BrandoFan

Once again....which insider-scout will be first to satisfy my inquiry?

First of all, why should the Yankees have a crack at Randy Johnson ahead of the White Sox? We have more to offer in prospects, and I thought Colangelo hated Steinbrenner...... Counsell? He makes 3.1 Mill to Robbie's 900 K. Millwakee won't pay a dime while Arizona might pick it up if you throw them a mid-level prospect. With Robbie, there is a possibility that he has a "Robbie" season left in him, while with Counsell 700 OPS is an accomplishment at this point. Robbie is a great bunter, Counsell is average. Defensively and baserunning wise, they're a wash. Robbie is also a bigger name, so if he succeeds, there will be more buzz around your team, the "great comeback" story in the playoffs, etc. Counsell is a nobody. Neither will play much against LHP because Crede, Rowand and Uribe will take 3B, CF and 2B against southpaws.

Robbie is cheap, and depth and experience are very important on a team that is basically staking its playoff future (unless you think Sox are gonna go after Vidro and his 9 Mill a year) on Rowand, Uribe, Crede and Harris, 2 of whom cannot hit RHP -- you know, your Pedros, Shillings, Browns, Gordons, Foulkes, Williamsons, Riveras, Mussinas, Contrerases, Lowes and Vasquezes, those RHP.

I don't think it will be as a back up per se. It goes without saying he sits against LHP (starters), but he starts against RHP with Uribe moving to 3B. Rowand and Harris compete for CF position. If Joe Crede has a problem with that, maybe not swinging from his heels and actually coming through in the clutch will help him reclaim his job. All you ask of Robbie is a .370+ OBP (775+ OPS) against RHP along with good defense, instinctive base-running and great bunts. Anything above that would be a bonus. He is cheap, and depth and experience are very important on a team that is basically staking its playoff future (unless you think Sox are gonna go after Vidro and his 9 Mill a year) on Rowand, Uribe, Crede and Harris, 2 of whom cannot hit RHP -- you know, your Pedros, Shillings, Browns, Gordons, Foulkes, Williamsons, Riveras, Mussinas, Contrerases, Lowes and Vasquezes, those RHP.

Sox have a better chance to make playoffs than Angels do - Oakland and Boston will be hard to top once Chavez, Nomar and Nixon are fully back, and the respective GM's make the deadline move(s). Also, dude....Getting a World Series trophey to Chicago would make him a legend around these parts, a giant muskateer version of Ditka .......while in Anaheim they already won it in 2002, and the state of California also basked in Oakland, SanFran and Dodger glory in the past. Come on, you big baby, don't exercise the damn clause....

This name has been bandied about for quite some time, but what about Mike Spidale? Wouldn't be something if this nobody went on to have a better ML career than the JoBo?

Yawn. Speaking of which.... Don't look now, but Cubs came within a fluke Diaz outing (last week against Zambrano) from taking 5 out of 6 from the Sox just as my "stupid" prediction stated. Next time you'll know better than to call me out, eh?

Calling the above "retarded logic" would be an insult to retards.

Good because Abreu has been one of my favorites since the time immemorial (read: 1999). Does this mean Cub fans are voting for Matsui?

But wait, the comparisons don't stop there. Leifer, too, was a 1st round draft pick.......A late bloomer is what people said when he was stuck in AAA. And when Leifer was Borchard's age (26), he actually had an OPS of 833 in the bigs while with the Sox. JoeBo can't even say that. Btw.....you nor other irrational Joe backers have asnwered or refuted the following

Now that is more in tune with reality. Average arm, average range in CF but with good instincts and hustle - that's Jeremy Reed. Mark Kotsay is an excellent defensive CF. Reed has a weaker arm, but there is nothing stopping him from continuing to improve on his reads and routes and eventually becoming an above-average fielder.

Exactly. Jeff Leifer put up better "power" numbers than Borchard did in AAA. I guess Sox should have kept his great "superstar" talent. Left-handed power, yo.

Left-handed power? I guess we should have never let Jeff Leifer go, then. Joe could be a late bloomer like Podsednik (bad example - Melvyn Mora was more of a sensational turn-around imo)? Great. I didn't know that initially busting out was a "tool".

Wait a minute....You were telling everyone just last week that Reed has "no arm". Now it's average. I guess better late than never. Zero power? He had a higher slugging % in the spacious AA park last year at 22 than Borchard did in a AAA bandbox at 25. Gap power invariably translates better to the ML level than the light-tower one does - if you're tardy on a ML heater and out in front of a ML breaking ball, your "power" is irrelevant. Average speed? He is twice the runner Joe Borchard is.

Great to see my question remain unanswered. For all the talking up of Borchard and his "tools", nobody can build a case worth damn on why he will be anything CLOSE to a superstar OF'er in the majors.

Woody Allen =

Why is it unbelivable? The 3 teams that beat Pedro at his 1999 best were Florida, Tampa Bay and White Sox - their combined payroll was less than that of the Red Sox.

