Balta1701

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Dec 24, 2011 -> 03:08 PM) "the level he was at beforehand" wasn't exactly starting-quality. He'd be really useful in a 3rd WR role if you had Bennett and say, Vincent Jackson on the other side, where all Knox ever had to do was run deep when he was in there and defy the defense to single cover him. If he's single covered, he's a home run target, if they send a safety after him, then you can shred the defense with the single-covered guys down low who can catch (Bennett) or Catch and run (Jackson). He also actually does compliment Sanzenbacher somewhat, because if he can develop as a hands guy, you can put Sanzenbacher in on 3rd and 4 plays and have 3-4 short possession/first down options to target (counting Forte).

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Dec 24, 2011 -> 02:58 PM) I thought most everything has indicated he'd be able to play football again (or at least they are optimistic regarding that). I'll believe it when I see it...and there's also "Getting back to the level he was at beforehand' that matters too.

Adrian Peterson just had his knee blown out.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Dec 24, 2011 -> 02:57 PM) I'm pretty convinced Dane isn't that guy (too inconsistent with those hands for a guy that is a "hands" receiver). I think he can have a role as a 5th/6th WR, guy who comes in as a slowly improving hands guy and plays a fair amount on ST, but yeah, the Bears need to target 2 WR's this offseason at least. They have no #1, their #2 is regularly hurt, and their #3/slot is Knox (may never play again), Sanzenbacher, and the best ST guy in the league. Oh, and their #4 WR is one of the biggest drug dealers in Chicago.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Dec 24, 2011 -> 02:46 PM) As much as I hate knox, the dude does have a role in the NFL (if he can get better and I hope he can). Right now, if I'm in the Bears FO, I think I'm planning for a future without Knox. If he happens to be able to play football again, great, but I don't know how you can count on that. Maybe by late-Feb the doctors reports will be clear, but with everything I've read...that looks career-threatening, and the Bears haven't exactly been open with a discussion of how bad it was.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Dec 24, 2011 -> 02:11 PM) Wow, Jerome Simpson just landed a forward flip over the defender into the end zone for a td. I think he stuck the landing too.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Dec 24, 2011 -> 01:54 PM) Viciedo=Bobby Bonilla Forget the Vladimir Guerrero comparisons, a HOF career is pretty unlikely. QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 24, 2011 -> 02:04 PM) Bobby Bonilla was a 6 time all star, 3 time silver slugger, 1 time MVP runner up, who put up an .862 OPS over 10 seasons, playing in parks that weren't hitters parks. If he played those seasons in Boston, or he stayed healthy after he hit 34, or he didn't have a down year right when he arrived with the Mets, or if he didn't play in the steroid era, people would be talking about him as a borderline HOF candidate. Got a better one. Bobby Bonilla's OPS in full seasons until he started breaking down was .859. His ballpark adjusted OPS+ in that time is 133. Paul Konerko's OPS with the White Sox is .866. His ballpark adjusted OPS+ in that time is 123. Bobby Bonilla for a decade was a significantly stronger offensive force than Paul Konerko has been with the White Sox. If Viciedo's comp is Bobby Bonilla, that would be spectacular. If he had a 10 year stretch like Bobby Bonilla, he'd have a statue.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Dec 24, 2011 -> 01:54 PM) Viciedo=Bobby Bonilla Forget the Vladimir Guerrero comparisons, a HOF career is pretty unlikely. Bobby Bonilla was a 6 time all star, 3 time silver slugger, 1 time MVP runner up, who put up an .862 OPS over 10 seasons, playing in parks that weren't hitters parks. If he played those seasons in Boston, or he stayed healthy after he hit 34, or he didn't have a down year right when he arrived with the Mets, or if he didn't play in the steroid era, people would be talking about him as a borderline HOF candidate.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 24, 2011 -> 01:58 PM) Not to mention the irony that the reason he is being prosecuted, is because there is the paper trail that democrats do not want to create in the other cases. We don't want people to have to register to vote?

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Dec 24, 2011 -> 01:38 PM) So the Sox don't have what it takes to deal for a potential top-of-the-rotation starter, I can accept that. Viciedo's ceiling mustn't be Vlad Guerrero then. No, his ceiling can still be an incredible player...but there's a probability factor. The Sox have jerked him around, particularly on defense, a ton, and they still haven't cleared out a reasonable place for him to play next year. The probability of him getting to where he could get isn't 100%. Same reason you're not already labeling Chris Sale a #1 pitcher/cy young award winner. He absolutely has the stuff to be that guy...but no one knows how his arm will hold up over 150+ innings. If guys always hit their ceilings, we'd be laughing at you for saying we needed an extra #1 starter with a guy who has the raw stuff of Sale on the roster.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Dec 24, 2011 -> 01:16 PM) My contention is Viciedo or Ramirez might be able to bring the Sox that return. No one would give that up for Viciedo until he has a full, successful season at the MLB level. The sox have messed around with him and moved him around too much. Alexei might..but then you have to convince another team to be willing to pay the price for a SS, and right now I don't see the team that's going to do so (braves included). If the Braves were willing to part with a Teheran based package for Alexei, everyone here would jump at it. But we can't make them do that, and neither can Kenny...so insisting that it shoudl happen is going to annoy people.

Yes, thanks!

