Balta1701

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 29, 2014 -> 10:10 AM) IMO, hitting on a solid first round pick doesn't mean a guy still isn't an overdraft. If he was the only one and was still a hit we wouldn't have a problem, but particularly with first rounders, drafting guys he likes that he could potentially have moved down and gotten is definitely a pattern with Emery.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Dec 29, 2014 -> 10:10 AM) f***. There goes a potential Cutler replacement. That also opens up a potential Cutler landing spot.

QUOTE (SoxAce @ Dec 29, 2014 -> 10:05 AM) Hard to question Kyle Long being an overdraft though in hindsight. He had some hits with him, Jeffrey and probably Fuller to name a couple but when he missed on some guys or decisions, he really missed. IMO, hitting on a solid first round pick doesn't mean a guy still isn't an overdraft. If he was the only one and was still a hit we wouldn't have a problem, but particularly with first rounders, drafting guys he likes that he could potentially have moved down and gotten is definitely a pattern with Emery.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Dec 29, 2014 -> 10:00 AM) I just remember last year after one of his press conferences, and having read an article in regards to how much he embraced analytics and data, thinking, wow, we've got a few very smart GMs in charge of my favorite teams finally. Boy did things go to s*** for him quickly. I liked his procedures in general, questioned some of them (the overdrafts of SMC and Kyle Long, for example), but as someone else said, whatever metric drove him to give Cutler that much money on a multi year deal sealed his fate.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Dec 29, 2014 -> 09:55 AM) I'll admit, there is a part of me that would have preferred to keep Emery. Bah, not after this debacle season.

QUOTE (SoxAce @ Dec 29, 2014 -> 09:32 AM) @AdamSchefter: Bears have fired HC Phil Emery. Huh?

QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Dec 28, 2014 -> 08:09 PM) I missed it, what happened? Slowly moved backwards after being pushed off a block, wound up standing on top of Rodgers's leg, moved off, moved back on again, Rodgers angrily pushed him off. It wasn't a violent move, Suh wasn't moving quickly, but some of the "Standing on Rodgers" could well have been deliberate, he wasn't exactly moving quickly to get off.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 28, 2014 -> 05:58 PM) Thanks for that. I couldn't find anything on the Sox page. IIRC they may have done an early-sale for people on their mailing list or with appropriate login codes on the days before that.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 28, 2014 -> 04:53 PM) Feb 28, 2015 is a Saturday. A search for Chicago White Sox on Ticketmaster shows the onsale for all games as Wednesday, Feb. 25, 10:00 am CST.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 28, 2014 -> 04:05 PM) Has a date been set for when single game tickets go on sale yet? Is this 2014 updated?

QUOTE (dasox24 @ Dec 28, 2014 -> 03:28 PM) They really need to make this happen. If Trestman can salvage anything positive from his tenure, I'd at least like to say he helped Forte break the record. Forte has it.

So basically no one wants the 6th seed in the AFC.

QUOTE (LDF @ Dec 28, 2014 -> 02:51 PM) in spite of all that bull crap, we won a world series the first in in how many wonderful yrs. the yrs that has a little of history in itself. dang it hard to be a loyal sox fan, sometimes. psst, the next will be sooner that that. The remarkable thing about that is...you can say in no small part that the White Sox won that world series thanks to the system that Kenny Williams helped build in the last years of the 90s when he was head of minor league development. Guys including Buehrle, Garland, Crede, Konerko were part of that system and other pieces (Carlos Lee) from it were used as trades to fill in other holes. They would not have had the ammo to build that team had they not relied on a strong minor league organization.

Forte needs 1 catch to tie the single season receptions record by a running back.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Dec 28, 2014 -> 02:45 PM) The only thing coming from the Castro camp is "blackmail and extortion". I don't doubt that baseball players in Central/SOuth American have major issues with that when they suddenly become multi-millionaires. But when these instances keep happening to the same player again and again, more than anyone else, it's time to question what the truth really is. At the very least...Castro needs to start going to different clubs.

QUOTE (ZoomSlowik @ Dec 28, 2014 -> 02:36 PM) I really don't think the one-and-done rule is that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. The rule really only affects a dozen or so guys every year. IMO, it's the middle ground for each side. The NBA definitely suffers with high school guys (only 4 guys were "ready" by my definition: Lebron, KG, Amare and Dwight. Perhaps Durant, Oden and/or Davis would have been), and it's not remotely fair to force someone like Jahlil Okafor to stay another year so he can dominate overmatched college bigs. You included Davis on that list, take a look at his rookie year. He was a decent player but he was no star. Look instead at how he's grown since then, I think you can even make a case that Davis having to stay in college for 2 years wouldn't have robbed the league of anything all that important. It was clear he could turn into a great player that year, but he also wasn't there at the time. I think that makes an important point about how big the physical difference is between these college sophomores and seniors when they're in the league.

QUOTE (LDF @ Dec 28, 2014 -> 11:42 AM) btw whose fault was it for the abysmal state of the farm??? Kenny Williams. some blame can go to people beneath him failing at their jobs but he's the guy at the top. He was the one who made poor draft choices based on a philosophy of finding guys who would be tradeable like Broadway and McCullough, he was the guy who made the decisions to trade away the guys we did produce like Gio, he's the guy who chose to spend money on the big league roster while limiting spending on the draft, he's the guy who was willing to give up draft picks to sign Adam Dunn and Scott Linebrink, he's the guy who employed Dave Wilder who screwed over this frachise for several years by fraudulently promoting international prospects and falsifying their ages. They spent more than half a decade with an official policy of neglecting the farm system in favor of the big league team. In the meantime they happened to ignore the fact that they were being defrauded. The end result is exactly what you'd expect.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Dec 27, 2014 -> 10:41 PM) I haven't followed Ferguson in weeks. Are the protests over? Back to normal completely? Just a day or two ago someone drove over the "memorials" in the street where he was killed and a police officer interviewed by the post scoffed at it as a bunch of trash.

