jackie hayes

I like Perez, but he's not going to come cheap. No guarantee he'll be affordable.

Yup -- any rumors about what happens to him? You'd think they'd want to trade him now, rather than risk an injury. But they could always hold onto him for another year, it didn't sound like he was ML ready.

I don't trust these "oh, you have no idea how bad this guy's attitude was" articles. They just scream "justification!" When you trade Milton Bradley for attitude problems, you understand, the guy's a powder keg. Carlos may have cared about the numbers -- everyone does, it's just a question of how much -- but he never made problems or demands. If Carlos was this big a problem, it sure is strange that they resigned him just a year ago to this 3-year deal. And that they didn't trade him in one of the previous offsesaons. Cowley said this has been a problem since 2002, after all. Btw, those clutch stats are bs. Bases-loaded? Carlos had 13 abs with the bases jammed. That's just sad, Cowley.

From http://www.brewerfan.net/ViewPlayerProfile.do?playerId=375: they have a breakdown of how he did at each level of the minor leagues. Actually not bad in A, but... Plain bad in AA. All in all, okay in AAA. His AAA stats look eerily similar to his ML avg. We'll see. But a .330 obp for a leadoff hitter isn't good enough.

And that is 1 year out of 9. Actually, check that, that is no year out of 9. Those stats are phony, or at least not Podsednik's. He was in AAA that year. The real stats. Where'd you dig this up? Basically I'm echoing the point qwerty's been making -- all these okay years in the minors, never looked like a great player. Gets to the ML and has a monster year. What could possibly look more fluky? It's not that he was in the minors too long (bothers me a bit, but I do want to see Gload in the lineup, it's not that big a deal). It's that he never showed that level of talent before. Or after, so far. Who knows -- his numbers in AAA were pretty good. Maybe he just got bored in A and AA. But I'm sceptical.

Cheap... We all remember 2003, how can you forget that performance? But do you trust 1 ML campaign or 9 seasons in the minors more? Eh, what's done is done, I'm still hoping he reproduces that season. Just don't have much confidence in that.

Lol, that seems ingrained. I figure there's gotta be something in the CBA about the Sox and new pitchers.

That's just not good logic. You can't just subtract 2 runs from all the highest scoring games and add a run to each of these. Offenses don't work that way. Sometimes you erupt, and you can't save those runs for tomorrow. Sometimes you run into a buzzsaw like Santana or Schilling and you get shut out. Shutting down the variation doesn't happen. Obviously if we could redistribute our runs ex post we could probably go 155-7.

Congrats on 1,000 posts! I only wish you could have been right for your 1,000th one... Why do I keep hearing about power? Carlos had power, but I never thought of him as a "slugger". He's a very good hitter, about to enter what's for many players their best years. .350-.380 obp, .500-.530 slg, these are realistic numbers for him. He wasn't slow (unlike PK), and he's learned how to field. And we had him signed for 2 years at about $8 mil per, which is reasonable. His k and bb numbers were better than most Sox hitters' (except Frank, of course). Finally, we could have afforded to lose PK to free agency in the off-season. Now.... Pods won't be at 2b to get knocked in unless he gets on base first. If he doesn't get on base better than .340 (taking that from someone else, thought it was a good minimum for a leadoff hitter), this trade is a big failure despite the salary room.

Anyone who tried to go all smallball today, to do away w/ all their power hitters and field slap hitters 1-9, would justifiably be put in an asylum. What the Sox did, though, is trade away an all-around hitter (good obp, low k, good power, not fast but not slow) for a guy who's only definite asset is speed. That's a smallballsy move.

Jenkins and Counsell had .330 obp (roughly), so they were better at avoiding outs than Pods. Overbay had a .385 obp and .478 slg. It's not all ba. They didn't make outs and 2 out of the 3 hit the ball pretty hard. It's just not a fair comparison to say the Brewers scored fewer runs overall, and not consider how many chances Pods had (pa) and who was responsible for knocking him in.

