YASNY

True, Beltran's stats were close. But Maggs had a BELOW AVERAGE YEAR FOR HIM. Pardon the caps lock.

From a Sun-Times article on performance enhancing drugs in sports:

You have a good point Spiff.

I am generally consevative. Not a staunch conservative, but most of my views lean that way. That being said, the Patriot Act scares the hell out of me. It is getting too easy for the government to know what you think (internet tracking), where you are at any given time (GPS technology), what you buy (credit card records), etc. The information age is setting us up to where we will have nothing about us unknown and the Patriot Act gives the Government (aka Big Brother) the legal means to use the information gathered,against us in court. As for your constitutional rights to fair and speedy trial, all they have to do is say you are a terrorist and that's gone. Dark days are ahead people. I believe it with every ounce of my being.

The franchise will out live Wirtz. Those original 6 franchise should remain in place.

Eastern Conference powerhouses? .... Isn't that a contradiction in terms?

And Everett was clueless in CF.

Hey. I'm a Carlos fan too, but let's be real. I'd take Pujols for Carlos Lee in a heartbeat.

Apparently, he felt that he had to get him off the team. He could not just send him to AAA. He had to trade him or let him walk.

That announcement by Frank was what I had in mind when I was talking about the perception and some of it having merit.

When the season opened last year, I liked Jiminez. he was the only one hitting with any consistency and was the only spark the team had. But his play and the stuff we were hearing about him coming from the clubhouse made me turn on him fast. He just didn't seem to be a good guy to have around the club .... on the field or in the clubhouse.

Based on Everett's past, I'm not sure we could count on Everett to match Everett's hitting production from last year. I will say this much, I'd rather have Aaron Rowand as our regular Cf'er than Carl Everett, taking into consideration all aspects of the game. As CF'ers, Rowand is a better all around player. Now, if LF was available and we had to choose between the two, I'd probably lean toward Everett.

For 6 years, JM managed a corpseball brand of baseball. Maybe Ozzie can, by changing the style of baseball the Sox play, change the outlook of the players.

It was either sign him for $9 million, trade him or risk paying him more after arbitration.

I always loved Artest ... He was intense. Jiminez plays with his head planted firmly up his ass.

You are right Steff. Most folks do only have input on stuff like this from the media. That is part of the reason I value your input here at Soxtalk so much. It was also the reason I had the twist on the Ozzie thing that I did. Maybe, just maybe, Ozzie had a plan in mind, based on his personal knowledge of Frank. I know Frank is basically a nice guy, from what I've heard. But, at times, he sure comes across like he doesn't have the interests of the team ahead of his own interests. Whether that is true, or not, I haven't a clue. But that is the PERCEPTION that is out there, and SOME of it has to be merited.

Jiminez had the baseball instincts of a box of rocks and the clubhouse demeanor of a snake. There are other things that make up a baseball player besides his ability to hit. Good riddance to him.

I have seen some of the posters in here come up with some outrageous trade scenarios. But, guys, if we want to top this Red Sox site for ridiculous garbage, we are going to have to step it up around here!

DJ sucked when he was here. I've already forgotten about him.

I was not saying that Rowand would match Everett head to head, though I think he's capable. I said that the combination of Rowand and Harris could match the combo of Everett and Alomar. When I'm talking "offensively", I'm also talking speed, situational hitting, etc. Not just the raw numbers.

Let's look at who we lost ... and just exactly WHAT we lost. 1. Colon. No brainer, losing Colon hurts. His innings pitched will be hard to account for this year. However, we lost a slightly better than .500 pitcher that COULD pitch great when he wanted to. Otherwise, he was mediocre at best. 2. Gordon. Ok ... Gordon was effective for us. Great. However, Flash Gordon will always be a question mark, heading into a season. Did anyone really expect him to such a good year for us when the season started? Who's to say someone else won't step up and fill Gordon's role, just as he unexpectedly did last year? 3. Graffinino. A utility infielder. Not gonna make a huge difference, unless he forget's that he needs to tag out a runner instead of a force out situation. 4. Alomar. Solidified our infield defense somehwat. Jiminez was already gone, so THAT went a long way toward solidifying that defense too. Offensively, he sucked just as he did with the Mets. 5.Everett. He did reasonably well at the plate and gave us another LH threat. But, the dude did not "fit" with this team. We had to play in CF and he was not, not ever should be, a CF'er. 6. Daubach .... Yawn 7. Sullivan. Didn't really live up to expectations. getting old and my or may not be starting to slide. Did we lose anyone that was lights out awesome for us last year? Not that I can see. Can we replace the production we got from these guys? It shouldn't be all that difficult. Colon was our "20 game wqinner" heading into last season, and we hoped Loaiza would be over .500. Well, Loaiza won 21 and Colon was what we expected Loaiza to be. We're still heading into this season with a pitcher coming of a 20 win year and still have Buehrle and Garland backing him up. Same situation as last year. We have ??? at 4 and 5 starter. Same as last year. Can Harris and Rowand match the production that Everett and Alomar gave us last year? I think it's very likely. Defensively, I call Harris vs. and old Alomar a wash. Harris will make more errors, but has greater range. Rowand vs. Everett, defensively, is no contest. Rowand is MUCH better. Now, the bullpen. Losing Gordon hurt, but if he was still here would we be confident that we'd get the same from him in 2004? Not me. Sullivan didn't do much, so that's no great loss. We've got enough good young pitchers to fill this bullpen up and it be solid. So what improvements can we look for? I, for one, don't expect Konerko to have another poor year. He's been a consistant hitter throughout his career. Just look at the season totals for each year. I think we can expect an average Paul Konerko year. That would be a tremendous improvement. I also expect Crede to keep getting better, and see potential for more production out of him. Magglio had a decent, but un-Magglio like year. If he can step up his production just a notch, that's more offense. I've already addressed Harris and Rowand. Olivo? Who knows. But We don't expect much there. Anything we get from him is a bonus. Defensively, I think we are in pretty good shape. Everyone says Valentin sucks at short. I don't see it. In fact, one major baseball publication... was it Baseball America? ... said he should have one the Gold Glove last season. That may be stretching it, but he has above average range and didn't make all that many errors last year. So, with Olivo, Harris, Valentin and Rowand ... we are fairly strong up the middle, defensively. Crede is solid at 3b. Lee is average in left and Maggs is average in right. Konerko at first doesn't have much range but he is fairly sure handed. So, can the Sox win this division? I don't see any reasons why they can't. Just my opinion and reason's I hold that opinion.

From Ken Rosenthal, this could have an effect on the Sox:

He could have named his site something like Mike Rowe's Oft Viewed WebSite ... It would still sound like Microsoft, but there would be no blatantly obvious attempt to refer to Micosoft.

And people wonder why kids go into high schools and start blowing people away. Here is the reason. It's an exceptionally grotesque example of what goes on, but the jocks and "elite" of any high school regularly degrade and humiliate those that aren't so fortunate. Some of these less fortunate ones, at times, go off and you end up with bleeding teenagers laying in the school hallways.

Whoa! Heavy question, dude.