Balta1701

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 28, 2010 -> 01:02 PM) I really doubt Nick Johnson gets the league minimum. I'm not confident he'll get a major league contract. If a team wants to give him that, more power to them, see if you can get an insurance company to cover that.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 28, 2010 -> 12:22 PM) Yeah I was about to say, I would bet money they have secret arms too. Do you mean secret arms in the "genetically engineered" sense or in the "I watch Glenn Beck so I'm stockpiling" sense?

QUOTE (Jerksticks @ Oct 28, 2010 -> 11:46 AM) I don't think anybody here would be happy with Dunn at 1B for 3 years. That defense is SOOOOOO bad it almost makes you forget about his offense and the 40 garbage-time homers. Adam Dunn's career numbers close and late: 47 HR, .858 OPS. High leverage: 77 HR, 925 OPS. Career OPS in Extra innings: 1.291. You can make a case that he isn't that great in the 8th and 9th innings overall, but the close and late stats and the leverage-stats suggest he'll do damage when it counts. The one thing taht will hurt him is that he has an .817 career OPS against LHP, which is good but nothing like the damage he does against righties. The "40 garbage time home runs" line makes you look worse than Adam Dunn's defense.

QUOTE (Jerksticks @ Oct 28, 2010 -> 11:53 AM) I know. He'll bring balance to that lineup if it kills him. You say that as though it's a bad thing.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Oct 28, 2010 -> 12:14 PM) Why would they be defiant? Because she was one tough little ship.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 28, 2010 -> 10:59 AM) Cream and clear for everyone!!! And there was much rejoicing!

QUOTE (Paint it Black @ Oct 28, 2010 -> 11:49 AM) Kind of a big difference between labor unions and a self proclaimed "secretive group" wouldn't you agree? Labor unions do a whole lot of under the table dealings also.

I wonder if that post wouldn't make a good attack ad. "2k5 admits he collects emails of students in Texas. Do you really want 2k5 around your children's emails? This message sponsored by Americans against NAMBLA."

Gosh, I didn't know you collected email addresses of minors from across the country. That kind of disturbs me.

QUOTE (balfanman @ Oct 28, 2010 -> 09:07 AM) We wouldn't even play Thome at 1st and he was at least adequate. Not playing Thome there had nothing to do with defense or stubbornness. It was entirely about the condition of his back.

QUOTE (balfanman @ Oct 28, 2010 -> 08:53 AM) I don't think resigning Kotsay, or having Kotsay on the team was dumb. What waqs dumb was the way Kotsay was used. If Kotsay only had 120 - 150 at bats all season he might have flourished. Let's hope that they learned their lesson and we only see Castro 1 - 2 times a week. Honestly...yeah it was dumb. Kotsay's only role was as a backup 1b once they realized he couldn't play the OF. If you're going to carry a 12 man bullpen (and hence go with a 4 man bench), you can't have 2 of your bench guys only able to play 1 position or you're going to be sorely lacking on depth. Backup 1b, Backup C, backup OF, backup IF. You have 1 guy to backup the other 3 OF positions and 1 guy to backup the other 3 IF positions.

Well, I'd say my favorite overall thing from yesterday's suite of interviews was that the President actually had to defend against questions from a skeptical person on the left...rather than having to deal with the implicit assumption that the Health Care bill went too far, there were questions about why things didn't move fast enough or change enough. And the best single moment..."Larry Summers is doing a heckuva job"...(pauses to gather his words, spontaneous laughter breaks out in the crowd), Stewart catches it, then Obama catches it and you can watch his face suddenly frown.

QUOTE (since56 @ Oct 28, 2010 -> 08:34 AM) Businesses come and go. What if they go bankrupt at any time? They are not the biggest of the cell phones companies. Verizon and AT&T for example dominate that market. Risky making permanent changes based on U. S. Cellular name. Put up bars and make the Sox socks striped black and white like prisoners? Like when the Sox made a substantial commitment to the Pontiac Fundamentals deck?

