Balta1701

QUOTE (Soxfest @ Apr 17, 2014 -> 06:31 PM) Overuse hurt Crain's arm and he did not pitch the last 3 months of 2013 not exactly a ringing endorsement for Ventura. Still never really found strong evidence for Overuse in Crain's numbers.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Apr 17, 2014 -> 02:34 PM) How much are picks worth in a trade, money wise? I am just curious, we know the Knicks need picks because they have traded them away like they are worthless Not sure what this means, are you referring to the associated cap hit?

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Apr 17, 2014 -> 01:47 PM) Obama has been the least supportive of Israel of any President in my lifetime yet US Jews gave him 69% of their votes in 2012. I guess now if they want to complain about this they should do their complaining in front of a mirror. What should the U.S. do in reply to this?

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Apr 17, 2014 -> 01:39 PM) The Knicks can offer $40 million more than the Bulls from what I read. I would never blame someone for not taking it, but I'm with you, once the "it's not about the money" stuff starts flying, it seems to end up all about the money. IMO, I think the only way the Bulls sign him is with some sort of sign and trade. I think Pheel would be interested in that. What the Bulls would have to give up, I have zero idea.He has to figure by the time the Knicks are championship quality, Melo is going to be pretty long in the tooth. To be fair though, isn't one of the reasons the Knicks can offer more the fact that they can offer an extra year? That doesn't seem to matter as much to these guys as the yearly. But yea, the Bulls would need to move another $10 million or so. They might be able to do it by moving Gibson - obviously after this year, keeping Noah alongside the guys has become a priority.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Apr 16, 2014 -> 09:52 AM) It's still April, and there's no guarantee that Dunn keeps this up all season, but in the hypothetical scenario where he actually puts up a .240/.420/.500 season, then why would you not take him back on a 1-year/$14M deal? It's hard to get guys his age on 1-year deals because they're generally looking to get 3-4 years to cover their decline. Even so, I don't think if Dunn is hitting .240/.420/.500 in July that he will still be here. He will have very good trade value and despite the nice start, I still think it's unlikely the Sox are in serious contention in July. Too many bullpen issues, and too many hitters (Ramirez, Flowers) that are destined to come back to earth at some point. If Dunn puts up a .920 OPS this year, what would you think he's more likely to do next year, repeat this year's numbers or fall back into the moat of sub .800 OPS's we've seen the last 2 years? Even if you think it's 50/50, that doesn't seem like a very good way to risk $14 million IMO, when the DH slot ought to be fillable for a lot less than that.

QUOTE (The Mighty Mite @ Apr 15, 2014 -> 08:33 PM) I'm a Senior Citizen and paid 1.25 for General Admission seats back in the 50s and 60s. It's hard to believe how much it is now to go to a ball game or any sporting event. I think it's reached a point were people are saying I'm not going to pay this kind of money anymore to go to a ball game. 2012 was a defining year as Sox fans with a team that was in first place 117 days but did not even hit the 2 million plateau. I give Sox management kudos for trying to resolve the issues that have kept people away from the park such as dynamic pricing and crazy parking fees. All that being said it still hurts to see the Sox just about last in attendance, 10,000,000 in the metro area and only 14,000 on a Sunday afternoon? It's worth adding, $1.25 in 1955 adjusts to $11 in 2014, and I'm pretty sure you can go to the upper deck for that amount pretty readily.

QUOTE (PorkChopExpress @ Apr 15, 2014 -> 05:20 PM) So I see that the Blue Jays lost Maicer Izturis for 4-6 months due a torn LCL in his left knee that will require surgery to repair. I think there were rumors of a Beckham to Tornto trade during the offseason. You guys think that might come to fruition soon? Or potentially sending them Keppinger? Or even Leury Garcia or Semien? With Carlos Sanchez (albeit not as touted as he once was) and Micah Johnson in the minors, it appears that the Sox actually have depth at 2B, and not just with fillers. Based on Toronto's need, we should be a perfect fit for a trade. Torotno was rumored to be interested in Beckham in the offseason so it really does make sense to send him there. But the problem is...Beckham flat out has to get back to the big leagues and at least play a few games beforehand; with an oblique injury Torotno isn't going to just believe "oh he'll be back in x number of days" because who knows how long he'll really take to be back? He was supposed to be almost back a week and a half ago. You've got to at least get him in a handful of big league ballgames and hopefully have him show a bit of success first, so that he establishes he's not compeltely hampered by the oblique. And unfortunately, that means getting Semien out of the way, at least temporarily.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Apr 15, 2014 -> 08:51 AM) I think it depends on how far the Sox think they are from contending. DeAza is perfectly fine as a starting LF on a team that isn't expected to contend. He will be streaky, play good LF defense, and can cover CF on occasion if needed. On a contending team, he's a 4th OF, and you have to ask if it's worth paying him $4M more to be a 4th OF than you would have to pay Jordan Danks. De Aza is a free agent after 2015 and he'll be 31 at the time. There is absolutely no sense in which he is a long-term solution for this team. They simply aren't going to be extending him.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Apr 14, 2014 -> 11:37 PM) (Yes, yes, I know there are many things that Hahn has done quite well, this was the only real black mark so far on his regime). Well, a 63 win season is a pretty solid black mark overall too.

