Kalapse

Not so fast. It turns out that he didn't fail a test in 2001 after all. It was a typo.

Richar: .783 OPS Owens: .652 OPS, has the fewest XBH of any AL OF with >300 ABs, plays WAY too much because of his 1.) hustle 2.) speed 3.) bad jumps combined with excellent closing speed lead to more than a few unnecessary diving catches which tricks people into thinking his defense in center is better than it actually is (reality: average at best) + his puss arm upsets many Dotel: 161 ERA+ 70+ IP Pierzynski: Defense becomes a serious liability Konerko: Hits his first triple since the 2000 season Dony Lucy: Impresses at the catcher position during a Toby Hall DL stint Jenks: Spends some time on the DL Havy Vazquez: Jas jimself an All Star caliber first jalf Fields: Breaks the single season strikeout record (199 by Ryan Howard) Ozzie: Spends 4 games in the press box Thome, Dye, Konerko and one of Fields/Swisher: Hit 35+ HR each Buehrle: K's 150+

Aside from the Mets the Cubs have as good a chance at winning the world series as any team in the NL IMO.

1.) Thome 2.) Dye 3.) Boone I'm sure Swisher will find a place in my heart during Spring Training.

QUOTE(South Side Fireworks Man @ Feb 8, 2008 -> 05:02 PM) Uribe is better than Lugo, Jacoby Ellsbury is better than Crisp. The Sox (ours) shouldn't give away more for Crisp than Uribe or maybe MacDougal staright up. If Boston doesn't want to do it, that's fine. If they do, it's a fair deal and improves both teams. No it doesn't and I already stated why. Trading Crisp for Uribe makes them immediately worse personnel wise since they're trading a decent player for a sack of s*** and on top of that it hurts them financially since they'd be forced to pay Julio Lugo $9M next year to ride the bench, pay a bad baseball player in Uribe $4.5M to start at short, probably release Alex Cora since there's no need for him with Lugo on the bench (eat another $2M), then they need to pay for a new 4th OF (right now Jacoby is the starting CF/leadoff hitter and Crisp is the 4th OF, pretty damn good situation IMO.) I really don't know why the Red Sox would be looking to dump Crisp anyway they're in a pretty good situation with him coming off the bench and Manny/Jacoby/JD starting in the OF. If I'm Epstein I'm only dealing Crisp if the trade makes my major league squad better, I doubt paying Covelli $4.75M to act as the 4th OF is going to cripple the team financially so there's no real good reason to trade him.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Feb 8, 2008 -> 02:59 PM) Are you sure about Lee being the first to homer in his first ML at bat? I seem to rememeber a catcher named Bob Christian or something that did it before Carlos. Well Bob Christian was a 1B/OF who debuted with the Tigers in 1968, he was 0-1 in his first game. After getting only 3 ABs for the Tigers in '68 he was sold to the Sox and did homer in his first AB in a Sox uni.

House! Now! Go! Do it!

I'm down of course. I finished in 2nd place in both Soxtalk League #1 and #4 last season. I really only like head to head, roto tends to piss me off. I'm also willing to fill in spots in multiple leagues again this year, I have no problem staying active with 2 or 3 teams at once.

QUOTE(2nd_city_saint787 @ Feb 7, 2008 -> 11:44 PM) ugh whyd it do that.... http://sports.yahoo.com/fantasy its the link that says 25 who will come of age, its right under the pic of the tampa guy Alright well that makes a lot more sense. It's just some Fantasy Baseball writer projecting his own random stats for 26-27 year old "breakout" fantasy players.

Well, since your link is broken I'll just comment on what you posted. The first thing that comes to mind: Owens and Swisher will both be 27 years old by the time Pitchers, Catchers and Quentin report next Saturday so the premise of your imaginary article confuses me.

QUOTE(South Side Fireworks Man @ Feb 7, 2008 -> 10:45 PM) Let him laugh. If he wants to pay Crisp $5M to sit on the bench when he could be paying Uribe $4.5 to start at SS over Lugo, so be it. The White Sox don't really need Crisp anyway. Pay Crisp $4.75M to act as a very good 4th OF + Pay Lugo $9M to start at SS + Pay Alex Cora $2M to act as the backup MI or Pay Uribe $4.5M to start at SS + Pay Lugo $9M to act as the backup MI + Eat Cora's $2M contract in order to make him go away + Find a new 4th OF Fairly easy decision in my mind.

