MacDougal or another one of our "pitchers" who "throw hard" and have "command issues." Uribe, my friends, is worthless in a swap. He's being paid too much money and offers nothing offensively. He'll be traded this year, but probably mid-season to a team that thinks they can compete but have a gap at short via injury/need a good defensive utility player. You don't get much of a return for that. Crisp however seems more likely to be dealt during spring training rather than before. He'll go to a team who currently thinks they have it all figured out, but whoops, either they're counting on a young player who just isn't ready for this level*, or they signed a free agent who doesn't have anything anymore**, or one of their veterans goes and tears up his legs***. Crisp is a fine backup plan for that situation. * Owens, Quentin ** ERSTAD '06 NEVER FORGET *** Dye

Guys... We can be 100% certain that Matt Cain will not be on the White Sox in 2008. If people are speculating for fun, then that's fine. Let's not seriously sit here and talk about how many of our third-rate player we'd have to stack up to get a pitcher like Cain. Joe Crede does not have a lot of trade value. You're looking at one decent prospect or two mediocre prospects at the very most in a deal.

San Francisco isn't going to compete this year. Why would they give up a building block with obscene talent for an injury riddled third baseman making 5 times as much money who is entering his walk year? People who are expecting a top tier talent like Lincecum and Cain are either grossly unaware of their values or biased towards Crede for his role on the 2005 team. Noah Lowry is a likely return because he's, well, not very good and about to become expensive. Jonathan Sanchez for Crede would be a great trade for us at this point. Three words: relief pitching prospect.

1. Erik Bedard is worth so much more than Bobby Jenks, price tag included. 2. If put on the market tomorrow, Bobby Jenks would be the third best closer available (Joe Nathan, Huston Street). This move is to get a quality set-up man to take the ball from our quality middle reliever (Linebrink) and give it to our quality closer. If you think that's worth more than $5 million, then Dotel is a fine bet. It's a lot of money to spend on a relief pitcher but jesus, if Brett Tomko is worth $3 million then Dotel is certainly worth 5.

To answer your question, the moves you listed would not likely change this teams likelihood of winning the division, which is currently significantly behind the chances of the Tigers and Indians.

I can't believe this guy is going to get paid that much to be as bad as he has always been.

Here's why this trade makes little sense... If they acquired Konerko, which would be a very valuable pickup for their lineup, they'd then probably have to move Kotchman, who wouldn't have any place to play. If they give up Kendrick, they'd need a replacement there. I think if we can really package Konerko and Crede the Angels would give us a very nice return, but the ones that are being rumored aren't quite there yet. If we can get a collection of guys from the group of Kendrick, Kotchman, Figgins, Santana, or Adenhart (still a top 100 prospect but one whose stock has taken a serious hit) then it's a deal we should embrace.

Could be Bobby Wilson, a C on their 40 man roster. A pretty run-of-the-mill catching prospect, so he'd instantly enter our top 5.

I would bet that the same prospects used to acquire Swisher or some fraction of them would have been used to get Crisp. But I wouldn't rule out bringing in another outfielder who could either play a bona fide center field or serve as insurance in case Quentin isn't ready. Someone cheap.

Nick Swisher will either be a big OPS and power guy for us for the next 4 years, or he'll be an inexpensive piece of trade bait in a couple of years when we have to rebuild. This is the opposite direction I would have gone in - we need more guys like Gio and De Los Santos and less like Jermaine Dye - but I like the move in that it gives us a pretty good outfielder who still has potential and is very affordable. As it has been pointed out - this is about it for our farm system. We're down to about 3 good prospects and might only have 1 in the top 100. If this works out for us, that would be great, but I can't start getting too excited about this organization until we have a couple of building blocks for the future. We need a solid starting pitcher now. That should be our goal. Also, Brian Roberts would fit on this team perfectly if we had anyone who might interest Baltimore in a trade (except Fields and Danks).

QUOTE(heirdog @ Dec 23, 2007 -> 05:12 AM) If our team salary is $105 million with him and $100.1 million without him, does it really matter? That's my only point. I think we need to put it in perspective. If using his money would have helped us land a bigger player, then yes, by all means he is not worth having "on the books" but if it means that we have no one instead, then I'd rather have Uribe and his $4.5 million "on the books." This does make a lot of sense. I would just hope that if we're able to "save" money in any way that it is somehow re-invested in the team in the future. Doesn't even have to be this year, but if we somewhere down the line have an extra $4 million to use on prospects or upping an offer to a free agent, then it's worth it. I'm sure that sounds very naiive.

QUOTE(GreenSox @ Dec 21, 2007 -> 11:04 PM) Williams shouldn't have given him $4.5 million... Enough said. It was a horrible decision. There would have been no negative consequences to taking some time to figure out what we really wanted to do at shortstop before we signed him. If we really were prepared to give Uribe this money, there would have been no problems with waiting a couple weeks, at which point we wouldn't have needed him anymore. And to the qualm about people "acting like it's their money"... Well, money is money. If the $4.5 million that is going into Uribe's buffet budget could have been spent on, oh, I don't know, MAYBE A HIGH UPSIDE PROSPECT IN THE DRAFT, then yes, it sure does make a difference. It's not my money, but it is my team. If two years down the line you can't get yourself a free agent you need or you can't afford a prospect because you have to pay a broken down Torri Hunter or Alfonso Soriano $18 million, then that affects the team. There isn't any immediate reward for White Sox fans when we don't spend money, but trust me, it's better to be smart with your cash. So all that aside, if Jay Payton were a free agent and we signed him to a 1 year, $5 million contract, that would be a bad, bad signing.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Dec 22, 2007 -> 02:14 AM) For an order of magnitude fewer dollars than what the Cubs gave to Fukudome (and for a younger guy at that), it's a reasonable risk. What would you rather have for $4.5 million, one year of Juan Uribe, 4 years of Alexei Ramirez, 2 months of Fukudome, or 1.5 months of Torii Hunter? Haha, I like this. As far as this signing goes: Can't hurt, might help. Let's hope the guy can adjust to major league pitching.

I'm afraid that this move should not be treated as a major one. Ramirez could prove to be an effective player, but he's probably not an impact bat, even if he is major league ready and - no, no he is not. This is still a good move. It gives us a 26(ish) year old player with a lot of upside and a lot of versatility. I just worry about fans who will see this like we're signing a sure thing. This is a step forward, but not one that is likely to change the likelihood of where we finish in the AL central next year.