Well, last season he had batting behind him Craig Counsell (not ideal but had a good year), Geoff Jenkins (same old same old, got on base some, with good power), and Lyle Overbay (huge year). Those are damn good hitters, and he only scored 85 times. Sure, the Brewers didn't score as many runs and didn't have great hitters up and down. But it's not like he was relying on Chad Moeller and Ben Sheets to drive him in. He just didn't get on-base often enough.

I still think Cheat has a point. Even though the Brewers had a worse team, the sb didn't help him very much. This guy played a LOT, and he was the leadoff hitter. 85 runs isn't that impressive. And I haven't seen any stats to back up the supposed benefits. But we can still have fun w/ numbers!

Over and over, people have shown that's just not true. I started a thread on this during the season, and one of the first entries in Jason's blog analyzed this. The White Sox did not have more low-scoring games than other teams, period. Just b/c KW says it's true doesn't make it true.

I think that's a good objection to this sort of thing. Anyway, if you really want to 'adjust' slugging percentage, though, you can only add those times he got on base on a base hit. Which will make a difference (not sure how big) -- he got 41 bb and 81 singles w/ none on, and 56 of his sb came with only himself on, on 1b. So I'd guess 15-25 of those sb shouldn't be added. And probably a few from the other 14. Then if you wanted to look at an 'adjusted' obp, you'd have to take off the cs, etc. Time to remind myself I don't believe in this stuff anyway... Sorry, just bored.

He's 34, and he's been as injury-riddled as they come. Only twice has he sniffed 200 innings. I don't think he should get that much, but then, I've said that about most every starter signed this offseason. None of this bodes well for the Sox getting Clement or Perez.

You wouldn't need to take cs out of his slg -- a single + thrown out at second is still a single, so it counts as 1 tb, not 1 tb-1 tb=0 tb, and that's kind of the analogue here. But any sb taken after a walk or hbp or error or fc shouldn't be added, and for that you'd have to go back to individual game records, I believe. Personally, I don't think this would be informative since we have each stat separately and know what they mean, but JMO.

Heck, we don't even need the player. We'd trade Williams for rights to that name.

Glad someone else reacted that way.... (Btw, I'm a Byrd fan, but that's a lotta money.)

Exactly what I was thinking, this sounds like total bs. He could do better for Hudson alone (arbitration-eligible Garland doesn't give you that much salary relief, nor many years), and I can't believe teams would avoid Kotsay for his $7 mil (?) salary. He had a monster year last season.

C'mon, you joking? That is a HUGE overstatement The Twins lineup last year had Cuddyer, Ford, Mourneau, Koskie, Jones, and Stewart, all of whom are very good players. Torii Hunter is usually good, not great, and last year he was solid. They had one horrible hitter (Blanco), one bad hitter (Rivas), and a borderline bad one (Guzman). But looking at that as a whole, we can't even say they had a "horrible" lineup. And then we get to their real strength, pitching, with Santana, and Radke having a career year, and Nathan automatic. Those are good players, not some aura of teamliness pulling them through. The next time I see a good team without good players will be the first.

I'll never understand this logic, 'We haven't won with Carlos so how great can he be.' So if a team doesn't win more than 1 division title in 5 years, we should completely turn over the roster?

I agree with everything you've said. One thing, though -- Hairston made about a million and a half last season, and Julio's up for arbitration, so he'll be making much more than his salary last season (which is the only reason for the O's to trade him). You wouldn't get as much salary relief here. BUT -- I still think you don't dump Carlos for salary space, and that this deal was lopsided. If the Sox wanted to dump salary, my guess is that there's some Konerko-Orioles match that would have been better. I'm not so sure this is a salary dump in KW's mind. Perhaps he thinks speed is this important.

I agree. But I think for a leadoff hitter, you shouldn't adjust his slg pct for sb, you just shouldn't be as concerned about slg pct, period. It's just not as important of a stat (and obp is probably much more important for most players, anyway).

Anyone else suspect that Vizcaino is another indication that the Sox don't trust Shingo as a closer? Just speculating. They really seem to be loading up on these rh 'closer-type' guys.