Kalapse

Cheap option: Justin Upton. Infinitely talented, 22 years old, dirt cheap in 2010 (~$500K), under team control for 4 more years and coming off an outstanding season. He takes over in right, Rios in CF and Quentin and Pierre rotate between LF and DH. More expensive option: Hanley Ramirez. I'd take Utley but he'll make more than twice as much as Hanley in 2010 ($7M compared to $15M) and I don't think the Sox can afford that. Probably the second most talented player in the game behind Pujols, incredible production, under team control for 5 more seasons, would allow for good flexibility and solve the DH disaster. Teahen, Beckham and the Ramirez's can fill the 3B/2B/SS/DH spots in whatever configuration grabs Guillen on a game to game basis. If you have to eat the contract of the play you dump then I'd of course drop Lillibridge. If the contract is somehow terminated and I don't have to pay it then I'd drop Konerko's $12M deal, move Beckham back to 3B, sign a 1B/DH on the cheap probably someone like Branyan who's getting no attention in free agency and will end up making very little in 2010. Teahen's added to the DH clusterf*** I suppose as well as a decent option off the bench.

QUOTE (Felix @ Jan 16, 2010 -> 07:54 PM) I know, but I can dream, can't I? He did work with Fox after they screwed him with Firefly to make Dollhouse. Never say never! All the main players are kinda busy right now succeeding at their own things. Nate Fillion has 'Castle', Adam Baldwin has 'Chuck', Morena Baccarin is the face of 'V' and Alan Tudyk made that DirecTV with Dule Hill (if they were to revisit a Firefly tv show it'd have to take place between the end of season 1 and Serenity, the current ages of the actors would make it odd (River) but Firefly without Wash would be disappointing as hell.)

QUOTE (gatnom @ Jan 16, 2010 -> 11:14 PM) Aren't Danks and Pena arb eligible? Yep. Not quite out of the woods just yet. I imagine Pena being pretty painless but Danks could get a lucrative multi-year deal that takes a few more days/weeks to complete.

QUOTE (Kalapse @ Oct 7, 2009 -> 11:52 AM) Jenks and Danks are fairly easy. Jenks will get around $7.5M and Danks I'd say about $3.2M. Quentin's tough, probably the same as Danks, maybe a bit less. So somewhere between $15 and $16M total for Jenks, Danks, Quentin, Carrasco and Pena. Spot on so far. And just because the Sox and Quentin agreed to a 1 year deal today doesn't mean they couldn't tear it up tomorrow and come to terms on a long term contract, not that I think that's a likely scenario.

QUOTE (Real @ Jan 16, 2010 -> 12:23 PM) Sounds to me that a lot of people here don't even have "high" expectations for this team, just "reasonable expectations" I don't see how anyone who pays attention to what other teams in this division are doing, can say we aren't the favorite as of right now to win this division Minnesota has Mauer, Morneau and to a lesser extent Kubel coming off a career year, moving outside of the metrodome (this fact seems to slowly become less acknowledged, and it's a huge factor in how their team will perform). They also have a starting rotation full of question marks. Which Nick Blackburn is the real one? Baker and Slowey are huge question marks as well. How will their team defense be affected by playing outdoors, especially in April and May when it's still cold Their bullpen also has question marks, outside of Nathan Detroit is trying to do what Kenny did last year, and that's rebuild on the fly. Dumping CG for cheap talent who may or may not perform well, given a starting position, and losing Rodney for Valverde. Their starting rotation is less questionable than Minnesota's due to having a true ace, and possible legit #2 , but Verlander (RHP) > Porcello (RHP) > ??? (Scherzer) > ??? (Bonine) > ??? (Bonderman) is going to most likely force their offense to score a lot of runs to win games, something we hopefully won't have to do The Sox's bullpen aside from 1 lefty reliever is a giant clusterf***. Konerko is nothing special at 1B and another year older, which Alexei is the real Alexei at the plate? Can he improve on his fielding at SS? Can Mark Teahen hit or field? Because he hasn't done either in 4 years. Can Quentin stay healthy or even come close to the production we saw in '08? Does Alex Rios really give a s*** about baseball? can he crack a .700 OPS in 2010? They're probably looking at a .325-.330 OBP slap hitter at the top with one of the worst arms in the game, that should be a step back from the production of the '09 leadoff man. Right now the Sox have to be slated for some of the worst production out of the DH spot of any team in the AL, that's not good when the rest of your offense is one big question mark. Can Gordon Beckham avoid a sophomore slump? Will AJ's defense become a liability in 2010? He's been toeing the line the past few years and he's now getting into his mid-30's and has logged nearly 9000 innings back there over the past 8 years. Has the team defense been anymore than marginally improved from 2009? It's all about how you look at things.

