thedoctor

although i don't have much interest in garcia (i think loaiza will be the only semi-washed up pitcher we acquire in 08) i do have a slight concern over danks IP. i've read somewhere (can't recall where and can't find it again) that they'd like to keep him to 160 IP heading into october. but as has been mentioned above, loaiza and/or masset could probably make spot starts if necessary to lighten the workload a bit. i'm not nearly as concerned about floyd, primarily because he's a bigger guy and has thrown a lot of innings in the past.

jordan crawford leaving indiana

QUOTE (Al Lopez's Ghost @ Jun 11, 2008 -> 06:21 PM) Loiaza is a mopup guy, someone to eat innings in blowout wins or losses. That's his role, and it's an important one. It lets you save Dotel, Thornton, Logan, and to a lesser extent, Masset for when you need them most. So don't sweat whether he hits 83 or 86. His pitch speed isn't really important. exactly.

i'd be more worried about our pitchers getting overworked.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Jun 11, 2008 -> 03:29 PM) Exactly right. We would have been out much more and without our quality defensive backup. As long as Uribe remains a defensive backup, he's pretty valuable to this team right now. agree completely. some have allowed their hatred of uribe to cloud their view of his ability. is he a top-level shortstop or second baseman? no. is he one of the dregs of mlb who has no place playing pro ball? no. he does have value, although some will allow their personal bias to cloud that reality.

rosenthal

QUOTE (bkmoney @ Jun 10, 2008 -> 01:26 AM) i want what he is smoking it's the same stuff steve phillips has. must be some potent east coast ganj.

i dislike uribe as much as the next guy but i don't think you do anything with him until two things happen. one, i want to see alexei keep this up over a more extended period of time, particularly once he starts seeing teams for the second time and they have a better scouting report on him. second, i want to see richar perform well in his rehab and earn a spot on the major league roster. once those happen, i'll be comfortable trading uribe, dfa'ing him, or sending him on a slow boat to china. whatever. but, at this point he does still have some value to the organization so there's no reason to do anything hasty.

just speculating here, but maybe del negro gave paxson the best of both worlds. he knows he has a group on his hands that could excel in an up-tempo system. at the same time, he has his own strong belief in the importance of defense. with d'antoni, he had perhaps the perfect offensive coach for his group, but a guy who had already chafed under a gm who insisted on him getting defensive help. and d'antoni had the leverage of the knicks job, so he didn't have to play ball the way paxson wanted. with del negro, you get a guy who is obviously very familiar with an up-tempo system, but he also has a defensive background and no leverage to say no to what paxson wants.

tribune story

QUOTE (ptatc @ Jun 9, 2008 -> 04:21 PM) It seems the major criticism about KW is the farm system. The farm system only exists to make the major league club better. Whether that's by calling up players or trading them to acquire talent. We have young players for the near future at most positions with Swisher, Fields, Ramierez, Richar Quentin and the picthers. What do we need a stocked farm system for if we have young MLB talent. Players will sit in the minors. They are there for trade bait. As long as the MLB club has the talent the minors becomes an after thought. This comes from someone who watches the prospects as much as the MLB team. although i agree with the overall gist of this, i don't see a scenario where you shouldn't or couldn't have both. the sox pay a lot of money to a lot of people who have the specific job of scouting and acquiring young talent. failing in that regard should not be acceptable any more than you'd accept failure in other areas. plus, even though we seem set at some positions you never know how things pan out with injuries, players not meeting expectations, etc. having a stocked minor-league system gives you the resources you need to either add a talented young player to the big club roster, or it gives you the firepower you need to acquire established players from other teams.

QUOTE (29andPoplar @ Jun 9, 2008 -> 03:25 PM) Interesting thread. I don't think it's time for I-told-you-so's nor crow eating at this point. Here is my view though ... This site has huge mood swings. A few losses and it's "this guy is done" and "trade this guy for anything you can get, just dump his conract". People seem to forget it's a long season and further, sometimes a team's makeup has to be viewed from an even longer lens, like 2 or even 3 years. No one wants to hear that in today's "I want it now" society but it's very true. Williams gets credit for having patience and faith in his players. Many on this site wanted Crede traded this spring for a B prospect from San Francisco because they were so sure our 3B prospect would be better. Contreras? He should have been given away or dumped according to many here. There are a few more examples but the point has been made. This guy Williams wants to win, he is the anti Ron Schueler who horded prospects that never panned out. He's always looking to add to the team and to make it better. He is far from perfect, says some dumb things from time to time and comes across the wrong way to some. I for one will take him as GM of my team. This team will go through a slump this year and guess what, people will panic again and want guys dumped for nothing again. Whether this team makes the playoffs or not, it's far too soon to tell but the front office deserves credit for building a team that's in decent position as we sit here on June 9th. very true. i actually really liked the moves kenny made this offseason, but more for the future than this year. at the end of last year we looked like an old and slow team that had no good prospects on the way and could be set up for a long rebuilding period. but the moves that we made got us younger (we are still slow) and did set us up better for the next few seasons. projecting forward, you can see a scenario where next year's team is really young and mostly locked up for a few years in terms of contract situations, particularly if thome's option is not picked up. losing either thome or paulie gives the roster an extra bit of flexibility we currently lack. i came into this year thinking that next year would be a year we could bounce back into playoff contention. i figured we'd lose cabrera, thome, and crede in the offseason but gain some financial flexibility that would allow us to fill what i thought would be a hole or two in the rotation. of course what changed is that floyd, danks, and contreras have way outperformed my expectations and the expectations of most. i'll be curious to see how kw handles things going forward.

