fathom

I don't mean this in a negative way...but PK is definitely in his contract year stretch drive right now. He has a lot of money on the table with a good finish to his season.

QUOTE(Rowand44 @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 11:22 PM) Smart ball + Long ball. Exactly. It's fine if you play for the long ball....but you're going to need a lot of homers if you can't get anyone on base.

PK is definitely getting locked in. Great start to this game....but lets keep it up!

BTW, did anyone else think Beltre's out in the first inning might have been a blooper off the bat?

Very nice by Pods there. He seems a lot more comfortable stealing 3rd now, than he does 2nd base. Knock him in Rowand!

How's Moyer at holding runners?

Didn't Big Frank own Moyer?

Great to see MB avoid the big inning there. Both of these pitchers are going to have to throw pitches over the plate tonight, as this ump isn't calling anything inside.

Great pitch to get Sexson looking. Already, you can tell umpire has a big zone on the outside, but won't call the inside pitch.

QUOTE(Greg Hibbard @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 11:07 PM) this is going well.... The top 5 in the Mariners lineup is pretty damn good.

MB's just going to start hitting Ichiro on the first pitch, as he might as well not waste pitches against him. I think he's 9 for his last 9 against him.

QUOTE(ScottPodRulez22 @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 11:05 PM) Ichiro is only batting .301 wow he is having a bad year Just asking for the jinx, aren't ya?

QUOTE(gosox41 @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 10:49 PM) Seems to happen a lot over there. On a different note, I am thrilled to death the fans are coming. It's a lot more enjoyable to go to a full ball park then a half empty one. It's good to win back some fans, hopefully it'll continue and the team can draw like they did in the early '90's. Bob Exactly, it's great to see the place packed basically every home night. Not only does it bring a great atmosphere to the park, but it should also help with payroll issues for future seasons. That's one thing none of us can complain about.

I predict we trade for D. Ward next wknd. He's not getting much playing time with the Pirates now. He'd be on par with PK and AJP in terms of speed.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 09:48 PM) Who did the A's and Astros pick up at the deadline to make them hot then? The A's got back B. Crosby from the DL, and have been incredible since that time. As for the Astros, it was just a matter of them getting a healthy Berkman and Pettitte back. I see what you're getting at, and I think I agree. A team doesn't necessarily have to add an ingredient in order to play well. However, I don't feel like we've done enough to make up for the offensive loss that happened when Thomas went out for the year. Everett was a great back-up for Thomas....but we don't have a back-up for Everett AT ALL!

QUOTE(nitetrain8601 @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 09:04 PM) I don't know, my TB friends say that it's BJ that's faster than Gathright. Maybe he's still slower than Justin Upton is. I have no idea. I know one of the Uptons are supposedly faster than Gathright though. Justin is supposed to be the fastest. My brother sees BJ Upton and Gathright play every night, and he definitely feels like Gathright is faster. BJ Upton, on the other hand, is one of the worst defensive players he's ever seen.

QUOTE(nitetrain8601 @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 08:57 PM) Don't forget BJ Upton and Delmon Young. Justin Upton is faster than BJ Upton.

QUOTE(MnSoxFan @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 08:41 PM) Then your brother does NOT know pitching, cause Seddon is the pitcher who shut Charlotte down on Monday, Rex got done earlier this week telling me how much he likes Seddon. Haha! My brother f***ing works for the Durham Bulls, and has seen every home game Seddon has pitched. This superstar Seddon has a 6.10 ERA this season, with a WHIP over 1.67. He K's about 6 guys per 9 innings. My brother said that he's far and away the worst Bulls starter. No offense to Rex, who knows his stuff....but Seddon isn't a good pitcher.