More . . . UNUSED:

Here's a couple I still have saved:

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Feb 7, 2008 -> 04:34 PM) Does anyone have a record of the Raines one I had, with the rocks? I cant find that thing anywhere. Same goes for my infamous "Flamethrower Freddy" sig. I no longer have the original psd file nor a png. If anyone saved that thing please please post it here.

QUOTE(witesoxfan @ Feb 7, 2008 -> 03:38 PM) don't forget to mention the silver slugger That's right, he was also the best offensive 3B in the American League for the 2006 seaso. Plus he's a 3 time All-Star ('98,'00,'02). AND he won the Most Valuable player award in 1998 and 2000!

QUOTE(witesoxfan @ Feb 7, 2008 -> 03:32 PM) I'd really like to see the logic behind this statement. Best defensive 3B in baseball + .300 AVG + 25 HR + 100 RBI = Joe Crede = Best in baseball

Kielty signed a minor league non-guaranteed deal. The only reason they brought him back is because he absolutely rakes against lefties. Unless Brian Anderson is a proven major league veteran with excellent splits against south paws and won't have to take up a spot on the 40 man then there's absolutely no correlation between the two. Take a look at Pawtucket's (Boston's AAA team) roster, they already have a couple Anderson's, they don't need anymore. Acquiring Anderson, Haeger and Sisco/Masset would only force Boston to waste 3 spots on their 40 man roster on crap, it wouldn't make their team any better.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Feb 5, 2008 -> 12:01 PM) In a terrible year where we were playing a lot of rookies and guys like Andy Gonzalez with no business being in the major leagues, the White Sox were #8 in MLB in strikeouts last year. Teams 7, 6, and 5? Colorado, Cleveland, and Philadelphia. The best 6-7 teams in the league at strikeouts? Minnesota, Seattle, the Dodgers, the Angels, The Giants, the Cardinals, and The Orioles. Only 1 playoff team in the top 8. I find it very difficult to argue either way that making contact and avoiding strikeouts is a key trait of winning teams when there seems to be little correlation between strikeouts and wins or offensive effectiveness, etc. 4 of the top 5 teams in OPS last season made the playoffs. 6 of the top 7 teams in OBP last season made the playoffs.

QUOTE(shipps @ Feb 5, 2008 -> 11:48 AM) If Nick hits over .265 and 22 hrs I would be shocked.I like his personality and everything that goes with the way he plays the game but I just dont think he is a good fit for our club.If SO and the inability to make contact and be crafty with the bat was our weakness in the past how is it good to add to that weakness? Because it's your opinion that the team's main weakness was craftiness and contact hitting, I don't see either to be a problem and besides the Sox replaced their least crafty/worst contact hitter with an incredibly crafty/very good contact hitter in Cabrera. The problem with the Sox's offense last season IMO was Andy Gonzalez, Darin Erstad, Scott Podsednik, Joe Crede and a brutal half season from Jermaine Dye (tough to have a productive offense with players like that hitting at the top). Replacing Erstad and Podsenik (2 god awful baseball players) with 2 high OBP hitters in Swisher and Quentin should help this team immensely. Strikeouts don't scare me all that much when that player is hitting 25+ homeruns to go along with a high OBP. Swisher is actually a perfect fit for this team, his power hitting is going to be a real asset at the cell and he's going to GET ON BASE (more players on base = more runs) in front of the big boppers in the lineup something this team has had trouble doing for the past few years. It seems the only group of fans who are annoyed with the Twins' slap hitting piranha approach to offense are Twins fans.

RISP w/ 2 OUT: .237/.381/.460/.841 CLOSE & LATE: .269/.395/.466/.861

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Feb 4, 2008 -> 08:38 PM) Some talk in the ether about a possible Arrested Development movie. If the strike ever ends. The fact that they had to cut the third season almost in half still pisses me off. A show as good as AD deserves a proper send off, (after say the 12th season or so) hopefully they can get this thing into production and end the story on their terms.

QUOTE(iamshack @ Feb 4, 2008 -> 08:27 PM) Of what can be quantified statistically. Well obviously there are no absolutes in a debate such as this.

I actually remember that piece about Henderson's base stealing, it was written by James Click. The entire point of the article was to evaluate what impact Ricky Henderson's base stealing had on the 1982 A's offensive production because even though he stole 130 bases that year his success rate was only 75%. The conclusion was that Ricky's 130 stolen bases only had a positive impact of a little over 1 run that season because he was also caught stealing 42 times. I think that might be where the 75% rule came from (or just an example of how the rule holds true), if a base runner steals bases at a 75% success rate he's actually right around the break even point value wise.