QUOTE (Real @ Jan 16, 2010 -> 12:09 PM) It's not about predicting the staff would fall apart, and you have to admit.. baseball tends to average things out for guys who aren't perennial studs, like Garland and Contreras (and to an extend sweaty freddy...though freddy was pretty good early on in his career) And yet that '06 team won 90 games, that team was damn good on paper even after factoring in any possible regression to the mean. If I'm predicting the record for the 2010 Sox right now it's somewhere in the mid 80's.

Kind of fitting given the discussion on here of late: http://ps3.ign.com/articles/105/1059102p1.html

QUOTE (joeynach @ Jan 6, 2010 -> 05:33 PM) UPDATE??? I'm a little baseball'd out right now. You'll see an update before February.

QUOTE (striker @ Dec 23, 2009 -> 01:51 PM) So did you just go through the mlb.com transaction and determine days on and off the 25 man roster? Yeah, pretty much.

QUOTE (chisoxfan09 @ Dec 29, 2009 -> 04:57 AM) Kalapse, most excellent work. Just one clarification for me if I could ask. The standard MLB contract (Standard because I see International Free Agents and people like Alexei getting 4 years) is 6 years (3 Pre-Arb/3 Arb)? To rephrase I think this only applies to amateur players who start in MILB or get picked up in the yearly June draft? Then once they play as you say 172 days of service that counts as 1 option gone? See I get the options and the ARB/Pre-Arb mixed up. Thanx for your time. I'm sorry I didn't answer you sooner, I haven't been very active on here over the past few weeks. First a refresher course. All out contractual clauses aside: if a draft pick or international free agent signs say a 4 year contract and accrues 4 years of service time over the duration of that contract he will be arbitration eligible in his 5th and 6th major league season even though the contract expired after 4 years. Alexei Ramirez is a good example of this: he signed a 4 year deal and it appears as though he'll be spending all 4 years in the majors so by the time his deal runs out he'll have accumulated 4 years of service time so the Sox will still hold the rights to Alexei for 2 more seasons when his deal runs out and he'll be arbitration eligible both years. Ok, any player who's either drafted or signed as an undrafted free agent or international free agent is under team control for 6 full major league seasons with only 1 exception: (as of right now only Japanese players have done this if memory serves) some International free agents will have a clause included in their contract that when their deal expires they must be tendered a new contract by a specific offseason date or granted their outright release, negating any years of control a team may have normally held after the duration of the deal. Such a clause would also prohibit a team from receiving any kind of free agent compensation since the team must release the player and is not granted the right to offer arbitration. Tadahito Iguchi had such a clause in his contract, this is why he was traded away for next to nothing at the trade deadline in the final year of his contract, the Sox were out of the race, didn't plan on bringing Iguchi back for the '08 season and wanted to get something-anything in return for him. Now to clear up any confusion you may have with service time and team options: Once a player is placed on the 40 man roster he must either be kept on the active 25 man roster or optioned to the minor leagues. So if you place a prospect on the 40 man roster in order to protect him from the Rule V draft or to be called up to the majors, if you wish to send him to the minors whether it be at the end of spring when you must get your active roster down to 25 men or anytime throughout the season then you must "option" that player to the minor leagues. Each player gets 3 'option years' meaning you can only send him to the minors in 3 separate seasons. 1 option is good for an entire season so if you send a player down in April then call him up in May and send him down again in June you've only used up 1 option despite the fact that you sent him down twice, you can't burn more than 1 option in any given season and there is no limit to the number of times you can send a player down in a given season though a certain amount of time must pass before he can be recalled again (off the top of my head I believe it's 10 days). So an "option" is actually an "option year" and you get 3 of them. Once a player is out of options he'll have to be placed on waivers and go unclaimed by the other 29 teams in order to be sent to the minors. Once a player reaches 5 years of service he can not be sent to the minors without his consent. Service time is unrelated to options. Like you said: once a player reaches 172 days on the active major league roster he's awarded 1 year of service, a player can earn nor more than 1.000 years of service in any given season. Once he reaches 3.000 service years he's eligible for arbitration (some players such as Mark Teahen qualify for arbitration before 3 years through Super 2 eligibility) and at 6.000 he becomes a free agent. So: All seasons started with between 0.000 and 2.171 years of service = pre arbitration, a team can pay the player whatever they see fit as long as it's at or above the major league minimum and jives with pay reduction rules. All seasons started wtih between 3.000 and 5.171 years of service = arbitration eligible. This is of course assuming that the player is not under contract. Someone like Evan Longoria or Ryan Braun won't have to deal with this since they signed long term deals in their pre arbitration seasons that run through their first few free agent eligible seasons. I hope this long, convoluted post cleared up any confusion.