So I click expecting a piece on Abreu and 2/3 of it is about Yasiel Puig.

QUOTE (Bigsoxhurt35 @ Apr 14, 2014 -> 06:05 PM) Downs hasn't been able to get anyone out. Veal isn't good. Downs has 1.2 IP 3 ER 4 BB....I'll give him a little more time but I'd sign mijares and put him in AAA for a couple weeks Downs is not being replaced. He is on a major league contract for multiple millions of dollars. No matter whether or not he has gotten anyone out, he will not be replaced any time in the next few weeks.

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Apr 14, 2014 -> 06:13 PM) Heath is a RHP You're right, my bad, brain crossed up looking at the DL guys. They have another LHP in the pen named Mauricio Robles but he's on hte 7 day DL.

QUOTE (Bigsoxhurt35 @ Apr 14, 2014 -> 05:54 PM) Why not a guy like Jose Mijares? Just a guess...they're not willing to cut Downs loose for nothing and they're not sending Veal down to make room for him any time soon, so they don't think there's a match. Purcey and Heath are already also lefties in Charlotte's pen.

QUOTE (BigHurt3515 @ Apr 14, 2014 -> 04:44 PM) What the hell happened to Jair Jurrjens? If he isn't hurt for the year he would be nice to bring in.. I actually would rather have most of those guys instead of Paulino Shoulder injury and torn meniscus in his knee, both of which he never really recovered from.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 14, 2014 -> 04:27 PM) Jon Morosi ‏@jonmorosi 44m Max Scherzer's fastball velocity is down about 2 mph relative to last year, according to data on @fangraphs. (91.4, compared to 93.3) Bullplop. If you compare his first 3 starts this year with his first 3 starts last year they're within error of each other.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Apr 14, 2014 -> 03:45 PM) Johnson has been horrid too, so that winds up making a fairly weak bullpen to begin with, weaker. Paulino and Johnson will get at least a little better, and that alone will help the bullpen, but right now, if Cleto and a rookie are the two guys you have any sense of confidence in, it is a pretty weak pen. I do think Veal is better than most think. He did give up runs Saturday but it was because he was the lamb. Normally he wouldn't have been out there that length of time. I pretty much agree here. The pen appears to be a weakness but it's not as weak as it looks right now, between Jones being out and it being the start of the season.

CBO updates its cost projections again, finds PPACA doing even better job of controlling costs than projected, cuts estimated costs for next decade by $164 billion, no expectation of extreme increases in plan costs next year, and slightly more people will get insurance through exchanges than previously projected. Somewhere in the ether there were probably several dozen posts telling me how these programs are always more expensive than projected.

QUOTE (bmags @ Apr 14, 2014 -> 03:24 PM) There are worse things in the baseball world than JR giving Konerko a victory lap. If we're going to complain about a couple useless guys on the roster, then we need to complain about them all.

QUOTE (maggsmaggs @ Apr 14, 2014 -> 02:54 PM) You can bet that Theo will go over their bonus pool by less 5% if he believes the player is worth it. The White Sox's 1st round pick bonus pool alone is 23.9% higher than the Cubs 1st round pick bonus.

How many teams would actually be able to give Rodon money equivalent to the #1 pick?

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Apr 14, 2014 -> 01:15 PM) What value? If he comes out and hits .300/.350/.400, are teams really going to be lining up trying to trade for him? I think his value basically is what it is. The most you could do is go from a C prospect to a C+ prospect. Well, the one difference we could make is having Beckham play for a month and be healthy for a month, as compared to right now when he's simply not healthy. Important at that level to get him some playing time if we are hoping to try to trade him for anything. If he gets hurt again, then his value is basically nothing.

If we're going to pay this much attention to his K-rate in his first 10 games then I might as well add the numbers. Hawkins's K/PA in 2013: 37.6% K/PA in 2014: 31.0%.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Apr 14, 2014 -> 12:01 PM) Our infield's not bad. Alexei's above average. Gillaspie's around average. Semien's decent. You left out our 1b, and just to stress, Gillaspie was actually below average last year (although I will note a lot of that is due to his 3-error inning in August and complete defensive collapse in the surrounding weeks., and thus he might be able to do better than that this year with regular playing time.)

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 12, 2014 -> 08:55 PM) I'd have the Cubs beating the Pacers right now. And apparently the Cubs beating the Thunder as well.

QUOTE (BigHurt3515 @ Apr 13, 2014 -> 02:47 PM) Can we get Mark Buehrle back? He is exactly what we need in the rotation instead of Paulino I would strongly bet that if you offered Paulino straight up for Buehrle the Blue Jays would be happy to accept.