First Shingo and then Gagne.....Whoa!

Who said Borchard has a super-star talent? -His batspeed and hand-eye coordination are nothing special. -Neither his pitch recognition, nor his SZ management are of "superstar" quality. -He lacks nerves of steel of Olerud, Edgar, Boggs, etc. -He has above average straight-line speed, but is only an average base-runner. -His range is nothing special and his arm is good but overrated. -At just 25yo, already can't play a week without a nagging injury paying him a visit. Yes, he is very strong. But so are a lot of people working in any given construction site. Joe should seriously start putting it ALL together RIGHT NOW - physically AND mentally. Otherwise....what's the EDGE, what's that SOMETHING that will allow him to succeed where 90+ % of ML'ers fail and become that star everyone wants him to be? Tell me.

It comes with the understaning that Robbie is gonna have to outplay either Harris Uribe or Crede in order to play even against RHP. Depth is something Sox could use - look at how the "unnessesary" signing of Todd Walker has paid in spades for the Cubs. And, again, there is always a chance Robbie could revitalize himself ala Kenny Lofton in the second half of 2003 and become a pitcher's nightmare in the pennant race and in the playoffs - an admittedly slim chance but you never know when it comes to HOF talents. As far as Ortiz and Unit.....don't even mention them in the same sentence. Ortiz won't be an improvement over Loaiza as a #3 the way he's pitched lately....while Unit and his sick Road ERA would be our ace-savior.

Here's to the Oracle of North Dakota

First of, real quick....Have you ever tried ignoring my posts? Works for many people, you should give it a shot. Secondly....Nobody is blaming Paulie or Lee. They were the two players who had a decent game. But Paulie's 2-0 swing on a fastball against Hawkins wasn't very smart or pretty - then again, if Paulie's swings were consistently "smart", he'd be a perennial All-Star if not a HOF'er. Thirdly.....You must not have been watching Sox in 2002-2003. And "analyzing" (to me it's just remembering what I saw and giving my opinion, this is a message board, not a scout symposium) individual atbats can often reveal trends and stuff. But who cares about that, right? Rusch was his mediocre self. He OWNED the outer half of the plate because Sox players could never drive the ball middle-away on any sort of consistent basis -- even Maggs who used to excel at it in years past now loves nothing more than to turn-n-burn. Big Frank's and Crede's atbats in particular were pitiful. Instead of lining a weak outside fastball to RF/RCF like Kong did in the 7th, Sox hitters were fouling it off and Rusch had them at 0-2, 1-2 a lot. Quit making excuses for Sox hitters hitting like their selfish loser counterparts from 2001-2003 did. Good ol' choking in front of the national audience is what it was. Hell, Greg Maddux couldn't understand why they didn't hit him hard in the Saturday game - by his own admission, he made more mistakes than he did a week ago at USCF. Tell you what, Sox hitters come into a playoff game against Mulder/Hudson/Brown/Vasquez/Pedro/Shilling with that type of approach/mindset and they are f***ED.

Yeah, but with the way Jose was turning DP's on Friday (Dusty Baker said what he and Uribe did was as good a twin killing under pressure as he's seen in the league), you had to take that chance. It's not as if you had weak-armed David Eckstein or Craig Counsell there. And last time I checked, Joe Crede and Harris are pretty good at turning DP as well. Cubs had a GAME WINNING run at 2B. A DP or a force play HAD to be set up. I mean, unless you had Sean Casey on deck after Martinez....... Who knew Shingo would be scared to death of Ramon Martinez's bat? Or that Damasso couldn't throw an 0-2 breaking ball to a left-handed hitter to save his life. As soon as Shingo fell behind 2-0 and Alou hit that single, I had a bad feeling about the inning - witnessing 8 innings of corpseball prior to that point didn't help either.

Well, as long as you've weighted all the options and considerations.....

Actually, I wouldn't mind having Robbie back. I figured that with his lithe build, track-athlete background, awesome bat control, hand-eye coordination, sound swing mechanics and ever-cool nerves, he would actually age SLOWER than his peers because, unlike, say, Soriano or Patterson, Robbie never relied on pure batspeed/quickness -- which is always the first to go. What happened to him between his great 2001 season and very mediocre 2002 is a total mystery, that's for sure. You never know with these HOF'ers - they might give you an Indian summer of a season - and Robbie is much younger than Barry Larkin or Rickey Henderson (as a Met in 1999), Ripken in his final year or even Biggio this year. I'd love for him to have an unexpected awesome 2nd half for us and then retire. Uribe is just not a 2-hole hitter, unfortunately. For 450 K (which is what is left on Robbie's contract), I wouldn't mind getting him from the D-Backs. He could still get on base versus RHP, can still run a little bit, field a little bit, is a great bunter. An experienced and inexpensive insurence if anything else. Sullivan and Evrettt can kiss my ass, on the other hand.