Princess Dye

It's almost impossible to post here and not read about this prospect and all others about 30 times a day

Bard may not be outstanding, but lets not overvalue Alexei either. Generic shortstop defensively. He gives you a very nice amount of offense for the position, but it's not at the level of special. Also since when does Alexei have an attitude? Do people here know him personally? If we're trying to do something silly like interpret his facial expressions ...that's highly contingent on the culture yr from.

I would not at all be surprised if they get their extra dough by losing Jenks' salary. Then they can fill their offensive needs with one real solid piece and one decent guy. Meanwhile the pen is hurt, but most pens go into the year needing a few shocking performances to make their team a contender. You'd have Hudson and a full year of Peña in the mix too.

Nick Johnson wont be cheap. Obviously an upgrade over Cust, but what we're talking about here is two open positions and minimal dollars to spend (from what we're hearing from the Sox) Now if they cut ties with Jenks things could be interesting....but we'll see. Also if we depend on Flowers in any large way, we are risking a Brian Anderson type situation, where you want to contend immediately but in so doing give away tons of atbats to a young guy getting acclimated. I dont see any way he can break camp here, since AJ's presence will keep Tyler's greatest value...still....in trade value. In the minors he stays a mysterious hitting catcher with patience at the plate. Granted this can only be the last year or half year where that stays the case.

Crede trying to do what Pods did last year...hmm... If it came down to accepting a minor league deal, I wonder if his top two choices would be here and his hometown Royals.

is flowers Mike Napoli?

If you're low on money, then we have the exact holes you would want to have... DH and LF. There are so many sluggers out there that may have worn out their welcome or need a change of scenery. I can understand why this would be seen as simplistic, but my goal is playoffs...and hopefully our staff is going to be good enough to support a slightly above average offense...and take it to and through the playoffs. To get to 'slightly above avg' offense, we need some respectable OBP hitters in LF/DH. There are bigger challenges out there to have. You can call leadoff a missing spot, but looking leaguewide, you could answer that with Beckham and be a lot better off than other teams. My concern is that defense is still a hole, but there's no question it has improved since the beginning of last year.

Assuming the price is right, I dont see how a Sox fan could be against adding him. The pen looked good last year #s wise....but you have to factor in the loss of Dotel and the year-in-year-out second half struggles of Linebrink. Things would be pretty bare for a playoff run.

i wonder at what point the non-AdrianGonzalez content of this thread becomes the majority of it

it's slow here---- any thoughts on acquiring him? Would come cheap for the amount of production he'd give, and you can hide what (if i remember correctly) is an emabarassingly bad glove

http://www.athleticsnation.com/2009/11/29/...n-blueprint-2-0 This was linked on soxmachine....an Oakland blogger who seems to have done some research and turned up Brent Morel as someone who'll have trade value But also while we're at it..........the blogger mentions Jack Cust...what are your thoughts on him EDIT: on second thought, started my own Cust thread. Which seems to be semi-thriving...

Why do people have a higher tolerance for PED use in the other sports? Likely because the individual records were not considered sacred in those sports. Thus, in our eyes ,Shawn Merriman can do whatever he wants and it doesnt affect our enjoyment of the game. I personally have always felt the team achievements should take (far and away) precedence over individual records, so the steroid use doesnt bother me to the level it does others. Many baseball records' legitimacy were affected by things such as changes to the length of season, pro-hitter mound/ball changes..... and yet they persevered. This may be too much to survive though. Perhaps, like in the NBA with the all-time leading scorer, it will soon be the case where no one cares much about the HR king title. PED use obviously does unfairly hurt the team that's not using in the context of a single game..... so in that sense i WOULD have a huge problem with it...........But as far as throwing blame.....you just still dont know exactly where to throw it, so it's kind of tough to get in a huff about. There are unknown things pitchers are doing to cheat, including drug use themselves..... so it's hard to rule in a definitive way on that. What I'd hate to see happen in the long run: Bonds is saddled with tons more blame than is coming the way of Pettitte, Ortiz, Manny, Clemens, A-Rod......simply because he was at the forefront of it earlier. After all, Bonds won no rings, which should be what matters

We'd all agree Linebrink is not great. But managers never do a nonstop shuffling of the deck chairs in their pen. That's something the fans always want but never gets put into practice. More often than not they just ride it out with the losers theyre stuck with.

QUOTE (Tex @ Nov 25, 2009 -> 08:56 PM) no pity party, just underwhelmed. I know who they were, and even this is an upgrade. I am hoping that we're not going to hear blah blah economics, blah blah, we're excited, opening day LFer, blah blah blah The poverty the Sox are claiming actually makes me think you WILL see exactly what you want to happen a big move...which unfortunately will cost us the top guys in the farm system. But all signs point to it .....the staff is win-now...the positions to be filled are often ones at a surplus..... and also factor in how Hudson/Flowers are right now at peak value.

A theme of these recent posts has been how we're headed for a deep lineup with no one bat that is scary. Look at what we had '06: Absolutely scare-your-soul hitting from three guys. But we were as bad as our weakest links, of which there were several. Now in '05.......it was actually AJ's worst hitting year for us. Dye had power but underwhelming OBP. Really eight of our offensive positions had lower than .352 OBP. However.... almost all the hitters were at least decent. So in short I think I'm going against some of the other things I've said in this thread. Lets get back to being deep and see where it takes us. Sure we all want a big signing, but in a sense we had our expenditures with Peavy and Rios........and now it's time to fill two positions where there are a bevy of options out there (so let them all bid against each other).........and fortifying the bench is a great thing to do while we're waiting.

QUOTE (nitetrain8601 @ Nov 25, 2009 -> 06:39 PM) Leads off once a game. If Crisp was a stud or at least could sustain a high OBP and high average, then I would have a slight hesitation. leads off once a game -- always has to be followed with "at a time when building a lead greatly increases your % chance of winning the game overall"

If all our scrap heap guys ( the recent signings, kotsay, rios and whatever future DH-man included) simultaneously turn the clock back some 5 years we'd be the Yankees In all seriousness though-- would help out greatly if just one of these guys had a nice bounceback year

Using 2mil on the bench might mean no more expenditures for backup catcher. Flowers is in?

It comes down to this concern versus the concern of whether or not Flowers/Hudson are each at the last possible point of being a high-end mysterious entity. Flowers will be 24 this coming season.

For those worried about Jones' motivation, it should be a good sign that he signed right away (for cheap) with the team that had the most playing time to offer (at least as we stand) We're not going to be able to call him AJ for short.

Lillibridge might make the team somehow to backup CF

Jayson Nix type bat in the outfield?

My mom will be thrilled we've acquired a player she knows of

Extremely cheap zero risk. Can platoon somehow with Kotsay. It looks like a scrap heap offseason unless we can swing a trade. I apparently got online right at the..right time Bernstein says "White Sox are saying it's for outfield depth"

B&B confirms. aieee