Wedge

Help us Magglio Ordonez... you're our only hope...

IIRC, it was Valentine unassisted in 2000 against the Tigers.

I think that's a pretty good trade right there.

I don't like Lee batting 3rd. Never seems to do the job well when he's there...

Burke at DH? Maybe Thomas is just getting a day or two off... he's struggled lately.

He's like Cougar from Top Gun, he's lost the edge...

I was at the game last night... I love that song, especially when it's used the way it is at Comiskullar. na na na na na na THUNDER!

Brando, this is from the Peter Gammons column this week: He ain't going anywhere. Drop it. By the way, I hope they get Eddy. We'd have a tremendous bullpen. I think Eddy, Marte, and Shingo could close any game for us. Having a 6 inning game is huge.

I gotta agree. Keith was great, but it seemed like whenever the Sox REALLY needed a win, he'd blow the save. I remember in 2001 he blew a huge game against Seattle that would have put us over 500. That one was a huge heartbreaker IIRC. That said, I'd rather have him that Cotts/Valdez/Koch/whatever we got out of it.

I'm just going to keep beating my "Diaz makes Loaiza expendable" drum. DUM DUM DA-DUM DUM Plus, maybe Wright will come back.

Since you've obviously got a crystal ball, maybe Kenny could call you for some advice? When you judge a trade, you have to look at it in two steps: Step 1: How does the trade look on paper? Is what you received equal to or greater than what you got back? You might also need add a correction factor in here for need. If you've got 3 catchers that can be All-Stars, but you need a CF, maybe giving up 1 All-Star catcher for a solid CF is fair. You also need to do some amount of reasonable projection: where does this guy fit in On paper, the David Wells trade was a very good one. We got an All-Star caliber pitcher who could be an ace. We desperately needed one, especially considering how terrible our staff looked healthwise at that point. Had it worked out (part of Step 2), I think we would have at least gone to the ALCS. Thumbs up to Kenny for that trade On paper, the Ritchie trade just sucks. We gave up 3 strong prospects (especially when you consider that Kip Wells performed comparably to him). On paper, the Colon trade was awesome. We got another All-Star ace. We gave up nothing. On paper, the Garcia trade is a push. We got an all-Star ace type pitcher that will be around for 3 years. We gave up a promising catcher who may or may not become an all-star and two pretty good prospects. When you consider our need was for another starter, I think this trade looks favorable. On paper, Uribe for Miles was a "who cares" sort of trade. It looked like we picked up a good defensive infielder and gave up a decent hitting prospect. However, our infield seemed set at the time, with a promising young 3B in Crede, Valentine, Konerko, and Willie Harris figuring to get much time. It looked like Uribe would be a suitable replacement for Graffanino and may have provided better defense. I'll just consider those few trades for the moment and we'll move onto Step 2: How do the players in question perform? This is the tough part, since GMs tend to get graded more on this than making good trades on paper. This is more of the intuition part of the job. In retrospect, I'd still say the Wells trade was a push. He didn't perform well on the field, but he had a huge impact on some of our young pitchers and helped Buehrle step it up. In retrospect, Ritchie was a horrible trade, but there was some talk that Schueler played a role in it. In retrospect, Colon was a pretty good trade. We got what we wanted out of him and the guys we gave up didn't really amount to much of anything. To early to say anything about Garcia. In retrospect, the Uribe trade looks brilliant. We got more than a defensive replacement/utilityman: we got an everyday player who can really drive the team around him.

He was also a brilliant defensive coordinator. He knows the game, but I think he's just proof that you have to understand leadership to be a successful head coach at a big time school. I do enjoy his commentary, despite being an ND fan (no hard feelings). When he did the Pittsburgh game last year, he had a lot of very nice things to say about all the players and was good at being impartial. Krush, Willingham isn't Davie, which is all he needed to be successful his first year. I just saw him get totally outclassed on the field so much last season. Back to back 30+ point HOME losses just doesn't happen at ND. That didn't even happen to Davie... For God's sake, are we Rutgers? When they hired the guy, I didn't think they upgraded at the coaching position. I hope time proves me wrong. I hope last year was just a tough year with a lot of bad attitudes and poor leadership from the senior class. I want Willingham to succeed at ND because I think a successful ND tends to make College Football more interesting. It's just that seeing everything: lack of in game adjustments, seemingly poor recruiting, etc make me very pessimistic about him working out at ND in the long run. As an ND guy, I do hope he proves me wrong.

Borchard's got to be better than this guy, right?

I'm not panicking. I'm not happy, either, but I'm not panicking.

Maybe they'll take Ben Davis for Kendall?

I think they just want Schoe to come in and do what he does so he can't complain any more about if he's a starter or not. Just a hunch.

Garcia has been a Halo killer his whole life... 10-2, 2.89 ERA...

I'd prefer Pavano since that would fill out our starting staff nicely. Also, I'd hope he'd come a bit cheaper than Magg's $15M/year, maybe in the $7-9M/year range?

Anybody know capacity at the Cell?

Thanks for the report!

Yeah, if we can get another young, good starter around these parts, then this team will have a great rotation for a few years. Maybe Garland or Diaz can complete our own "Big 3"

I would hope most ballplayers work-out in the offseason :-p

Yeah, you can include the Sox in that list

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Boo-ya!