Reyes and Gathright are the two fastest players in baseball, and it's not even close. Other guys who supposedly are incredibly fast are Patterson, Wily Mo Pena, and minor leaguer Esix Snead.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 08:41 PM) Here comes the arguement I was making right before the trade deadline... Yeah, keeping Mark Buehrle, Jon Garland, and maybe Freddie Garcia around for a while will cost a fortune. But this team would be insane to let either of the 1st 2 guys go for the next 5 years or more, even if they cost a ton. That's where young guys come in. If we want to pay Mark the $15 mil or whatever it will take to keep him, we're going to have to save money somewhere. How do we save money? By having guys like BMac filling roles in the lineup...because while guys like him are still arbitration eligible, they cost an order of magnitude less than guys who have gotten close to the free agent market. That's why unless we're the Yankees, we have to make sure we hold onto a few prospects, because if they make the big leagues and are even adequate, they make paying for their position so much cheaper. Look at ARow right now...he's great on defense, he's leading our team in hitting, he'll be hitting .300 in another week or so more than likely, and he'll probably hit 15-20 home runs this year. He is now costing us about $1 mil per year. Why? Because he's not even arbitration elibile yet. You bring up guys like BMac, Brian Anderson, Bobby Jenks, maybe Gio, and so on...and those guys filling positions give you the money to keep the keystone guys you have. If I'm in KW's chair...I sit there and say my #1 goal is not letting MB and JG get away, because keeping those 2 around will give me something to build around as long as they're here. Then I say we need to fill in what we can. If BMac is ready to join the big club next year, then Contreras can be moved at some point (if El Duque stays and is healthy for most of the year). If Gload (or Rogowski) can be an adequate fill in for Konerko and maybe hit close to .300, then he'll be so cheap that his contract will give us freedom to keep the guys we need to keep. That's my version of moneyball. Rowand signed a contract extension, and I'm pretty sure he's making about 3 million a year now. Something that's really helping our team this year is that we really don't have any bad contracts. Guys like Iguchi and AJP are giving a lot of production at their positions for below market value. And as long as Crede and Uribe are on the left side of the infield, we can't have a question mark at 1b like Gload or Rogo. No matter which way you look at it, Gload is not a favorite of the organization. The Sox really should consider trading Sweeney this offseason, as he's another year of no power in the minors before his stock drops even more.

QUOTE(LosMediasBlancas @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 08:36 PM) Nah, even without it, his ERA is lower than Duque and Count's. And he gets to pitch half of his games in a great pitcher's park.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 08:28 PM) I really don't think that going for boppers is the best strategy in that ballpark. Take a look at Cinci, or Colorado. They both have ballparks that balls fly out of, and they've both tried having lineups loaded with boppers (Griffey, Dunn, Pena, etc in Cinci, Walker, Burnitz, Castilla, Helton in Colorado last year). What ends up happening is you end up spending a lot more money paying the salaries of the $9+ million a year guys, and then you end up hitting whatever the cap you've decided is the spending limit for your team. Then, you end up finding whoever else is out there (i.e. Ben Davis, Willie Harris, Scott Schoenewies) to plug the holes remaining in your lineup and your rotation. If on the other hand you go in the direction we have this year...defense, productive outs, hitting, pitching, and balance, you end up eliminating those holes in the lineup by plugging in guys who actually can win games. You have a stronger bench to cover your arse when people get hurt. And you don't have black holes in your rotation that you expect will probably be losses. The real key is that guys like Carlos Lee cost a ton more than guys like AJ or ARow, while ARow and AJ probably have won our team just as many games as Carlos has won for Milwaukee this year. You can win games with defense and timely hitting if you get good guys, and you can afford a lot more good guys than you can great guys. You're right about the price of good hitting, and that it makes good pitching difficult. The Reds would be a playoff team if they had solid pitching. Instead, they get stuck with simply awful starting pitchers. Our starting pitching is going to end up costing a lot in the next few years, but our bullpen should be pretty cheap. I'm all for not resigning PK and trying to trade Contreras....and then adding a major offensive bat or two to the lineup.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 08:18 PM) I love having a ballpark that has the ball carry so well...because when your pitching staff is as good as ours, the opponents have a rough time taking advantage of it, and it should help out our offense. Right now we just need to get into a few people's heads and get them to shorten their swings a bit - stop swinging for the fences and let the ball fly on its own. Other than that, the ballpark is lovely. With having a good pitching staff like what we have, and look to have for a few years, would it be better to have a team with more boppers on it again? This is just for discussion sake, as I'm sure they'll continue to go after smallball type players. However, if we had the pitching we had this year in previous seasons, we would have been having a very successful season this year also.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 08:16 PM) We haven't been manufacturing runs for a few games now. We haven't worked at it at all. This is something Ozzie needs to wake people up on. A team meeting might be useful just to get it in people's heads. When your pitching staff gives up 4 runs or less, you should be able to win ballgames. You make a good point about not manufacturing runs. Something that is very noticeable is that Pods is trying to force the action when he reaches. The other team knows he's going, and he's having a hard time successfully stealing the base. Why not take some of the pressure off, and go for a hit-and-run with Pods in motion? He has enough speed that even if the hitter misses, he could be safe. However, we'd still be able to benefit from Podsednik's speed. This team has a very comfortable division lead......they should be playing loose and having fun on the field. Instead of playing not to lose......they should expect to win every game.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Aug 6, 2005 -> 08:13 PM) Garcia giving up 4 is not a bad outing for him. Garcia giving up 5+ in 6-7 innings is a bad outing. You should be able to win ballgames giving up 4 runs more often than not...otherwise you'll have to get your ERA down below 2 to have a winning record. Garcia, since the ASB, has a 4.89 ERA and a 1.66 WHIP. Before the ASB, his ERA was 3.53 with a great WHIP of 1.18.