QUOTE (Tex @ Dec 27, 2014 -> 12:16 PM) Or the truly right vote isn't the popular vote. Why piss off your readers to do the right thing? Secret ballots are how we decide most elections. I would rather they vote and not be able to use it as a marketing piece for their careers. Give me an example. If you think tetrahydrogestrinone belongs in the hall of fame, or you think Greg Maddux does not belong there, tell me why.

QUOTE (Jake @ Dec 26, 2014 -> 10:30 PM) They should be able to keep their ballots private if they want to. You're supposed to make the right vote, not the popular one. If backlash will have a chilling effect, then you can't make them public. If you're not willing to stand behind your vote then I don't believe you think it's the "right" one.

QUOTE (Jerksticks @ Dec 26, 2014 -> 06:44 PM) Too bad we're so weak in guards. I was trying to make that joke but then Comcast did one of its 3-4x a day random pauses.

QUOTE (shipps @ Dec 26, 2014 -> 06:06 PM) Did Emery make this move? If he is on the way out he wouldn't have been allowed to sign a player to an extension would he? Does this indicate he is safe? Not sure exactly but usually when we see an extension or two late in the season it's an effort to put a part of the extension on the current season's salary cap and to use up the remaining cap space that teams leave open to use when injuries happen.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Dec 26, 2014 -> 11:20 AM) I don't think trying to pinpoint whether people are trolls or not is really necessary. Douglas's point of view is one that is not unique among Sox fans (which isn't a bad thing!) as it seems quite a few of them really do dislike Robin as manager. I know we've had the discussion before but it's a slow point in the year and it's not a bad thing to discuss the merits of his management style. I personally don't feel he's worthy of being replaced but this is a big year. If the team comes out flat or they lose a lot of games, it's worth considering the idea of replacing him. I think the AL is a lot tougher than it's been in previous years and there isn't one team that I can pinpoint as being really bad anymore (though ultimately I think the Astros and Twins will end up fairly bad but not terrible, and I am not sleeping on either). Still, I think the team is going to play really well this year and will be in contention much of the year. I'm one of the ones who's been complaining about Robin for about 2 years. I continue to give him enormous credit for how well the 2012 team performed - came out focused and disciplined in a way I haven't seen from any White Sox team this century. I thought his rookie year earned him a major contract extension. Then we saw the 2013 season that was the exact opposite. In 2012 even people who weren't good on defense were at least crisp, they might not have run down the ball every time but they still hit the cutoff man. In 2013 I'm not sure the team hit a cutoff man the whole year. The number of throws on an average rundown went from 1 in 2012 to something like 7 in 2013. The same players seemingly forgot how to do basic things and that was a huge part of why that team was so terrible. Robin deserved an extension after 2012 and deserved fired after 2013. He got an extension after 2013 instead. 2014 to me didn't seem that much better. We at least saw some growth from a couple guys - Abreu during the year, Gillaspie, Flowers, but a lot of the slop was still there. But there was still a major excuse for him - they didn't spend money. There was no trading away of players for guys on a short term contract, there was no big spending in the FA market. For 2014 I wasn't going to blame him for losing games from a bad bullpen or weak roster because his job in 2014 was to develop people. Now we've spent the money, we've filled most of the holes, and we traded away depth for a guy who is on a 1 year deal. It doesn't matter how good the rest of the division is, we traded for a guy who's likely to walk for a 9 figure deal after next season and signed 3 other guys to >$10 million a year, multi year deals. That's a major bet on this season. The manager should be evaluated with that in mind. This team picked up 4 different "$10 million a year" guys and gave up 2 draft picks and 4 players from AA and above to do it. If we suffer a rash of injuries to guys with no major injury history, then at some point we have to ask why that's happening. If we're still that sloppy and uncaring on defense, or our big money offense/big money pitching staff disappoint, then someone needs to answer why.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Dec 26, 2014 -> 11:26 AM) It is going to cost Tim Anderson (plus some) to get Zobrist and he's going to be 34 years old. Acquiring Zobrist would be an incredibly short-sighted move that really doesn't mesh well with what the Sox have been doing this offseason. I'd put the odds of the Sox acquiring Zobrist lower than the Sox acquiring Longoria, and the Rays aren't going to trade Longoria. The Sox probably have the talent necessary to acquire Zobrist, but it would destroy the top end talent in the minor league system, leave the Sox minor league system exactly where they were 2 years ago when Hahn took over, and the Sox still wouldn't be the favorites in the division, nevermind conceding all hope of re-signing Samardzija. It's just not a move that makes sense and I doubt the Sox have done anything other than a possible email or text. I gotta at least partially disagree with that given that they already traded for one guy who is a free agent at the end of this year. That makes it make a fair amount more sense to me. The difference isn't that the move is short-sighted, it's that the Sox have been trying to sacrifice their depth in trades rather than their couple top guys.

Until next year.