Personally, I wouldn't give up my PS3 for anything simply because of its ability as a media server and hub. I can either stream video and music from my PC to my PS3 or -- and more importantly -- quickly transfer a few seasons of several TV shows and a bunch of movies to an external hard drive then plug that into to the PS3 (any properly formatted external hard drive will do, Sony doesn't care) and instantly be watching media off the 1 TB hard drive or swap out the internal hard drive of the PS3 itself upgrading my memory to 500 gigs of space (without voiding the warranty) and transfer media to PS3's hard drive and watch my TV shows from there. It's just an incredibly powerful and versatile media server. Not to mention the whole outstanding exclusive baseball game thing which is a pretty big deal for me personally.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Dec 29, 2009 -> 04:51 PM) Beckham's mug alone is worth it. I don't have MLB 09, just got the PS3 in September. I'm happily looking forward to the newest version of the best baseball game on the market. Ok, I just assumed you bought the game when you got your PS3.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Dec 29, 2009 -> 02:01 PM) If you look at a lot of the movies that make bank, they dont make a lot of sense. Spiderman 3? Twilight? New Moon? blech Revenge of the Fallen made $402M domestic, which puts it in the top 10 all time. I don't plan on ever seeing it.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Dec 29, 2009 -> 12:19 PM) then MLB 10. From the details Sony has released thus far regarding MLB 10 I'm not seeing a compelling reason to by the game. MLB 09 was groundbreaking, as of now MLB 10 looks like updated rosters, Home Run Derby, new crowd animations and some silly video editor. Nothing to justify dropping $57 to pick it up at launch.

The God of War Collection is a winner. I didn't play the first two games when they were originally released on the PS2 (I have no idea why) so this is a new experience for me and one that I'm thoroughly enjoying. The game looks great in remastered 720p, it almost feels like a PS3 original.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 23, 2009 -> 04:52 PM) Tough = it's against the rules for him to sign with us now. QUOTE (Jenks Heat @ Dec 23, 2009 -> 09:26 PM) I thought they changed that but I could be wrong. They did change the rule. Under the current CBA teams are free to negotiate with their free agents through the entire offseason even if they either did not offer arbitration or offered and had it declined. The Sox could still bring back Dotel, Podsednik or Dye without breaking any rules.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Dec 16, 2009 -> 04:38 PM) I agree with you about the leadoff part, but we definitely could use the team speed. Say we ignored every every statistic other than OBP and simply signed the players with the highest OBP out of the entire player pool. While good in theory, a team of plodders with not many skills other getting on base seems a bit limited to me. Haven't the A's, Blue Jays, Red Sox, etc., tried this for the past 5-6 years, with limited success? Is the correlation between OBP and runs scored that strong that you can completely ignore other skills such as bunting, speed, and contact altogether? Jesus, you read way too much into my posts. I'm just tired of arguing at this point, you've worn me down. Was Juan Pierre the best corner outfielder that Kenny could acquire or was he the best "leadoff hitter" that he could acquire that could also play that position? That's all I'm saying.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 16, 2009 -> 12:59 PM) The other problem with overstating the importance of a leadoff hitter, is that it narrows your field of potential players. I'd rather find the 9 best guys available, and then make the lineup from there, than specifically seek out a leadoff hitter and limit the pool of players I can choose from. Its simple math. The bigger pool of players I have to choose from, to make each position better, the more successful I'd be as a GM. Find the best players within your budgetary and resource constraints, then let your manager make the lineup card. I agree 100% which is why I dislike acquiring a guy like Pierre, he's not all that good at baseball but he's a prototypical "leadoff hitter" so Kenny went out of his way to get him.

QUOTE (Jenks Heat @ Dec 15, 2009 -> 09:13 AM) Halladay is more of an injury risk, not a large one but a risk none the less, but he is a horse. How do you figure? Just based strictly on work load?

QUOTE (iamshack @ Dec 16, 2009 -> 03:58 PM) I don't even remember this Julio Ramirez character...I must have blocked him out of my mind or something... We got him from Florida straight up for Jeff Abbott.

QUOTE (Markbilliards @ Dec 16, 2009 -> 02:30 PM) I refuse to accept that anyone can justify any player other than Andy Gonzalez as the worst Sox player of the decade. Andy Gonzalez: .185/.280/.249/.529, 39 OPS+ Brent Lillibridge: .158/.273/.179/.452, 21 OPS+

Harold Baines Gustavo Molina Julio Ramirez

QUOTE (knightni @ Dec 16, 2009 -> 02:38 PM) The decade starts at 2001 and ends with 2010, btw. Not in baseball.

QUOTE (soxfan3530 @ Dec 16, 2009 -> 11:11 AM) Speaking of that, i know a year or so ago the idea was thrown about that the sox should sign Frank for a game or so and let him retire a White Sox. I think that would be a great gesture for opening day this year. I don't think he wants to push back his hall of fame eligibility another 2 years.

Garrett Jones for MVP?