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Dec 24, 2011 -> 01:02 PM) It's a problem that has gotten worse over time as players bulked up, right? Really hard to know that, because the equipment and medical response has changed over time also. Helmet designs have at least slowly changed over the years, but that has also allowed some guys to hit harder. Also, for players like QB's and RB's, the quality of turf/playing surface has probably had a big impact, since a lot of concussions for those guys are from their helmets hitting the ground. Some of the hardest hitters I can remember were guys like safeties or LB, who weren't you know, 340 lb behemoth linemen. Steve Atwater vs. Christian Okoye comes to mind.

QUOTE (Reddy @ Dec 24, 2011 -> 12:31 PM) JJ is an upgrade over Soria. Relievers are thirty times easier to come by, and if Jurrjens stays healthy it's totally worth it. In his good seasons, Soria was worth 2 WAR while Jair was worth about 4, but Jair has had those last 2 seasons where he's been worth about 1-1.5 because he's never on the mound. So it's all about whether or not you think you can keep him healthy.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Dec 24, 2011 -> 12:11 PM) I'm not sure it matters whether or not they knew the exact repercussions of concussions. For a living (and a damn good paycheck), they played a sport that required them to beat the living s*** out of themselves and others. They had to know that there would be long-lasting effects. That obviously won't hold up in a court of law, but in my mind these guys took a risk they understood. You might well be able to get away with that argument starting in about 20 years, when the people who are just starting right now wind up having their bodies collapse under them. The ones who retired 10 years ago though, I can believe that a lot of them really didn't understand the kind of long term damage they were doing mentally.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 24, 2011 -> 12:51 PM) Which, ironically, Democrats are pretty much trying to do after crying about disenfranchisement, they are going to do exactly that to the majority of the state of Indiana if they have their way. But now its OK. Well, it's nice to see you come out and strongly endorse having zero Republicans on the ballot in the state of indiana on a silly technicality. But I guess them's the apples.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Dec 24, 2011 -> 12:53 PM) I understand that. Clearly you don't, otherwise you wouldn't keep requesting that the team trade for one.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Dec 24, 2011 -> 11:54 AM) How exactly do these laws in general and in Indiana specifically keep poor people from voting. The same poor people that need a license to drive or an id to cash their welfare check at the currency exchange or to buy booze. Actually, at least in Tennessee, the ID requirement for voting is much more stringent than the ID requirement for any of those other things. You can live your life with a state-issued ID that won't let you vote, and then voting requires realizing that your ID is longer good, producing documents that you might not have/might not realize you need, getting transportation to a DMV center (with no public transit options to get there), and going a couple times in order to get them to supply you with a free ID. There's no state going out there and spending $100 million a year to go out and track down the people who don't have ID's and make sure that they get them.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Dec 24, 2011 -> 12:24 PM) The middle of the rotation has been shored up this offseason, I'd still like them to deal basically whatever it took for one more potential top-of-the-rotation starter. Teams do not give up potential top-of-the-rotation starters in trades very willingly.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Dec 24, 2011 -> 11:13 AM) Yeah, I agree completely. Stewart should start the season in AAA and continue to develop as a starter. With Reed, Crain & Frasor, we only need one or two more right-handed relievers. We have several options in-house already and maybe they'll bring in another guy or two on minor league deals. I'm not too worried about those last couple spots. There are a couple of much bigger question marks that will dictate our season. If the team were truly rebuilding, I'd totally agree. Go for either scrap heap or Axelrod in the bullpen for spots 6 and 7. If the team has any desire to compete, and you look at a rotation with Sale, Peavy, and Humber in it, you have to expect that a deep bullpen would be the only way you'd have a shot to win the division. We decided we didn't need that when we traded Santos though. And that's why people keep suggesting things like Stewart or even Molina in this year's pen.

The 0-14 1976 Bucs averaged under 9 points per game and were shut out 5 times during the season. The 1991 Colts scored 14 touchdowns all season.

QUOTE (bmags @ Dec 24, 2011 -> 10:57 AM) If you all treated this as harshly as you've treated the small # of voter fraud cases concerning poor minorities...you would pass laws trying to strip all indiana politicians of their right to vote (but more realistically, throw high barrier obstacles to affluent white people voting). The irony of course is that Indiana recently implemented one of the harshest voter ID laws in the nation to keep poor people from voting.

So, there's something else going on in this story too.

QUOTE (bmags @ Dec 24, 2011 -> 10:42 AM) do you guys think this is the worst offense ever trotted out on an nfl field? No.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Dec 23, 2011 -> 11:15 PM) Balta is waiting to go all Incredible Hulk on that idea. With Sale already a potential victim of the bullpen experiment in 2011...trading Santos/moving Sale/Pena departing/trading Thornton and forcing Zach Stewart into a relief role doesn't quite seem to be a good enough payoff for Daniel Hudson. Where it looks like a magical move is if Stewart. Sale and Molina put up Buehrle/Floyd/Hudson/Gio Gonzalez/Edwin Jackson numbers on the board. Otherwise, the future is bleak indeed. AAARRRRGHHHHHHH!!! Cooper did say earlier this offseason that he thinks Stewart's long term role is in the bullpen. But even if that's true, it's crazy to start him in the pen this year. Even as a reliever, he'd benefit from starting in AAA and piling up innings, in terms of getting practice on his offspeed stuff. Furthermore, if there's a 10% chance he turns into a successful starter, a starter is so much more valuable than a reliever it's silly to give that away without at least trying. You move him back to the pen for a year, that's it, he's never leaving the pen again.