QUOTE (Tex @ Oct 28, 2010 -> 08:12 AM) Dumb ass kids drive me crazy Everyone archive Tex's school related posts so that when he goes off the deep end we can make some money in press interviews.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Oct 27, 2010 -> 09:31 PM) With regards to Cotts, he did have a very mediocre slider to go along with that fastball, and used it just to get the other hitters thinking about it. He hid the ball very well and thus, his 88-91 MPH MPH fastball looked to be about 93-96. I recall people saying that he altered his delivery the following year - I think coming more over the top opposed to three-quarters - and it was much easier to pick the ball up and he's been killed ever since. I think part of him altering his delivery wound up being that he couldn't stay healthy if he didn't. He either had to choose between getting shelled or the DL.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Oct 27, 2010 -> 09:03 PM) I really don't understand how anyone with knowledge of the White Sox payroll committments could believe we would be major players this offseason. Barring some sequence of huge trades, we'll be signing a few guys off the scrap heap and maybe signing PK. The money just isn't there this offseason. Now that doesn't mean KW doesn't pull off a deal for a player such as Kemp, but it would have to be a high-risk/high-reward type deal for someone like Kemp or BJ Upton or someone who is not quite meeting his capabilities and management is impatient with him. It all depends on what the Sox are willing to do. The Sox's payroll came in at $120 million in 2008, with some money coming in to help offset Thome...even if you count that though, we've already seen a substantial total payroll cut for 2009 and 2010 from where we were in 08. On top of that, presumbably at some level we're now entering more of an economic recovery phase, so at least the possibility of huge ad-deal losses has decreased. This team is back into a position where if it wins games, it can count on substantial revenue growth again, and while we're not down $70 million in commitments like the Tigers, there has the potential to be some maneuvering room.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Oct 27, 2010 -> 11:15 PM) If Konerko is off the books we have another major hole to fill. Viciedo seems to me to be a DH more than a 1B. Our 1B defense will be atrocious. I agree with shack's post. I just hope we get rid of this year's scrap heap guys and add a new cast of characters. No Jones please. Find a way to get rid of Juan Pierre. Omar needs to be a coach; Oz will be too tempted to play him every day. He's too old for that. Of all the names you mentioned, I want Fielder. First point: 1. How on Earth can we judge what Viciedo's 1b defense would be like? He's barely played there, he bounced back and forth between 1b and 3b this season to get at bats, despite his size he's probably going to wind up having better reactions/instincts/speed/range than PK14 because he is somewhat athletic. 2. How on Earth can you say "our 1b defense will be atrocious" and "I want Fielder" in the same post? Either you care about 1b defense or you don't.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Oct 28, 2010 -> 01:24 AM) Sandy Alomar Jr would be a fantastic bench coach If we're going to be training a new, young catcher in the next year or two...that might be entirely plausible.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Oct 27, 2010 -> 11:06 PM) Don't you think the AJ era is over and Castro will be our starter? Hope he is good in that role. I'm thinking Paulie is back and AJP is gone. I don't think there's any chance Kenny expects Castro to be a 400 PA+ catcher next year. That'd be almost as stupid as re-signing Kotsay.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Oct 27, 2010 -> 11:07 PM) Just say no ... to Berkman! I wouldn't be surprised at all to see KW go after him.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 27, 2010 -> 05:49 PM) If he isn't healthy, like always, he isn't filling a spot. If he's signed for basically the league minimum plus incentives, and he winds up on the DL, then he's only filling a DL spot.

If...and this is a big if...we otherwise fill either the RF spot, and Quentin becomes the primary DH, I could totally see the Sox taking a gamble here to give themselves a LH option...who might be able to be pressed into service at 1b a few games a year even if that'd probably kill him.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 27, 2010 -> 05:23 PM) Not a chance. The Sox don't go after really injury prone players, especially at the kind of prices that Johnson will get. Seriously, who is dumb enough to offer Nick Johnson anything more than the minimum this year? I'd have been that dumb last year to the tune of maybe $2-3 million, but that was before he lost yet another season. And anyway, the Sox don't go for injury prone players...like trading for Carlos Quentin or Jake Peavy or signing Andruw Jones?

As always not conclusive of anything...but that storm that roared through the midwest yesterday wasn't just intense, it was ridiculous. The quote comes from Minnesota Meteorologist Paul Douglas. Weatherunderground has a much more extensive discussion.

Balta is not.