QUOTE (TCQ @ Jun 9, 2008 -> 01:35 AM) Yes he has done some great things, but that aggressiveness has also ended up with the sox having todd ritchie, david wells (when he didnt care), dangelo jiminez and billy koch. i wouldn't characterize the acquisition of wells, jiminez, or koch as aggressive deals. they didn't work out, but it wasn't like we overpaid or did something ridiculous to get those guys. they were like many free-agent signings that don't work out. there was no long-term price to pay. ritchie was an aggressive deal that didn't work out well. at the same time, the most significant player we ended up giving up in that deal was josh fogg, who has been at best a third or fourth starter in an offensively poor league.

QUOTE (BearSox @ Jun 9, 2008 -> 01:32 AM) Never been a fan of Kenny. I almost came around after 05, but didn't. However, for as many bad moves as he's made, he's made plenty of good moves. which is pretty much what you can say about the great majority of gms, outside of the train wrecks (see: phillips, steve).

i think kenny elicits strong reactions from people because he's brash and some people aren't down with that. as far as gm's go i don't think he's the best or the worst. i think he's been pretty good at keeping the big club healthy and productive, but his work with our prospects and minor league system has been poor. is that all his fault? no. but he's the gm so he's accountable for that. all-in-all, i'm fine with him being our guy. although he and ozzie say some dumb stuff some times, they have made the white sox a story both locally and nationally, which isn't something you could say for many years. previous to the kw/ozzie era, the sox were a pretty nondescript ballclub since the veeck days. some nice seasons for sure, but nothing a casual fan would really hang their hat on.

news doesn't look good for indians' westbrook; miller done for the year

QUOTE (Kalapse @ Jun 4, 2008 -> 09:00 PM) As fans what fish should we be frying exactly? What resources are we wasting on supporting Quentin's All-Star bid that we could be allocating eleewhere? it would mean less posts about uribe sucking, walker firing, crede trading, cooper fixing, etc. our resource allocation is thin, man. what do you expect from us?

QUOTE (whitesoxbrian @ Jun 4, 2008 -> 08:25 PM) What you just said, it gives me hope that it actually happened. Just like you, I can't even believe it sometimes. It seems like it was just yesterday. It's weird, the other night I watched game 3 and AJ's hit off Oswalt by the hill in Houston, even that gave me goosebumps. The PK homer never gets old, either... i used to have farmer's call of that on my ipod. never failed to get a big smile out of me. "light it up!"

QUOTE (watchtower41 @ Jun 4, 2008 -> 04:36 PM) meh...this organization and fanbase cares way too much about "writing-in" players for the all-star ballot, going back to Vote Podesednik and Punch A.J. yeah. showing support for players on your favorite team is pretty stupid. what the hell were we thinking.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jun 4, 2008 -> 09:56 AM) Which is fine by this guy, so long as the least suckiest team is from Chicago. word.

jake westbrook back to the dl

i mix it up a lot. some days i grind the beans, others i don't. i've always liked starbucks, particularly their stronger blends. although really you can't go wrong with the house blend. if it's a typical week and i'm a bit low on ends, i'll probably go with eight o'clock bean colombian roast beans.

the indians finished may batting .218 for the month. that's the lowest in baseball since 2003 and the lowest month for the indians since 1968.

QUOTE (jackie hayes @ May 29, 2008 -> 04:30 PM) I did not see that coming. So the plan is for Rose to become a star in 2 or 3 years, and fire Collins then? i do wonder if in talking to collins they discussed a "succession" plan of some sort. from reading a few stories, collins was one of the first people that paxson contacted, but he wasn't interested at the time. supposedly them getting the top pick piqued his interest, so here we are. if collins was wavering, maybe he isn't in it for the long haul, so to speak. i can definitely see one of the assistant's paxson interviewed for the head coaching job coming on staff with the idea that he'd take over in a few years. either way, i am happy they are not going with an unproven coach. i'm not sure they could do that considering how the team reacted to an unproven coach last year.

sun-times